Antiochus and Peripatetic Ethics

Offers a re-appraisal of the sources and philosophical significance of Peripatetic ethics as interpreted and appropriated by Antiochus of Ascalon.

Georgia Tsouni (Author)

9781108412612, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 April 2023

245 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.31 kg

'All in all, this book is a fine piece of scholarship, providing as it does an accurate analysis of Antiochus' distinctive position in ethics, and specifically his reclaiming oikeiosis-theory for Aristotle and the Peripatetic tradition.' John Dillon, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

This book offers a fresh analysis of the account of Peripatetic ethics in Cicero's On Ends 5, which goes back to the first-century BCE philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. Georgia Tsouni challenges previous characterisations of Antiochus' philosophical project as 'eclectic' and shows how his reconstruction of the ethics of the 'Old Academy' demonstrates a careful attempt to update the ancient heritage, and predominantly the views of Aristotle and the Peripatos, in the light of contemporary Stoic-led debates. This results in both a hermeneutically complex and a philosophically exciting reading of the old tradition. A case in point is the way Antiochus grounds the 'Old Academic' conception of the happy life in natural appropriation (oikeiosis), thus offering a naturalistic version of Aristotelian ethics.

Introduction
Part I: 1. Antiochus in Rome
2. 'Old Academic' history of philosophy
Part II. The Ethics of the 'Old Academy': 3. Oikei?sis and the telos
4. Self-love in the Antiochean-Peripatetic account
5. 'Cradle arguments' and the objects of oikei?sis
6. Oikei?sis towards theoretical virtue
7. Social oikei?sis
8. The Antiochean conception of the happy life
9. Animals and plants in Antiochus' ethical account
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Philosophy [HP], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]