Recent research in the humanities and social sciences suggests that individuals who understand themselves as belonging to something greater than the self-a family, community, or religious or spiritual group-often feel happier, have a deeper sense of purpose or meaning in their lives, and have overall better life outcomes than those who do not. Some positive and personality psychologists have labeled this location of the self within a broader perspective "self-transcendence." This book presents and integrates new, interdisciplinary research into virtue, happiness, and the meaning of life by re-orienting these discussions around the concept of self-transcendence. The essays are organized around three broad themes connected to self-transcendence. First, they investigate how self-transcendence helps us to understand aspects of the moral life as it is studied within psychology, including the development of wisdom, the practice of moral praise, and psychological well-being. Second, they explore how self-transcendence is linked to virtue in different religious and spiritual traditions including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Finally, they ask how self-transcendence can help us theorize about Aristotelean and Thomist conceptions of virtue, like hope and piety, and how this helps us to re-conceptualize happiness and meaning in life.

This series is intended to serve the needs of philosophers and students of philosophy interested in Plato in much the same way as those interested in Aristotle are served by the well-known Clarendon Aristotle Series. Each volume contains a new translation (usually of a single, medium-length dialogue), and exegetical and critical notes on the philosophical content and agruments.

The Chinese Tao and the Western Trinity have a fundamental unity of theme: the unity of opposites. Both are connected with problems as broad and diverse as how to describe the entire universe, how a system can talk about itself, the relationship between symbols and realities, and the nature of signs and sacraments.

Published in 1987: The following essays form, as their title-page shows, only the first half of a collection which the writer hopes to complete in the course of a few months. Even when completed the whole work is designed to be merely preparatory to another on the interpretation of the Platonic Philosophy, and the materials brought together in the following pages, as well as those which, it is trusted, will form their continuation, were originally intended to appear in the Introduction to that projected work.

Pyrrhonian Buddhism reconstructs the path to enlightenment shared both by early Buddhists and the ancient Greek sceptics inspired by Pyrrho of Elis, who may have had extended contacts with Buddhists when he accompanied Alexander the Great to India in the third century BCE. This volume explores striking parallels between early Buddhism and Pyrrhonian scepticism, suggesting their virtual identity. Both movements saw beliefs-fictions mistaken for truths-as the principal source of human suffering. Both practiced suspension of judgment about beliefs to obtain release from suffering, and to achieve enlightenment, which the Buddhists called bodhi and the Pyrrhonists called ataraxia. And both came to understand the structure of human experience without belief, which the Buddhists called dependent origination and the Pyrrhonists described as phenomenalistic atomism. This book is intended for the general reader, as well as historians, classicists, Buddhist scholars, philosophers, and practitioners of spiritual techniques.

First published in 1991, The Greatest Happiness Principle traces the history of the theory of utility, starting with the Bible, and running through Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus. It goes on to discuss the utilitarian theories of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in detail, commenting on the latter's view of the Christianity of his day and his optimal socialist society. The book argues that the key theory of utility is fundamentally concerned with happiness, stating that discussions of happiness have been largely left out of discussions of utility, it also argues utility as a moral theory, posing the question ultimately, what is happiness?

This collection of essays engages with several topics in Aristotle's philosophy of mind, some well-known and hotly debated, some new and yet to be explored. The contributors analyze Aristotle's arguments and present their cases in ways that invite contemporary philosophers of mind to consider the potentials-and pitfalls-of an Aristotelian philosophy of mind. The volume brings together an international group of renowned Aristotelian scholars as well as rising stars to cover five main themes: method in the philosophy of mind, sense perception, mental representation, intellect, and the metaphysics of mind. The papers collected in this volume, with their choice of topics and quality of exposition, show why Aristotle is a philosopher of mind to be studied and reckoned with in contemporary discussions. Encounters with Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of ancient philosophy and philosophy of mind.

This is the first volume of essays devoted to Aristotelian formal causation and its relevance for contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science. The essays trace the historical development of formal causation and demonstrate its relevance for contemporary issues, such as causation, explanation, laws of nature, functions, essence, modality, and metaphysical grounding. The introduction to the volume covers the history of theories of formal causation and points out why we need a theory of formal causation in contemporary philosophy. Part I is concerned with scholastic approaches to formal causation, while Part II presents four contemporary approaches to formal causation. The three chapters in Part III explore various notions of dependence and their relevance to formal causation. Part IV, finally, discusses formal causation in biology and cognitive sciences. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation will be of interest to advanced graduate students and researchers working on contemporary Aristotelian approaches to metaphysics and philosophy of science. This volume includes contributions by Jose Tomas Alvarado, Christopher J. Austin, Giacomo Giannini, Jani Hakkarainen, Ludger Jansen, Markku Keinanen, Gyula Klima, James G. Lennox, Stephen Mumford, David S. Oderberg, Michele Paolini Paoletti, Sandeep Prasada, Petter Sandstad, Wolfgang Sattler, Benjamin Schnieder, Matthew Tugby, and Jonas Werner.

Early Skepticism and its founder, Pyrrho of Elis, were introduced to the world in the third century BCE by the poet and philosopher Timon of Phlius. This is the first book-length study in English of the fragments of Timon's works. Of his more than 100 titles, four fragments remain of a catalogue elegy, the Indalmoi, and 133 verses of the Silloi, a hexameter parody in three books in which Timon ridicules philosophers of all periods whom he observes on a trip to Hades. Dee L. Clayman reconstructs the books of the Silloi starting from an outline in Diogenes Laertius and the book numbers assigned to a few fragments by their sources. This has not been attempted since Wachsmuth's edition of 1885, and carries his approach further by careful observation of syntactic and contextual clues in the text. Using the Greek text of Lloyd-Jones and Parsons of 1983, all of the extant fragments are translated into English and discussed as literature, rather than as source material for the history of philosophy. Separate chapters demonstrate that the principle Hellenistic poets, Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes, were aware of Timon's work specifically, and of Skepticism generally. The book concludes with a definition of "Skeptical aesthetics" that places many of the characteristic features of Hellenistic literature in a skeptical milieu.

Returning from the battle of Potidaea, Socrates reenters the city only to find it changed, with new leadership in the making. Socrates assumes the mask of physician in order to diagnose the city's condition in the persons of the young and charismatic Charmides and his ambitious and formidable guardian Critias. Beneath the cloak of their self-presentations, Doctor Socrates discovers a profound and communicable disease: their incipient tyranny, "the greatest sickness of the soul." He thereby is able to "foresee" their future and their role in the oligarchy (The Thirty Tyrants) that overthrows the democracy at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The unusual diagnostic instrument of this physician of the city: the question of sophrosyne (customarily translated as moderation). The analysis of the soul of this popular favorite uncovers a distorted development with little prospect of self-knowledge, and that of the guardian, a profound disabling ignorance, deluded and perverted by his presumed practical wisdom. Alongside on the bench sits Socrates whose ignorance, by contrast, shows itself to be enabling, measured and prospective. In this way, the profound ignorance of the tyrant and the profound ignorance of the philosopher are made to mutually illuminate one another. In the process, Levine brings us to see Plato's extended apologia or defense of Socrates as "a teacher of tyrants" and his counter-indictment of the city for its unthinking acceptance of its leaders. Moreover, in the face of modern skepticism, we are brought to see how such "value judgments" are possible, how Plato conceives the prospects for practical judgment (phronesis). In addition we witness the care with which Plato presents his penetrating diagnoses even amidst compromised circumstances. Levine, further, is at pains to situate the specific dialogic issues in their larger significance for the philosophic tradition. Lastly, the author's inviting style encourages the reader to think along with Socrates. The question of tyranny is always relevant. The question of our ignorance is always immediate. The conversation about sophrosyne needs to be resumed.

Plato's Critique of Impure Reason offers a dramatic interpretation of the Republic, at the center of which lies a novel reading of the historical person of Socrates as the "real image" of the good. Schindler argues that a full response to the attack on reason introduced by Thrasymachus at the dialogue's outset awaits the revelation of goodness as the cause of truth. This revelation is needed because the good is what enables the mind to know and makes things knowable. When we read Socrates' display of the good against the horizon of the challenges posed by sophistry, otherwise disparate aspects of Plato's masterpiece turn out to play essential roles in the production of an integrated whole. In this book, D. C. Schindler begins with a diagnosis of the crisis ofreason in contemporary culture as a background to the study of the Republic. He then sets out a philosophical interpretation of the dialogue in five chapters: an analysis of Book 1 that shows the inherent violence and dogmatism of skepticism; a reading of goodness as cause of both being and appearance; a discussion of the dramatic reversals in the images Socrates uses for the idea of the good; an exploration of the role of the person of Socrates in the Republic; and a confrontation between the "defenselessness" of philosophy and the violence of sophistry. Finally, in a substantial coda, the book presents a new interpretation of the old quarrel between philosophy and art through an analysis of Book 10. Though based on a close reading of the text, Plato's Critique of Impure Reason always interprets the arguments with a view to fundamental human problems, and so will be valuable not only to Plato scholars but to any reader with general philosophical interests.

This book provides a unified account of the connection between justice and the good life. It argues that the virtues of character require institutions, while good institutions enable persons to live together virtuously. Although virtue ethics and political philosophy are rich and sophisticated philosophical traditions, there has been an unfortunate divergence, in theory and practice, between the virtues of character and the virtues of institutions. This book has two primary purposes. First, it reorients political philosophy around the concept of the good life. To do so, the author addresses the problem of political authority from a virtue ethics perspective. He also considers whether a political theory oriented around the good life is compatible with Rawls's notion of reasonable pluralism. Second, the book explains the relationship between the virtues of institutions and the virtues of character. The author shows how institutions support the development and exercise of the virtues of character, while examining specific other-regarding virtues such as justice and friendship. The Authority of Virtue will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in virtue ethics, social and political philosophy, ancient philosophy, and political theory.

Drawing on evidence from a wide range of classical Chinese texts, this book argues that xingershangxue, the study of "beyond form", constitutes the core argument and intellectual foundation of Daoist philosophy. The author presents Daoist xingershangxue as a typical concept of metaphysics distinct from that of the natural philosophy and metaphysics of ancient Greece since it focusses on understanding the world beyond perceivable objects and phenomena as well as names that are definable in their social, political, or moral structures. In comparison with other philosophical traditions in the East and West, the book discusses the ideas of dao, de, and "spontaneously self-so", which shows Daoist xingershangxue's theoretical tendency to transcendence. The author explains the differences between Daoist philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy and proposes that Daoist philosophy is the study of xingershangxue in nature, providing a valuable resource for scholars interested in Chinese philosophy, Daoism, and comparative philosophy.

This book looks at the epistemological views and arguments of the early Stoics, in particular those of Chrysippus (3rd century BC), the third head of the Stoic school. It discusses such issues as the manner in which we perceive things and come to have notions of them, the reliability of arguments, the nature and variety of cognitive errors, and the possibility and nature of knowledge.

Unlike most recent works on the subject, the aim of this book is to give a comprehensive account of Stoic epistemology as a whole as it was developed by Chrysippus. The emphasis lies - more than usual - on how the epistemological views of the Stoics are interrelated, not only among themselves, but also with views belonging to their physics and logic. The author focuses on the ancient sources and does not attempt to cover all the subjects that are discussed in the scholarly literature, but in working with the sources, he makes extensive use of the latest scholarship on the subject.

Our evidence for early Stoicism is quite poor. There are probably many views and arguments we will never get to know about. But we do find lots of passages bearing on various issues in Stoic epistemology in Sextus, Galen, Plutarch, Cicero, and a few others authors. Much of Lokke's work therefore consists of putting together bits and pieces of evidence from these authors so as to try and make sense of the subjects that we know the early Stoics discussed, some of which are listed above.

The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths explores and compares the most influential sets of divine myths in Western culture: the Homeric pantheon and Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. Heath argues that not only does the God of the Old Testament bear a striking resemblance to the Olympians, but also that the Homeric system rejected by the Judeo-Christian tradition offers a better model for the human condition. The universe depicted by Homer and populated by his gods is one that creates a unique and powerful responsibility - almost directly counter to that evoked by the Bible-for humans to discover ethical norms, accept death as a necessary human limit, develop compassion to mitigate a tragic existence, appreciate frankly both the glory and dangers of sex, and embrace and respond courageously to an indifferent universe that was clearly not designed for human dominion. Heath builds on recent work in biblical and classical studies to examine the contemporary value of mythical deities. Judeo-Christian theologians over the millennia have tried to explain away Yahweh's Olympian nature while dismissing the Homeric deities for the same reason Greek philosophers abandoned them: they don't live up to preconceptions of what a deity should be. In particular, the Homeric gods are disappointingly plural, anthropomorphic, and amoral (at best). But Heath argues that Homer's polytheistic apparatus challenges us to live meaningfully without any help from the divine. In other words, to live well in Homer's tragic world - an insight gleaned by Achilles, the hero of the Iliad - one must live as if there were no gods at all. The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths should change the conversation academics in classics, biblical studies, theology and philosophy have - especially between disciplines - about the gods of early Greek epic, while reframing on a more popular level the discussion of the role of ancient myth in shaping a thoughtful life.

This book presents a positive account of Aristotle's theory of political economy, arguing that it contains elements that may help us better understand and resolve contemporary social and economic problems. The book considers how Aristotle's work has been utilized by scholars including Marx, Polanyi, Rawls, Nussbaum and Sen to develop solutions to the problem of injustice. It then goes on to present a new Social Welfare Function (SWF) as an application of Aristotle's theory. In exploring how Aristotle's theories can be applied to contemporary social welfare analysis, the book offers a study that will be of relevance to scholars of the history of economic thought, political theory and the philosophy of economics.

Discussing Plato’s views on knowledge, recollection, dialogue, and epiphany, this ambitious volume offers a systematic analysis of the ways that Platonic approaches to education can help students navigate today’s increasingly complex moral environment. Though interest in Platonic education may have waned due to a perceived view of Platonic scholarship as wholly impractical, this volume addresses common misunderstandings of Plato’s work and highlights the contemporary relevance of Plato’s ideas to contemporary moral education. Building on philosophical interpretations, the book argues persuasively that educators might employ Platonic themes and dialogue in the classroom. Split into two parts, the book looks first to contextualise Plato’s theory of moral education within political, ethical, and educational frameworks. Equipped with this knowledge, part two then offers contemporary educators the strategies needed for implementing Plato’s educational theory within the pluralistic, democratic classroom setting. A Platonic Theory of Moral Education will be of interest to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of: ethics; Plato scholarship; moral psychology; educational foundations; and the philosophy of education. This book would also benefit graduate students and scholars in teacher education. Mark E. Jonas is Professor of Education and Professor of Philosophy (by courtesy) at Wheaton College, US. Yoshiaki Nakazawa is Assistant Professor of Education at University of Dallas, US.

This book reconstructs the theory of signification implicit in Aristotle's De Interpretatione and its psychological background in his writing De Anima, a project often envisioned by scholars but never systematically undertaken. I begin by explaining what sort of phonetic material, according to Aristotle, can be a significans and a phone. To that end, I provide a physiological account of which animal sounds count as phone, as well as a psychological evaluation of the cognitive content of the phonai under consideration in De Interpretatione: names, verbs, and assertive sentences. I then turn to noemata, which, for Aristotle, are the psychological reference and significata of names, verbs and assertive sentences. I explain what, for Aristotle, are the logical properties a significatum must have in order to be signified by the phonetic material of a name, verb or assertive sentence, and why noemata can fulfil those logical conditions. Finally, I elucidate the significans-significatum relation without making use of the modern semantic triangle. This approach is consonant with Aristotle's methodology and breaks new ground by exploring the connection between the linguistic and psychological aspects of Aristotle's theory of signification.

Does a flourishing life involve pursuing passionate attachments? Can we choose what these passionate attachments will be? This book offers an original theory of how we can actively cultivate our passionate attachments. The author argues that not only do we have reason to view passionate attachments as susceptible to growth, change, and improvement, but we should view these entities as amenable to self-cultivation. He uses Pierre Hadot's and Michel Foucault's accounts of Hellenistic self-cultivation as vital conceptual tools to formulate a theory of cultivating our passionate attachments. First, their accounts offer the conceptual resources for a philosophical theory of how we can cultivate our passionate attachments. Second, the exercises of self-cultivation they focus on allow us to outline a practical method though which we can cultivate our passionate character. Doing this brings out a significantly new dimension to the role of the passionate attachments in the flourishing life and offers theoretical and practical accounts of how we can cultivate them based on the Hellenistic conception of self-directed character change. Cultivating Our Passionate Attachments will be of interest to advanced students and scholars working in virtue ethics, moral philosophy, and ancient philosophy.

This volume offers a new translation of Plutarch's three treatises on animals-On the Cleverness of Animals, Whether Beasts Are Rational, and On Eating Meat-accompanied by introductions and explanatory commentaries. The accompanying commentaries are designed not only to elucidate the meaning of the Greek text, but to call attention to Plutarch's striking anticipations of arguments central to current philosophical and ethological discourse in defense of the position that non-human animals have intellectual and emotional dimensions that make them worthy of inclusion in the moral universe of human beings. Plutarch's Three Treatises on Animals will be of interest to students of ancient philosophy and natural science, and to all readers who wish to explore the history of thought on human-non-human animal relations, in which the animal treatises of Plutarch hold a pivotal position.

This book is the first comprehensive study of Plato's conception of justice. The universality of human rights and human dignity-recognized as the source of the former-are among the crucial philosophical problems in modern-day legal orders and in contemporary culture in general. If dignity is genuinely universal, then human beings also possessed it in ancient times. Plato not only perceived human dignity, but a recognition of dignity is also visible in his conception of justice, which forms the core of his philosophy. Plato's Republic is consistently interpreted in the book as a treatise on justice, relating to the individual and not the state. The famous myth of the cave is a story about education taking place in the world here and now. The best activity is not contemplation but acting for the benefit of others. Not ideas but individuals are the proper objects of love. Plato's philosophy may provide foundations for modern-day human rights protection rather than for totalitarian orders.

The volume collects the most important papers Pierluigi Donini wrote in the last three decades with the aim of promoting a better assessment of post-hellenistic philosophy. The philosophical relevance of post-hellenistic philosophy is now widely (though not yet universally) recognized. Yet much remains to be done. The common practice of focusing each single school in itself detracts from a balanced assessment of the strategies exploited by many philosophers of the period. On the assumption that debates among schools play a major role in the philosophy of the commentators, Donini concentrates on the interaction between leading Aristotelians and Platonists and demonstrates that the developments of both systems of thought were heavily influenced by a continuous confrontation between the two schools. And whereas in cases such as Alcinous and Aspasius this is basically uncontroversial, for other authors such us Alexander, Antiochus and Plutarch the pioneering work of Donini paves the way for a better understanding of their doctrines and definitely confirms the intellectual importance of the first imperial age, when the foundations were laid of versions of both Aristotelianism and Platonism which were bound to influence the whole history of European thought, from Late Antiquity onwards.

This book offers new translations of Aristotle's Politics 5 and 6, accompanied by an introduction and commentary, targeted at historians and those who like to read political science in the context in which it was produced. Philosophical analysis remains essential and there is no intention to detract from the books as political theory, but the focus of this volume is the text as a crucial element in the discourse of fourth-century Greece, and the conflict throughout the Greek world between democracy, oligarchy, and the rise of the Macedonian monarchy.

This volume is the first monograph devoted to the philosophy of Taurus of Beirut, and provides a long-awaited analysis of his texts and their first English translation. Through close examination of the extant witnesses, Petrucci gives a new account of Middle Platonism based on a fresh approach to the theological and cosmological view of Taurus. In this way, the book contributes substantially to the debate on Post-Hellenistic Platonism from the point of view of both exegetical methods and philosophical doctrines, and offers a starting point for a new understanding of many aspects of ancient thought.