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This volume presents essays on Ancient ethics from Homer to
Plotinus with a focus on the significance of Ancient ethical
thinking for contemporary ethics. Adapting Kant's words, we might
describe philosophers today as holding that meta-ethics without
normative ethics is empty; normative ethics without meta-ethics is
blind. One fascinating feature of Ancient ethics is its close
connection between content and method, between normative ethics and
meta-ethics. In connecting ethical, epistemological, and
cosmological issues, Ancient ethical theories strive for an
integrated understanding of normativity. The project of this volume
is to capture some of the colours of the bright spectrum of ancient
ethics. The goal of bundling them together is, ultimately, to shed
better light on the issues of contemporary ethics. Topics:
Classical Chinese Ethics, Indian Ethics, Homeric Ethics, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, Plotinus, Ancient and
Modern Moral Psychology, Hybrid Theories of Normativity, The Unity
of the Virtues, The Art of Life and Morality (Lebenskunst und
Moral).
In the past quarter century, enormous philosophical attention has
been paid to Plato's "Socratic" dialogues, as interpreters have
sought to identify which dialogues are truly Socratic and interpret
and defend the moral theories they find in those works. In spite of
this intellectual energy, no consensus has emerged on the question
of whether Socrates was a hedonist--whether he believed pleasure to
be the good. In this study, George Rudebusch addresses this
question and the textual puzzle from which it has arisen.
In the Protagoras, Plato has Socrates appeal to hedonism in order
to assert his characteristic identification of virtue and
knowledge. While in the Gorgias, Socrates attributes hedonism to
his opponent and argues against it in defense of his own view that
doing injustice is worse than suffering it. From the Apology and
Crito, it is clear that Socrates believes virtue to be the supreme
good. Taken together, scholars have found these texts to be
incoherent and seek to account for them either in terms of the
development of Plato's thinking or by denying that one or more of
these texts was meant to reflect Socrates' own ethical theory.
Rudebusch argues instead that these texts do indeed fit together
into a coherent moral theory as he attempts to locate Socrates'
position on hedonism. He distinguishes Socrates' own hedonism from
that which Socrates attacks elsewhere. Rudebusch also maintains
that Socrates identifies pleasant activity with virtuous activity,
describing Socrates' hedonism as one of activity, not sensation.
This analysis allows for Socrates to find both virtue and pleasure
to be the good, thus solving the textual puzzle and showing the
power of Socratic argument in leading human beings toward the good.
Tackling some of the most fundamental debates over Socratic ethics
in Plato's earlier dialogues, Socrates, Pleasure, and Value will
generate renewed discussion among specialists and provide excellent
reading for courses in ancient philosophy as well as ethical
theory.
George Rudebusch addresses the question of whether Socrates was a hedonist -- that is, if he believed that the good is, at bottom, a matter of pleasure. Rudebusch claims that this issue is so basic that, unless it is resolved, no adequate assessment of the Socratic dialogues' place in the history of philosophy can be made. In attempting to determine Socrates's position, Rudebusch examines the passages in Plato's early dialogues that are most important to this controversy and draws important distinctions between two kinds of pleasure and between hedonism and Protagoreanism. His conclusion, that Socrates was a "modal hedonist," rather than a "sensate pleasure" hedonist, is supported by some very original readings of the early dialogues.
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