'The unexamined life is not worth living.' Socrates Plato is the founding thinker of European speculative thought. He was the first Western writer to undertake a comprehensive and rigorous study of the fundamental categories of reality and value, and few philosophers have escaped his influence or rivaled the depth of his works, many of which have remarkable dramatic power and literary beauty. His writings range over ethics, politics, religion, art, the structure of the natural world, mathematics, the human mind, love, sex and friendship. Richard Kraut explores the intellectual milieu that gave rise to Plato's thinking and emphasizes the influence of Socrates, whose devotion to the examined life and death at the hands of Athenian democracy are memorialized in many of Plato's writings, and the full extent of his moral and political thought and its metaphysical underpinning are investigated. Kraut argues that Plato's theory of forms is grounded in common sense, and that his critique of democracy and search for a rational religion continue to be of vital importance.

Designed for courses in the history of philosophy, social and political theory, government, and Plato specifically, Plato's Republic: Critical Essays will enrich students' understanding of this profoundly influential work. The comprehensive collection covers Plato's social and political thought, his metaphysics and epistemology, his ethical theory, and his attitude towards women. The essays, chosen for their clarity and ability to stimulate student discussion, are related to one another in ways that will help students see the connections among the various strands of Plato's thought. The book includes an index of passages to guide students through parts of the Republic that they find challenging.

Aristotle's Politics is widely recognized as one of the classics of the history of political philosophy, and like every other such masterpiece, it is a work about which there is deep division. Many readers of Aristotle are uncertain whether his Politics has any contribution to make to contemporary debates about political life and political theory. The essays in this volume aim to address, implicitly or explicitly, this very question about the relevance of Arisotle's thinking in contemporary political philosophy. Written by leading scholars in lucid and accessible style, the nine essays in this volume will be a critical resource for newcomers to Aristotle.

Aristotle's Politics is widely recognized as one of the classics of the history of political philosophy, and like every other such masterpiece, it is a work about which there is deep division. Many readers of Aristotle are uncertain whether his Politics has any contribution to make to contemporary debates about political life and political theory. The essays in this volume aim to address, implicitly or explicitly, this very question about the relevance of Arisotle's thinking in contemporary political philosophy. Written by leading scholars in lucid and accessible style, the nine essays in this volume will be a critical resource for newcomers to Aristotle.

This volume contains a clear and accurate translation of the last two books of Aristotle's Politics, together with a philosophical commentary. It is well suited to the requirements of students, including those who do not know Greek. The Politics is a key document in Western political thought; it raises and discusses many theoretical and practical political issues which are still debated today. In Books VII and VIII Aristotle gives his fullest picture of the ideal civic community, as a model for actual political systems.

The first edition of the Cambridge Companion to Plato (1992), edited by Richard Kraut, shaped scholarly research and guided new students for thirty years. This new edition introduces students to fresh approaches to Platonic dialogues while advancing the next generation of research. Of its seventeen chapters, nine are entirely new, written by a new generation of scholars. Six others have been thoroughly revised and updated by their original authors. The volume covers the full range of Plato's interests, including ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, religion, mathematics, and psychology. Plato's dialogues are approached as unified works and considered within their intellectual context, and the revised introduction suggests a way of reading the dialogues that attends to the differences between them while also tracing their interrelations. The result is a rich and wide-ranging volume which will be valuable for all students and scholars of Plato.

The first edition of the Cambridge Companion to Plato (1992), edited by Richard Kraut, shaped scholarly research and guided new students for thirty years. This new edition introduces students to fresh approaches to Platonic dialogues while advancing the next generation of research. Of its seventeen chapters, nine are entirely new, written by a new generation of scholars. Six others have been thoroughly revised and updated by their original authors. The volume covers the full range of Plato's interests, including ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, religion, mathematics, and psychology. Plato's dialogues are approached as unified works and considered within their intellectual context, and the revised introduction suggests a way of reading the dialogues that attends to the differences between them while also tracing their interrelations. The result is a rich and wide-ranging volume which will be valuable for all students and scholars of Plato.

The ethics of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), and virtue ethics in general, have seen a resurgence of interest over the past few decades. No longer do utilitarianism and Kantian ethics on their own dominate the moral landscape. In addition, Aristotelian themes fill out that landscape, with such issues as the importance of friendship and emotions in a good life, the role of moral perception in wise choice, the nature of happiness and its constitution, moral education and habituation, finding a stable home in contemporary moral debate. The essays in this volume represent the best of that debate. Taken together, they provide a close analysis of central arguments in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. But they do more than that. Each shows the enduring interest of the questions Aristotle himself subtly and complexly raises in the context of his own contemporary discussions.

This fresh outlook on Socrates' political philosophy in Plato's early dialogues argues that it is both more subtle and less authoritarian than has been supposed. Focusing on the "Crito," Richard Kraut shows that Plato explains Socrates' refusal to escape from jail and his acceptance of the death penalty as arising not from a philosophy that requires blind obedience to every legal command but from a highly balanced compromise between the state and the citizen. In addition, Professor Kraut contends that our contemporary notions of civil disobedience and generalization arguments are not present in this dialogue.

The Quality of Life: Aristotle Revised presents a philosophical theory about the constituents of human well-being. The principal idea is that what Aristotle calls 'external goods' - wealth, reputation, power - have at most an indirect bearing on the quality of our lives. Starting with Aristotle's thoughts about this topic, Kraut increasingly modifies (and occasionally rejects) that stance. He argues that the way in which we experience the world is what well-being consists in. A good internal life comprises, in part, pleasure but far more valuable is the quality of our emotional, intellectual, social, and perceptual experiences. These offer the potential for a richer and deeper quality of life than that which is available to many other animals. A good human life is immeasurably better than that of a simple creature that feels only the pleasures of nourishment; even if it felt pleasure for millions of years, human life would be superior. In opposition to contemporary discussions of well-being, which often appeal to a thought experiment devised by Robert Nozick, Kraut concludes that the quality of our lives consists entirely in the quality of our experiences. While others hold that we must live in 'the real world' to live well and that one's interior life has little or no value on its own, Kraut's interpretation of this thought experiment supports the opposite conclusion.

Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," which equates the ultimate end of human life with happiness (eudaimonia), is thought by many readers to argue that this highest goal consists in the largest possible aggregate of intrinsic goods. Richard Kraut proposes instead that Aristotle identifies happiness with only one type of good: excellent activity of the rational soul. In defense of this reading, Kraut discusses Aristotle's attempt to organize all human goods into a single structure, so that each subordinate end is desirable for the sake of some higher goal.

This book also emphasizes the philosopher's hierarchy of natural kinds, in which every type of creature achieves its good by imitating divine life. As Kraut argues, Aristotle's belief that thinking is the sole activity of the gods leads him to an intellectualist conception of the ethical virtues. Aristotle values these traits because, by subordinating emotion to reason, they enhance our ability to lead a life devoted to philosophy or politics.

Are there things we should value because they are, quite simply, good? If so, such things might be said to have "absolute goodness." They would be good simpliciter or full stop - not good for someone, not good of a kind, but nonetheless good (period). They might also be called "impersonal values." The reason why we ought to value such things, if there are any, would merely be the fact that they are, quite simply, good things. In the twentieth century, G. E. Moore was the great champion of absolute goodness, but he is not the only philosopher who posits the existence and importance of this property.
Against these friends of absolute goodness, Richard Kraut here builds on the argument he made in What is Good and Why, demonstrating that goodness is not a reason-giving property - in fact, there may be no such thing. It is, he holds, an insidious category of practical thought, because it can be and has been used to justify what is harmful and condemn what is beneficial. Impersonal value draws us away from what is good for persons. His strategy for opposing absolute goodness is to search for domains of practical reasoning in which it might be thought to be needed, and this leads him to an examination of a wide variety of moral phenomena: pleasure, knowledge, beauty, love, cruelty, suicide, future generations, bio-diversity, killing in self-defense, and the extinction of our species. Even persons, he proposes, should not be said to have absolute value. The special importance of human life rests instead on the great advantages that such lives normally offer.
"When one reads this, one sees the possibility of real philosophical progress. If Kraut is right, I'd be wrong to say that this book is good, period. Or even great, period. But I will say that, as a work of philosophy, and for those who read it, it is excellent indeed." --Russ Shafer-Landau, University of Wisconsin-Madison

What is good? How can we know, and how important is it? In this book Richard Kraut, one of our most respected analytical philosophers, reorients these questions around the notion of what causes human beings to flourish--that is, what is good for us. Observing that we can sensibly talk about what is good for plants and animals no less than what is good for people, Kraut advocates a general principle that applies to the entire world of living things: what is good for complex organisms consists in the maturation and exercise of their natural powers.

Drawing on the insights of ancient Greek philosophy, Kraut develops this thought into a good-centered moral philosophy, an "ethics of well-being" that requires all of our efforts to do some good. Even what is good of a kind--good poems no less than good people--must be good for someone. Pleasure plays a key role in this idea of flourishing life, but Kraut opposes the current philosophical orthodoxy of well-being, which views a person's welfare as a construct of rational desires or plans, actual or ideal.

The practical upshot of Kraut's theory is that many common human pursuits--for riches, fame, domination--are in themselves worthless, while some of the familiar virtues--justice, honesty, and autonomy--are good for every human being.

The Quality of Life: Aristotle Revised presents a philosophical theory about the constituents of human well-being. The principal idea is that what Aristotle calls 'external goods' - wealth, reputation, power - have at most an indirect bearing on the quality of our lives. Starting with Aristotle's thoughts about this topic, Kraut increasingly modifies (and occasionally rejects) that stance. He argues that the way in which we experience the world is what well-being consists in. A good internal life comprises, in part, pleasure but far more valuable is the quality of our emotional, intellectual, social, and perceptual experiences. These offer the potential for a richer and deeper quality of life than that which is available to many other animals. A good human life is immeasurably better than that of a simple creature that feels only the pleasures of nourishment; even if it felt pleasure for millions of years, human life would be superior. In opposition to contemporary discussions of well-being, which often appeal to a thought experiment devised by Robert Nozick, Kraut concludes that the quality of our lives consists entirely in the quality of our experiences. While others hold that we must live in 'the real world' to live well and that one's interior life has little or no value on its own, Kraut's interpretation of this thought experiment supports the opposite conclusion.

This book offers a systematic overview of Aristotle's conception of well-being, virtue and justice in the Nicomachean Ethics, and then explores the major themes of Politics: civic-mindedness, slavery, family, property, the common good, class conflict, the limited wisdom of the multitude, and the radically egalitarian institutions of the ideal society.