Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8096934
AutoresNicholas White (Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Irvine, autor de correspondencia)
Año2002
Páginas320
Fecha de publicación2002-06-13
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaIndividual and Conflict in Greek Ethics (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/0198250592.001.0001
OpenAlexW4206311095
Open LibraryOL7398302M
ISBN9780198250593
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10

Even before Hegel, philosophers opposed to Kant's dualism of reason and inclination, and to other similar dualistic oppositions of morality and self‐interest, have looked to the ancient Greeks for an alternative conception of ethics and the human personality that is to be guided by it. For this purpose these philosophers fixed on Greek ethics, stressing its harmonizing eudaimonist elements and its use of the notion of virtue. This book argues to the contrary that if we picture Greek ethics as simply a form of harmonizing eudaimonism we seriously distort its true character. First, Greek ethics is far too variegated to fit under a single such label. Second, the Classical ideas of Plato and Aristotle contain important elements that are characteristic neither of harmonizing eudaimonism nor of an ethics of virtue. Greek thinkers did not as a group believe in a consistency of one's happiness with one's conformity to ethical norms or with a full regard for the happiness of others. Rather they took seriously the idea that ethical standards can possess a rational force that does not derive from any contribution that they might make to one's own well‐being. Even Plato and Aristotle believed that under certain circumstances there can be a genuine clash between obeying ethical standards and achieving one's greatest good. The project of ruling out any such clash was developed not in the Classical period but rather in the Stoic ethics of the Third Century. Thus Greek ethics does not eliminate ethical dualisms, and many Greek views exhibit many of the same contours, and the same deep philosophical problem of the conflict of individual and social good, as modern ethics does

Ancient Greek · Epistemology · Eudaimonia · Greeks · Happiness · Information ethics · Meta-ethics · Morality · Normative ethics · Political science · Virtue · Virtue ethics · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Free Will and Agency · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Ethics · Greece · History · Law · Philosophy