Ancient Philosophy

This book breaks new ground in the study of later ancient philosophy by examining the interplay of the two main schools of thought, Platonism and Aristotelianism, from the first century BC to the third century AD. From the time of Antiochus and for the next four centuries, Platonists were strongly preoccupied with the question of how Aristotle’s philosophy compared with the Platonic model. Scholars have usually classified Platonists into two groups, the orthodox ones and the eclectics or syncretists, depending on whether Platonists rejected Aristotle’s philosophy as a whole or accepted some Peripatetic doctrines. The book argues against this dichotomy, claiming that Platonists turned to Aristotle only in order to discover and elucidate Plato’s doctrines and thus to reconstruct Plato’s philosophy. They did not hesitate to criticize Aristotle when judging him to be at odds with Plato. For them, Aristotle was merely auxiliary to their accessing and understanding Plato. The evaluation of Aristotle’s testimony on the part of the Platonists also depends on their interpretation of Aristotle himself. This is particularly clear in the case of Porphyry, with whom the ancient discussion reaches a conclusion, which most later Platonists accepted. While essentially in agreement with Plotinus’s interpretation of Plato, Porphyry interpreted Aristotle in such a way that the latter appeared to agree essentially with Plato on all significant philosophical questions, a view which was dominant until the Renaissance. It is argued that Porphyry’s view of Aristotle’s philosophy guided him to become the first Platonist to write commentaries on Aristotle’s works.

This book is an examination of Plato's treatment of the relation between a whole and its parts in a group of Plato's later works: the Theaetetus, Parmenides, Sophist, Philebus, and Timaeus. Plato's discussions of part and whole in these texts fall into two distinct groups: a problematic one in which he explores, without endorsing, a model of composition as identity; and another in which he develops an alternative to this rejected model. Each model is concerned with the nature of composition of a whole from its parts, such that a whole is an individual, rather than a mere collection or heap. According to the problematic model of composition, a whole is identical to its many parts, that is, the relation of many parts to one whole is just the relation of identity. This model is shown to have the paradoxical consequence that the same thing(s) is (or are) both one thing and many things, and for this reason, amongst others, it cannot support an adequate account of composition. According to the alternative model of composition, wholes of parts are contentful structures (or, instances of such structures), whose parts get their identity only in the context of the whole they compose. Plato presents the structure of such wholes as the proper objects of Platonic science: essentially irreducible, intelligible, and normative in character.

This book examines Plato's subtle and insightful analysis of pleasure and explores its intimate connections with his discussions of value and human psychology. The book offers a fresh perspective on how good things bear on happiness in Plato's ethics, and shows that for Plato, pleasure cannot determine happiness because pleasure lacks a direction of its own. Plato presents wisdom as a skill of living that determines happiness by directing one's life as a whole, bringing about goodness in all areas of one's life, as a skill brings about order in its materials. The ‘materials’ of the skill of living are, in the first instance, not things like money or health, but one's attitudes, emotions, and desires where things like money and health are concerned. Plato recognizes that these ‘materials’ of the psyche are inchoate, ethically speaking, and in need of direction from wisdom. Among them is pleasure, which Plato treats not as a sensation but as an attitude with which one ascribes value to its object. However, Plato also views pleasure, once shaped and directed by wisdom, as a crucial part of a virtuous character as a whole. Consequently, Plato rejects all forms of hedonism, which allows happiness to be determined by a part of the psyche that does not direct one's life but is among the materials to be directed. At the same time, Plato is also able to hold both that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and that pleasure is necessary for happiness, not as an addition to one's virtue, but as a constituent of one's whole virtuous character itself. Plato therefore offers an illuminating role for pleasure in ethics and psychology, one to which we may be unaccustomed: pleasure emerges not as a sensation or even a mode of activity, but as an attitude — one of the ways in which we construe our world — and as such, a central part of every character.

This book is an evolution of Plato’s Moral Theory where Irwin presented for the first time his personal interpretation of Plato’s ethics. The aim of this book is to demonstrate that Plato’s rejection of Socrates’ instrumentalism is one of the key elements in the development of Plato’s philosophical perspective. The book, which is structured in 20 chapters, is a dialogue by dialogue commentary, which discusses Plato’s ethics in context of his metaphysics and epistemology. The first chapters study how in his early dialogues (Laches, Charmides, and Euthydemus) Plato interprets Socrates’ method and doctrines. Then, from chapter 6 to 9, it is illustrated how in later dialogues (Gorgias, Meno, Protagoras) Plato tries to defend and support Socrates’ theories against some possible critics. The core of the book (chapters 10 through 18) is devoted to a careful analysis of how Plato in the Republic develops his own views, moving away from the positions of his master. Lastly, in the two final chapters how the mature views of the Republic are advanced in the late dialogues (the Philebus, the Statesman, and the Laws) is examined.

Argues that Plato in his middle period (roughly at the time of the Phaedo and the Republic) had a radically pessimistic view of non‐philosophers: they could not be genuinely virtuous or happy, and their lives were inevitably deeply undesirable ones to live. This pessimistic conclusion, I argue, rests on Plato's middle‐period epistemology, psychology, and metaphysics. But in the later dialogues (e.g. the Laws and the Statesman), Plato comes to a strikingly different conclusion. At least some non‐philosophers can be virtuous and lead lives that are well worth living. This book traces and explores the backward and forward connections to Plato's new estimate of non‐philosophers’ ethical capacities. On the backward side, these changes rest on significant developments in Plato's psychology and epistemology. In particular, in Plato's late period, he develops a more unified view of the soul's capacities and a richer understanding of how reason structures and influences the rest of the soul's capacities. On the forward side, these differences in non‐philosophers’ ethical capacities have significant implications for Plato's political philosophy. Since non‐philosophers are capable of more, the political and social institutions appropriate for them must also be differ ent.

This book thus reads the Laws in the context provided by Plato's other post‐Republic dialogues—especially the Phaedrus, the Philebus, the Statesman, the Theaetetus, and the Timaeus—and tries to show how the Laws’ novel ethical and political conclusions depend on the epistemology, psychology, and metaphysics of these later dialogues.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the Platonist philosophers of Late Antiquity — from Plotinus in the 3rd century to the 6th-century schools in Athens and Alexandria — neglected the political dimension of their Platonic heritage in their concentration on an otherworldly life. This book presents a reappraisal of these thinkers, arguing that their otherworldliness involved, rather than excluded, political ideas. A reconstruction of the political philosophy of these thinkers is proposed for the first time, including discussion of these Platonists’ conceptions of the function, structure, and contents of political science (including questions concerning political reform, law, justice, penology, religion, and political action), its relation to political virtue and to the divinization of soul and state. This book also traces the influence of these ideas on selected Christian and Islamic writers: Eusebius, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and al-Farabi.

The book presents in chapter format a selection of the author's essays in ancient philosophy, drawn from forty years of writings on the subject. The central theme is the moral psychology of Plato and Aristotle, with a special focus on pleasure and related concepts. It also contains discussions of Socrates and the Greek atomists (including the Epicureans) showing how Plato's ethics grows out of the thought of Socrates, and showing also that pleasure is a central concept for the atomists. It surveys a range of important topics in the work of some of the greatest ancient philosophers, which remain the subject of lively philosophical debate today.