Craig Taylor

C. C. W. Taylor presents a selection of his essays in ancient philosophy, drawn from forty years of writings on the subject. The central theme of the volume is the moral psychology of Plato and Aristotle, with a special focus on pleasure and related concepts, an area central to Greek ethical thought. Taylor also discusses Socrates and the Greek atomists, showing how Plato's ethics grows out of the thought of Socrates, and that pleasure is also a central concept for the atomists. Pleasure, Mind, and Soul provides a fascinating survey of a range of important topics in the work of some of the greatest ancient philosophers, and which remain the subject of lively philosophical debate today

Almost uniquely for someone whose thought has been so influential, Socrates wrote nothing himself, and our knowledge of his philosophical opinions and method is derived mainly from the engaging and infuriating figure who appears in Plato's dialogues. The philosophy of Socrates and Plato is therefore closely interconnected, and the most powerful elements of Plato's mature thought form the basis of an interpretation of knowledge, reality, and morality which is still held and debated by philosophers today. Aristotle's approach to these and other issues is in many ways directly opposed to that of Plato, and has been no less influential.

This essay explores the treatment of the relation between nature (phusis) and norm or convention (nomos) in Democritus and in certain Platonic dialogues. In his physical theory Democritus draws a sharp contrast between the real nature of things and their representation via human conventions, but in his political and ethical theory he maintains that moral conventions are grounded in the reality of human nature. Plato builds on that insight in the account of the nature of morality in the myth in the Protagoras. That provides material for a defense of morality against the attacks by Callicles in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus and Glaucon in the Republic, all of whom seek to use the nature-convention contrast to devalue morality.

For Murdoch the importance of the fact–value dichotomy is not to suggest that value is not real. Rather this separation is required in order to keep value pure and untainted with empirical facts. Here Murdoch focuses Kant and Wittgenstein, notably the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. For both, value appears as an intimation of ‘something higher’. And it is here that Murdoch sees the deeper problem with various forms of the fact–value dichotomy: that in our explanations of human life the essential thing, value, must be built into our model or picture from the start if it is to be ultimately integrated into it at all, but that in doing so we may be accused of what Murdoch calls an unwarranted act of faith or intuition.