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27Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at RomeCanadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (3): 449-456. 2006.Students of Stoicism often bewail the state of our sources. Of the works of Zeno and Chrysippus, the two major early Stoics, we have only fragments and later accounts whose distance from the original we can only guess. Our sources for early Stoic ethics are in better shape than our sources for Stoic metaphysics or logic, but they are still gappy and have the frustating feature that almost none of them are concerned to reveal the argumentative structure of the theory.
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94Aristotle's "Politics": A Symposium: Aristotle on Human Nature and Political VirtueReview of Metaphysics 49 (4). 1996.
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213Aristotle on Human Nature and Political VirtueReview of Metaphysics 49 (4): 731-753. 1996.Nature in the Politics has been most extensively studied in the context of the book 1 argument that the polis is "by nature." Fred Miller's Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics is a landmark in this respect as in many others, and his discussion of the naturalness of the polis is, I think, definitive, and should put an end to the notion that according to Aristotle people find their natural end functioning as mere parts in some large organic social whole. However, nature in Aristotl…Read more
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23"Self-Knowledge in Early Plato"In Dominic J. O'Meara (ed.), Platonic Investigations, Catholic University of Amer Press. pp. 111-138. 1985.
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77Practical ExpertiseIn John Bengson & Marc A. Moffett (eds.), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 101. 2011.
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157. Politics and Ethics in Plato's RepublicIn Otfried Höffe (ed.), Platon, Politeia, Akademie Verlag. pp. 141-160. 2005.
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816. Aristotle on Pleasure and GoodnessIn Amélie Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, University of California Press. pp. 285-300. 1980.
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282Mill and the Subjection of WomenPhilosophy 52 (200). 1977.When Mill's The Subjection of Women was published in 1869 it was ahead of its time in boldly championing feminism. It failed to inaugurate a respectable intellectual debate. Feminist writers have tended to refer to it with respect but without any serious attempt to come to grips with Mill's actual arguments. Kate Millett's chapter in Sexual Politics is the only sustained discussion of Mill in the feminist literature that I am aware of, but it is not from a philosophical viewpoint, and deals with…Read more
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65Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (3): 449-456. 2006.Students of Stoicism often bewail the state of our sources. Of the works of Zeno and Chrysippus, the two major early Stoics, we have only fragments and later accounts whose distance from the original we can only guess. Our sources for early Stoic ethics are in better shape than our sources for Stoic metaphysics or logic, but they are still gappy and have the frustating feature that almost none of them are concerned to reveal the argumentative structure of the theory.
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409Plato's Republic and FeminismPhilosophy 51 (197). 1976.Not many philosophers have dealt seriously with the problems of women's rights and status, and those that have, have unfortunately often been on the wrong side. In fact Plato and Mill are the only great philosophers who can plausibly be called feminists. But there has been surprisingly little serious effort made to analyse their arguments; perhaps because it has seemed like going over ground already won
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22[V] what use is the form of the good? Ethics and metaphysics in PlatoIn Platonic Ethics, Old and New, Cornell University Press. pp. 96-116. 1999.
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11[VII] elemental pleasures: Enjoyment and the good in PlatoIn Platonic Ethics, Old and New, Cornell University Press. pp. 137-166. 1999.
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434Virtue as a skillInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 3 (2). 1995.Abstract The article argues that a consideration of the idea, common in ancient ethical theory, that virtue is a skill or craft, reveals that some common construals of it are mistaken. The analogy between virtue and skill is not meant to suggest that virtue is an unreflective habit of practised action. Rather what interests ancient ethical theorists is the intellectual structure of a skill, one demanding grasp of the principles defining the field and an ability to reflect on the justification of…Read more
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76Virtue and Duty: Negotiating Between Different Ethical TraditionsJournal of Value Inquiry 49 (4): 605-618. 2015.
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463Virtue EthicsIn David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. pp. 515-536. 2006.In the tradition of Western philosophy since the fifth century BC, the default form of ethical theory has been some version of what is nowadays called virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is best approached by looking at the central features of the classical version of the tradition. Modern virtue ethical theories have not yet achieved such a critical mass of argument and theory, and most are as yet partial or fragmentary. This article builds up, cumulatively, a picture of the entire structure of classi…Read more
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725The phenomenology of virtuePhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (1): 21-34. 2008.What is it like to be a good person? I examine and reject suggestions that this will involve having thoughts which have virtue or being a good person as part of their content, as well as suggestions that it might be the presence of feelings distinct from the virtuous person’s thoughts. Is there, then, anything after all to the phenomenology of virtue? I suggest that an answer is to be found in looking to Aristotle’s suggestion that virtuous activity is pleasant to the virtuous person. I try to d…Read more
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30Reply to CommentatorsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (4). 1995.Response to Nancy Snow In Nancy’s impressive book she shows, through a thorough study of the philosophical debate about the position called ‘situationism’ and the psychological literature that supposedly based it, that there was a serious misconception right from the start among philosophers about the kind of disposition or trait which psychologists were concerned with. The kind of disposition the philosophers were rejecting was one taken to be expressed over a number of situations characterized…Read more
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35Plato on law-abidance and a path to natural lawJurisprudence 9 (1): 19-30. 2018.In his later depiction of an ideal city, the Laws, Plato does not move from rule by experts to the rule of law, as often claimed, since law is also basic to the Republic. Rather, he now sees educated law-abidance as part of civic virtue: the laws are to be obeyed strictly, but also to be understood so that they are obeyed in the right spirit. Plato introduces original means to encourage this, and is led to make some moves in the direction of what will later be developed by the Stoics as natural …Read more