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70Reason and emotion: Essays on ancient moral psychologyPhilosophical Review 110 (2): 263-267. 2001.This splendid book is a collection of twenty-three of John Cooper’s papers on Greek ethical philosophy: seven are on Socrates and Plato, twelve are on Aristotle and four are on the Hellenistics; nineteen have appeared elsewhere, two are newly written essays incorporating previously published material, and two are new essays written for this volume. Many of these papers are justly regarded as classics of contemporary scholarship and some of them are located in out of the way journals or volumes: …Read more
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7Plato on Legal NormativityAncient Philosophy Today 4 (Supplement): 24-44. 2022.This paper attempts to determine what laws’ most fundamental normative property is for Plato. After examining the Hippias Major and the pseudo-Platonic Minos, I argue that in the Laws this property is correctness (orthotês) which is understood as maximizing the citizens’ happiness. I argue that laws failing to do so are defective as laws because they’re not partially grounded in the relevant ethical facts and that Plato is thus a natural law theorist. The last section provides further justificat…Read more
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5The Practices of Reason: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (review)Philosophical Review 103 (3): 567-569. 1994.
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Why should philosophers rule? : Plato's Republic and Aristotle's ProtrepticusIn David Keyt & Fred Dycus Miller (eds.), Freedom, reason, and the polis: essays in ancient Greek political philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2007.
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7Cinzia Arruzza, A Wolf in the City. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, xi + 296 pp (review)Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 102 (3): 518-524. 2020.
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The Moral and Political Philosophy of Plato's "Laws"Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. 1990.Although it is Plato's last and longest dialogue, the Laws has been badly neglected by philosophers. In this dissertation, I try to remedy some of this neglect by making a careful examination of the moral and political philosophy of the Laws. ;I begin by considering the basic features of the Laws's moral philosophy; the nature of the four virtues, the relations among them , the relation between virtue and happiness and Plato's division of goods. I argue that Plato has abandoned his earlier claim…Read more
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Persuasion, Compulsion, and Freedom in Plato's LawsIn Gail Fine (ed.), Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, Oxford University Press. 1999.
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131Akrasia and Agency in Plato’s Laws and RepublicArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 76 (1): 3-36. 1994.
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2Plato on akrasia and knowing your own mindIn Christopher Bobonich & Pierre Destrée (eds.), Akrasia in Greek Philosophy: From Socrates to Plotinus, Brill. pp. 41--60. 2007.
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92Akrasia in Greek philosophy: from Socrates to Plotinus (edited book)Brill. 2007.The 13 contributions of this collective offer new and challenging ways of reading well-known and more neglected texts on akrasia (lack of control, or weakness ...
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1Plato's Theory of Goods in the Laws and PhilebusProceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 11 101-136. 1995.
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116Persuasion, Compulsion and Freedom in Plato's LawsClassical Quarterly 41 (2): 365-388. 1991.One of the distinctions that Plato in the Laws stresses most heavily in his discussion of the proper relation between the individual citizen and the laws of the city is that between persuasion and compulsion. Law, Plato believes, should try to persuade rather than compel the citizens. Near the end of the fourth book of the Laws, the Athenian Stranger, Plato's spokesman in this dialogue, asks whether the lawgiver for their new city of Magnesia should in making laws ‘explain straightaway what must…Read more
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191Plato's utopia recast: his later ethics and politicsOxford University Press. 2002.Plato's Utopia Recast is an illuminating reappraisal of Plato's later works, which reveals radical changes in his ethical and political theory. Christopher Bobonich examines later dialogues, with a special emphasis upon the Laws, and argues that in these late works, Plato both rethinks and revises the basic ethical and poltical positions that he held in his better-known earlier works, such as the Republic. This book will change our understanding of Plato. His controversial moral and political th…Read more
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19Baffioni, Carmela (ed.) On Logic: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of EPISTLES 10-14 (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity) (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2): 357-359. 2011.
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71Plato's 'Laws': A Critical Guide (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2010.Long understudied, Plato's Laws has been the object of renewed attention in the past decade and is now considered to be his major work of political philosophy besides the Republic. In his last dialogue, Plato returns to the project of describing the foundation of a just city and sketches in considerable detail its constitution, laws and other social institutions. Written by leading Platonists, the essays in this volume cover a wide range of topics central for understanding the Laws, such as the …Read more
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34Plato’s EthicsPhilosophical Review 105 (2): 235. 1996.In 1977, Terence Irwin published Plato’s Moral Theory. This book, along with the work of Gregory Vlastos, has had a greater influence on the study of Plato’s ethics than anything published since. Although the present volume, Plato’s Ethics began as a second edition of PMT, it quickly became a “new book” in which none of PMT’s text reappears. Irwin declines to keep score of the specific differences between the two works and I cannot here provide a comprehensive comparison. I shall, instead, discu…Read more
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48Platonic Questions: Dialogues with the Silent PhilosopherPhilosophical Review 111 (2): 297-299. 2002.Diskin Clay's new book is designed to be a guide for a reader coming to the Platonic dialogues for the first time. It emphasizes the literary character of the dialogues, although in addition to literary analysis narrowly construed, the author provides useful social and historical background. Clay writes clearly and well, and the book admirably serves its purpose.
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114Individual and Conflict in Greek EthicsPhilosophical Review 113 (4): 557-560. 2004.This book covers a great deal of ground and aims to undermine some of the most widespread claims about ancient Greek ethics. White thinks that the study of Greek ethics has been wrongly dominated by the assumption that all Greek ethical theorists were eudaimonists and harmonizing eudaimonists. Roughly, White takes eudaimonism as the thesis that for each individual there is a single ultimate rational end aimed at for its own sake and that this is the individual’s own eudaimonia, well-being, or ha…Read more
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22Review of Christopher Gill (ed.), Virtue, Norms, and Objectivity: Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (12). 2005.
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1Nicomachean Ethics VII, 1150a9-1150b28: Akrasia and self-control, and softness and enduranceIn Carlo Natali (ed.), Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book Vii Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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7Aristotle's ethical treatisesIn Richard Kraut (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Blackwell. pp. 12-36. 2006.The prelims comprise: Background Acknowledgments Notes References.
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33Politics (review)Philosophical Review 108 (4): 582-585. 1999.Despite its importance both historically and within the Aristotelian corpus, and despite the outpouring of first-rate scholarship on Aristotle in the past thirty years, the Politics has received much less attention than it deserves. This situation is, however, beginning to be rectified. The magisterial four-volume nineteenth-century commentary by W. L. Newman has been joined in recent years by numerous new translations as well as commentaries by Richard Robinson with supplementary material by Da…Read more
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292. The Puzzles of ModerationIn Christoph Horn (ed.), Platon: Gesetze/Nomoi, De Gruyter. pp. 23-44. 2013.
Stanford, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
History of Western Philosophy |