Julia Annas

Learning and teaching virtue involves the virtue terms, which fall under what philosophers call “thick” concepts, uniting description and evaluation, in contrast with deontic concepts, which are essentially “thin.” The chapter suggests that focusing on virtue terms casts light on the philosophical issue, and also suggests why psychologists should not have worries about the role of evaluative terms in their research of ethical development. The chapter describes two interesting problems which are frequently raised for thick concepts, namely, the necessity of including the agent’s own evaluation in determining the correct use of a thick term, and the so-called shapelessness hypothesis, which holds that thick concepts cannot map out a purely descriptive “shape.”

A common criticism of virtue ethics is that it fails to provide action guidance. The chapter rejects this criticism in the case of ethics in which virtue is the rich, Aristotelian type. Such an ethics can direct us to the right action as well as to the virtuous action, but it is the thick virtue terms, not the thin deontic ones, which guide us to act. Often right action is thought always to have the force of duty; the chapter shows that this rests on a mistake, and that while an action’s being a right action always has the force of a demand, this is a demand of duty in contexts where there is an applicable institutional role, and a demand of virtue where there is no relevant institutional role.

There are problems with egoism as a theory, but what matters here is the point that intuitively ethics is thought to be about the good of others, so that focusing on your own good seems wrong from the start. Virtues are not just character traits, however, since forgetfulness or stubbornness are not virtues. Virtues are character traits which are in some way desirable. Criticism is generally renewed at this point on the grounds that claims about flourishing are now including claims about virtue, and are thus no longer common ground to the defender and the critic of virtue ethics. But virtue ethics has never held that they are, so this is not a problem. It is only to be expected that the virtuous will differ from the nonvirtuous in their assessments of flourishing, because we are dealing here with virtue in the context of a formally characterized conception of flourishing.

This paper considers an Epicurean challenge to the possibility of Sceptical inquiry (reminiscent of a famous paradox in Plato’s Meno), and also explores Sextus’ reply to that challenge. It suggests that Sextus makes the good point that one need not know, nor even believe, that p, in order to inquire whether p is so. However, it is less clear whether one can inquire if one lacks all beliefs; yet the Sceptics are sometimes thought to disavow all beliefs. The paper also discusses the vexed notion of Epicurean prolepses, and evaluates Sextus’ argument for the claim that it is the Epicureans who are not well placed to inquire, given their epistemological commitments.

This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.