Goodness and Justice

Plato, Aristotle and the Moderns
1. Auflage 2001
ISBN: 978-0-631-17259-8
Verlag: Wiley

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 572 g

This volume explores Plato and Aristotle's theories about good things, goodness, and the best life for human beings, and draws comparisons between ancient and modern theories of good and justice.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Santas, Gerasimos

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface.

Part I: Introduction.

1 The Role of the Good in the Ancients and the Moderns.

2 Science and Ultimate Good.

3 Disputes and Questions about Good.

4 The Aims and Limits of this Study.

Notes.

Part II: The Socratic Good of Knowledge.

Introduction.

1 All Goods and their Socratic Rankings.

2 The Dispute with Gorgias: Is Rhetoric the Greatest Good?.

3 The Dispute with Polus about Power, Desire, and Good.

4 The Dispute with Polus about Justice and Happiness.

5 The Dispute with Callicles about Good and Pleasure.

6 Conditional and Unconditional Goods.

7 Socrates and Kant: Wisdom or the Good Will?.

8 The Conditional Value of all Goods on Virtue in the Meno.

9 Socrates and G.E. Moore on the Value of Knowledge.

10 Goods, Wisdom, and Happiness.

Notes.

Part III: The Good of Platonic Social Justice.

1 The Great Questions of the Republic.

2 The Functional Perfectionist Theory of Good.

3 The Application of the Functional Theory of Good to the City.

4 The Definitions of the Social Virtues.

5 The Role and Scope of Platonic Social Justice.

6 The Good of Platonic Social Justice.

7 The Application of Platonic Social Justice to Gender.

8 Conclusion.

Notes.

Part IV: The Good of Justice in Our Souls.

1 The Isomorphism between Social and Psychic Justice.

2 Plato's Pioneering Analysis of the Psyche.

3 Psychic Justice and the Good of It.

4 Plato and Hume on Reason or Passion as the Rule of Life.

5 The Defence of Psychic Justice as Analogous to Health.

6 The Criticism of the Democratic Individual.

7 Which is Prior, Social or Psychic Justice?.

8 The Structure of Plato's Ethical Theory.

Notes.

Part V: Plato's Metaphysical Theory of the Form of the Good.

1 Opinion, Knowledge, and Platonic Forms.

2 The Imperfections of the Sensible World.

3 Forms as the Best Objects of their Kind to Know.

4 Forms as the Best Objects of their Kind and the Form of the Good as their Essence.

5 Function, Form, and Goodness.

Notes.

Part VI: Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Form of the Good: The Breakup of Goodness.

1 Aristotle's Arguments from Priority.

2 Breaking up Goodness: Aristotle's Argument from Homonymy.

3 Aristotle's Argument from Final and Instrumental Goods.

4 The Attack on the Ideality of the Form of the Platonic Good.

5 The Attack on the Practicability and Usefulness of Plato's Good.

6 Putting the Fragments of Goodness Back Together: Focal Meaning.

Notes.

Part VII: The Good of Desire, the Good of Function, and the Good of Pleasure.

1 The Concept of the Good.

2 Different Orectic Conceptions of the Good.

3 Aristotle's Functional Perfectionist Theory of Good.

4 Objections to Aristotle's Functional Theory of Good.

5 Orectic, Hedonic, and Perfectionist Good.

Notes.

Part VIII: The Good of Character and the Good of Justice.

1 Is Aristotle's Ethical Theory Circular?.

2 Did Aristotle have a Virtue Ethics?.

3 Aristotle's General Analysis of Virtue and Functional Good.

4 Can Moral Virtue be Explicated by Functioning Well?.

5 States of Character and Practical Wisdom.

6 Aristotle's Analysis of Justice: Not a Virtue Ethics.

7 Paucity of Practical Content: Justice and the other Virtues.

8 Summary and Conclusion.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Gerasimos Santas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Irvine. He is author of Socrates: Philosophy in Plato's Early Dialogues (1979), and Plato and Freud: Two Theories of Love (Blackwell 1988).