Aristotle and Beyond: Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics

Written over a period of thirty-five years, these essays explore the topics of causation, time, fate, determinism, natural teleology, different conceptions of the human soul, the idea of the highest good, and the human significance of leisure. While most of the essays take as their starting-point some theme in Ancient Greek philosophy, they are meant not as exegesis but as distinctive and independent contributions to live philosophizing. Written with clarity, precision without technicality, and philosophical imagination, they will engage a wide range of readers, including scholars and students of Ancient Greek philosophy and others working on more contemporary analytical concerns.

• These characteristic and unusual essays, written over a period of thirty five years, are published together for the first time • Includes previously unpublished writings • Will appeal to readers interested in both metaphysics and ethics

1. Affecting and being affected; 2. Backwards causation and continuing; 3. From necessity to fate: an inevitable step?; 4. Alternative world-histories; 5. A contemporary look at Aristotle’s changing now; 6. Nature and craft in Aristotelian teleology; 7. Soul and body in Plato and Descartes; 8. Aristotle and contemporary ethics; 9. The idea of the summum bonum; 10. What should we mean by ‘the highest good’?; 11. The good of practical beings: Aristotelian perspectives; 12. Taking stock of leisure.