The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics

Can moral philosophy alter our moral beliefs or our emotions? Does moral scepticism mean making up our own values, or does it leave us without moral commitments at all? Is it possible to find a basis for ethics in human nature? These are some of the main questions explored in this volume, which is devoted to the ethics of the Hellenistic schools of philosophy. Some of the leading scholars in the field have here taken a look at the bases of the Stoics’ and Epicureans’ thinking about what the Greeks took to be the central questions of philosophy. Their essays, which originated in a conference held at Bad Homburg in 1983, the third in a series of conferences on Hellenistic philosophy, propose important interpretations of the texts, and pose some fascinating problems about the different roles of argument and reason in ancient and modern moral philosophy. This book will be of interest to moral philosophers and to scholars of Greek philosophy too.

Acknowledgements; Preface Günther Patzig; Part I. Argument, Belief and Emotion: 1. Doing without objective values: ancient and modern strategies Julia Annas; 2. Therapeutic arguments: Epicurus and Aristotle Martha Nussbaum; 3. Nothing to us? David Furley; 4. The Stoic doctrine of the affections of the soul Michael Frede; Part II. Ethical Foundations and the summum bonum: 5. The cradle argument in Epicureanism and Stoicism Jacques Brunschwig; 6. Discovering the good: oikeiōsis and kathēkonta in Stoic ethics Troels Engberg-Pedersen; 7. Antipater, or the art of living Gisela Striker; 8. Stoic and Aristotelian conceptions of happiness T. H. Irwin; 9. Epicurus - hedonist malgré lui Malte Hossenfelder; Bibliography; Index of passages; Glossary of Greek and Latin terms; General index.