Plato's Cretan City is a thorough investigation into the roots of Plato's Laws and a compelling explication of his ideas on legislation and social institutions. A dialogue among three travelers, the Laws proposes a detailed plan for administering a new colony on the island of Crete. In examining this dialogue, Glenn Morrow describes the contemporary Greek institutions in Athens, Crete, and Sparta on which Plato based his model city, and explores the philosopher's proposed regulations concerning property, the family, government, and (...) the administration of justice, education, and religion. He approaches the Laws as both a living document of reform and a philosophical inquiry into humankind's highest earthly duty. (shrink)

Most traditional accounts of Aristotle's theory of ethical education neglect its cognitive aspects. This book asserts that, in Aristotle's view, excellence of character comprises both the sentiments and practical reason. Sherman focuses particularly on four aspects of practical reason as they relate to character: moral perception, choicemaking, collaboration, and the development of those capacities in moral education. Throughout the book, she is sensitive to contemporary moral debates, and indicates the extent to which Aristotle's account of practical reason provides an alternative (...) to theories of impartial reason. (shrink)

This paper originated in an attempt to come to terms with the problems which arise from the structure of the Politics. It is no news to anyone who has the slightest familiarity with the Politics that the work reads, to borrow a phrase of Barker's, not as a composition, but as composite. Broadly speaking, it falls into three parts: Books I–III, Books IV-VI, and Books VII-VIII.

This paper originated in an attempt to come to terms with the problems which arise from the structure of the Politics. It is no news to anyone who has the slightest familiarity with the Politics that the work reads, to borrow a phrase of Barker's, not as a composition, but as composite. Broadly speaking, it falls into three parts: Books I–III, Books IV-VI, and Books VII-VIII.

This book aims to provide an introduction to Aristotle's Politics, highlighting the major themes and arguments offered in the scholar's work. It begins with a discussion on what Aristotle perceives as human good, which he had described as the ethical purpose of political science, and how he views the political community, or the polis, as a community of persons formed with a view to some good purpose and a supreme entity in the sense that it is not just one aspect (...) of city-state society but is the whole of that society. The book also discusses Aristotle's arguments against the abolition of the household for the ruling class and the communism of families and property, which Plato advocates, and highlights certain inconsistencies and vulnerabilities in his arguments supporting natural slavery and on how the husband should rule over his wife and children. The book presents Aristotle's account of the relative merits of six different types of constitution and his views on the best possible constitution that will help in the realization of the polis' true purpose of achieving the good life. It ends with a discussion on Aristotle's view of political science in relation to the protection of particular constitutions against constitutional change and political disorder. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work was the first to propose an inquiry into the forms, dynamics, and constructs of educational policy. This fine book remains the only treatment of educational policy incorporating an account of the differences between various kinds of educational goods. Professor Green explored the nature of policy and prospects for the future, and it is a rare treat that we can now (more than fifteen years later) revisit the text to discover his uncanny accuracy.

First published in 1981 this unique study discusses the evolution of Plato's thought through the actual developments in Athenian democracy, the book also demonstrates Plato's continuing responses to changes in political theory and argues for a new understanding of Plato's goals for the state and his ultimate concern for the moral well-being of the citizens.

This book explores for the first time an idea common to both Plato and Aristotle: although people are separate, their lives need not be; one person's life may overflow into another's, so that helping someone else is a way of serving oneself. Price considers how this idea unites the philosophers' treatments of love and friendship (which are otherwise very different), and demonstrates that this view of love and friendship, applied not only to personal relationships, but also to the household and (...) even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism. (shrink)

_The Laws_, Plato's longest dialogue, has for centuries been recognized as the most comprehensive exposition of the _practical_ consequences of his philosophy, a necessary corrective to the more visionary and utopian _Republic_. In this animated encounter between a foreign philosopher and a powerful statesman, not only do we see reflected, in Plato's own thought, eternal questions of the relation between political theory and practice, but we also witness the working out of a detailed plan for a new political order that (...) embodies the results of Plato's mature reflection on the family, the status of women, property rights, criminal law, and the role of religion and the fine arts in a healthy republic. "Because it succeeds in being both literal and comprehensive, it is by far superior to any translation available. By reproducing dramatic detail often omitted, such as oaths, hesitations, repetitions, and forms of address, Pangle allows the reader to follow the dialogue's interplay between argument and dramatic context.... Pangle's translation captures the excitement and the drama of Plato's text."—Mary P. Nichols, _Ancient Philosophy_ "Pangle's achievement is remarkable.... The accompanying interpretive essay is an excellent distillation of a dialogue three times its size. The commentary is thoughtful, even profound; and it amply demonstrates the importance of reading Plato carefully and from a translation that is true to his language."—Patrick Coby, _American Political Science Review_. (shrink)

NEITHER in the scholarly nor in the philosophical literature on Aristotle does his account of friendship occupy a very prominent place. I suppose this is partly, though certainly not wholly, to be explained by the fact that the modern ethical theories with which Aristotle’s might demand comparison hardly make room for the discussion of any parallel phenomenon. Whatever else friendship is, it is, at least typically, a personal relationship freely, even spontaneously, entered into, and ethics, as modern theorists tend to (...) conceive it, deals rather with the ways in which people are required to regard, and behave toward, one another, than with the organization of their private affairs. To the extent, then, that one shares this modern outlook one will tend to neglect, or treat merely as an historical curiosity, Aristotle’s efforts to define friendship and to place it within the framework of human eudaimonia, the theory of which is central to moral philosophy as he understands it. Yet in the Nicomachean Ethics the two books on φιλία make up nearly a fifth of the whole, and this seems to me a fair measure of the importance of this subject to the complete understanding both of Aristotle’s overall moral theory and even of many of the more circumscribed topics to which so much scholarly and philosophical attention has been devoted. If, as I suggest, the failure of commentators to appreciate its importance is partly the effect of distortions produced by the moral outlook that has predominated in modern moral philosophy, the careful study of these books may help to free us from constricting prejudices and perhaps even make it possible to discover in Aristotle a plausible and suggestive alternative to the theories constructed on the narrower base characteristic of recent times. (shrink)