Ethics after Aristotle

177 Pages·2014·0.51 MB·English

by  Brad Inwood

Ethics After Aristotle
Based on the Carl Newell Jackson Lectures

Ethics After Aristotle
ZY
Brad Inwood
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2014
Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Inwood, Brad.
Ethics after Aristotle / Brad Inwood.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-73125-7 (alk. paper)
1. Ethics, Ancient. 2. Aristotle—Infl uence. I. Title.
BJ161.I59 2014
170.938—dc23 2013040261
To the memory of Steven Michael Inwood (1956–2011)
Mentem mortalia tangunt

Contents
Preface ix
1. Working in the Wake of Genius 1
2. Flirting with Hedonism (It’s Only Natural) 30
3. The Turning Point: From Critolaus to Cicero 51
4. Bridging the Gap: Aristotelian Ethics in the
Early Roman Empire 73
5. Alexander and Imperial Aristotelianism 105
Notes 127
Note on the Ancient Texts 147
Bibliography 149
Source Index 157
Subject Index 161
vii

Preface
The lectures on which this short book is based were delivered at Har-
vard University in April of 2011, at the invitation of the Department
of the Classics. I am grateful to the department and especially to
Professor Kathleen Coleman for the honor and for the opportunity
to develop these thoughts in a more organized way than I had been
able to do previously. I am grateful to the audience for stimulating
questions and challenges. I owe a particular debt to Gisela Striker, for
her interventions on the occasion of the lectures, for the example of
her incomparable work on ancient ethics, and for a supportive philo-
sophical friendship that spans more than a quarter century. At a later
stage I benefi tted a great deal from presenting parts of this project to
the ancient philosophy community at the University of California at
Berkeley; their vigorous discussion contributed to a number of signif-
icant improvements in the argument.
My deepest gratitude, though, goes to two of my colleagues at the
University of Toronto, John Magee and Jennifer Whiting. Both of
them read the lectures as they were being developed and provided a
helpful balance of criticism and encouragement, though neither has
read the fi nal version and only I am responsible for any mistakes or
ix