Ancient Ethics and the Natural World

Ursula Coope is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Oxford. She is author of Time for Aristotle: Physics IV. 20-14 (2005) and Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought (2020), and has published numerous book chapters and journal articles on ancient philosophy. Barbara M. Sattler is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She is author of The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought (Cambridge, 2020) and editor of One Book, the Whole Universe: Plato's Timaeus Today (with Richard D. Mohr, 2010). Her research has appeared in dozens of edited collections and journals.

• Introduction Ursula Coope and Barbara Sattler; Part I. Humans in nature: nature and law, humans and natural catastrophes: 1. Legislating in accordance with nature in Plato's Laws Alex Long; 2. Plato's astronomy and moral history in the Timaeus Barbara Sattler: 3. Natural catastrophe in Greek and Roman Philosophy A. A. Long; Part II. Humans as godlike, gods as human-like: Presocratics and Platonists: 4. Anthropomorphism and epistemic anthropo-philautia: the early critiques by Xenophanes and Heraclitus Alexander P. D. Mourelatos; 5. Nature and divinity in the notion of godlikeness Li Fan; Part III.Emotions, reason, and the natural world (Aristotle); 6. Human and animal emotions in Aristotle Jamie Dow; 7. Reasonable and unreasonable affections and human nature Dorothea Frede; Part IV. Action and the natural world (Aristotle): 8. Chains that do not bind: causation and necessity in Aristotle Thomas Tuozzo; 9. Aristotle on nature, deliberation and purposiveness Ursula Coope; Part V. The naturalness of goodness; 10. Eudoxus's hedonism Joachim Aufderheide; 11. Aristotle and Socrates in the eudemian ethics on the naturalness of goodness Christopher Rowe.

This is an excellent collection of new research in several areas of ancient Greek philosophy.  Every one of these essays has moments of real brilliance. All are valuable in at least several respects. Brad Inwood, Yale University