Platonic Ethics, Old and New

Julia Annas is Regents Professor at the University of Arizona. Her books include Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind and The Morality of Happiness. She is the coeditor of New Perspectives on Plato, Modern and Ancient.

In this remarkable book....Annas succeeds in leading us to take seriously the Middle Platonist interpretation. While Alcinous and his cohorts may not be Vlastos, Shorey, or Grote, they should not be ignored, at least if we are interested in getting clear about Plato's ethics.(The Classical Journal) Engaging.... Most ancient philosophy and classics collections will want this challenging study.(LIBRARY JOURNAL) It goes without saying that Annas writes with the elegance and lucidity which characterizes all her work, and that her mastery of the Platonic corpus and of the wide range of ancient commentators who she cites is total... regard the book as a milestone in modern Platonic studies. I have little doubt that it will have a permanent effect on Platonic scholarship, in causing writers in the analytic tradition to regard the Middle Platonists as people to be taken seriously in the search for understanding of Plato.- C.C.W. Taylor, Corpus Christi College at Oxford (The Philosophical Quarterly) Julia Annas has made a complex and subtle book out of her 1997 Townsend lectures at Cornell.... Annas's book is full of good things....- Francis Sparshott (Apeiron) Original, provocative, and convincing... this is strongly recommended for university and college libraries.(Choice) This is a lively and contentious book, mixing scholarly partisanship with useful exposition of a variety of texts; it is clearly written throughout and should interest students as well as professionals. The appended 'Cast of Characters' is very helpful in making the argument surveyable.- Sabina Lovibond, Worcester College, Oxford (The Classical Review)