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Aristotle's teaching on the subject of happiness has been a topic of intense philosophical debate in recent years; it is of vital importance to the question of the relevance of his ethics in the present day. Aristotle's admirers struggle to read a comprehensive account of the supreme happiness into ...

Aristotle's teaching on the subject of happiness has been a topic of intense philosophical debate in recent years; it is of vital importance to the question of the relevance of his ethics in the present day. Aristotle's admirers struggle to read a comprehensive account of the supreme happiness into the Nicomachean Ethics; Kenny argues that those who are prepared to take the neglected Eudemian Ethics seriously preserve their admiration intact without doing violence to any of the relevant texts of the Nicomachean Ethics. Kenny has refined his position on the relation between the two works, offering a fresh examination and interpretation of the Eudemian Ethics on the basis of the 1991 Oxford Classical Text. He combines scholarly discussion of the Greek texts with reflection of the topics covered by Aristotle, taking account of post-Aristotelian treatments of themes such as moral vocation and moral luck.

In the past quarter century, enormous philosophical attention has been paid to Plato's "Socratic" dialogues, as interpreters have sought to identify which dialogues are truly Socratic and interpret and defend the moral theories they find in those works. In spite of this intellectual energy, no ...

In the past quarter century, enormous philosophical attention has been paid to Plato's "Socratic" dialogues, as interpreters have sought to identify which dialogues are truly Socratic and interpret and defend the moral theories they find in those works. In spite of this intellectual energy, no consensus has emerged on the question of whether Socrates was a hedonist-whether he believed pleasure to be the good. In this study, George Rudebusch addresses this question and the textualpuzzle from which it has arisen. In the Protagoras, Plato has Socrates appeal to hedonism in order to assert his characteristic identification of virtue and knowledge. While in the Gorgias, Socrates attributes hedonism to his opponent and argues against it in defence of his own view that doing injustice is worse than suffering it. From the Apology and Crito, it is clear that Socrates believes virtue to be the supreme good. Taken together, scholars have found these texts to be incoherent andseek to account for them either in terms of the development of Plato's thinking or by denying that one or more of these texts was meant to reflect Socrates' own ethical theory. Rudebusch argues instead that these texts do indeed fit together into a coherent moral theory as he attempts to locate Socrates' position on hedonism. He distinguishes Socrates' own hedonism from that which Socrates attacks elsewhere. Rudebusch also maintains that Socrates identifies pleasant activity with virtuous activity, describing Socrates' hedonism as one of activity, not sensation. This analysis allows for Socrates to find both virtue and pleasure to be the good, thus solving thetextual puzzle and showing the power of Socratic argument in leading human beings toward the good. Tackling some of the most fundamental debates over Socratic ethics in Plato's earlier dialogues, Socrates, Pleasure, and Value will generate renewed discussion among specialists and provide excellent reading for courses in ancient philosophy as well as ethical theory.