Suchergebnisse

Introduction --Law in the Republic --Changing from within : Plato's new approach in the Laws --Virtue in a framework of law --Law and the divine --Citizen virtue --Cicero on natural law and ideal laws --Philo on virtue and the laws of Moses --Bringing things together.

Julia Annas offers an account of virtue and happiness as central ethical ideas. She argues that exercising a virtue involves practical reasoning of the kind we find in someone exercising an everyday practical skill. This helps us to see virtue as part of an agent's happiness

To understand ancient ethics we must examine the basic structure of ancient ethical theory. Here, Julia Annas brings together the results of a wide-ranging study of ancient ethical philosophy, and makes it easily accessible to anyone with an interest in ancient or modern ethics.

In the area of moral epistemology, there is an interesting problem facing the person in my area, ancient philosophy, who hopes to write a historical paper which will engage with our current philosophical concerns. Not only are ancient ethical theories very different in structure and concerns from modern ones (though with the rapid growth of virtue ethics this is becoming less true), but the concerns and emphases of ancient epistemology are very different from those of modern theories of knowledge. Some may think that they are so different that they are useful to our own discussions only by way of contrast. I am more sanguine, but I am quite aware that this essay's contribution to modern debates does not fall within the established modern traditions of discussing moral epistemology.

The two most important and central concepts in ancient ethical theory are those of virtue (aretē) and happiness (eudaimonia). This is well-known by now, as is the way that many scholars and philosophers have in recent years investigated the structure of ancient ethical theories, at least partly in the hope that this would help us in our modern ethical thinking by introducing us to developed theories which escape the problems that have led to so much frustration with deontological and consequentialist approaches. And there has indeed been considerable interest in developing modern forms of ethics which draw inspiration, to a greater or lesser extent, from the ancient theories. However, there is an asymmetry here. Modern theories which take their inspiration from Aristotle and other ancient theorists are standardly called virtue ethics, not happiness ethics. We have rediscovered the appeal of aretē, but eudaimonia is still, it appears, problematic for us. This has an important consequence for us, for in ancient theories virtue is not discussed in isolation; it is seen as part of a larger structure in which the overarching concept is happiness. If we focus on virtue alone and ignore its relation to happiness, we are missing a large part of the interest that study of the ancient theories can offer.

Fragen nach der Lebensqualität sind Fragen nach den gesellschaftlichen Lebensformen von Individuen. Die biologischen Geschlechtsunterschiede bedingen in allen bekannten Gesellschaften große kulturelle Differenzen. Die Autorin definiert Gesellschaften dann als traditionell, wenn die Tatsache, daß es zwei geschlechtsspezifische Normen gibt, für Frauen und Männer zu einer gewaltsam erzwungen Aufteilung der Arbeitsbereiche und Lebensweisen führt. Als liberal gilt eine Gesellschaft, wenn diese Arbeitsteilung nur schwach ausgeprägt ist. Damit kann sie Gesellschaften - unabhängig von anderen Wertunterschieden - vergleichen und die Situation von Frauen in sonst unterschiedlichen Gesellschaften charakterisieren. Sie legt dar, daß Urteile über Ungerechtigkeiten, wenn sie die Geschlechterrollen betreffen, systematisch rückwärtsgerichtet sind: wir seien in der Lage, die Fehler in einer traditionellen Gesellschaft zu erkennen, aber unser eigene Gesellschaft sehen wir undeutlich und vage. Führt diese Position nicht zur Unfähigkeit, die aktuellen ungerechten Praktiken, rational zu kritisieren? Die Autorin schlägt als Kompromiß zwischen Dogmatismus und Skeptizismus in dieser Frage abschließend vor, sich auf den "stückweisen Gewinn" der rückwärtsgerichteten Perspektive zu beziehen. (rk)

It is well-known that in recent years, alongside the familiar forms of modern ethical theory, such as consequentialism, deontology, and rights theory, there has been a resurgence of interest in what goes by the name of "virtue ethics" — forms of ethical theory which give a prominent status to the virtues, and to the idea that an agent has a "final end" which the virtues enable her to achieve. With this has come an increase of theoretical (as opposed to antiquarian) interest in ancient ethical theories, particularly Aristotle's, an interest which has made a marked difference in the way ethics is pursued in the Anglo-Saxon and European intellectual worlds.In this essay, I shall not be discussing modern virtue ethics, which is notably protean in form and difficult to pin down. I shall be focusing on ancient eudaimonistic ethical theories, for in their case we can achieve a clearer discussion of the problem I wish to discuss (a problem which arises also for modern versions of virtue ethics which hark back to the ancient theories in their form).