Antiochus and Peripatetic Ethics
Antiochus and Peripatetic Ethics
This book offers a fresh analysis of the account of Peripatetic ethics in Cicero's On Ends 5, which goes back to the first-century BCE philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. Georgia Tsouni challenges previous characterisations of Antiochus' philosophical project as 'eclectic' and shows how his reconstruction of the ethics of the 'Old Academy' demonstrates a careful attempt to update the ancient heritage, and predominantly the views of Aristotle and the Peripatos, in the light of contemporary Stoic-led debates. This results in both a hermeneutically complex and a philosophically exciting reading of the old tradition. A case in point is the way Antiochus grounds the 'Old Academic' conception of the happy life in natural appropriation (oikeiosis), thus offering a naturalistic version of Aristotelian ethics.
- Presents the first systematic analysis of Antiochus' ethics (Cicero's On Ends 5) in terms of its Peripatetic content
- Addresses Antiochus' hermeneutical assumptions regarding the unity of the 'Old Academic' tradition and places them in the cultural context of the late Republic
- Highlights the way Aristotelian/Peripatetic ideas developed under the influence of a Stoic philosophical agenda and terminology
Reviews & endorsements
'All in all, this book is a fine piece of scholarship, providing as it does an accurate analysis of Antiochus' distinctive position in ethics, and specifically his reclaiming oikeiosis-theory for Aristotle and the Peripatetic tradition.' John Dillon, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Product details
February 2019Adobe eBook Reader
9781108359559
0 pages
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I:
- 1. Antiochus in Rome
- 2. 'Old Academic' history of philosophy
- Part II. The Ethics of the 'Old Academy':
- 3. Oikeiōsis and the telos
- 4. Self-love in the Antiochean-Peripatetic account
- 5. 'Cradle arguments' and the objects of oikeiōsis
- 6. Oikeiōsis towards theoretical virtue
- 7. Social oikeiōsis
- 8. The Antiochean conception of the happy life
- 9. Animals and plants in Antiochus' ethical account
- Epilogue.
