Plato on Virtue and the Law

Plato on Virtue and the Law

by Sandrine Bergès
Plato on Virtue and the Law

Plato on Virtue and the Law

by Sandrine Bergès

eBook

$35.49  $46.75 Save 24% Current price is $35.49, Original price is $46.75. You Save 24%.

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

Ancient philosophy is no longer an isolated discipline. Recent years have seen the development of a dialogue between ancient and contemporary philosophers writing on central issues in moral and political philosophy. The renewed interest in character and virtue as ethical concepts is one such issue, yet Plato's contribution has been largely neglected in contemporary virtue ethics.

In Plato on Virtue and the Law, Sandrine Berges seeks to address this gap in the literature by exploring the contribution that virtue ethics make to the understanding of laws alongside the interesting and plausible insights into current philosophical concerns evident in Plato's dialogues. The book argues that a distinctive virtue theory of law is clearly presented in Plato's political dialogues. Through a new reading of the Crito, Menexenus, Gorgias, Republic, Statesman and Laws, Berges shows how Plato proposes several ways in which we can understand the law from the perspective of virtue ethics.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781441133045
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 11/03/2011
Series: Continuum Studies in Ancient Philosophy
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 188
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Sandrine Berges is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bilkent University, Turkey.
Sandrine Bergès is Professor of Philosophy at Bilkent University, Turkey. She is the author of The Routledge Guidebook to Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (2013) and co-editor of The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft (2018), Women Philosophers on Autonomy (2018). She is the translator of Sophie de Grouchy's Letters on Sympathy (2019).

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Some Key Concepts in Ancient Virtue Ethics
1. Plato and Aristotle's Virtue Ethics
2.Agent Focused and Agent Based Virtue Ethics
3.What is Virtue Jurisprudence?

Chapter Two: Obedience and Persuading the Laws in the Crito
1. Introduction
2. The incompatibility problem introduced.
3. Unconditional Obedience.
4. Agreement.
5. The Role of the Laws: the Parent Analogy.
6. The Crito, the Apology, and Civil Disobedience.

Chapter Three: Promoting and Preserving Virtue in the Menexenus
1. Introduction 2. The relevance of Plato's proposal to contemporary debates 3. Alternative Accounts: Slote and the Republic 4. The Argument in the Menexenus
5. Why the Virtue Politics Account is not Overly Paternalistic.

Chapter Four: Virtue as Mental Health in the Gorgias and Other Dialogues
1.The Model of Psychic Health in Plato.
2.How the model works: elenchos as therapy.
3.Virtue and the situationists.
4.Community service for offenders as elenctic therapy: a case study.

Chapter Five: Paternalism in the Republic
1.A problem and a solution?
2.Paternalism in the Republic
3.Educating the philosopher kings and the rest.
4.Paternalism in education.
5.Conclusion.

Chapter Six: The Statesman and Equity
1.Introduction.
2.Two attitudes to the laws in the Statesman.
3.The anti-democratic reading of the second claim.
4.Equity.
5.An objection.
6.Making way for the Laws.

Chapter Seven: The Laws: Persuading the citizens
1.Introduction.
2.Preambles.
3.The two audiences for the preambles.
4.Are the preambles paternalistic?
5.Persuading the Laws.

Chapter Eight: Towards virtue-promoting Democratic Institutions
1.A flourishing environment: from laws to institutions.
2.Can democratic institutions be wisdom promoting?
3.Can wisdom-promoting laws be produced democratically?
4. Two examples: racism and sexism.
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews