Product Description: Plato is the foundational thinker of European speculative thought. He was the first Western writer to undertake a comprehensive and rigorous study of the fundamental categories of reality and value, and few philosophers have escaped his influence or rivaled the depth of his works, many of which have remarkable dramatic power and literary beauty...read more

What is good? How can we know, and how important is it? In this book Richard Kraut, one of our most respected analytical philosophers, reorients these questions around the notion of what causes human beings to flourish--that is, what is good for us. Observing that we can sensibly talk about what is good for plants and animals no less than what is good for people, Kraut advocates a general principle that applies to the entire world of living things: what is good for complex organisms consists in the maturation and exercise of their natural powers. Drawing on the insights of ancient Greek philosophy, Kraut develops this thought into a good-centered moral philosophy, an "ethics of well-being" that requires all of our efforts to do some good. Even what is good of a kind--good poems no less than good people--must be good for someone. Pleasure plays a key role in this idea of flourishing life, but Kraut opposes the current philosophical orthodoxy of well-being, which views a person's welfare as a construct of rational desires or plans, actual or ideal. The practical upshot of Kraut's theory is that many common human pursuits--for riches, fame, domination--are in themselves worthless, while some of the familiar virtues--justice, honesty, and autonomy--are good for every human being.

The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics illuminates Aristotle’s ethics for both academics and students new to the work, with sixteen newly commissioned essays by distinguished international scholars. The structure of the book mirrors the organization of the Nichomachean Ethics itself. Discusses the human good, the general nature of virtue, the distinctive characteristics of particular virtues, voluntariness, self-control, and pleasure.

Product Description: Aristotle's Politics is widely recognized as one of the classics of the history of political philosophy, and like every other such masterpiece, it is a work about which there is deep division. Many readers of Aristotle are uncertain whether his Politics has any contribution to make to contemporary debates about political life and political theory...read more

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Product Description: This volume contains a clear and accurate translation of the last two books of Aristotle's Politics, together with a philosophical commentary. It is well suited to the requirements of students, including those who do not know Greek...read more

Product Description: Designed for courses in the history of philosophy, social and political theory, government, and Plato specifically, Plato's Republic: Critical Essays will enrich students' understanding of this profoundly influential work. The comprehensive collection covers Plato's social and political thought, his metaphysics and epistemology, his ethical theory, and his attitude towards women...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which equates the ultimate end of human life with happiness (eudaimonia), is thought by many readers to argue that this highest goal consists in the largest possible aggregate of intrinsic goods. Richard Kraut proposes instead that Aristotle identifies happiness with only one type of good: excellent activity of the rational soul. In defense of this reading, Kraut discusses Aristotle's attempt to organize all human goods into a single structure, so that each subordinate end is desirable for the sake of some higher goal. This book also emphasizes the philosopher's hierarchy of natural kinds, in which every type of creature achieves its good by imitating divine life. As Kraut argues, Aristotle's belief that thinking is the sole activity of the gods leads him to an intellectualist conception of the ethical virtues. Aristotle values these traits because, by subordinating emotion to reason, they enhance our ability to lead a life devoted to philosophy or politics. (view table of contents)

This fresh outlook on Socrates' political philosophy in Plato's early dialogues argues that it is both more subtle and less authoritarian than has been supposed. Focusing on the Crito, Richard Kraut shows that Plato explains Socrates' refusal to escape from jail and his acceptance of the death penalty as arising not from a philosophy that requires blind obedience to every legal command but from a highly balanced compromise between the state and the citizen. In addition, Professor Kraut contends that our contemporary notions of civil disobedience and generalization arguments are not present in this dialogue.