Editor's IntroductionWhen Oxford University Press sent us the three enormous volumes of Irwin's The Development of Ethics, we had two thoughts: First, the book is very important and demands a review; second, since human sacrifice is abolished in North America, it will be very difficult to find a reviewer. We handed the volumes to several interested persons, who in the end returned the books saying the task was beyond them. Then, my wife, a lifetime worker at that center (...) of communal thought, the United Nations, suggested that we form a team to review the book. We put an announcement out on the Web, asking for reviewers to do a chapter each, at 250 words a review. We got several hundred volunteers, and chose 82 to review the 96 chapters of Irwin. We got 81 of 82 reviews, 75 before the deadline, six slightly later. For purposes of completeness, I filled in the sole missing review. Would that the students in my seminars were so punctual! I would like to thank Elyse Turr at Oxford University Press for the PDFs, and my 82 reviewers for their expertise and diligence. I am grateful to all the volunteers who showed an interest in this strange and perhaps unprecedented project, and who patiently endured the vetting process. Special thanks is due to Laura di Summa, who coordinated all the pieces of this incredible puzzle. Did we accomplish something, something new, by mobilizing 82 minds to review one book? I hope so, but I can now only say what they say on television: “America, it's up to you.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY HIS ARTICLE continues and complements an earlier scussion of contemporary sacramental method pubhed in October, 1983, based on a review of eleven books published in English on the sacraments from 1975 to 1983.1 That article dealt specifically with approaches to "contemporary systematic reflection on the Christian sacraments, the relation of sacramental theology to other areas of theology, the impact of liturgical studies on sacramental studies, and (...) aspects of pastoral practice." 2 The final section described the elements that should be included in a contemporary approach to a systematic study of sacraments.3 The present article assesses seven more recent works in English on sacraments in general,4 again from the perspective of method. In this connection the words of Stephen Happel are helpful: [T] he coalescence of historical data on the development of sacraments, emerging consensus on some general frameworks within which to ask sacramental questions, and the need to provide textbooks for those who cannot wade through the jungles of.critical 1 See Kevin W. Irwin, "Recent Sacramental Theology: A Review Discussion," The Thomist 47 (October, 1983) 592-608. 2 Ibid. 592. s Ibid. 605-608 for a summary. 4 The books discussed here are: Bernard Cooke, Sacraments and Sacramentality (Mystic: Twenty-Third Publications, 1983); Gerard Fourez, Sacraments and Passages Celebrating the Tensions of Modern Life (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1983); Joseph Martos, The Catholic Sacraments, Volume One in Message of the Sacraments series edited by Monika K. Hellwig (Wilmington : Glazier, 1983); David N. Power, Unsearchable Riches: The Symbolic Nature of the Liturgy (New York: Pueblo Publishing Co., 1984) ; John P. Schanz, Introduction to the Sacraments (New York: Pueblo Publishing Co., 1983); James F. White, Sacraments as God's Self Giving: Sacramental Practice ana: Faith (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983) ; Patricia Smith, Teaching Sacraments (Wilmington: Glazier, 1987). 124 RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY Ul5 monographs have begun to produce new general theories of sacramental life. This is a vital move in the postconciliar church. It is as though we feel that we have enough sense of the shifting sands of time to use them in an hourglass to mark our age.5 Each of the books discussed here can be understood to propose a new general theory of sacramental life or a new approach to the systematic study of sacraments. The works by Cooke and Schanz are clearly intended as texts for college courses in sacramental theology. Martos's book offers an interdisciplinary approach to sacraments. James White offers a fresh look at the traditional dictum lex orandi, lex credendi on a level useful for pastors and seminary students. Gerard Fourez approaches sacraments from a social science perspective. David Power deals with symbol in liturgy and the relationship between sacramental study and contemporary culture. Patricia Smith offers a way of dealing with how to teach about sacraments in the contemporary context of evolving sacramental theories. Each book can be understood as an attempt to chart a path through the shifting sands of theological method, liturgical reform and the varying approaches to sacramental theology in the past two decades. Well known for his books Christian Sacraments and Christian Personality (1965) and Ministry to Word and Sacrament (1976), Bernard Cooke presents an.approach in Sacraments and Sacramentality that is grounded in human experience and everyday life. The first six chapters demonstrate how Christian sacraments are grounded in human life; the remaining chapters discuss individual sacraments and sacramental grace. Cooke states that Christian sacraments are "specially significant realities that are meant to transform the reality of the human by somehow bringing persons into closer contact with the.saving action of Jesus" (8). Intent on broadening the notion of sacramentality Cooke writes that his work concerns " the sacramentality of Christians and their everyday 5 From Happel's review of Colman O'Neill's work Sacramental Realism in Worship 58 (May, 1984) 276-77. 126 KEVIN W. IRWIN lives" (4). He clearly succeeds in placing the seven sacraments in this wide framework and in demonstrating the essential relationship between sacraments and human life. Cooke begins his discussion of individual sacraments by arguing that marriage is the basic sacrament (chapter seven). He states that there is " good reason for seeing human friendship as... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ENVIRONMENTAL THEOLOGYA REVIEW DISCUSSION* KEVIN W. IRWIN The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. l UST OVER a decade ago the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess coined the term deep ecology to encapsulate his challenge that while others have dealt with short-term views of ure and ways of dealing with the ecological crisis,1 he urged a deeper probing of "why, how and where" educational systems, religious bodies, and societies themselves (...) can deal with environ- * The books under discussion are: Leonardo Boff, Ecologia, Mundializacao, Espiritualidade (Sao Paolo: Editora Atica, 1993), English translation by John Cuming, Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995); Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom ofGod: An Ecological Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995); Catharina J. M. Halkes, New Creation: Christian Feminism and the Renewal ofthe Earth, trans. C. Romanik (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991); Michael J. Himes and Kenneth R. Himes, Fullness of Faith: The Public Significance of Theology (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1993), especially chapter 5, "Creation and an Environmental Ethic"; Tony Kelly, An Expanding Theology: Faith in a World of Connections (Newtowne: E. J. Dwyer, 1993); Richard N. Fragomeni and John T. Pawlikowski, eds., The Ecological Challenge: Ethical, Liturgical and Spiritual Responses (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1994); Albert J. LaChance and John E. Carroll, eds., Embracing Earth: Catholi.c Approaches to Ecology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994); Sean McDonagh, The Greening ofthe Church (London: G. Chapman; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990); and Passion for the Earth: The Christian Vocation to Promote Justice, Peace and the Integrity ofCreation (London: G. Chapman; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994). 1 From the outset it is important to clarify terminology and to indicate the meaning of some terms used in this review. In accord with common usage we understand that the term "ecology" (from the Greek oikos, "home") refers to our being at home on the earth, and "ecological crisis" refers to the destruction that has been worked to make the earth/home less inhabitable for a variety of species. "Creation" refers to the whole created world and all living beings as gifts from God the creator. "Environment" refers to the life context in which we live, our habitat as given to us by God and for which we are responsible. 301 302 KEVIN W. IRWIN mental deterioration and devastation.2 That Roman Catholicism has an important contribution to make to this issue3 is clear from recent magisterial statements as well as from the theological literature under review here. For example, in 1990 John Paul II articulated a number of avenues from within the Catholic tradition that relate to the ecological crisis and the Church's corporate responsibility to face it theologically, spiritually, and practically.4 In 1991 the U.S. bishops issued a more focused document, Renewing the Earth, which was drawn largely from the Church's social teaching tradition.5 The purpose of this article is to review some recent Roman Catholic theological literature in English (originally or recently translated) on environmental theology and ethics that can be understood as deep ecology from within mainstream Catholic thought. The contention of these authors is that the ecological crisis is a matter of theology, ethics, and values. Not surprisingly, given the comparative infancy of Catholicism's theological contribution to this issue, these works include collections of essays with a variety of approaches of varying quality, monographs that deal with the issue with greater methodological pre2 "Intuition, Intrinsic Value, and Deep Ecology," The Ecologist 14 (Sept./Oct., 1984): 56 ; also see Devall Bill and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1985). 3 It is important to note that other Christian faith traditions have offered pertinent and challenging statements on this issue, especially the Orthodox. See, for example, the statement by Patriarch Dimitrios, Orthodoxy and the Ecological Crisis (Geneva: Ecumenical Patriarchate, 1990). 4 See "Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation," Origins 19 (Dec. 14, 1989): 465-68. This is but one example of John Paul's voice on this issue, which is not univocal. Among other statements, his 1993 Lenten Message is particularly interesting in the way it addresses the devastation caused by "uncontrolled industrial development and the use of technologies which disrupt the balance of nature [that] have caused... (shrink)

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

_A unique philosophical look at the hit television series _Downton Abbey_ _ Who can resist the lure of _Downton Abbey_ and the triumphs and travails of the Crawley family and its servants? We admire Bates's sense of honor, envy Carson's steadfastness, and thrill to Violet's caustic wit. _Downton Abbey and Philosophy_ draws on some of history's most profound philosophical minds to delve deeply into the dilemmas that confront our favorite characters. Was Matthew right to push Mary away after his injury (...) in the war? Would Lord Grantham have been justified in blocking Lady Sybil's marriage to Tom Branson? And is Thomas really such a bad person? Offers fresh and intriguing insights into your favorite _Downton Abbey_ characters, plot lines, and ideas Addresses many of your most pressing questions about _Downton Abbey's_ story and characters, such as: Should Daisy have lied to William about her feelings toward him—especially to the point of marrying him? Should Mr. Bates have been upfront with Anna from the beginning about his past? Views _Downton Abbey_ through the lens of some of the most influential philosophical thinkers, from Saint Augustine and David Hume to Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill Ventures upstairs _and_ downstairs to examine key themes involving ethics, virtue, morality, class, feminism, the human condition, and more Philosophical speculation awaits on every page of this essential _Downton Abbey_ companion. So take a seat in your personal library, have the butler pour a cup of tea, and start reading! (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:704 BOOK REVIEWS The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy. By PAUL F. BRADSHAW. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 217. $35.00 (cloth). Despite broad and general acceptance of the study of liturgy as an academic discipline comprising (among other things) historical, theological, anthropological, aesthetic, and ritual aspects, liturgical scholars themselves are still engaged in (...) refining the contours of this discipline. With regard to historical perspectives on liturgy, for example, contemporary liturgical scholars have both relied upon the ground-breaking work of authors such as Anton Baumstark, Jean Danielou, Gregory Dix, and Josef Jungmann and urged caution in appropriating their insights too facilely or uncritically. More precisely, the kind of research such scholars were able to do on the sources they examined, the editing of new editions of those same sources, the fact of the discovery of additional sources, and the crucial issue of how to interpret what historical sources have to say require that contemporary liturgiologists revisit the early sources of the liturgy ever more carefully and precisely. Paul Bradshaw's contribution in The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship is nothing short of ground-breaking for the contribution it makes to contemporary liturgical method in general and to the study of liturgical sources in particular. With admirable clarity and modesty in tone Bradshaw accomplishes his aim: " to offer a guide or handbook for the journey through the field of liturgical origins" (x). He makes no claim that even a careful study of liturgical origins or liturgical history comprises the discipline and craft of liturgiology. What he does claim and exemplify in this remarkable hook is that the study of the sources of liturgy requires careful contextualization as well as precise textual and source criticism of the documents so that what can he legitimately gleaned from historical investigation continues to be a major factor in liturgical study. Bradshaw published some of the material in this carefully constructed monograph in an article in Studia Liturgica 17 (1987): 26-34 and in his contributions to The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship (1991) and Fountain of Life (1991). Among the author's noteworthy accomplishments is the way he has incorporated this material into a new synthesis here. The first three chapters deal with the Jewish background of Christian worship, worship in the New Testament, and principles for interpreting early Christian liturgical evidence. Bradshaw states and exemplifies one of his chief theses here: that any sense BOOK REVIEWS 705 of a linear progression from Jewish liturgical forms at the time of Jesus through the early Christian centuries is impossible to sustain for at least two reasons. First, the Jewish sources themselves at the time of Christ were not uniform, as exemplified by the fact that some manuscripts presumably attesting to the Jewish practices at the time of Jesus were not compiled until centuries later. And even then the normativity of such texts was not universally held. Second, the pluriformity in church life customarily derived from the scientific study of the scriptures should also be expected to derive from the scientific study of liturgical sources, for example, because of the difference between and evolution within the liturgy both East and West. With regard to what are customarily more precisely termed " liturgical sources " Bradshaw offers significant insights in chapter four about individual documents (e.g., the Didache, the Apostolic Tradition, and the Apostolic Constitutions) and, even more importantly, their interrelationship. The modesty in tone of the whole book is nowhere more evident than when he observes that one needs to be cautious in determining whether these documents describe or prescribe what should be done liturgically and when he muses about why some of the evidence in these texts should have appeared there at all. This caution is sustained in chapter five describing "other major liturgical sources," namely, the apostolic fathers, patristic texts, and the diary of Egeria. Here again the descriptive/prescriptive issue resurfaces especially regarding Justin's accounts of liturgy in his First Apology, insights about initiation rites in patristic homilies and catecheses, and the ceremonies of the Easter triduum recounted by Egeria. In chapters six through eight... (shrink)

Philosophical and technoculture studies surrounding the existential understanding of the human–technology–world experience have seen a slow but steady increase that makes a turn to material hermeneutics in the second decade of the twenty-first century (Ihde in Postphenomenology: essays in the postmodern context. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1993; Capurro in AI Soc 25(1):35–42, 2010; Romele in Digital hermeneutics: philosophical investigations in new media and technologies. Routledge, Abingdon, 2020; among others). This renewed focus makes sense because human–technology–world experiences need to be (...) interpreted. And many of these are more complicated to study, precisely because technology is at the root of the experiences. One interesting subset of technologies is media technologies, also called digital media, which intertwines the device and the content to mediate together in the world (Irwin in Digital media: human-technology connection. Lexington Books, Lanham, 2016). Visual media technologies and media content, together, through what is called moving image technologies, create virtual role-playing, virtual and augmented reality, video games, and social media focused worlds that have become central experiences in contemporary culture. Just as image-based scientific instruments read the world in different ways, so to do these visual mediated experiences. How might this comingled “reading” of technology explain the digital film language and experience? I contend that understanding the existential “early” film experience helps understand the new age of cinema, with implications for digital media, digital representation of the visual, and technoscience and technoculture studies. The material hermeneutics perspective called postphenomenology is one way to study these visually focused human–technology–world perceptual and interpretive experiences. Don Ihde’s methodological framework (1990, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2019) is both an idea from technoscience studies and a set of nuanced vocabulary that helps to explore and reveal variations, patterns, and trajectories of the whole-body experience of technology. This use case will first explore traditional cinema and then the “new age” term “moving image”, to learn more about this complicated and radically transforming technological experience. Work by Don Ihde and Vivian Sobchack is considered. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY: A METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL KEVIN w. IRWIN The Catholic University of America Washington, D.O. HE PAST DEOADE has witnessed the publication of number of English language works on sacraments ealing with general theories of sacramental theology as well as specialized studies of individual sacraments. In the postoonciliar church there is not yet a uniform or universally agreed upon method for the study of sacraments. Still most vecerrt (...) 'Wo11ks indicate significant shifts in method from the post-Tr:identine!legacy o:f treating sacraments priimarily in dogmatic tracts and canon law studies.1 At the s1ame time there has been an increased interest by liturgists and theologians alike in liturgical theology. This includes not only the theologicrul dimensions of what occurs in the liturgy hut 1also (more recently) how the liturgy can serve as a source for theology in geneml as well 1as for the theology of the sacraments.2 Despite this recent writing and evolving thought on the rela1 See, Kevin W. Irwin, "Recent Sacramental Theology: A Review Discus· sion," The Thomist 47 (1983) : 592-608; "Recent Sacramental Theology [Review Discussion II]" The Thomist 52 (1988) : 124-147; "Recent Sacramental Theology III," The Thomist 53 (1989) : 281-313. 2 Among the English language works that have sparked interest in liturgical theology and have shaped part of the contemporary deb-ate about what it includes are those of Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology (New York: Pueblo, 1984) and Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). For an assessment of these works and other recent writing on liturgical theology see Teresa Berger, "'Doxology,' 'Jubilate,' 'Liturgical Theology ': Zurn Verhaltnis von Liturgie und Theologie: Publikationen aus dem englischsprachen Raum,'' Arohiv fur Liturgiewissensohaft 28 (1986) : 247-255. 311 KEVIN W. IRWIN tionship of liturgy and sacramental theology, what is still lacking is some method for developing a contemporary theology of the sacraments with the liturgy as its foundation. There are many reasons for this lack: shifts in contemporary theological method in general, the nature of the reformed liturgy which invites flexibility and option, and :finally questions of wha;t ought to be factol'ed into a systemat1c study of the sacramental theology and of sacramental life in the postconciliar church. It is the purpose of this article to propose 1a, method for sacramental theology which uses liturgy as its essentia1l foundation and which delineates aspects of sacriamental theology 1that can be based on the liturgy. The article will be divided into ctwo unequal parts, with the :first laying the foundation for the second. The first deals with the general notion of a liturgical theology of the sacraments, with particular 1attention to the postconciliar context for this discussion.3 This foundation leads to the seoond pa:rt which proposes aspects of sacramental theology that are first drnwn from the liturgy and then can he used to understand 1both individual sacraments and sacraments in general hy continual reference to the liturgy. In delineating these aspects of a liturgically grounded sacramental theology, the categories of classical sacramental theology will be respected, in the sense that, despite their deficiencies, systematic treatises on 'Sacraments from the medieval and post-Tr,identine s This is not to suggest that the seminal works of such authors as Cipriano Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, trans. Leonard J. Doyle and W. A. Jurgens from the fourth Italian edition (Collegeville: The Litur· gical Press, 1976) and Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, trans. Ashleigh Moorhouse (London: The F'aith Press, 1966), will be ignored. It is to suggest, however, that the recent work on liturgical theology has had to consider the flexibility of postconciliar liturgy as opposed to the fixity of the preconciliar rites. On this as an important factor in the method of doing liturgical theology see P. DeC!erck, "Lex orandi, lex oredendi, sens original et avatars historiq'ues d'un adage equivoque," Questions Liturgiques 59 (1978) : 193-212, and Gerarcl Lukken, "La liturgic comme lieu theologique irremplacable," Questions Liturgiques 56 (1975) : 104-109. SACRAM:ENTAL THEOLOGY 313 periods have left a v:aluable legacy of sacramental theory and prractice.4 The following six aspects of the liturgical experience... (shrink)

Education is increasingly vocational and structured to serve the ongoing exponential increase in economic growth. Climate change is an outcome of these same economic values and praxes. Attempts to shift these values and our approach to technology are continually absorbed and overcome by the pressing motif of economic growth. In this article, Ruth Irwin uses Martin Heidegger's concept of the technological enframing of modernity to view economic growth. John Maynard Keynes's notion of economic growth has impacted the pace of (...) consumerism that now permeates every aspect of knowing about the world we live in. Irwin asks us to think through technological enframing anew by looking to an early mechanical Greek artifact, the Antikythera mechanism, which depicts a cyclical notion of time used by ancient cultures to define the rhythm of economic productivity. The earth-centric cosmos embodied by this mechanism helped the Mesopotamian economy stay within the parameters of the local ecology and demonstrates that cyclical economic growth may enable a civilization to maintain a steady state over time and survive for millennia. An earth-centric cosmology creates a different set of values, one that emphasizes the need to regulate the pace of consumerism rather than allowing it free rein “as by an Invisible Hand.” The role of education in this exploration is twofold: first, it is a pivotal site for cultural exploration and transformation; and second, the expectations of the state strictly limit the forms education can take, so that as long as promoting economic growth defines state expectations, education will remain subservient to these values. If we aim to overcome climate change, Irwin concludes, we need to transform the expectations for education from society as well as from teachers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading Audio BooksWilliam IrwinI hide my audio book habit because most of my colleagues, and even some of my snobbier students, regard audio books as a sign of an impending dark age of mass illiteracy. Feeling uneasy, I wonder: when The Brothers Karamazov comes up in conversation am I obliged to "confess" that I listened to the unabridged audio book, but did not silently read the massive tome? Is (...) there a difference that makes a difference between listening to an audio book and reading a printed book?IPeople read less today, partly because reading silently is not social; we crave the company of loved ones at the end of the day, and so prefer to watch television with them. Silent reading does not fit today's multitasking lifestyle; you can listen to music while you drive or jog, but you cannot read a book. Or, then again, perhaps you can, if listening to an audio book is reading after all. Time does not need to be specifically set aside for an audio book the way it does with a conventional book—the lights don't even have to be on. And surprisingly, it is satisfying to listen to a book ten minutes at a time while running errands. Perhaps this is because getting started is as easy as pressing a button. By contrast, few people read printed books in ten minute blocks, presumably because it takes something for most people to warm up to reading. If they are going to read, then they are going to do it for a sustained time—something longer than a ten-minute block. It is easier to "push through" and finish an audio book. I nearly gave up on Catch-22; it's too thick and over the top with satire for my taste. And I surely would have given up on it if I had been reading the book silently. I stuck with [End Page 358] the audio book, however, largely because it was easy to continue; I just pressed play every time I got in my car.Books on tape have been available for quite some time, but, despite often being abridged, they were too clunky and cumbersome for most people. The availability of books on CD and for MP3 download makes it all much more convenient. Audio books are now the fastest growing segment of the book industry and are likely to become even more common and popular, perhaps some day eclipsing the sale of conventional books, perhaps some day becoming the normal way of "reading" literature. And far from being abridged, some audio books today include extras. For example, the audio version of The Amber Spyglass includes epigrams before each chapter that are not in the print version.IIHarold Bloom says, "Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear. You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you."1 Before listening to audio books myself I would have agreed with Bloom; but now I suspect he simply has never listened to an audio book. Skeptical of literature on audio, I started my audio experience with nonfiction. Pleasantly surprised with nonfiction, I tried listening to fiction and found the presentation very different. Nonfiction books are simply read, whereas works of fiction are typically performed—characters get distinct voices and the reader really puts on a show. Most audio book performances of literature are much like a one-man play, taking us back to the days of traveling bards and rhapsodes.In The Performance of Reading Peter Kivy highlights that for most of its history Western literature has been experienced out loud.2 As is well known, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were performed out loud by bards, as Beowulf was centuries later. But less well known is the fact that even after the invention of the printing press, when books were still scarce and expensive, even people in possession of books generally read them out loud to themselves and to others. So it is odd that along with Harold Bloom, my colleagues and students, look with mistrust at... (shrink)

I review this fine collection of articles on ancient ethics ranging from the Presocratics to Sextus Empiricus. Eight of the nine chapters are published here for the first time. Contributors include Charles H. Kahn on "Pre-Platonic Ethics," C. C. W. Taylor on "Platonic Ethics," Stephen Everson on "Aristotle on Nature and Value," John McDowell on "Some Issues in Aristotle's Moral Psychology," David Sedley on "The Inferential Foundations of Epicurean Ethics," T. H. Irwin on "Socratic Paradox and Stoic Theory," Julia (...) Annas on "Doing Without Objective Values: Ancient and Modern Strategies," and Susan Sauvé Meyer on "Moral Responsibility: Aristotle and After." There is also an introductory essay by the editor, Stephen Everson. I summarize and then critique each chapter in this rather lengthy review. (shrink)

Reprinted in Aristotle's Ethics, edited by T. Irwin, Garland Press, 1995; revised in Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric, edited by A. Rorty, University of California Press, 1996.

L’intitulé de l’ouvrage fait inévitablement référence à un livre plus ancien, écrit à plusieurs mains : H. A. Frankfort, J. A. Wilson, Th. Jacobsen, et W. A. Irwin, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man : an essay on speculative thought in the ancient Near East, University Press, Chicago, 1946. On pense également à R. Watson et W. Horowitz, Writing Science Before the Greeks : a naturalistic analysis of the Babylonian astronomical treatise MUL.APIN, Brill, Leyde, 2011. Dans le premier, (...) il... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Method in Ancient PhilosophyDavid K. GliddenJyl Gentzler, editor. Method in Ancient Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. viii + 398. Cloth, $72.00.The fifteen papers in this collection constitute revisions of conference proceedings and reflect the varied interests of participants. The ensemble exhibits a thoroughly modern methodology. Whatever and however various ancient methods of philosophy may have been, in Anglo-American scholarship it is standard practice to first address (...) established scholarly interpretations as the primary entry point to critical discussionóoften displacing antiquity with a critical vocabulary of philosophical modernity. Scholars may come to understand each other better, but at the risk of asking the wrong questions or sacrificing ancient texts themselves as mere means of producing papers.Most scholars are progressives. They believe philosophy has advanced past the comparatively primitive wisdom of antiquity, and so such scholars feel perfectly entitled to make better sense of ancient texts, by patiently explaining what the ancients would have meant had they only been able to get it right. There are, of course, exceptions. And some papers in this collection suggest deeper faith in our philosophic fathers. So, the battle between the ancients and the moderns is joined once more, between those who would adorn their papers with footnotes for their peers and those who would attempt more anthropological an inquiry into ancient philosophic practices.Ian Mueller and Robert Bolton each address the same passage in Plato's Phaedo, both beginning with an article from Vlastos, first published in 1969. Mueller thoughtfully explores three different yet related accounts of what we might call scientific method in explaining Plato's views on natural change. Bolton wonders whether scholars are asking the wrong questions. Patricia Curd attempts a progressivist account of Eleatic thought, notwithstanding her recognition of the paucity of ancient sources. Complete with elaborately numbered sentences, Gail Fine focuses primarily on Burnyeat (1976) on Plato on Protagoras. Constance Meinwald presents a rather near-sighted account of two passages in the Philebus that employ the peras-apeiron distinction, with a view toward Plato's allegedly modernist mathematization of understanding. Lesley Brown revisits five pages of the Sophist that were hotly debated in the 1960s. With charity and elegance, she offers several plausible solutions to puzzles posed by previous scholars. Sometimes time smoothes over differences.A. A. Long's essay on Plato's presentation of Socrates in the Theaetetus might appear more philosophically anthropological. Yet Long reveals progressive sympathies, suggesting that Plato dispatches Socrates in the Theaetetus, so as to prepare the way for a more rigorously academic form of philosophizing, such as that exhibited in the Sophist. [End Page 111] In this way, Long speculates, Plato abandoned practical ethics for the academic life of research, so familiar to university professors and conference participants. It might be hard to square such speculation with Plato's Laws and the reception of Plato's writings among his own contemporaries. Still, Socrates' shifting role in Plato's dialogues is well worth pondering.By comparison, T. H. Irwin's contribution is wonderfully old-fashioned. His paper addresses the background knowledge to be presumed by ancient readers of Plato's dialogues and how that knowledge is artfully put to use in Plato's depiction of Socrates' reflections on the unity of virtue. By speculating on Plato's relation to his ancient readers, Irwin displaces many modernist preoccupations, though not without himself falling victim to that peculiar scholarly obsession of dating Plato's dialogues by their doctrines.With characteristic conservatism, Gisela Striker cautions scholars not to over-read Aristotle's Prior Analytics. While that extraordinary work may have deep implications for the history of formal logic, it probably was instead intended to be part of a general account of argument. In a similar vein, Charlotte Witt attempts to rescue Aristotle from scholars who would delimit Aristotle's multifarious uses of the "for the sake of" explanation, which altogether pervade his metaphysics, physics, biology and ethics. Yet, Witt soon finds herself competing in a contest over interpretive distinctions, a sport that will certainly never capture Aristotle's own authorial intentions.Facing another mass of scholarship, in this case on Aristotle's dialectic, C. D. C. Reeve sensibly attempts to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a NovelChristopher PerriconeThe Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel, by George Santayana; edited by H. J. Saatkamp and W. G. Holzberger; xli & 744 pp. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994, $50.00.In 1936, Irwin Edman reviewed The Last Puritan for the New York Times. It was a sympathetic review. However, Edman was not blind to (...) the novel’s fundamental weakness: it is driven by ideas, “essences,” rather than characters, ones you might hate or love: “... this is a poet’s novel and philosopher’s tale.... If the characters do not come to life, they live as themes dramatized and as ‘human persuasions.’”This year Harold Bloom wrote in The Western Canon that canonical works are those works which deserve re-reading. As a novel, The Last Puritan does not deserve re-reading, as Tom Jones, The Trial, or Huckleberry Finn, do. But as a philosophy “not argued but presented as a picture” (Edman), The Last Puritan may be among Santayana’s best works. Yes, one reads and re-reads The Last Puritan because one wants to know the ideas of America’s great philosophical poet. Without the philosophy to support the novel, I am not sure it would have a reason for being. One is not interested per se in Santayana’s plot or characters, their friendships and failures, Oliver and Jim, their deaths, or Mario, his paganism and love of life. Rather one wants to be enchanted by [End Page 186] Santayana’s poetic voice; one wants to know what Santayana thinks about the play of spirit and matter and how “the genteel tradition” had so much promise and yet had gone bad. And these are, indeed, in principle, the very same reasons why one reads and rereads Plato, Lucretius, or Dante.The critical edition, put together by Saatkamp and Holzberger, with an introduction by Irving Singer, is a first-class piece of work. It is everything a Santayana scholar would want or need. Singer’s introduction provides the reader with a sound and well-researched background on Santayana and Oliver’s story, and anticipates some problems of aesthetics the reader will face, e.g., the problem of character development. Unlike me, Singer thinks Santayana’s “idealizations” bring vitality to character: “Far from being desiccated types, the great characters in fiction give one a sense of individuality that often seems more natural to us than what is found in nature itself” (p. xix). Notwithstanding my disagreement with Singer, his presentation is well thought-out and plausible.The “Editorial Appendix,” written by Saatkamp and Holzberger, is impeccable. In the “Notes to the Text” they provide the scholar or the curious reader with a marvelous wealth of information. They run down and support with convincing evidence every allusion in the novel. In the “Textual Commentary,” they provide a statement of textual principles and procedures, a description and development of the text, and an explanation of how the critical text was established; in effect, after one has read the product, one can then read about the process by which the product was brought about. Naturally, there are also lists of emendations and variants.As a philosophical novel, I recommend The Last Puritan to anyone who believes that “... what the realm of essence, in its mute eternity, chiefly adds to our notion of nature is the proof that nature is contingent. An infinite canvas is spread before us on which any world might have been painted. The actuality of things is sharpened and the possibilities of things are enlarged. We cease to be surprised or distressed at finding existence unstable and transitory. Why should it have been otherwise? Not only must our own lives be insecure, as earthly seasons change, but perhaps all existence is in flux, even down to its first principles. Dum vivimus, vivamus. Everything, so long as it recognizably endures, is free to deploy its accidental nature, and we may lead the life of reason with a good grace, harmonizing as well as possible our various impulses and opportunities, and exploring the realm of essence as our genius may prompt” (Santayana, “A General Confession... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Solon and Early Greek Poetry: The Politics of ExhortationGregory HaysElizabeth Irwin. Solon and Early Greek Poetry: The Politics of Exhortation. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xiv + 350 pp. Cloth, $90.Thirty years ago we understood archaic Greek elegy pretty well—or so we imagined. The elegists sang of the new developments of the archaic period, above all the rise of the polis. They wrote (...) first-person poetry celebrating their own individuality; most modern anthologies open emblematically with Archilochus's... They invoked the phraseology of epic only to reject its values: Homer's aristocratic warriors retreated in disarray before the bandy-legged general of the mercenary Archilochus. The arrival of the citizen soldier was reflected in Tyrtaeus and Callinus, whose exhortations hoplites chanted as they marched into battle. Solon was a little harder to accommodate in this picture: an odd hybrid of Jeremiah and Polonius, rising to occasional grandeur, but weak on logic and organization. Still, his praise of Eunomia helped bridge the gap between Homeric naiveté and the abstract thinking of the fifth century. And of course there was that law code...This explanatory model reflects the Geistesgeschichte approach of Bruno Snell, Hermann Fränkel, and Werner Jaeger, and it has been notably tenacious. But as a tool for explaining elegy (and lyric generally) it has come to seem pretty dated. Archilochus's "I" was problematized as early as 1964 in K. J. Dover's contribution to the Fondation Hardt Archiloque volume. But it was in the 1980s that the ice really started to break up. In an influential article (JHS 106 [1986] 13-35), [End Page 427] Ewen Bowie stressed the symposium's centrality as the performative context for elegy, thus making conservative aristocrats the genre's primary consumers (so much for the citizen soldier and the rising middle class!). The rise of "cultural poetics" left archaic society—and its poets—looking much less familiar. Finally, the conventional relationship between elegy and epic was being reexamined. Many supposed Homeric allusions melted away under closer examination (notably in Robert Fowler's The Nature of Early Greek Lyric [Toronto, 1987]). Recent scholarship has proposed dramatically later dates for the stabilization of the Homeric poems, calling into question their priority to lyric even in a chronological sense. The old picture of elegy as an archaic response to a monolithic "epic" has given way to theories of an ongoing and dynamic dialogue between (and within) both genres.These trends are reflected in Elizabeth Irwin's study of Solon, a revised version of her 1999 Cambridge dissertation. It also reflects renewed interest in the poet, appearing soon after commentaries by Maria Noussia (2001) and Christoph Mülke (2002) and almost simultaneously with a collective volume edited by Josine Blok and André Lardinois (Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches [Leiden, 2006]), to which Irwin has contributed. Along with Solon, Irwin focuses on Callinus and Tyrtaeus, and one of her stated goals is "to help us unlearn what we think we know about this poetry and its historical significance" (18).The book is divided into three parts. In part 1 ("The Politics of Exhortation") Irwin examines the tradition of martial exhortation represented by Tyrtaeus and Callinus. The conventional view had these poets discarding Homer's individualistic front-fighters in favor of the new citizen-armies of the polis— is now a civic virtue. But as Irwin observes, "fighting for one's fatherland" is not alien to Iliadic values. For her, the similarities between martial elegy and epic outweigh any differences. As she notes, the evocation of future warfare in sympotic elegy mirrors a corresponding appeal to past feasting in the exhortations of the Iliad. Martial elegy provides (or sees itself as providing) an off-duty complement to Homeric warriors' battlefield vaunts—the sort of thing Sarpedon might have directed to Glaucus back in Lycia while the slave-boys were refilling the goblets. Such Iliadic self-fashioning constructs its sympotic audience not simply as heroic, but specifically as a heroic elite. While martial elegy may pay lip service to the polis, its center of gravity is elsewhere. Thus Tyrtaeus fragment 11W can conclude with patronizing advice to the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 121 her hermeneutical enterprise. I agree that the Hippolytean interpretation is interesting (how could any interpretation of Heraclitus be without interest?) but I am not convinced that it is new. Here I must be brief: as early as Plato a case can be made for awareness of the moral implications of Heraclitus's cosmological views. The interconnection which Plato sees between Protagorean relativism (moral as well as epistemological (...) ) and Heraclitean (cosmic) flux in the first part of the Theaetetus is indicative of this 052d-e, 16od-e with 172a-b; and for some suggestive commentary see T. Irwin, Plato's Moral Theory [Oxford University Press, 1977], x48-53 ). And given this normative gloss on Heraclitus's cosmological views, based as it is on pre-Hippolytean evidence, I conclude that the new methodology which Osborne proposes is not likely to change our picture of the Presocratics. DANIEL H. FRANK University of Kentucky G. R. F. Ferrari. Listening to the Cicadas:A Study of Plato's "Phaedrus." Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, t987. Pp. xiii + 293. $39.5o. Plato's conception of the philosophical life acknowledges as centrally important a transcendent aspiration. It also incorporates an appreciation for the philosopher's worldly and contingent biography. In the Symposium Plato portrays the stages of philosophical development and how they transcend worldly beauty only to issue, in the end, in a demand for reshaping the world in terms of the soul's ultimate vision and understanding. In the Republic Plato sketches the psychological, moral, and cognitive itinerary of philosophical education and training. Moreover, Plato emphasizes the necessity that directs the philosopher to return to the world, to organize and maintain social-political life, and to cultivate friendship, justice, and psychological health. In the Phaedrus Plato turns to the domain of interpersonal relations, the sphere of love, and there he charts the way in which the philosophical life arises out of the encounter between lover and beloved and then gives shape to that relationship. This confrontation between the philosophical lover and the contingency of his embodiment is one of the central themes of Professor Ferrari's study of the Phaedrus. That theme concerns the domain of "goods which, although external to the philosophic life, nevertheless belong to it more than just accidentally [and] which result from the realisation~0f the philosophic impulse in our actual lives" (a 28). There are a host of scholarly cruxes in the Phaedrus that Ferrari discusses: the role of the dialogue's pastoral setting; the relation between the dialogue's two parts; the relations among philosophy, poetry, and prophecy; the precise character of Plato's psychology in the Phaedrus; the nature of philosophical madness; whether Plato's famous remark on writing is the theme of the dialogue or a mere epilogue to it; the Platonic use of myth; and so forth. But Ferrari does not approach the dialogue through these cruxes; nor does he enter the Phaedrus through Plato's moral philosophy, his epistemology, or his psychology. Rather he engages the dialogue as it presents itself, as a literary document written with care and discipline, and as an attempt 122 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY 1990 on Plato's part to show something important about the philosophical life. The key word here is 'show', for it is Ferrari's conviction that in the Phaedrus Plato exploits the distinctions between what can be told and what can be shown and between background and foreground in order to exhibit two things: how philosophy and rhetoric are interrelated and hence what the philosophical art is, on the one hand, and how the philosophical life is stimulated by and enriches the experience of interpersonal love, on the other. In the Phaedrus Plato develops a rhetorical strategy for showing the philosophical life by juxtaposing it with alternative lives and by exhibiting it and these alternatives against a carefully articulated background. This is why the portraits of Socrates, Lysias, and Phaedrus are given so vividly and in part why Plato turns to myth, as a philosophical strategy for presenting philosophical love. Philosophy, then, must be rhetorical. But also, rhetoric, to be genuine, must be philosophical. Part of what... (shrink)

Educating the Virtues David Carr Routledge, 1991. Pp. 304. ISBN 0?415?05746?9. £35. The Philosophical Theology of St Thomas Aquinas By Leo J. Elders E. J. Brill, 1990. Pp. 332. ISBN 0?04?09156?4. $74.36. The State and Justice: An Essay in Political Theory By Milton Fisk Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. x + 391. ISBN 0?521?38966?6. £10.95 pbk. Perspectives on Language and Thought: Interrelations in Development Edited by S. A. Gelman and J. P. Byrnes Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xii (...) + 524. ISBN 0?521?37497?9. £50. Aristotle's First Principles By T. H. Irwin Oxford University Press, 1989. Pp. xviii + 702. ISBN 0?198?24717?6. £17.50 Pbk. Truth and Eros: Foucault, Lacan, and the Question of Ethics By John Rajchman Routledge, 1991. Pp. 155. ISBN 0?415?90380?7. £10.99. Logical Forms By Mark Sainsbury Blackwell, 1991. Pp. 408. ISBN 0?631?17777?9. £11.95. Form and Transformation. A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus By Frederic M. Schroeder McGill?Queen's University Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 136. ISBN 0?7735?1016?8. £34.95. Did The Greeks Believe Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination By Paul Veyne, translated by Paula Wissing The University of Chicago Press, 1988. Pp. 161. ISBN 0?226?85434?5. £8.75 Pbk. What is Philosophy? By Dietrich von Hildebrand Routledge, 1991. Pp. lvii + 242. ISBN 0?415?02584?2. £12.99. (shrink)

Albert Einstein.--Bertrand Russell.--John Dewey.--R.A. Millikan.--Theodore Dreiser.--H.G. Wells.--Fridtjof Nansen.--Sir James Jeans.--Irving Babbitt.--Sir Arthur Keith.--J.T. Adams.--H.L. Mencken.--Julia Peterkin.--Lewis Mumford.--G.J. Nathan.--Hu Shih.--J.W. Krutch.--Irwin Edman.--Hilaire Belloc.--Beatrice Webb.--W.R. Inge.--J.B.S. Haldane.--Biographical notes. Note: This book was re-published by AMS Press, 1979.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary PhilosophyFrederick BeiserRudolf A. Makkreel and Sebastian Luft, editors. Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy. Studies in Continental Thought. Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. Pp. ix. + 331. Paper, $27.95.This collection of essays testifies to the growing interest in neo-Kantianism in the Anglophone world. The editors boast that “it is the first of its kind published in English,” though they have been beat to the post by (...) an issue of the The Philosophical Forum (Vol. XXXIX, no. 2, Summer 2008), Back to Kant: Neo-Kantianism and its Relevance Today, edited by Andrew Chignell, Terence Irwin, and Thomas Teufel. Still, claims to priority are of small moment where quality is concerned, and the many valuable essays in this volume more than compensate for second place. In their introductory essay, Makkreel and Luft make a convincing case for the continuing relevance of neo-Kantianism in contemporary philosophy. Basically, nearly every philosophical movement of the twentieth century—phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, positivism, Frankfurt school—was influenced by, or grew out of a reaction to, neo-Kantianism, so that we cannot understand and assess these movements unless we have a handle on neo-Kantianism itself. The editors missed a trick, however, when they failed to mention the concept of normativity, which plays such a big role in contemporary philosophy, and whose roots lie in neo-Kantianism.Despite the high quality of many of its essays, this volume suffers from a lack of balance and perspective. Contemporary scholars on neo-Kantianism tend to focus on the Marburg school, especially the work of Cohen, Cassirer, and Natorp. This volume reflects this bias: almost all the articles are centered on these figures. Only two essays focus on the Southwestern or Baden school: one on Emil Lask by Steven Crowell, another on Dilthey and the neo-Kantians by Makkreel. The latter article, however, is more a defense of Dilthey than a study of the neo-Kantians. The important contributions of the Southwestern school to value-theory, and the logic of history and the social sciences, receive scant treatment.The lack of balance is especially evident in the case of the neo-Friesian school, which is never mentioned. This school of neo-Kantianism prospered in Göttingen in the early twentieth century under the leadership of Leonard Nelson. Its members—the theologian Rudolf Otto (1869–1937), the psychiatrist Arthur Kronfeld (1886–1941), the Nobel Prize winner Otto Meyerhoff (1884–1951), and the mathematician Gerhard Hessenberg (1874–1925)—were eminent in their own right and advocated noble social and political causes. Their circle is of great cultural interest, and it deserves a place in history no less than the Marburg and Southwestern schools. Following Fries, Nelson developed an anthropological interpretation of Kant competing with the logicist interpretation of the Marburg and Southwestern schools. Nowadays Heidegger is given credit for the anthropological interpretation, though its origins ultimately go back to Fries.The bias in perspective becomes explicit in the essay by Manfred Kühn, “Interpreting Kant Correctly: On the Kant of the Neo-Kantians.” Kühn attempts to find the common [End Page 145] interpretation of Kant in the Marburg and Southwestern schools, and locates it in the Platonized version of Kant of the later Cohen, an interpretation that eliminates sensibility and stresses the autonomy of pure thought. Kühn’s generalization is problematic for three reasons: (1) It ignores the anthropological interpretation of the Friesian school; (2) it scarcely works for the Southwestern school, which never eliminated Kant’s sensibility (Kühn bases his interpretation on a single later essay by Rickert, as if it held for all his earlier work and for Windelband and Lask); and (3) it applies only to the later Cohen, who took the plunge toward an objective idealist interpretation only in his 1896 Einleitung mit kritischen Nachtrag zur neunten Auflage der Geschichte des Materialismus. Although there are indeed Platonic tendencies to Cohen’s thinking even in the late 1860s, they do not erase the Kantian dualism between understanding and sensibility, which remains well in place even in the second edition of Kant’s Theorie der Erfahrung (1885). On the whole, Kühn’s interpretation is very anachronistic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge Companion to the StoicsJohn SellarsBrad Inwood, editor. The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 438. Cloth, $70.00. Paper, $26.00.No doubt everyone will be familiar with the format and rationale of the Cambridge Companion series, each volume being designed to function as a "reference work for students and nonspecialists." Brad Inwood's Cambridge Companion to The Stoics follows the (...) usual plan, offering fifteen essays by an impressive line up of well-known Stoic scholars. The essays fall into four distinct groups. The first group (Sedley, Gill) offers a sketch of the history of the Stoa, and both essays are excellent. Of particular interest is Sedley's challenge to the traditional distinction between the orthodox "early" and eclectic "middle" Stoa (esp. 23-24). The second group (Hankinson, Bobzien, White, Algra, Frede, Brunschwig, Schofield, Brennan) forms the heart of the volume, each essay examining a central topic in Stoic philosophy. While all of these contributions are very good, those by Bobzien, Brunschwig, and Schofield stand out in particular. Hankinson offers a helpful discussion of Stoic epistemology but lapses into anachronistic descriptions at times; the Stoic position is "Lockean," the Stoics are good empiricists in the Humean fashion, they have "Leibnizian metaphysics" (63, 69). Brennan gives a very interesting discussion of Stoic moral psychology, but perhaps pitches it a little too high for a nonspecialist audience. The third group (Hankinson again, Blank and Atherton, Jones) explores the ancient Stoic tradition's relationship with medicine, grammar, and the astronomical sciences. Jones' discussion of the neglected Cleomedes is especially welcome (333-37). The final group (Irwin, Long) considers the reception of Stoic ideas in the Western intellectual tradition. Of these I found Long the more accessible and useful of the two (compare, for instance, their respective discussions of Butler, 357-62 and 382-89), although Irwin will no doubt prove stimulating to those already familiar with the issues he addresses.What is lacking from the collection as a whole, however, is any sense of the systematic unity of Stoic philosophy. While it has inevitably been divided up under various headings for the sake of exposition, there has not been much attempt to put it back together again (like Humpty Dumpty, Stoic philosophy is like an egg; Diogenes Laertius 7.40). Although many individual contributors signal the systematicity of Stoicism, there is no extended discussion of the way in which the various parts of Stoic philosophy fit together, nor how that system relates to the way in which the Stoics conceived philosophy, or their ideal of the Sage. [End Page 337]My principal concerns with the volume as a whole relate to the lack of any supporting material that might prove useful to the student or nonspecialist approaching the subject for the first time. There is no list or chronology of the principal Stoics, nor a guide to the ancient sources for Stoicism. There is a list of primary sources, but this contains all of the primary material cited by the contributors, including works by Aquinas, Butler, Duns Scotus, Hume, Leibniz, and Spinoza. There is no readily accessible table of abbreviations, and what nonspecialist will know that in order to find a text cited as 'S. E. M' they may end up opening a book entitled Against the Logicians (as 'M' 7 and 8 are called in the Loeb Classical Library series)? Some abbreviations are explained within the list of primary sources, but this is not immediately obvious. The bibliography is indeed substantial but it also simply lists the various items cited by the contributors. What might have been more useful in this companion is a structured guide to further reading, such as the one in A. S. McGrade's excellent Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, for instance. Even better would have been a bibliography along the lines of the one in Jonathan Barnes' Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. One other omission that is striking is the absence of a discussion of methodological problems that arise from relying on often hostile doxographical sources. Although a number of the contributors do touch on such issues en route, a more sustained treatment might have... (shrink)

The Gorgias is a vivid introduction to the central problems of moral and political philosophy. In the notes to his translation, Professor Irwin discusses the historical and social context of the dialogue, expounds and criticises the arguments, and tries above all to suggest the questions a modern reader ought to raise about Plato's doctrines. No knowledge of Greek is necessary.

This book traces the development of Plato's theory in its historical context, from the Socratic conception of virtue, knowledge and moral motivation to the revised Platonic conception, including the Theory of recollection, the Theory of forms, Platonic love, and the divisions of the soul.

Many of the original Saturday Night Live (SNL) cast and writers believed that cocaine was non‐addictive and that it was a logical drug to use to sustain the long hours of intense preparation necessary for a weekly live show. It's no secret that drugs and alcohol have been fuel for some SNL cast members. In the early days, the culture and writing of SNL were fueled by drugs, particularly cocaine and marijuana. So John Belushi's drug use was not at all (...) unique, and it justified his belief that people in the entertainment business needed to do drugs to cope with pressure and stress. Sadly, though, John and Chris Farley both lost their lives to overdoses at the young age of 33. Although Stuart Smalley pokes fun at the Pollyanna tone of recovery gurus, Al Franken himself has been a great advocate for the kind of twelve‐step programs that Chris Farley succeeded with for a time. (shrink)

Building on the strengths of the first edition, the second edition of the Irwin Nicomachean Ethics features a revised translation (with little editorial intervention), expanded notes (including a summary of the argument of each chapter), an expanded Introduction, and a revised glossary.