Julia Annas

• Ph.D Harvard
• Professor at University of Arizona

Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction explores the tradition of ancient philosophy. It elaborates on the key themes and debates of Graeco-Roman philosophy. Due to the long, rich, and variety of ancient philosophy, the field is in constant discussion and argument. The VSI showcases a sense of freshness and liveliness in the field of ancient...

As interest in virtue ethics has developed and spread, a variety of accounts of virtue, and of virtue ethics, has emerged. We are now familiar not only with neo-Aristotelian accounts (still the most popular) but also target-centered, exemplarist, agent-based and sentimentalist accounts, as well as accounts based on Kant, utilitarianism and other th...

In his later depiction of an ideal city, the Laws, Plato does not move from rule by experts to the rule of law, as often claimed, since law is also basic to the Republic. Rather, he now sees educated law-abidance as part of civic virtue: the laws are to be obeyed strictly, but also to be understood so that they are obeyed in the right spirit. Plato...

The field of ancient Greek ethics is increasingly emerging as a major branch of philosophical enquiry, and students and scholars of ancient philosophy will find this Companion to be a rich and invaluable guide to the themes and movements which characterised the discipline from the Pre-Socratics to the Neo-Platonists. Several chapters are dedicated...

Some years ago I started to write a book on virtue ethics, in which I tried to meet early criticisms of what was then a new way of doing ethics. The book continued to be unsatisfactory, and I finally abandoned it, realizing that I needed to get clear about virtue before producing a defence of virtue ethics. This need should have been obvious, espec...

Virtue ethics is sometimes taken to be incapable of providing guidance for an individual's actions, as some other ethical theories do. I show how virtue ethics does provide guidance for action, and also meet the objection that, while it may account for what we ought to do, it cannot account for the force of duty and obligation.

CICERO, DE LEGIBUS - Fontanella (F.) Politica e diritto naturale nel De Legibus di Cicerone. (Temi e Testi 109.) Pp. x + 139. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012. Paper, €24. ISBN: 978-88-6372-482-0. - Volume 64 Issue 2 - Julia Annas

Practical expertise may seem like routine activity in being direct and effortless, but this is misleading. In both the way it is developed and the way it is exercised, practical expertise requires many differences from routine, which are detailed.

This paper considers an Epicurean challenge to the possibility of Sceptical inquiry (reminiscent of a famous paradox in Plato's Meno), and also explores Sextus' reply to that challenge. It suggests that Sextus makes the good point that one need not know, nor even believe, that p, in order to inquire whether p is so. However, it is less clear whethe...

The book develops an account of virtue which, in a contemporary version, foregrounds the idea that virtue is an exercise of practical intelligence (ideally, a form of practical wisdom) similar to the practical exercise of a skill. A practical skill is acquired through experience and habituation, but the result is not routine but an educated and int...

I have been helped by discussion with Martha Nussbaum, Margaret Jacobs, Anthony Lloyd and Ralph Walker. 1. Kant's claims about the kind of freedom which morality presupposes are riddled with difficulty, and he shifts in his view of the relation between freedom and morality. See R.C.S. Walker, Kant (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 147-5...

In both the Republic and the Laws, Plato delineates societies whose aim is the happiness of the citizens; and in both works they are to achieve happiness by living a life of virtue. It is the chief aim of Magnesia, the city of the Laws - one it shares with the Doric societies of Sparta and Crete, though with an enlarged and improved view of it - to...

As Cicero tells us, Plato's Laws is the literary model for his own work de Legibus, as is his Republic for Cicero's de Re Publica. In the case of the de Legibus, how much is the influence merely a literary one? At de Legibus 2.16-17 Cicero remarks that he has made what Plato calls a prooemium or prelude to the laws, and Quintus responds: I am very...

The Republic is linked to the Timaeus by the latter's preface, and also by the appearance in the Timaeus of the Atlantis story, which continues in the unfinished Critias. There are problems, well-known to scholars, with the link provided in the preface by the references to the Republic. Socrates in the Timaeus summarizes a speech he gave “yesterday...

Ethics, is referred to as a concern to act rightly and to live a good life, is pervasive in Plato's work, and so we find Plato's ethical thinking throughout the dialogues. The article discusses the idea of ethics as propounded by Plato. Why does Plato take most people to be drastically wrong about goodness but not about happiness? The answer here l...

This paper is an invited response to Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King (2008) and to Waterman's (2008) commentary. Kashdan et al. assert that the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being is unwarranted philosophically and scientifically. We disagree, because a correct understanding of Aristotle refutes Kashdan et al.'s claims, and we refu...

In the tradition of Western philosophy since the fifth century bc, the default form of ethical theory has been some version of what is nowadays called virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is best approached by looking at the central features of the classical version of the tradition. Modern virtue ethical theories have not yet achieved such a critical mass...

What is it like to be a good person? I examine and reject suggestions that this will involve having thoughts which have virtue or being a good person as part of their content, as well as suggestions that it might be the presence of feelings distinct from the virtuous person’s thoughts. Is there, then, anything after all to the phenomenology of virt...

There are problems with egoism as a theory, but what matters here is the point that intuitively ethics is thought to be about the good of others, so that focusing on your own good seems wrong from the start. Virtues are not just character traits, however, since forgetfulness or stubbornness are not virtues. Virtues are character traits which are in...

Epictetus frequently tells us to remember our duties as son, brother, town councilor and the like, and thus to think of our duties in terms of a perspective embedded in our social lives. However, he also tells us to think in terms of the perspective of universal reason, from which the Stoic thinks of his duties as being owed to all rational humans....

The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory is a reference work in ethical theory, consisting of articles by leading moral philosophers. Ethical theories have always been of central importance to philosophy, and remain so—ethical theory is one of the most active areas of philosophical research and teaching today. Courses in ethics are taught in colleges...

When examining the role of Stoic ethics within Stoic philosophy as a whole, it is useful for us to look at the Stoic view of the way in which philosophy is made up of parts. The aim is a synoptic and integrated understanding of the theoremata of all the parts, something which can be achieved in a variety of ways, either by subsequent integration of...

Students of Stoicism often bewail the state of our sources. Of the works of Zeno and Chrysippus, the two major early Stoics, we have only fragments and later accounts whose distance from the original we can only guess. Our sources for early Stoic ethics are in better shape than our sources for Stoic metaphysics or logic, but they are still gappy an...

SYSTEMATIZING SOCRATES Socrates is a figure in all of Plato's dialogues except the Laws; and in all the dialogues in which he occurs, Socrates illustrates something important to Plato about philosophy and the way it should be pursued. However, as soon as we try to think of Socrates as an intellectual personality unified across dialogues, we run int...

This chapter provides an intellectual framework for understanding modern theories of virtue. It presents a version of virtue ethics, which draws on the resources of the historical, particularly ancient, tradition, discussing the ways in which a virtue is a disposition, and the ways in which it involves practical reasoning and emotion. It explores v...

In the Stoics we find a combination of two perspectives which are commonly thought to conflict: the embedded perspective from within one's social context, and the universal perspective of the member of the moral community of rational beings. I argue that the Stoics do have a unified theory, one which avoids problems that trouble some modern theorie...

This chapter examines two issues relative to providing a rich notion of virtue of epistemology: (i) the connection between virtue and skill; and (ii) the relation of virtue to success. It argues that ancient virtue ethicists - regarding virtue ethics - differ from Aristotle in ways that are significant to how the concept of virtue should be applied...

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...

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...

Saluant la parution d'un recueil des articles de G. Striker consacres a l'ethique et a l'epistemologie hellenistiques (1996), l'A. s'interesse plus particulierement a la seconde partie de l'ouvrage traitant de la morale ancienne, de l'ethique stoicienne et de l'hedonisme epicurien. Comparant les theories anciennes portant sur le bonheur et la vie b...

Scepticism about value is the kind of scepticism which impinges most immediately on our daily lives and activities; for our actions and deliberations presuppose that we find some things and courses of action valuable and others not, and that we react to these accordingly, in positive and negative ways. If our conviction that things and courses of a...

Response to Nancy Snow In Nancy’s impressive book (Virtue as Social Intelligence) she shows, through a thorough study of the philosophical debate about the position called ‘situationism’ and the psychological literature that supposedly based it, that there was a serious misconception right from the start among philosophers about the kind of disposi...

This book presents twenty essays on various aspects of Aristotle’s De Anima. These cover topics such as the relation between the body and soul, functionalism, sense-perception, imagination, memory, intellect, and desire. It includes an introduction that provides a description of the manuscripts of the De Anima, commentaries, and its links with othe...

The article argues that a consideration of the idea, common in ancient ethical theory, that virtue is a skill or craft, reveals that some common construals of it are mistaken. The analogy between virtue and skill is not meant to suggest that virtue is an unreflective habit of practised action. Rather what interests ancient ethical theorists is the...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

The book examines the major traditions of ancient ethical theory, showing that they share a common theoretical structure. They are examples of eudaimonism, a type of ethical theory in which the basic concepts are those of happiness and virtue. The book looks at the way this type of theory is articulated in Aristotle, and then at the differing versi...

How to evaluate the injustices arising from the existence of two distinct social normas for the lifes of men and women? The author argues that these injustices become more visible when the way this distinction appears in a "liberal" society is compared with the way it manifests itself in a "traditional" society. This comparison can reveal the role...

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...