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Faculty of Classics

 

All sessions in room 1.11, Faculty of Classics.

The seminar is open to anyone resident in Cambridge who is prepared to attend for the full week. Visitors from outside Cambridge should check with David Sedley (dns1@cam.ac.uk), because space is limited.

(1) Monday May 24th, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM. David Sedley.

-- A I-IV (1181a24-1185a39: the nature of ethics; virtue; doxographical survey; the nature of goodness; eudaimonia)

(2) Monday May 24th, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM. Sarah Broadie.

-- A V-XVI (1185b1-1188b38: the soul; defect and excess; pleasure and pain; habituation; mean states and the extremes; what is up to us?  the (in)voluntary)

(3) Tuesday May 25th, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM. Giles Pearson.

-- A XVII-XXVI (1189a1-1192b17: choice; error; the telos; courage; temperance; gentleness; liberality; greatness of soul; magnificence)

(4) Tuesday May 25th, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM. James Warren.

-- A XXVII-XXXIII (1192b18-1196b3: righteous indignation; dignity; modesty; urbanity; friendship; sincerity; justice: (i) its kinds; (ii) proportionality; (iii) domestic ‘justice’? (iv) political justice; (v) conventional and natural justice; (vi) conditions for (un)just action; (vii) suffering injustice voluntarily?)

(5) Wednesday May 26th, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM. Richard McKirahan.

A XXXIV-B III (1196b4-1200a34: orthos logos; intellectual faculties and virtues; ‘natural’ virtue; phronesis; equity; discrimination; euboulia; is equal distribution characteristic of the just? does the unjust have phronesis? can one injure a bad person? can the virtues conflict? can one have too much virtue?)

(6) Wednesday May 26th, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM. Nick Denyer.

B IV-VI (1200a35-1204a18: self-control and incontinence; bestiality; pace Socrates, incontinence exists; puzzles concerning self-control; analysis of incontinence)

(7) Thursday May 27th, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM. Stephen White.

B VII-VIII (1204a19-1207b18: pleasure; arguments against its goodness; replies to these arguments; can bad logos overcome good pathe? good fortune)

(8) Thursday May 27th, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM. Malcolm Schofield.

B IX-XI (1207b19-1210b32: kalokagathia; orthos logos again; pathe; analysis of friendship)

(9) Friday May 28th, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM. Christopher Rowe.

B XI-XVII (1210b33-1213b30: friendship continued)

(10) Friday May 28th, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM. Robert Wardy.

Retrospect.

Friday evening: party for all participants


STARTER BIBLIOGRAPHY

Text

Aristotelis Quae Feruntur Magna Moralia, ed. Franz Susemihl, Teubner, 1883 (free download available at: www.archive.org/details/aristotelisquae01susegoog)

Commentary

Aristoteles Magna Moralia, übersetzt und kommentiert von Franz Dirlmeier (Berlin, 1983) (originally published in 1958 - the first major modern defence of authenticity)

H. Bonitz, Observationes criticae in Aristotelis quae feruntur Magna Moralia et Ethica Eudemia ( Berlin 1844)

Secondary literature

John Cooper, ‘The Magna Moralia and Aristotle’s moral philosophy’, in his Reason and Emotion (Princeton, 1999), pp.195-211 (the second major modern defence of authenticity)

Christopher Rowe, ‘A reply to John Cooper on the Magna Moralia’, AJP 96 (1975): 160-72 (defending the orthodox view that the MM is post-Aristotelian)

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