Aristotle on eudaimonia

Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. RICHARD SORABJI Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xi, 499.

Greek culture matters because its unique pluralistic debate shaped modern discourses. This ground-breaking book explains this feature by retelling the history of ancient literary culture through the lenses of canon, space and scale. It proceeds from the invention of the performative 'author' in the archaic symposium through the 'polis of letters' enabled by Athenian democracy and into the Hellenistic era, where one's space mattered and culture became bifurcated between Athens and Alexandria. This duality was reconfigured into an eclectic variety consumed by Roman patrons and predicated on scale, with about a thousand authors active at any given moment. As patronage dried up in the third century CE, scale collapsed and literary culture was reduced to the teaching of a narrower field of authors, paving the way for the Middle Ages. The result is a new history of ancient culture which is sociological, quantitative, and all-encompassing, cutting through eras and genres.

Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture

Epidemiological studies regarding the association between red and processed meat intake and the risk of breast cancer have yielded inconsistent results. Therefore, we conducted an updated and comprehensive meta-analysis which included 14 prospective studies to evaluate the association of red and processed meat intake with breast cancer risk. Relevant prospective cohort studies were identified by searching PubMed through October 31, 2014, and by reviewing the reference lists of retrieved articles. Study-specific relative risk (RR) estimates were pooled using a random-effects model. Fourteen prospective studies on red meat (involving 31,552 cases) and 12 prospective studies on processed meat were included in the meta-analysis. The summary RRs (95 % CI) of breast cancer for the highest versus the lowest categories were 1.10 (1.02, 1.19) for red meat, and 1.08 (1.01, 1.15) for processed meat. The estimated summary RRs (95 % CI) were 1.11 (1.05, 1.16) for an increase of 120 g/day of red meat, and 1.09 (1.03, 1.16) for an increase of 50 g/day of processed meat. Our findings indicate that increased intake of red and processed meat is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. Further research with well-designed cohort or interventional studies is needed to confirm the association.

Red and processed meat intake and risk of breast cancer: a meta-analysis of prospective studies.

'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist philosophy in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy.

Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation

PART A: REDISCOVERY AND ENDORSEMENT: ANDRONICUS AND EUDORUS PART B: EARLY CRITICISMS: PLATONISTS AND STOICS PART C: PERIPATETIC SYNTHESIS AND RESPONSE

Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire

When an ancient Greek or Roman chose to become a philosopher, was he or she committing to a way of thinking, or to a way of living? Here, C. delivers a wide-ranging and highly accessible interpretation of the concept of ‘ancient philosophy as a way of life’, advancing the literature on a topic that has attracted blossoming interest in Anglophone scholarship following the publication of P. Hadot’s influential books in English translation, Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995) and What is Ancient Philosophy? (2002). C. develops two general claims. The first partly follows Hadot: each ancient philosophy was conceived, not as an intellectual exercise or methodology, but as the ‘steersman of one’s life’ (p. 7). But ‘rigorous analysis and reasoned argumentation’ and the ‘pursuit of truth’ were also indispensable (pp. x, 17). C.’s second claim is that philosophy did not comprise one ‘way of life’, but several, distinct ways of life. C. ascribes to all of these three strong commitments: (a) ‘[R]eason is . . . a power of motivation for action’ (p. 11); (b) ‘philosophy perfects reason’ (p. 12); and (c) the person who knows the truth is ‘completely safe from ever doing any wrong thing, and therefore inevitably lives a . . . good life’ (p. 13). Together, these commitments enable philosophy to foster εὐδαιμονία through the interlocking study of dialectic, ethics and physics, which offer ideas ‘from which a life might be led’ (p. 15). He then expounds these basic commitments in each major school. (C.’s account places greater weight on this conceptual interdependence than on the ‘spiritual exercises’ which play a pivotal role in Hadot’s account, though C. argues [pp. 20–1] that these are an important development of late antiquity). C. treats six ways of life, beginning with the Socratic (Chapter 2). (Here the account naturally leans on ‘early’ Platonic dialogues; the name ‘Socrates’ is just used to signal their protagonist.) Socrates is the paradigmatic philosopher living ‘from’ his philosophy (p. 29), striving in an ‘open-ended’ way towards a complete knowledge of human values (p. 38). The well-being of the soul is the only unconditional value. If we were gods, we could act based upon σοφία, a ‘complete grasp of the total truth about human values of all sorts’ (p. 46); as humans, we seek the humbler goal of φιλοσοφία, striving constantly to improve our understanding (p. 52). Socratic philosophy is set apart by its ‘committed open-endedness’ (p. 61), in contrast to (say) the Stoic life, which operates on the basis of actually possessed knowledge (pp. 62–4). C. treats Aristotle next (Chapter 3). (C. focuses on philosophers who ‘advocate . . . their own views’, pp. 66–7; thus no ‘way of life’ is attributed to Plato, who wrote dialogues). The approach to Aristotle hinges on the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. What motivates us to act virtuously is a full grasp of what is good about virtue (p. 76). The ensuing life – ‘an activity inclusive of all the activities of the virtues of the human soul insofar as it THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 52

PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE. (J.M.) Cooper Pursuits of Wisdom. Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus . Pp. xiv + 442.Princeton and Oxford:Princeton University Press,2012. Cased, £24.95, US$35. ISBN:978-0-691-13860-2.

Proclus on the ethics of self-constitution

Conventions Textual Emendations Introduction Translator's Note Translation Notes Select Bibliography English-Greek Glossary Greek-English Index Index of Names Subject Index

Life of Plato, and, On Plato First Alcibiades 1-9

This chapter explores the role of self-knowledge in the Socratic and Buddhist ethical traditions. Socrates (in Plato’s “early” dialogues) and the Buddha (in the Pāli Canon) diagnose the primary cause of human suffering as a widespread misunderstanding of the self. They recommend a radical reconceptualization of selfhood as a necessary step toward their ultimate concerns of human well-being (eudaimonia) and liberation (nirvāṇa). In particular, they argue, we wrongly identify bodies, physical states, social status, or possessions as self. But Socrates endorses a view that the Buddha rejects, namely, that certain conscious states of mind (psychē) are self. Buddhists would object that the irreducible complexity and impermanence of mental states render them implausible candidates for selfhood. Similar concerns motivated Plato to advance the metaphysical theory of Forms, which may offer resources for a reply. The chapter closes with a review of an apparent tension, shared by both traditions, between the goals of embodied social virtue and world-transcendence. The Platonic philosopher and the Mahayāna Bodhisattva both experience a liberating insight which motivates them to return to the “cave” of social service or saṃsāra: both motivations are susceptible to consequentialist, deontological, and virtue-ethical interpretations, and I suggest that the two traditions are mutually illuminating.

Michael J. Griffin

Papers

Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire

PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE. (J.M.) Cooper Pursuits of Wisdom. Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus . Pp. xiv + 442.Princeton and Oxford:Princeton University Press,2012. Cased, £24.95, US$35. ISBN:978-0-691-13860-2.

Proclus on the ethics of self-constitution

Life of Plato, and, On Plato First Alcibiades 1-9

The Ethics of Self-Knowledge in Platonic and Buddhist Philosophy