Something Aristotle calls ‘right logos’ plays a crucial role in his theory of virtue. But the meaning of ‘logos’ in this context is notoriously contested. I argue against the standard translation ‘reason’, and—drawing on parallels with Plato’s work, especially the Laws—in favor of its being used to denote what transforms an inferior epistemic state into a superior one: an explanatory account. Thus Aristotelian phronēsis, like his and Plato’s technē and epistēmē, is a matter of grasping explanatory accounts: in this case, accounts that identify the right action and say why it is right. Arguably, Aristotelian rationality is a matter of being able to grasp accounts in general.

Right Reason in Plato and Aristotle: On the Meaning of Logos

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Philo of Alexandria's Exposition of the Tenth Commandment

In ancient Greece and Rome an ambiguous relationship developed between man and nature, and this decisively determined the manner in which they treated the environment. On the one hand, nature was conceived as a space characterized and inhabited by divine powers, which deserved appropriate respect. On the other, a rationalist view emerged, according to which humans were to subdue nature using their technologies and to dispose of its resources. This book systematically describes the ways in which the Greeks and Romans intervened in the environment and thus traces the history of the tension between the exploitation of resources and the protection of nature, from early Greece to the period of late antiquity. At the same time it analyses the comprehensive opening up of the Mediterranean and the northern frontier regions, both for settlement and for economic activity. The book's level and approach make it highly accessible to students and non-specialists.

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An Environmental History of Ancient Greece and Rome

s 377 Reprint from Virtues for the People. Aspects of Plutarchan Ethics ISBN 978 90 5867 858 4 Leuven University Press Plutarch’s Lives and the Critical Reader

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William F. Wyatt

Papers

Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike : Studien zur Tierpsychologie, Anthropologie und Ethik

Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Lieferungen 13-22