Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 11 - Civic and Anti-Civic Ethics

  • from Part II - Thought
  • Edited by Joshua Billings, Princeton University, New Jersey, Christopher Moore, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists
    Published online:
    23 December 2023
    Print publication:
    19 October 2023, pp 306-334

  • Summary

    This chapter concerns the pursuit of aretē among the sophists. It argues that such pursuit did not mean what it came to mean to Plato and his heirs. For the latter, the goal of human life, called eudaimonia, is personal flourishing; and aretē is used to refer to some highly valued psychological condition crucial to achieving eudaimonia. The sophists use aretē to refer to a psychological condition once. Predominantly, they use aretē to refer to a life of civic success, conceived as success in public affairs, saliently involving the agent’s making significant positive contributions to his fellow citizens and polis. As such, sophistic ethics tends to be civic ethics. Granted this, there is limited evidence of anti-civic ethics among the Sophists. Given traditional views of the Sophists, the locus of this evidence is ironic. It consists of attributions to the Socratic Aristippus and content in the Athenian Antiphon’s On Truth.