This rich volume of sixteen previously unpublished articles captures the heart of Julia Annas' abiding influence in ancient philosophy. The collection begins with a cluster of six essays covering an assortment of issues in Plato, and illustrating the enduring insights of Annas' Introduction to Plato's Republic (1981) (IPR); The Morality of Happiness (1993); Platonic Ethics, Old and New (1999); and ‘Plato's Republic and Feminism’ (Philosophy 51 [1976]), among other works. The nod to Aristotle is brief, with only one article squarely about virtue in Aristotle.
The remaining nine essays dwell on the Hellenistic era, primarily of course with the Stoics, but also with Plotinus and overviews of eudaimonism and rationalism that bring Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans into conversation with one another – much as Annas herself has done so well and often. Here the contributions continue to engage with Platonic Ethics, Old and New, as well as Voices of Ancient Philosophy (2000), Intelligent Virtue (2011) and Annas' many articles in Platonic and Hellenistic ethics.
The volume is arranged more or less chronologically, following the order of Annas' publications, with the result that certain threads of thought emerge and tie the essays together. Throughout the collection, one finds the imprint of Annas' commitment to the continued viability of ancient ethics, conversations between old and new, ancient and modern, about agency, rationality and the good life – the heart of ancient philosophy.
In the first essay M. McPherran delivers an insightful analysis of the fraught relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. The textual focus of the essay is Gorgias, but the landscape of the issue and McPherran's considered position that the difference between rhetoric and philosophy is one of aim rather than method is applicable deep into the corpus.
With customary wit, J. Barnes, ‘Justice Writ Large’, demonstrates the ability of IPR to stir up our thoughts and intuitions about the Republic. Barnes takes up Annas' criticisms of the city-soul analogy and extends them into a robust rant against Plato's so-called dross, in self-conscious contrast to Annas' avowed progress towards charity in understanding the Republic.
In ‘Plato on the Power of Ignorance’ N.D. Smith deepens his already valuable contribution to the scholarship on Republic V by addressing the recalcitrant question, how ignorance is to be understood as a dunamis. The suggestion that ignorance is the ability to produce defective conceptions is an important piece of the puzzle addressed by Annas in ‘Belief, Knowledge and Understanding’ (IPR, Chapter 8).
C.C.W. Taylor turns to Annas' influence on the topic of Plato's feminism (or lack thereof). His perspective on the Republic as establishing an equal-opportunity objective for men and women to lead a self-directed life adds valuable nuance to the ongoing debate over the role of women in Plato.
In ‘Justice as Virtue of Soul’ P. Woodruff supports Annas' long-standing commitment to the Republic as a work of justice and morality first, politics second. He argues that in contrast to a Rawlsian notion of justice as fairness, the Republic depicts ethics and personal morality as the underpinning of politics; not vice versa.
M. Schofield addresses Socratic intellectualism, a topic near and dear to Annas and her readers. He tracks the thesis that no one errs willingly from Protagoras to the Laws, arguing that the Laws abides by the view that doing wrong is always involuntary and merits education; yet recognises doing harm, or injury, as not only voluntary but akratic (i.e. the result of reason being overcome by passion), meriting punishment on behalf of the victim.
D.C. Russell contributes the only essay about Aristotle, arguing in the Annas spirit for the viability of an ancient view. To the charge that Aristotle's virtue of greatness makes him an elitist, Russell replies plausibly that all virtue is an inalienable function of phronēsis, and that as such the virtue of greatness is available to anyone whose fortune puts him in the appropriate circumstances.
Turning to the Hellenistic era, R. Bett argues that the very notion of human rights would have been anathema to the Stoics – not because they were committed to inequality on principle, but because violations like enslavement are not relevant in the Stoic conception of happiness. First, genuine freedom is a state of soul that is entirely up to us, so it is strictly impossible for anyone to be enslaved by another. Second, rights as demands for certain external circumstances do not compute in a system that makes everything external indifferent to happiness.
The intellectualist strain continues in R. Hursthouse's account of Stoic psychology: to act under the influence of passion is to endorse a bad judgement, thereby generating the impulse that impels one to the wrong action. One is thus beyond reason in being unresponsive to good reasons, not because reason cedes control to passion, pleasure, fear, pain, desire, et al. (cf. Schofield on akrasia in the Laws).
A.M. Ioppolo keeps the focus on agency but zooms in, so to speak, on the dialectic between Chrysippus and Aristo. Ioppolo's close textual reading of Plutarch illustrates the intricacy of Stoic scholarship in the Annas tradition. And Ippolo's suggestion that Chrysippus and Aristo were in harmony on the nature of impulse and preferred indifferents stands in important contrast to the more common characterisation of their philosophical relationship as polemical.
‘How Unified is Stoicism Anyway?’ is thus a fitting neighbour in the volume, as B. Inwood argues through a close textual reading that Stoic philosophy does not enjoy the unity of parts or practitioners that people have seen in Cicero's testimony at De finibus 3.74–5. Inwood's essay, in support of Annas' observations on the topic, is an important caution to Stoic critics and apologists alike to take claims of Stoic unity with a grain of salt.
A.A. Long brings Plotinus into conversation with Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans in a creative and insightful analysis of Ennead 1.4 that finds Plotinus turning his opponents' formal constraints on happiness into an argument for his (neo)Platonic dualism. Long himself exemplifies the elegant criticism and eclecticism he finds in Plotinus; and this synthesis of eudaimonist and intellectualist views is nicely placed to unify the volume.
P. Bloomfield takes a long-range view of intellectualism, placing ancient eudaimonism as a whole in conversation with Hume and Kant, Sidgwick and various contemporary thinkers. Bloomfield ‘stands up for virtue’ with Annas, arguing that eudaimonism does not imply egoism; but, he adds, only if morality and self-interest genuinely coincide. Unexpectedly, Bloomfield argues that they do as a piece of metaphysics: that phronēsis is guided by and participates in the Good.
M. LeBar and N. Goldberg then turn to the psychology of eudaimonism; in particular to the common commitment that everyone, as a matter of descriptive fact, desires the good. They argue, by way of Donald Davidson, for the transcendental claim that if we are to attribute rationality to someone we have to presume the desire to live well. Thus the thesis that everyone desires the good loses its counter-intuitive sting.
In its natural place at the close of this fine Festschrift, S. LaBarge's ‘How to Grieve Like an Ancient Philosopher’ demonstrates the viability of what may be the most counter-intuitive ancient thesis of all, that there is little or no place for grief. Seen as a kind of therapy against fear and in support of the good life (homologia), LaBarge rescues the ancient caution against grief from its usual counter-intuitive consequences.
It would, of course, be impossible for one volume to do justice to the ground that Julia Annas has covered in her career. None the less, one might still wonder why Aristotle was so under-represented, along with Epicurus, and why epistemology in the sceptical tradition was conspicuously absent. However, this is a tiny complaint about a rewarding volume delivered with palpable affection for a great scholar.
