III. Ethics and Values

Abstract

In recent work on Greek ethics, several developments parallel, and are linked with, those discussed in Chapter II in connection with psychological models. In this area too, for a variety of reasons, some recent scholarship has laid less stress than before on the idea of development within Greek ethics and on the differences between Greek and modern approaches to ethics. It has emphasized, rather, recurrent patterns in Greek ethical thought of different periods, and also the idea that Greek thought constitutes an intelligible type of ethical thought for modern thinkers. As well as outlining these developments, I suggest ways in which they can be taken further in some ways and qualified in others.