Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics

Abstract

Abstract Even before Hegel, philosophers opposed to Kant's dualism of reason and inclination, and to other similar dualistic oppositions of morality and self‐interest, have looked to the ancient Greeks for an alternative conception of ethics and the human personality that is to be guided by it. For this purpose these philosophers fixed on Greek ethics, stressing its harmonizing eudaimonist elements and its use of the notion of virtue. This book argues to the contrary that if we picture Greek ethics as simply a form of harmonizing eudaimonism we seriously distort its true character. First, Greek ethics is far too variegated to fit under a single such label. Second, the Classical ideas of Plato and Aristotle contain important elements that are characteristic neither of harmonizing eudaimonism nor of an ethics of virtue. Greek thinkers did not as a group believe in a consistency of one's happiness with one's conformity to ethical norms or with a full regard for the happiness of others. Rather they took seriously the idea that ethical standards can possess a rational force that does not derive from any contribution that they might make to one's own well‐being. Even Plato and Aristotle believed that under certain circumstances there can be a genuine clash between obeying ethical standards and achieving one's greatest good. The project of ruling out any such clash was developed not in the Classical period but rather in the Stoic ethics of the Third Century. Thus Greek ethics does not eliminate ethical dualisms, and many Greek views exhibit many of the same contours, and the same deep philosophical problem of the conflict of individual and social good, as modern ethics does.