Philosophy

Abstract

David Conan Wolfsdorf has done a great service in putting together the thirty chapters (only a handful by women) that make up the new collection Early Greek Ethics. As he notes, ethical thinking prior to Socrates has generally been neglected or, in some cases, simply denied. Wolfsdorf's classification of ‘early’ as the ‘formative period’ (late sixth to early fourth centuries bce) prior to Plato's and Aristotle's major ethical works allows him to bring together a rich and diverse group of individuals and topics. He himself acknowledges that different people will feel different kinds of lack within the collection, but he is explicit that its aim is to be ‘quite’, rather than entirely, comprehensive. He is also clear that his aim is to focus on Greek ‘philosophical ethics’ (as he understands it) rather than the sort of significant ethical thinking we might think can be found in Greek tragedy, for example.