Ancient Ethics

Ancient Greek Ethics and the Art of Living: Virtue, Character, Habit, and the Good Life is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the moral wisdom of the ancient Greek world. This book brings together the foundational ideas of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and earlier Greek thinkers to illuminate one of history’s most enduring questions. What does it mean to live well. Through clear explanations and thoughtful analysis, this book shows how Greek moral philosophy offers powerful insights into virtue, character formation, and the pursuit of a flourishing life. Across its ten chapters, the ...

Most readers have been taught that philosophy began in Greece—and that everything else is myth, religion, or folklore. This book quietly overturns that assumption. An Introduction to Aztec Philosophy reveals a sophisticated tradition of thought developed by the Nahua people of ancient Mexico—one that grappled seriously with truth, ethics, uncertainty, beauty, and the sacred long before European contact. This is not a book about gods and legends alone. It is a book about how human beings learned to live wisely in a world they knew was fragile, unpredictable, and in constant motion. ...

The last book Cicero wrote. He was dead within the year, and he knew it was coming. It is the autumn of 44 BC. Caesar has been stabbed to death in March. The men who killed him had no plan for the morning after. Mark Antony is gathering the pieces. And Cicero — sixty-two years old, out of office, moving between country houses — is writing at a pace that reads like a man running out of time. Fourteen months later he was hunted down on the road and killed, and his head and hands were nailed up in the Roman forum. What he chose to write, in that season, was a letter to his son about how to...

One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have wasted our life. In A Guide to the Good Life, William B. Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives. In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a refreshing presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Most people assume that the world has been explored and true adventure is dead: This book is one man’s rebuttal. Explorer and conservationist Paul Rosolie shares his incredible life in the Amazon rainforest—and what we can learn from the people fighting to...

Step back into the world of Classical Greece and discover how one man reshaped the future of healing. Healing Wisdom of Hippocrates: Exploring the Father of Medicine and His Lasting Legacy takes readers on a journey through the life, ideas, and enduring influence of Hippocrates, whose revolutionary approach transformed medicine from superstition into a rational, ethical, and scientific discipline. From the legendary Hippocratic Oath to his insights on diet, lifestyle, and the healing power of nature, this book reveals how Hippocrates set the foundation for modern healthcare. Across ten in-...

The definitive translation of Plato's Republic, the most influential text in the history of Western philosophy. “To read The Republic as Bloom means it to be read is to question everything we think we know about government, politics, the best human life, and the nature of truth.” —Adam...

LEARN PHILOSOPHY IN 100 PAGES: From Ancient Philosophy to Modern Ethics—Critical Thinking, Logic, and Essential Ideas for Beginners Finally—Philosophy That Makes Sense Philosophy has a reputation for being abstract, impractical, and impossible to understand. This book proves otherwise. In just 100 pages, you'll gain a working understanding of the ideas that have shaped Western thought for 2,500 years—without the academic jargon, without the confusion, and without wasting your time on trivia that doesn't matter. This isn't a textbook. It's not a collection of famous quotes. It's a ...

What makes a life good? Is pleasure the highest aim? Can virtue alone make us happy? Or does a fulfilled life also depend on health, friendship and the circumstances beyond our control? In On Moral Ends, Cicero brings the great ethical disputes of the ancient world into conversation. Across five books, three speakers defend competing accounts of human happiness. Torquatus presents the philosophy of Epicurus, Cato argues for the Stoic ideal, and Piso explains the teaching of Antiochus and the older Academic and Peripatetic schools. Cicero questions each position, testing its reasoning ...

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics and government.

Long before modern philosophy, psychology, and political theory existed, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were asking the questions that shaped our civilization.

A seventy-year-old man stands in front of five hundred of his neighbours, on trial for his life, and refuses to apologise for anything. In 399 BC an Athenian jury tried Socrates on two charges: that he did not believe in the city's gods, and that he corrupted the young. The penalty sought was death. What he was actually on trial for was thirty years of asking people questions they could not answer. He had gone about Athens — the market, the gymnasium, the dinner tables — stopping men who were confident they knew what justice was, or courage, or piety, and asking them to explain it. They...

What if the person you become depends less on your natural instincts—and more on what you deliberately practice? More than two thousand years ago, the Chinese philosopher Xunzi made a provocative claim: human beings are not born naturally virtuous. Left undisciplined, our desires can lead to rivalry, conflict, and disorder. But Xunzi was not a pessimist. He believed human beings possess an extraordinary ability to transform themselves through learning, ritual, discipline, good teachers, and conscious effort. Xunzi for Beginners: A Simple Guide to Human Nature, Ritual, Learning, and Moral ...

Ancient wisdom. Practical guidance. A better way to live. Nearly two thousand years ago, the Jewish sages recorded a collection of short, unforgettable teachings about character, responsibility, friendship, leadership, humility, and the wise use of time. Those teachings became Pirkei Avot—often translated as Ethics of the Fathers—and their message remains strikingly relevant today. How should you respond to anger? What makes a person truly wise? Why do your friends and teachers matter? How can you pursue success without becoming controlled by wealth, status, or praise? Pirkei Avot for ...

What makes a friendship worth having—and what should we refuse to do, even for a friend? In On Friendship, Cicero explores the affection, loyalty, and moral courage that bind people together. His questions remain familiar: How do we recognize a true friend? Can friendship survive ambition or disagreement? When does loyalty become complicity? And how can we tell honest affection from flattery? The dialogue unfolds after the death of Scipio Aemilianus. Remembering his closest friend, the Roman statesman Laelius considers what their bond meant and what others might learn from it. Personal ...

The book is one of the most influential ethical treatises of all time. Written in 350 BC, it identifies happiness as life's goal. How do we achieve this goal? Not through the satisfactions that come from pleasure, wealth, or fame. According to Aristotle, the true path to happiness lies in contemplation of philosophic truth. This is the only action through which humans can exercise their distinctively unique trait: the ability to reason.

Aristotle's Politics does not finish. Its last page is about music and the education of the young, and the sentence in which the treatise stops has a hole in it — a translator's honest hyphen marking a gap nobody has ever filled. Two sentences earlier, Aristotle is in the middle of correcting Socrates about a point of musical theory. The largest work of political classification produced in antiquity ends still arguing with a character from somebody else's book, and never reaches the end of its own sentence. Plato's Republic ends differently. Two books after expelling poets from the ideal ...

From one of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world, a profound exploration of the spiritual power of nature—and an urgent call to reclaim that power in everyday life. "Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change.... But...

From the renowned and best-selling author of A History of God, a sweeping exploration of religion and the history of human violence. For the first time, religious self-identification is on the decline in American. Some analysts have cited as cause a post-9/11perception: that faith in general is...

Can philosophy help us face death, endure pain, and recover from grief? Can a good life remain happy when fortune turns against us? In the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero brings these questions into five searching conversations. Writing in the aftermath of personal loss, he tests the promises of philosophy against experiences that no argument can make unreal: fear, suffering, sorrow, anger, and desire. Each book takes up a central problem of human life. The first examines death and the reasons we fear it. The second asks how pain can be endured. The third considers grief and whether it can be...