Bøger af Richard Kraut

This fresh outlook on Socrates' political philosophy in Plato's early dialogues argues that it is both more subtle and less authoritarian than has been supposed. Focusing on the Crito, Richard Kraut shows that Plato explains Socrates' refusal to escape from jail and his acceptance of the death penalty as arising not from a philosophy that requires blind obedience to every legal command but from a highly balanced compromise between the state and the citizen. In addition, Professor Kraut contends that our contemporary notions of civil disobedience and generalization arguments are not present in this dialogue.

Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", which equates the ultimate end of human life with happiness, is thought by many readers to argue that this highest goal consists in the largest possible aggregate of intrinsic goods. The author proposes instead that Aristotle identifies happiness with only one type of good: excellent activity of the rational soul.

What is good, how do we know, and how important is it? Kraut reorients these questions around the notion of what causes human beings to flourish. Extending his argument to include plants and animals, Kraut applies a general principle to the entire living world: what is good for complex organisms consists in the exercise of their natural powers.

Bringing together the most influential and accessible articles on Plato's "Republic", this collection elucidates this important work of Western philosophy for general readers, students and academics alike.

Plato is the foundational thinker of European speculative thought. His writings range over ethics, politics, religion, art, the structure of the natural world, mathematics, the human mind, love, sex and friendship. Richard Kraut argues here for the vital importance of his work.