Sôphrosunê (“self-discipline”) is the often-forgotten sibling of
justice, wisdom, courage, and piety in discussions of canonical Greek
virtues. Christopher Moore shows that during the classical period it
was the object of significant debate--about its scope, its feel, its
practical manifestations, and its value. By interpreting sôphrosunê
as a commitment to norm-following, we see that these pointed
discussions of the virtue, previously ignored as parodic moralizing or
expressions of political propaganda, are in fact concerned with the
ideal of human agency. These discussions query the way we become fully
responsible for our actions. Greek thinking about sôphrosunê becomes
thinking about self-constitution, our crucial capacity to act on the
general reasons that we come to identify with as our own. This
perspective explains sôphrosunê's inclusion in Plato's canon of
virtues, and before that its frequent appearance in funerary
inscriptions, elegiac poetry, tragic drama, and historiography. It
also explains the analytic attention given to it by Heraclitus, the
Sophists, the historians, Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato. Moore deals
principally with the classical period, though the book includes one
chapter addressing earlier poetry and another addressing the virtue in
two gender-sensitive post-classical works. An appendix deals with the
epigraphic material. For the Greeks (and perhaps for us) there is a
virtue of agency, an acquirable capacity to be guided by what's best.
Hardly just a concern for reticence and reserve, commitment to
sôphrosunê is a commitment to whatever it is that makes us truly
ourselves.
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Sôphrosunê and Self-Constitution in Classical Greece
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780197663523
Publisert
2023
Utgiver
Oxford University Press Academic US
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter