Research Catalog

Against the ethicists : (Adversus mathematicos XI)

Title: Against the ethicists : (Adversus mathematicos XI) / Sextus Empiricus ; translation, commentary, and introduction by Richard Bett.
Author: Sextus, Empiricus.
Publication: New York : Oxford University Press, [1997], ©1997.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	B621.P62 E53 1997	Off-site

Additional Authors

Bett, Richard Arnot Home.

Description

xxxiv, 302 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

In this unjustly neglected and misunderstood work Sextus sets out a distinctive Sceptic position in ethics. He discusses the concepts good and bad, and puts forward the sceptical argument that nothing is either good or bad by nature or intrinsically or invariably, but only relatively to persons and/or to circumstances. He then argues that the sceptic is better off than the non-sceptic. In the latter part of the book, Sextus attacks the Stoic view that there is such a thing as a 'skill for life'.
This volume contains a translation of Against the Ethicists into clear modern English, together with an introduction and a detailed commentary. Those who have discussed this work in the past have tended to underestimate it, often regarding its main position as essentially the same as that of Sextus' better-known Outlines of Pyrrhonism.
Richard Bett shows that Against the Ethicists represents a quite distinct and coherent philosophical outlook, associated with a phase of Scepticism earlier than Sextus himself, an outlook of which little other evidence survives.

Series Statement

Clarendon later ancient philosophers

Uniform Title

Alternative Title

Pros ethikous.

Subjects

Bibliography (note)

ISBN

0198236204

LCCN

96020840

OCLC

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries