Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle

A collection of articles on Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s

Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. The newly written

introductory chapter offers a sketch of the metaphysical foundations of

Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethical and political philosophy. Two chapters

on the Republic examine Plato’s account of justice and his use of the

ship of state metaphor. The remainder of the book is devoted to

Aristotle and discusses such topics as his view of the best life for a

man, his political naturalism, his proto-anarchism, his theory of

distributive justice, and his ideal polis. The final chapters, also

newly written, address the unattractive features of Aristotle’s

political ideal-natural slavery, the subordination of women, and the

denigration of technical skill-and argue that these features are in fact

inconsistent with the basic principles of his ethical and political

philosophy. The volume ends with a defense of the claim that Aristotle’s

political philosophy, once shorn of its excrescences, is updateable to

the twenty-first century.