In the Gorgias, Socrates famously declares that he is alone among contemporary Athenians in taking up the “true craft of politics.” But the claim is extremely puzzling, since Socrates also claims to be ignorant and lacking in any significant wisdom of any kind. Crafts, for Socrates, involve cognitive achievement. But Socrates declares that he has accomplished little of such achievement. Shows how the model of craft-knowledge can resolve this paradox by allowing Socrates to regard taking up the craft of politics as an attempt to improve his ability in achieving the goals of that craft: benefiting others. Shows how Plato’s early dialogues give abundant evidence of Socrates’ activities in both of what he characterizes as the branches of politics: legislation and correction.

Provides a philosophical evaluation of the Socratic views discussed in the main body of the book. Is this an ethical philosophy we should admire, or one we should reject? What should we make, from a contemporary philosophical point of view, of Socrates’ commitments to motivational intellectualism, to a craft model of ethical knowledge and achievement, and of his proposals for how we should go about ethical self-improvement? Scholarship aims to understand the thoughts of others. But once we do understand them, it is appropriate also to consider how we should assess the actual philosophical merits of the positions attributed to the focus of scholarly attention. What should we think of Socrates as a philosopher?

Socrates was a motivational intellectualist, which means that he believed that all actions follow the agent’s belief about what is best at the time of acting. This intellectualism entails that all human ethical error involves cognitive error. How do people come to have false ethical beliefs, and how can the processes of evaluative belief-formation be made more reliable? Explores the Socratic account of different etiologies of evaluative belief-formation in such a way as to explain human error but also to indicate ways to improve one’s ability to make appropriate ethical judgments. Discusses the role of punishment in improving one’s ethical condition, not just by causing suffering, but by changing the ways in which a wrongdoer generates and sustains evaluative beliefs.

Christian monastic literature represents a unique genre within Late-antique and Byzantine literature. Scholars have debated for centuries the diverse influences which shaped such texts, but something of a consensus has emerged that, notwithstanding the obvious and predominant influence of the Christian Bible, these texts have also been influenced by the ethical reflections of Greek philosophy.

It is impossible to deny the obvious parallels between the insights of Greek philosophers—in particular the Neoplatonists (soul-body dualism; a transcendent, otherworldly finality of human existence; a well-ordered society which sublimates individual ambition to the common good) and Stoics (to live 'in accordance with reason' or 'self-sufficiently') —and Christian monastic literature.

This chapter will argue that, although Christian monastic writers rarely had direct access to Greek philosophical texts, they nonetheless absorbed the collective wisdom of these texts as filtered through the Hellenistic Christianity of their day, many of whose chief intellectuals—such as Clement and Origen of Alexandria—had already managed a creative fusion of Greek wisdom with the Christian Gospel.

In this essay I argue that there is an Iamblichean and Neoplatonic theory of ethics. By examining the seven grades of virtue recognised by Iamblichus, I show that there is associated with each grade a specific kind of cognition or knowledge. The hierarchy of kinds of knowledge is parallel not only to the grades of virtue but also to the various stages of the soul’s theurgical ascent. The higher that we ascend in the ritual, the better and more secure the knowledge we possess. Examining and interpreting a series of passages in book V of the De mysteriis, I argue that Iamblichus associates various classes of humanity with the grades of virtue and the kinds of knowledge that they possess. Putting these various criteria together, I show that Iamblichus believed that all humanity at all levels has a kind of virtue and that the philosopher-theurgists themselves have a duty to descend with their higher knowledge and work for the benefit of all humanity.