Professor George Boys-Stones will deliver the Centre's annual lecture at 5pm on 24 May 2024 in the Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi. His title is ‘The Limits of Eudaimonism: Theories of Virtue in the Ancient Platonist Tradition’.
It is often assumed that ancient philosophers took it as axiomatic that being good, being virtuous, and being happy all coincided. But it is not so clear that Plato did, and it is quite clear that many of his later followers did not. This talk looks at two of them, Alcinous and Plutarch, and suggests that, in general, the assumption of eudaimonism occludes as much in the landscape of ancient ethics as it illuminates.