The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
Author(s): Martha C. Nussbaum (Author)
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 4 July 1994
Language: English
Print length: 572 pages
ISBN-10: 0691033420
ISBN-13: 9780691033426
Book Description
The Epicureans, Skeptics and Stoics practised philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. This monograph maintains that these Hellenistic schools have been unjustly neglected in recent philosophical accounts of what the classical “tradition” has to offer. By examining texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm – including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus and Seneca – the author recovers a valuable source for current moral and political thought and encourages the reader to reconsider philosophical argument as a technique through which to improve lives. In describing the contributions of Hellenistic ethics, Nussbaum focuses on each thinker’s treatment of the question of emotion. All argued that many harmful emotions are based on false beliefs that are socially taught, and that good philosophical argument can transform emotions, and, with them, both private and public life.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“By turns wise and witty, silly and Socratic, critical and compassionate, Nussbaum proves to be an extraordinarily addictive literary companion…. She has triumphantly proved … that the life of the mind can be one of the highest and most rewarding pursuits known to man, including woman…. If Nikidion got one-tenth of the pummeling, excitement, and stimulation in the Garden of Epicurus that Nussbaum provides, intellectually and emotionally, in this densely argued volume, I should be very much surprised…. This is a book to live with.”—Peter Green, The New Republic
“Nussbaum adventurously straddles boundaries conventionally drawn between philosophy and its own history, between philosophy and literature, and between scholarship and the social sciences…. Few modern books have done as much as this one promises to do in raising the profile of Hellenistic philosophy. It is constantly gripping and absorbing, written with rare eloquence and containing long stretches of almost lyrical intensity. A literary as well as a philosophical
tour de force.“—David Sedley, The Times Literary Supplement
“Nussbaum writes as an advocate [of the Hellenistic philosophers], though not an uncritical one, for even while she admires the seriousness and subtlety with which these philosophers analyze the passions, she allows that there is an unresolvable conflict between the detachment and the intense engagement entailed by their philosophies. The sense that these philosophers still matter, that we can wrangle with them and learn from them, is invigorating.”
—Richard Jenkyns, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Martha C. Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. Her writings include Aristotle’s “De Motu Animalium” (Princeton), The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, and Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature.
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