Sôphrosunê ("self-discipline") is the often-forgotten sibling of justice, wisdom, courage, and piety in discussions of canonical Greek virtues. Christopher Moore shows that during the classical period it was the object of significant debate--about its scope, its feel, its practical manifestations, and its value. By interpreting sôphrosunê as a commitment to norm-following, we see that these pointed discussions of the virtue, previously ignored as parodic moralizing or expressions of political propaganda, are in fact concerned with the ideal of human agency. These discussions query the way we become fully responsible for our actions. Greek thinking about sôphrosunê becomes thinking about self-constitution, our crucial capacity to act on the general reasons that we come to identify with as our own. This perspective explains sôphrosunê's inclusion in Plato's canon of virtues, and before that its frequent appearance in funerary inscriptions, elegiac poetry, tragic drama, and historiography. It also explains the analytic attention given to it by Heraclitus, the Sophists, the historians, Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato. Moore deals principally with the classical period, though the book includes one chapter addressing earlier poetry and another addressing the virtue in two gender-sensitive post-classical works. An appendix deals with the epigraphic material. For the Greeks (and perhaps for us) there is a virtue of agency, an acquirable capacity to be guided by what's best. Hardly just a concern for reticence and reserve, commitment to sôphrosunê is a commitment to whatever it is that makes us truly ourselves.

Xunzi is traditionally identified as the third philosopher in the Confucian tradition, after Confucius and Mencius. Unlike the work of his two predecessors, he wrote complete essays in which he defends his own interpretation of the Confucian position and attacks the positions of others. Within the early Chinese tradition, Xunzi's writings are arguably the most sophisticated and philosophically developed. This richness of philosophical content has led to a lively discussion of his philosophy among contemporary scholars. This volume collects some of the most accessible and important contemporary essays on the thought of Xunzi, with an Introduction that provides historical background, philosophical context, and relates each of the selections to Xunzi's philosophy as a whole and to the themes of virtue, nature, and moral agency. These themes are also discussed in relation to Western philosophical concerns.

Conventional thinking about the mind, dating back to Aristotle envisions the emotions as being directed and determined by rational thought. The author argues that the conventional picture of rationality is fundamentally false and has little to do with how real human beings actually behave.

What would stoic ethics be like today if stoicism had survived as a systematic approach to ethical theory, if it had coped successfully with the challenges of modern philosophy and experimental science? A New Stoicism proposes an answer to that question, offered from within the stoic tradition but without the metaphysical and psychological assumptions that modern philosophy and science have abandoned. Lawrence Becker argues that a secular version of the stoic ethical project, based on contemporary cosmology and developmental psychology, provides the basis for a sophisticated form of ethical naturalism, in which virtually all the hard doctrines of the ancient Stoics can be clearly restated and defended. Becker argues, in keeping with the ancients, that virtue is one thing, not many; that it, and not happiness, is the proper end of all activity; that it alone is good, all other things being merely rank-ordered relative to each other for the sake of the good; and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Moreover, he rejects the popular caricature of the stoic as a grave figure, emotionally detached and capable mainly of endurance, resignation, and coping with pain. To the contrary, he holds that while stoic sages are able to endure the extremes of human suffering, they do not have to sacrifice joy to have that ability, and he seeks to turn our attention from the familiar, therapeutic part of stoic moral training to a reconsideration of its theoretical foundations.

Drawing on the work of Maria Montessori and contemporary virtue epistemologists such as Linda Zagzebski and Jason Baehr, Intellectual Agency and Virtue Epistemology presents a new interpretation of the nature of intellectual agency and its associated virtues. Focusing on Montessori's interpretation of specific virtues including sensory attentiveness, intellectual love and intellectual humility, it discusses why these are virtues, why one can be held responsible for them, and how they relate to each other. Moreover, it considers pedagogical implications of considering these capacities to be virtues. Intellectual Agency and Virtue Epistemology not only reveals the value of seeing Montessori as a virtue epistemologist, it encourages educationalists to take seriously the cultivation of intellectual virtues as an important part of the education of children.

How should we understand the self, as well as personal, relational and systemic growth? This volume proposes a radical new way of answering this question. It rests on a non-representational theory of knowledge on how to approach and understand the self and action more broadly. Although it has never been lost, the Aristotelian emphasis on excellence in moral character and practical reason as preconditions for achieving happiness has gradually been degraded. This book suggests that this has happened thanks to a split between knowledge and action that can be traced back to the origins of modernity. Modern academic disciplines in general, and psychology in particular, are based on the idealisation of theoretical, hypothetical and abstract reason, suggesting that this morally neutral ideal must guide human action. This volume systematically integrates those domains in a more profound and meaningful proposal, relevant for current times and challenges. Based on previous research bridging philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, the contributors here identify two alternative paradigms for conceiving of the self and human development: the so-called “autonomous self” (AS) and the “inter-processual self” (IPS). The book considers the person as an ethical being and as the foundational cornerstone of a new theory of self, action and knowing that achieves decisive distance from modern theory’s limitations. To keep on-going dialogue on human development open, the authors introduce a new theoretical model (IPS) which can be scientifically measured and tested; they also suggest its further application in concrete, practical realms, thus touching on how the adoption of the IPS paradigm inspires a renewed view of human cognition, education, governance, and business management.

Ernest Sosa extends his distinctive approach to epistemology, intertwining issues concerning the role of the will in judgment and belief with issues of epistemic evaluation. While noting that human knowledge trades on distinctive psychological capacities, Sosa also emphasises the role of the social in human knowledge.