Book manuscript, Softness and Endurance in Plato and Aristotle

This book examines “softness” (malakia) and “endurance” (karteria) as contrary character traits or dispositions in Plato and Aristotle’s practical philosophy. Softness and endurance have received little scholarly attention despite being central to the moral psychological and ethical theories of these authors. I argue that both Plato and Aristotle discuss softness as a deficient trait that results in a distinctive executive and ethical failing, different from akrasia and vice. This book also addresses the frequent attribution of the trait of softness to women and foreigners, and the way in which philosophers appealed to this attribution to justify the subordinated political roles of these groups. These hosts of associations, I argue, were pervasive in Antiquity, as an examination of the literary, historiographical, and medical sources suggests, and were the background against which Plato and Aristotle developed their accounts of soft and enduring agents. I further argue that softness is associated with a deficiency in spirit (thumos), and so can illuminate the nature and form of spirited motivations in these authors, and that a study of softness can help us make progress in explaining these philosopher’s conceptions of inheritance and environmental determinism, which shaped their ideas concerning gender and ethnic differences. 

Crafting Race in Plato and Aristotle (co-edited with John Proios)

Plato and Aristotle made overwhelmingly influential contributions to the history of Western thought, not least on the topic of the human condition. As ancient cultural representations illustrate, the societies in which these philosophers lived considered human beings to differ according to the region in which they lived, their culture, language, and also their skin color and other phenotypic markers. These differences – whether labeled as ‘racial’, ‘proto-racial’, ‘ethnic’, or otherwise – were often associated with cognitive, emotional, and moral dispositions and traits. Yet, there has been little engagement with the ways in which representations of race and ethnicity shaped the philosophical views of Plato and Aristotle. The goal of this project is to edit a volume of essays containing accessible but cutting-edge research on racial and ethnic differences in Plato and Aristotle’s writings. Our goal is to make the topic available to teachers, students, and researchers, as well as to set up debate for years to come. Contributors to this volume include Toni Alini, Cinzia Arruzza, Elena Comay del Junco, Sophia Connell, Emily Fletcher, Julián Gallego, Marta Jiménez, Sukaina Hirji, Dhananjay Jagannathan, Mariska Leunissen, Hendrik Lorenz, Jackie Murray, Patrice Rankine, Christopher Raymond, Rachel Singpurwala, Adele Watkins, and Josh Wilburn.

You can learn more about this project here.