Ancient Philosophy Quotes

“Everything I do, I am responsible for; there is always something else I could have done, some other attitude I could have taken up. To say I am overcome by emotion is to evade the fact that I was the one who acted, who thought at the time that what I was doing was the right thing to do.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“some of Plato’s most famous passages about the divided soul he represents the parts of the soul other than reason as non-human animals.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“This picture implies, though, that reason has a kind of internal hold on the other parts – it asks them, so to speak, to do things in terms that they can understand and agree to. But then won’t the parts other than reason have to have a kind of reason of their own, in order to understand and go along with what the reason part demands? And then won’t all the parts have to have their own reasons? – which makes it unclear how we are supposed to have found a part of the soul which is separate from reason.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“argument goes, the same thing can’t be thus affected in opposing ways at the same time, so it must be that it is not the person as a whole who is in this contradictory state, but different parts of him which do the pulling in opposite directions. When I reflect correctly, then, I can see that I don’t want to drink and want not to drink; rather, part of me, which Plato calls desire, wants to drink, and another part of me, which is reason (my ability to grasp and act on reasons), is motivated to refrain.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“the argument goes, the same thing can’t be thus affected in opposing ways at the same time, so it must be that it is not the person as a whole who is in this contradictory state, but different parts of him which do the pulling in opposite directions. When I reflect correctly, then, I can see that I don’t want to drink and want not to drink; rather, part of me, which Plato calls desire, wants to drink, and another part of me, which is reason (my ability to grasp and act on reasons), is motivated to refrain.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“the argument goes, the same thing can’t be thus affected in opposing ways at the same time, so it must be that it is not the person as a whole who is in this contradictory state, but different parts of him which do the pulling in opposite directions.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“Plato takes the phenomenon of psychological conflict, being torn between two options, to show that the person so torn is not really a unity; he is genuinely torn between the motivational pull of two or more distinct parts of the soul.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“Academy, Plato’s own school, for hundreds of years – until it came to an end in the first century BC – took its task to be that of arguing against the views of others without relying on a position of one’s own.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“Writing this way is not just for literary effect; the dialogue form formally distances Plato from the views of anyone in the dialogue, and this forces the reader to think for herself what positions are being discussed, and what the upshot is, rather than accepting what is said on Plato’s authority.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“The Stoics think that there are no parts or divisions to the human soul, and that it is all rational. (By the soul they mean the item that makes humans live in a characteristically human way.) Emotions are not blind, non-rational forces which can overcome rational resolve; they are themselves a kind of reason which the person determines to act on.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“What happens, the Stoics think, is that, being in an emotional state, she follows the reasons which go with that state: she seeks revenge because that is how angry people think. But there is no real division within Medea’s self. She oscillates between different decisions as a whole; there is no inner battle of parts of her.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“The universal aspect of Stoicism is illustrated by the fact that Epictetus, a former slave, was influential on the Stoic reflections of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180).”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“many ways of teaching Stoicism; where you begin depends on the audience’s level of interest and expertise.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“Stoicism often presented itself, particularly at first, in a deliberately harsh light, emphasizing doctrines that are so far from common sense as to be paradoxical. However, Stoicism as a philosophy is holistic – that is, its parts can be developed separately, but ultimately the aim is to understand them all in relation to the other parts.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“One school of ancient philosophers, the Stoics, developed a distinctive view of Medea as part of their ethics and psychology. They think that the idea that there are really two distinct forces or motives at work in Medea is an illusion. What matters in this situation is always Medea herself, the person, and it is wrong to think in terms of different parts of her.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“philosophical thinking. This kind of reflective, probing thinking regarded Medea’s situation as calling for explanation and understanding in terms that they, and we so many years later, can readily recognize as philosophical.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“How can anger, or any other emotion or feeling, get someone to go against what they have deliberately resolved on doing? Until we have some systematic way of understanding this, we and the way we act are mysterious to ourselves.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“I think it better for me to do A than B, but am led by anger, or some other emotion, to do B instead.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“In Euripides’ famous play, produced at Athens in the fifth century BC, Medea resolves to kill her sons, then goes back on her resolve when she sees them. Sending them away, she steels herself to do the deed, and speaks words which were to become famous: I know that what I am about to do is bad, but anger is master of my plans, which is the source of the greatest troubles for humankind. She recognizes two things going on in her: her plans and her anger or thumos. She also recognizes that her anger is ‘master of’ the plans she has rationally deliberated on carrying out.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“Some of these people are not strictly Presocratics, since their lives overlapped with that of Socrates, but Socrates is generally held to mark a turning-point in ancient philosophy. He wrote nothing, but greatly influenced a number of followers, including Aristippus, a founder of hedonism, the idea that our aim should be pleasure, and Antisthenes, a founder of Cynicism, the idea that our needs should be as minimal as possible. Socrates’ emphasis on questioning and argument made him the key symbolic figure of the Philosopher to the ancient world.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“In the second half of the fifth century, intellectuals called sophists developed some philosophical skills, particularly in argument, and philosophical interests, particularly in ethical and social thought. The best known are Protagoras, Hippias, Gorgias and Prodicus.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“the second half of the fifth century, intellectuals called sophists developed some philosophical skills, particularly in argument, and philosophical interests, particularly in ethical and social thought. The best known are Protagoras, Hippias, Gorgias and Prodicus.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“Parmenides and Zeno became famous for arguments which apparently cannot be refuted but which reach conclusions impossible to accept. These arguments provoke a crisis in philosophical accounts of the world; responses to it can be found in the cosmologies of Anaxagoras, Empedocles and the Atomists Leucippus and Democritus.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“Ancient philosophy is traditionally held to begin in the sixth century BC, in the Greek cities of coastal Asia Minor. A large number of philosophers are generally grouped as ‘Presocratics’; their activities cover the sixth and fifth centuries. Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes are early cosmologists, giving ambitious accounts of the world as a whole. Pythagoras began a tradition emphasizing mysticism and authority. Heraclitus produced notoriously obscure aphorisms. Xenophanes begins a long concern with knowledge and its grounds.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“what, if anything, unites the ancient philosophical tradition.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“one particular metaphysical debate, namely whether there are purposes in nature or not, and if so what they are.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“ancient variety of views on ethics and on knowledge – how we can come to engage with the ancients in a respectful but critical way, both disagreeing with them and learning from them.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“factors that distance us from the ancient philosophical writers. One is the literal distance of time and the loss of much evidence. Another is the influence of other factors, which we should be aware of, which make our concern with the ancients a selective and changeable one, so that a text like Plato’s Republic is read very differently at different times.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“centrality to the ancient tradition of argument, and also of practical engagement with issues important to our lives.”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“understanding the conflict of reason and emotion within ourselves,”
― Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction