Charles Young

Chair, Professor of Philosophy Charles Young

Philosophy Department
School of Arts and Humanities
Claremont Graduate University
121 East Tenth Street
Claremont, CA 91711
Tel.: 909.607.3926
Fax: 909.607.1221
Email: charles.young@cgu.edu

This fall, I’ll be teaching:

Philosophy 144/244: Logic and Argumentation
Philosophy 300: Philosophical Greek
Philosophy 301: Greek Readings

I work mostly in ancient Greek philosophy, especially in Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethics. I’m currently completing the module on Book V of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for Project Archelogos. When I finish that, I’ll return to work on a monograph on Aristotle’s accounts of the various individual virtues of character in Nicomachean III-V; it’s tentatively entitled Aristotle on Virtue and the Virtues.

Click here for the current version of the module on Nicomachean V.

Some preliminary studies for Aristotle on Virtue and the Virtues (click on the titles to download):

"The Doctrine of the Mean,” Topoi 15 (1996), 89-99.
“Aristotle on Courage,” in Humanitas: Essays in Honor of Ralph Ross, ed. Q. Howe (Scripps College Press, 1977), 194-203.
“Aristotle on Temperance,” The Philosophical Review 97 (1988), 521-42.
"Aristotle on Liberality,” Proceedings of the 1994 Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 10 (1996), 313-334.
“Aristotle on Justice,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, supplementary issue (1990), 233-49.
“Aristotle’s Justice,” in R. Kraut, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Ethics, Cambridge: Blackwell, forthcoming.
"Aristotelian Grace," in progress.
“Virtue and Flourishing in Aristotle’s Ethics,” in The Greeks and the Good Life, ed. D. Depew (Hackett, 1980), 138-56.
“What Virtue Knows,” in progress.

A few other papers (click on the titles to download):

“A Delicacy in Plato’s Phaedo,” Classical Quarterly 38 (1988), 251-2.
“An Architectonic of Verbs,” Verbatim 12 (1984), 13.
“Polemarchus’ and Thrasymachus’ Definition of Justice,” Philosophical Inquiry 2 (1981), 404-19.
“Computation with Roman Numerals” (with other authors), Archive for History of Exact Science 15 (1976), 141-8.
“A Note on Republic 335c9-10 and 335c12,” The Philosophical Review 83 (1974), 97-105.
“First Principles of Socratic Ethics,” Apeiron 29 (1997), 13-23.
“Plato” and “Aristotle” in The Perseus Encyclopedia (a multimedia package for the study of Greek art, architecture, history, literature, and philosophy), Yale University Press, 1995.
“Plato and Computer Dating,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12 (1994), 227-50.
“The Socratic Elenchos,” in H. Benson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
“Plato’s Crito on the Obligation to Obey the Law,” in G. Anagnostopoulos, ed., Essays on Ancient Legal Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming.

And a couple of waifs (click on the titles to download):

A Commentary on Aristotle’s EUDEMIAN ETHICS I and II (ed., with R. McKirahan), 2000.
“How I Could Have Solved the World’s Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever,” in progress.

The Commentary is a much-edited compilation of the minutes of the West Coast Aristotelian Society’s discussions over a period of years on Books I and II. Those working on these books might find parts of the Commentary useful.

I’ve actually tried to get the logic puzzle piece published. No luck, as yet. The editors and referees agree that the criticisms of Boolos are on the mark, and that the solution offered is correct. But so far no one has accepted the thing, usually because it’s “almost utterly without redeeming philosophical content,” in the words of one editor. Hard to argue with that ...