Books by John M. Rist

This study makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the development of ancient Platonism and of the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian thought. The author examines a number of themes such as Eros, Virtue, and Knowledge in the writings of Plato.

In an effort to confront this situation John Rist attempts to chart Aristotle's philosophical progress, using the techniques of both philology and philosophical analysis. His aim is to see where Aristotle came from philosophically and what impelled him to develop his ideas in particular directions.

This major work provides a detailed and accurate account of the character and effects of Augustine's thought as a whole. Augustine weighed some of the major themes of classical philosophy and ancient culture against the truth he found in the Bible and Catholic tradition, and reformulated these in Christian dress.

John Rist surveys the history of ethics from Plato to the present and offers a vigorous defence of an ethical theory based on a revised version of Platonic realism. In a wide-ranging discussion he examines well-known alternatives to Platonism, in particular Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume and Kant as well as contemporary 'practical reasoners', and argues that most post-Enlightenment theories of morality (as well as Nietzschean subversions of such theories) depend on an abandoned Christian metaphysic and are unintelligible without such grounding. He also argues that contemporary choice-based theories, whether they take a strictly ethical or more obviously political form, are ultimately arbitrary in nature. His lively and accessible 2001 study is informed by a powerful sense of philosophical history, and will be of interest to both students and scholars of ethics.