Are people’s characters and the values that shape them thought
to be stable in terms of what we may judge to be virtuous or
vicious performances across time and place? If this was the case,
should we today not be able to emulate those of the past in their
best practices? In this lecture, Janet Coleman charts a journey,
beginning with Aristotle and ending with Hobbes, that deals with
what has been called an anthropological prelinguistic set of
conditions of experiences that were held by representative
premoderns to be the ways in which the self itself comes to
acknowledge of suitable human action and seeks to conform to
it.
About the Podcast
Recordings from the popular public lecture series featuring new work on all aspects of intellectual history. Hosted by the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews.