The Theory and Practice of Life

This book is a study of the literary culture within which the works, schools, and careers of Plato, Aristotle, and contemporary Greek intellectuals took shape. It argues that Isocrates' contemporary theory of training and self-formulation was an important provacation and creative inspiration to such works as Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and Plato's Phaedrus. The second half of the book brings together the fragmentary evidence for the participation of "Isocrateans" in the philosophical polemics, princely didactics, and literary competition of the fourth century, shedding new light on the "lost years" of intellectual and literary history that lie before the dawn of the Hellenistic period.