Regret A Study in Ancient Moral Psychology

This book provides a study of regret (metameleia) in the moral psychology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. It was important for all these philosophers to insist that regret is a characteristic of neither fully virtuous nor wholly irredeemable characters. Rather, they took regret to be something that affects people who retrospectively feel pain at realising an earlier mistaken action. Regret sets out in full the accounts of the nature of this emotion found in the works of these philosophers, viewing them in the context of their respective accounts of virtuous and non-virtuous agents, ethical progress, the role of knowledge in producing good actions, and compares it with modern philosophical notions of 'agent regret'.

James Warren, University of Cambridge

James Warren studied Classics at Clare College, Cambridge, where he stayed to complete his MPhil and PhD. After two years as a Research Fellow at Magdalene College, in 2001 he took up a Lectureship at the Faculty of Classics in Cambridge and a Fellowship in Philosophy at Corpus Christi college. He
became Professor of Ancient Philosophy in 2017.

Introduction: Why Regret?
1. Virtue, Metameleia, Regret, and Remorse
2. Plato on Regret, Akrasia, and the Tyrannical Soul
3. Aristotle on Regret and Counter-Voluntary Actions
4. Aristotle on Regret and Akrasia
5. Metameleia and Ignorance
6. Stoic Regret
7. Gellius and Gallus on the Limits of Regret
8. Epilogue