Patterns of Evil in Ancient Chinese and Greek Philosophy

The roots of evil are often held to be Biblical, but philosophers in ancient China and Greece were thoroughly conversant with both the phenomena and the languages of evil. This volume provides a comparative examination of patterns of evil in ancient Chinese and Greek philosophy.

R.A.H. King is full Professor for the History of Philosophy, at the University of Berne, Switzerland. Previously he taught philosophy at the Universities of Glasgow and Munich. He is the author of Aristotle on life and death (2001), Aristotle and Plotinus on Memory (2009), and ＂The Lord a Lord, the Minister a Minister, the Father a Father, the Son a Son＂. Virtues and Roles in ancient Greek and Chinese thought (forthcoming). He has edited Common to Body and Soul Philosophical Approaches to Explaining Living Behaviour in Greco-Roman Antiquity (2006), How should one live? Comparing Ethics in Ancient China and Greco-Roman Antiquity (with Dennis Schilling) (2011), The Good Life and Conceptions of Life in Early China and Graeco-Roman Antiquity (2015). He is one of the translators of Plotinus in the Cambridge Plotinus (ed. Lloyd Gerson 2018, 2nd ed. 2024). He has published many articles on early Chinese ethics especially in comparison with Greek ethics.

Pavlos Kontos is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Patras. His recent publications include Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason (Routledge: 2021), (ed.) Evil in Aristotle (2018), Phenomenology and the Primacy of the Political: Essays in Honor of Jacques Taminiaux (co-editor; 2017), and Aristotle’s Moral Realism Reconsidered (Routledge: 2013). His Introduction to Aristotle’s Ethics, originally published in Modern Greek with the title The two eu of eutuchia (C2018, 2023), has been translated in English and Chinese. Kontos is the co-editor, alongside C.D.C. Reeve, of Aristotle: Complete Works (2025).