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Ethics, Byzantine

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy

Abstract

Ethics in Byzantium was not a systematic philosophical discipline, but an occasional response to particular problems posed in everyday life or in interpreting the Scripture. Ethical views on virtues and vices, evil and passions, the Good, the commandments and their observance, labor, marriage and family, sexual life, spiritual exercises, death, resurrection, deification are scattered through a diversity of texts, philosophical, theological, and hagiographical, letters, “mirrors of princes,” etc. Moral reasoning was inseparable from theology and ethics could not be autonomous but, with few exceptions, was a Christian ethics for a particular Christian society. The two ingredients of Byzantine ethics were early Greek Patristic thought and ancient Greek ethical theories (Stoic, Neoplatonic, and Aristotelian). Revelation, hence scriptural authority and tradition, was the ultimate source of Byzantine ethics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    George Zografidis

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  1. George Zografidis
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Henrik Lagerlund

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Zografidis, G. (2011). Ethics, Byzantine. In: Lagerlund, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9729-4_160

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9729-4_160

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