Vogt puts forward a novel version of the Guise of the Good: the desire to have one's life go well shapes and sustains mid- and small-scale motivations. Her book lays out a non-relativist version of Protagoras's Measure Doctrine and defends a new realism about good human lives.

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. A Blueprint for Ethics 2. The Good and the Good Human Life 3. Disagreement, Value, Measure 4. The Long Goodbye from Relativism 5. The Guise of the Good 6. The Nature of Pursuits 7. The Metaphysics of the Sphere of Action Concluding Remarks Bibliography

"...her engagement with ancient ideas is creative and novel. Vogt's monograph is therefore an important contribution to scholarship in ancient philosophy. Furthermore, she enriches the contemporary ethical debate, since she offers an interesting and novel way to discuss the question of the good with regard to human agency, psychology and the metaphysics of human action." -- Laura Summa, ZEMO "Katja Maria Vogt proposes a refreshing, comprehensive, and intuitive Aristotle-cum-Plato inspired approach to ethics ... Her book is demanding yet rewarding ... Vogt's work lays a foundation that allows moral realists to be able to claim that there is a good for human beings and a good for individuals. This work is a welcome addition to Aristotelian ethics." -- David J. Rodriguez, Journal of Moral Philosophy "Vogt's book promises an exciting result: ancient ethics can not only influence but can be extended into contemporary thought. Vogt offers, in equal part, an exegetical account of ancient theories, and how they can be developed in such a way that they are brought into direct conversation with the state-of-the-art in contemporary metaethics. I would recommend Vogt's book to anyone interested in ancient philosophy and its contemporary applications. The book should also appeal to (historically-minded) philosophers working on action theory, ethics, and metaethics. Apart from providing a number of very interesting analyses of ancient texts, this book develops a systematic theory of motivation and the good which is worthwhile pursuing. The book is well produced with appealing photography on the dustjacket." -- Udit Bery, Ancient Philosophy Today "Vogt brings Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Plato's Philebus, Euthyphro and Symposium into dialogue with contemporary authors such as Elizabeth Anscombe, J. David Velleman, Bernard Williams, George Edward Moore, Samuel Scheffler and Paul Boghossian. [...] Vogt's book is on the cutting edge of moral philosophy, metaphysics, theory of action and psychology. Theories that regard humans as 'angelic', as purely thinking beings, and that are averse to psychological and metaphysical contingencies, according to Vogt are necessarily defective. For this reason, she considers the good that agents are most familiar with, namely the good human life as they conceive of it, as a suitable starting point for ethical inquiry." --Seppe Segers , Tijdschrift voor Filosofie "Vogt's book is an important and very welcome contribution for all those who are interested in developing an Aristotelian approach in the context of contemporary ethics. She puts into focus certain deficits of the contemporary discussion and provides a compelling example for how engagement with ancient texts can benefit the contemporary debate." --Jan Szaif, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "Vogt proposes a new way to orient our thinking about Aristotle's ethics and ethics more generally. Her invitation to construe Aristotelian ethics as a theory of human motivation rather than practical reasoning is refreshingly different from the emphasis by scholars in recent decades on questions about practical reasoning in Aristotle and on well-worn debates about the nature of and relation between virtue and happiness in ancient ethics." -- Susan Sauve Meyer, University of Pennsylvania "Vogt's method resembles that of modern thinkers who have drawn on Aristotle as a resource to inform contemporary virtue-ethics and eudaimonism, though she herself carves out a different line, which does not fall neatly into these categories. The book has an original and arresting thesis, which is stated and argued with clarity and in an engaging way. The book is challenging, intellectually, and is in this sense a demanding read, but is not especially technical and is sometimes disarmingly straightforward in its claims." --Christopher Gill, University of Exeter

Katja Maria Vogt is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She specializes in ancient philosophy, ethics, and normative epistemology. In her books and papers, she focuses on questions that figure both in ancient and in contemporary discussions: What are values? What kind of values are knowledge and truth? What does it mean to want one's life to go well?

Selling point: New approach to the Guise of the Good account of agency/motivation Selling point: Focuses on Plato's Philebus as inspiration for ethics today Selling point: New version of Aristotelian realism