My father, Christopher Rowe, who has died aged 81, was a classical scholar specialising in the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. He completed his final work, a translation into English of his edition in Greek of Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics, after being diagnosed as terminally ill with a glioblastoma in September 2024. The edition appeared in 2023, and the translation of it will be published in September 2025.
Christopher’s skills as a linguist, translator and philosopher enabled him to make celebrated contributions in this centuries-old field of study, which he believed had resonance in the modern age. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, in their different ways, argued that philosophical thinking is necessary if we are to live a successful, happy life. Capitalists, the privileged, or people of whatever sort will have nothing of what they really want until they ask the simple question: “What is it all for?” It was this thinking that guided Christopher in his studies, his politics and his personal relationships.
