El objetivo del presente artículo consiste en analizar el trasfondo de las matemáticas empleadas por Aristóteles en el libro V de la _Ética a Nicómaco_ con el propósito de esclarecer las nociones de aritmética y geometría en relación con la justicia y la ética. Expongo brevemente la concepción de algunos estudiosos de Aristóteles que proponen una incompatibilidad radical entre ambos modelos matemáticos, y a partir de ello indico por qué esa lectura es equivocada. Finalmente, defiendo una interpretación integracionista, especialmente a (...) partir de la comprensión de la virtud como _enérgeia_ y _entelécheia_. (shrink)

Este artículo contrasta el método del abandono del límite con la analogía de Tomás de Aquino, ofreciendo una descripción global de esta última, en orden a la determinación del significado y el estatuto gnoseológico de la noción de ente. Examina en los respectivos planteamientos el valor y el alcance metafísico de la potencia, de la articulación abstracta del tiempo y de la “entelécheia”.

In various texts, Aristotle assigns priority to form, in its role as a principle and cause, over matter and the matter-form compound. Given the central role played by this claim in Aristotle's search for primary substance in the Metaphysics, it is important to understand what motivates him in locating the primary causal responsibility for a thing's being what it is with the form, rather than the matter. According to Met. Theta.8, actuality [ energeia / entelecheia ] in general is prior (...) to potentiality [ dunamis ] in three ways, viz., in definition, time and substance. I propose an explicitly causal reading of this general priority claim, as it pertains to the matter-form relationship. The priority of form over matter in definition, time and substance, in my view, is best explained by appeal to the role of form as the formal, efficient and final cause of the matter-form compound, respectively, while the posteriority of matter to form according to all three notions of priority is most plausibly accounted for by the fact that the causal contribution of matter is limited to its role as material cause. When approached from this angle, the work of Met. Theta.8 can be seen to lend direct support to the more specific and explicitly causal priority claim we encounter in Met. Z.17, viz., that form is prior to matter in its role as the principle and primary cause of a matter-form compound's being what it is. (shrink)

The belief that Aristotle opposes potency (dunamis) to actuality (energeia or entelecheia) has gone untested. This essay defines and distinguishes forms of the Opposition Hypothesis—the Actualization, Privation, and Modal—examining the texts and arguments adduced to support them. Using Aristotle’s own account of opposition, the texts appear instead to show that potency and actuality are compatible, while arguments for their opposition produce intractable problems. Notably, Aristotle’s refutation of the Megarian Identity Hypothesis applies with equal or greater force to the Opposition Hypothesis. (...) For Aristotle, then, potency and actuality are compatible. (shrink)

Gestützt auf die bisher unveröffentlichten Teile des Briefwechsels von Leibniz mit Denis Papin aus der Zeit von 1692 bis 1700 wird in diesem Aufsatz versucht, einige Aspekte der Leibnizschen Dynamik darzulegen. Insbesondere wird der apriorische Beweis der Erhaltung der actio f ormalis im Zusammenhang mit der Diskussion zwischen Leibniz und Papin über die Messung der Kraft bei der horizontalen Bewegung behandelt. Es war Leibniz* Absicht, durch den apriorischen Beweis die Dynamik zu begründen und die Cartesianischen Gesetze der Bewegung zu ersetzen. (...) Papin seinerseits beschränkte sich auf die physikalische Ebene der Gesetze der Mechanik. Im Laufe der Debatte entwickelte Leibniz als Antwort auf Papins Kritik wichtige Argumente über die metaphysische Begründung der Dynamik. Die Begriffe actio f ormalis, inertia naturalis, entelecheia und Geschwindigkeit als quantitas intensiva werden in diesem Zusammenhang von Leibniz gegen Papins Einwände verteidigt. (shrink)

En este trabajo partimos de la hipótesis de que Heidegger tiene en miras las nociones aristotélicas de _δύναμις_ (_dýnamis_) y _δυνατóν_ (_dynatón_) al momento de tematizar su concepto de posibilidad (_Möglichkeit_) en _Sein und Zeit_ (1927), pero no con el sólo propósito de asimilar las reseñadas conceptualizaciones –apropiación que, como veremos subsiguientemente, no es plena-, sino también, para radicalizarlas, asumiendo un punto de vista francamente superador. Sustentamos esta tesis, en principio, en el hecho que Aristóteles haya pensado que la _ἐνέργεια_ (...) (_enérgeia_) o _ἐντελέχεια_ (_entelécheia_) es, en términos generales, anterior (_πρότερον_/_próteron_) respecto de la _dýnamis_, siendo esta posición teórica revisada y renovada por Heidegger en el texto reseñado. Por otra parte, Heidegger cuestiona la tesis aristotélica de la fundamentalidad de la realidad efectiva (_Wirklichkeit_) o de la realidad a secas (_Realität_) y como consecuencia de ello, el concepto aristotélico de ser (_εἶναι/eînai_), _ἐστίν_ (_estín_) o lo que es (_ὄν/ón_), señalando no sólo que la posibilidad es más originaria que la realidad efectiva, sino también, que la realización de una posibilidad no implica nunca la transición a una realidad efectiva. Además, el vínculo de Heidegger con Aristóteles se inicia muy tempranamente -más específicamente, en el año 1907-, merced a la lectura de la tesis doctoral de Franz Brentano y se prolonga constantemente desde 1921, cuando Heidegger dicte un seminario sobre _De Anima_ en la Universidad de Friburgo. (shrink)

Die Erklärung der Begriffe ›Akt‹ und ›Potenz‹ erfordert es, zunächst den sprachlichen Hintergrund dieser Begriffe zu erörtern. Es handelt sich dabei nämlich um Ausnahmen in Aristoteles’ Philosophie. Während er sich meistens des Wortschatzes der natürlichen Sprache bedient, oder bisweilen termini technici von seinen Vorgängern übernimmt, sind energeia und entelecheia höchstwahrscheinlich neu erfundene Wörter.

One bi-lingual - hungarian-ENGLISH - meditation and research about the Illness and the Living Being. Concentrated, of course, to the specific HUMAN reporting to them. The book investigates philosophically the issue of human illness and its organic pertinence to the meaning of human life starting from the recognition that the dangerous encounter with the experience of illness is an unavoidable – and as such crucial – experience of the life of any living being. As for us humans, there is probably (...) no mortal man who has never suffered of some – any! – kind of disease from his birth to the end of his life… Illness is therefore an experience or outright a danger of existence and its possibility, as well as a way of being that nobody has ever been and will ever be ontological or existentially exempted from. So, it may well be “arbitrary” or “accidental” which disease affects which being or person, when and to what degree, in what way, etc., but it is factually unavoidable that in the course of one’s entire life – from its very beginning to its very end – one would never fall ill in some respect. The paper discusses this issue by the ontological investigation of possibility. Together with the analyses about of the origins and history of the MEDICINE. -/- The english CONTENTS -/- Illness – A Possibility of the Living Being Prolegomena to the Philosophy of Human Illness ............................................. 127 -/- Excursus Sketchy considerations regarding the problems of Christian medicine and Christian healing ...................................................... 135 -/- A dialogue-attempt with Aristotle: Dynamis, energeia, entelecheia, and steresis ...................................................... 147 . (shrink)

"Act" or "Actuality" traduces two words coined by Aristotle: energeia and entelecheia. The first meaning of energeia is movement (kinesis). The second meaning designs the end of movement: form, substance (ousia), essence. Here entelecheia is brought to design that final state in which things reach their end and perfection. The third meaning or application of ener-geia, and derivately of entelecheia, is operation, action, function (ergon).

Wie an Politik I 2 in Verbindung mit anderen Passagen aus dem Corpus Aristotelicum, v.a. aus seinen zoologischen Schriften, gezeigt werden kann, ist die besondere Fähigkeit des Menschen, sich mitzuteilen, nicht ohne seine spezifische Zoologie denkbar. Ebensowenig ist daher die besondere menschliche Art, Haus- und Staatswesen zu bilden, ohne seine zoologischen Besonderheiten vorstellbar. Die menschliche Fähigkeit, sich mitteilen zu können, weist so in seine spezifische Art des Mitseins und eröffnet dadurch das, was er mitzuteilen vermag, z.B. Recht und Unrecht. Im (...) Unterschied zur Interpretation bei Thomas, der in der Art des Mitteilbaren das spezifische Mitsein des Menschen gegründet sieht, deutet sich dergestalt umgekehrt das Mitsein des Menschen sowie die Art seiner Teilhabe am Dasein überhaupt als Grundzug seiner Mitteilung und des durch sie Mitteilbaren an. Der Beitrag enthält im Anhang einige für die Erörterungen wichtige Begriffsbestimmungen, so u.a. zu den aristotelischen Begriffen 'autarkeia' und 'energeia/entelecheia'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Individuation und Einzelnsein: Nietzsche, Leibniz, AristotelesBrandon C. LookPaola-Ludovika Coriando. Individuation und Einzelnsein: Nietzsche, Leibniz, Aristoteles. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2003. Pp. ix. + 318. €28,00.What is a singular thing? Is there a first or last principle that allows us to call something an individual or one? What is the relation between the particular and the universal? Does the being of a particular mean the separation from the universal, or, on (...) the contrary, is the universal a post facto aggregation of individual subjects? What constitutes the individuality of man? This book, based on a lecture course given at the University of Freiburg, addresses these difficult questions and their answers by Nietzsche, Leibniz, and Aristotle.The author claims to limit the discussion to these philosophers because their philosophies represent distinct stations in the development of the question of individuation and the nature of individuality and, at the same time, because their different positions are both explicitly and implicitly related to each other (15). Coriando begins her discussion with Nietzsche, a philosopher one might not have linked at all to the "problem of individuation" per se, and moves backward in time to Leibniz and finally to Aristotle. The point of this order of presentation, the reader is told, is to trace back the essentials of the question of individuation to its origin: Aristotle (16). This strategy is largely successful.Nietzsche's primary concern, of course, is with the nature of the individual, or more particularly, the individual Mensch, and how he is distinguished from or distinguishes himself from the rest of the world. The answer, for Nietzsche, is to be found in his concept of the "will to power," which provides what Coriando calls his "ontological principle of individuation": the inherent drive for perspectival self-affirmation and self-increase (131). There is also, however, an "ethical principle of individuation": the attitude of a person vis-à-vis the eternal recurrence of the same. In accepting and letting go of the entirety of the world and its eternal recurrence, one "becomes who one is," and one can know one's individuality.Whereas Nietzsche tries to approach the problem of individuation independently of the entire western tradition of metaphysics, Leibniz is squarely within this tradition. Indeed, [End Page 121] in his first philosophical work, the Metaphysical Disputation on the Principle of Individuation, the sixteen-year-old Leibniz throws himself into a scholastic fray, carving out a strongly nominalist position. Leibniz's belief that only genuine individuals exist would, of course, stay with him throughout his career; the problem will be, as Coriando nicely shows, to give a precise account of the nature of individual substance. Coriando focuses on two works in her discussion, On the Correction of Metaphysics and the Concept of Substance and, to a much greater extent, the Monadology. The view that she extracts from these works should not be surprising. The principle of individuation, for Leibniz, rests in the active force of a monad and in the particular representation of the rest of the world from the monad's own point of view. Put this way, there is an interesting commonality with Nietzsche at work here.A similar commonality is shown with the thought of Aristotle. Here the principal concern is to explicate Aristotle's conception of ousia in De anima and MetaphysicsZ, H, and Q. Naturally, this leads into an account of how matter can be living and a further explication of Aristotle's energeia and entelecheia. In the end, it becomes clear that the set of concepts—energeia, conatus, will to power—are all, if not equivalent, at least performing largely the same role in guaranteeing the being of individuals. What has become "lost" in Aristotle's philosophy, however, is a notion like the perspectivalism present in Leibniz and Nietzsche, something that Coriando does not discuss at any length.This book offers a broad perspective on the question of individuation, and the choice of Nietzsche, Leibniz, and Aristotle allows Coriando to highlight interesting answers to this metaphysical problem. I do have two small quibbles. First, the problem of individuation, or the desire for a principium individuationis is so much a problem associated with medieval philosophy that... (shrink)

This paper is an initial attempt to develop a dynamic conception of being which is not anarchic. It does this by returning to Aristotle in order to begin the process of reinterpreting the meaning of ousia, the concept according to which western ontology has been determined. Such a reinterpretation opens up the possibility of understanding the dynamic nature of ontological identity and the principles according to which this identity is established. The development of the notions of energeia, dynamis and entelecheia (...) in the middle books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics will be discussed in order to suggest that there is a dynamic ontological framework at work in Aristotle’s later writing. This framework lends insight into the dynamic structure of being itself, a structure which does justice as much to the concern for continuity through change as it does to the moment of difference. The name for this conception of identity which affirms both continuity and novelty is "legacy." This paper attempts to apprehend the meaning of being as legacy. (shrink)

Hippolytus of Rome on Aristotle’s definition of the soul. His work Concerning the Soul is obscure. For in the entire three books [where he treats of his subject] it is not possible to say clearly what is Aristotle’s opinion concerning the soul. For, as regards the definition which he furnishes of soul, it is easy [enough] to declare this; but what it is that is signified by the definition is difficult to discover. For soul, he says, is an entelecheia of (...) a sôma physikon organikon; [but to explain] what this is at all, would require a very great number of arguments, and a lengthened investigation. (shrink)

Heidegger’s thinking of the human way to be unavoidably concerns itself with a distinctive human possibility of being. It is argued here that the early Heidegger, who engaged Aristotle’s philosophy via what Heidegger calls “phenomenological interpretations,” learns from Aristotle’s method of definition but goes beyond it to conceive the idea of possibility—Dasein’s being-possible (Seinkönnen)—differently. It is reasonable to argue that the early Heidegger accomplishes a productive interpretation of Aristotle in this case while being indebted to Aristotle’s understanding of ‘definition’ as (...) both “genuinely indicative” and “indeterminate.” Despite Aristotle’s ontological commitment to a metaphysics of presence (Anwesenheit) with its linkage of “possibility-actuality” (“dunamis-energeia/entelecheia”), Heidegger appreciates that there remains an important possibility of phenomenological interpretation in both Aristotle’s concept of zóon lógon echon and the expression ‘tò tí en einai’. This interpretive move is discussed here. (shrink)

This article discusses Heidegger’s lecture course Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, which focuses on Aristotle’s conception of the relationbetween the essence of man, logos, and the being of the world, kinesis. It is argued that the overall aim of Heidegger’s interpretation is to show that, on the one hand, it is Aristotle’s insight into the nature of logos that has made possible the great achievement of the Physics: the explication of being in terms of kinesis or movement; but that, on the (...) other hand, the concept of kinesis in its turn leads Aristotle to a notion of being as perfect presence, entelecheia, which proves to have problematic consequences for his concept of logos. Heidegger’s own project is then presented as a critical retrieval of Aristotle’s understanding of the relation between logos and kinesis. (shrink)

This article discusses Heidegger’s lecture course Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, which focuses on Aristotle’s conception of the relationbetween the essence of man, logos, and the being of the world, kinesis. It is argued that the overall aim of Heidegger’s interpretation is to show that, on the one hand, it is Aristotle’s insight into the nature of logos that has made possible the great achievement of the Physics: the explication of being in terms of kinesis or movement; but that, on the (...) other hand, the concept of kinesis in its turn leads Aristotle to a notion of being as perfect presence, entelecheia, which proves to have problematic consequences for his concept of logos. Heidegger’s own project is then presented as a critical retrieval of Aristotle’s understanding of the relation between logos and kinesis. (shrink)

In the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's definition of kinesis in the Physics. This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present‐at‐an‐end and energeia with being‐at‐work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of Heidegger's (...) interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta, which insists that its mode of being is presence‐at‐hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotle's metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it. (shrink)

Hippolytus of Rome on Aristotle’s definition of the soul. His work Concerning the Soul is obscure. For in the entire three books [where he treats of his subject] it is not possible to say clearly what is Aristotle’s opinion concerning the soul. For, as regards the definition which he furnishes of soul, it is easy [enough] to declare this; but what it is that is signified by the definition is difficult to discover. For soul, he says, is an entelecheia of (...) a sôma physikon organikon; [but to explain] what this is at all, would require a very great number of arguments, and a lengthened investigation. (shrink)

The psychology of Aristotle has never been understood in a historically correct way. A new interpretation of the De anima will be proposed in which this work can be seen as compatible with the psychology that can be reconstructed from the fragments of Aristotle's lost dialogues and the De motu animalium and other biological works and the doxographical data gathered from ancient writers besides the commentators. In De anima, II, 412b5, where psychè is defined as 'the first entelecheia of a (...) natural body that is organikon,' the words 'natural body' should not be taken to mean 'the body of a living plant, animal or human being' but to stand for 'elementary body.' And the qualification 'organikon' should not be understood as 'equipped with organs' but in the sense of 'serving as an instrument to the soul.' This 'instrumental body' that is inseparably connected with the soul is the seat of desire, which physically influences the parts of the visible body. Besides those two corrections there are the words ta merè in 412b18 that should be taken as meaning not 'parts of the body' but 'parts of the soul.' Aristotle is arguing there that even those parts of the soul that are not yet actualized in the embryo of a new living being can be said to be 'not without body.'. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Leibniz' (L.) concept of entelechy, though L. himself believes to have derived it directly from Aristotle, does not correspond exactly to the Aristotelian concept. The main difference between the Aristotelian and the Leibnizian concept may be explained as follows: Whereas Aristotle uses "entelecheia" to designate a property possessed by living organisms, L. takes it to be a generic term for souls and other monads. It is further argued that Aristotle's somewhat intricate argument in De (...) Anima II 1 has contributed to the misunderstanding of the Aristotelian term, a misunderstanding starting already with the Aristotelian commentators Themistius, Philoponus and Simplicius. L. took his concept from the tradition of the commentators which he knew through the Italian humanist Ermolao Barbaro. (shrink)

In this article Aristotleś conception of moving principle of human action is described. The author is interested in Aristotleś way of combining cyclical moving of effective causes with entelecheia, a direction to highest good or happines, as a purposive cause of human action. This idea can be illustrated as a cycle of effective causes centralised around the purposive cause. This reconstruction of Aristotleś conception of causation of human action can be useful in process of contemporary syntetisis human action theories. Acending (...) to the author, Aristotleś idea that the essence of rationality lies in human action is a first step to solving the problem of nature of human being, and his conception of moving principles of human action is congenial anticipation of some aspects of contemporary theories of rational action and choice. (shrink)

Throughout the tradition of Aristotelian commentary, there is a common tendency to present a static conception of substance according to the persistence of form imposed upon matter. In this essay, I present a dynamic conception of substance beginning with an account of the striving movement of the soul in De Anima. I argue that the paradigm for Aristotle’s definition of substance as actuality (entelecheia) is necessarily determined by his account of desire (orexis) as an efficient cause of the soul. The (...) striving movement of desire as an efficient cause fulfills a holistic function by providing a teleological unity to the various capacities of the soul. (shrink)

Nos proponemos mostrar cómo para la Ontología Modal del Aristóteles griego, según el logos central de su Filosofía Primera (el IX, 6-10), la verdad ontológica tiene estatuto práctico y poético de transmisión histórica comunitaria. Lo cual funda la asamblea universal e isonómica de la legislación política. Mostraremos a su vez cómo la ontología hermenéutica contemporánea y el pensamiento de la diferencia francés beben abundantemente de esta comprensión de la verdad que pertenece de lleno a la ontología modal-temporal que piensa los (...) modos del ser-tiempo de la acción posibilitante (enérgeia) y la potencia (dúnamis) en Aristóteles. (shrink)

The principles of the physical patterns of self-organization are numerous, different upon various levels of the scale of complexity. The integrated pattern of the changes going on in a living body indicates an integrated nature of its principle - whatever it might happen to be. Aristotle called this kind of principle „psycho", H. Driesch called it „entelecheia", sociobiolo- gists believe that D N A is the right name for it. The fundamental problem consists in seeing - not just deciding a (...) priori - if the empirical data do require - in a living organism - a single, integrating agency. If such a requirement originates in an illusion, the whole problem is fictitious. If this requirement is well founded, then we must to search for such an agent. (shrink)

The principles of the physical patterns of self-organization are numerous, different upon various levels of the scale of complexity. The integrated pattern of the changes going on in a living body indicates an integrated nature of its principle - whatever it might happen to be. Aristotle called this kind of principle „psycho", H. Driesch called it „entelecheia", sociobiolo- gists believe that D N A is the right name for it. The fundamental problem consists in seeing - not just deciding a (...) priori - if the empirical data do require - in a living organism - a single, integrating agency. If such a requirement originates in an illusion, the whole problem is fictitious. If this requirement is well founded, then we must to search for such an agent. (shrink)

The principles of the physical patterns of self-organization are numerous, different upon various levels of the scale of complexity. The integrated pattern of the changes going on in a living body indicates an integrated nature of its principle - whatever it might happen to be. Aristotle called this kind of principle „psycho", H. Driesch called it „entelecheia", sociobiolo- gists believe that D N A is the right name for it. The fundamental problem consists in seeing - not just deciding a (...) priori - if the empirical data do require - in a living organism - a single, integrating agency. If such a requirement originates in an illusion, the whole problem is fictitious. If this requirement is well founded, then we must to search for such an agent. (shrink)

This paper on Aristotle’s De Amilla attempts to understand the treatise as a unified whole---a unity, it may be argued, that is only as problematic as is the unity of the soul of which it speaks. Aristotle’s treatise on the soul must strike its reader as being all too perplexing, and the subject of touch in particular seems to arouse such perplexity. But Aristotle would have it that “in our inquiry into the soul, in going forward, we must be thoroughly (...) perplexed” (403b20). Touch, as a locus of perplexity in the De Amina, thus seems to provoke the kind of forward motion that leads to the human soul’s knowledge of itself. As such a locus of perplexity, I hope to show, the discussion of touch serves as a thread that provides the seams needed to tie the text together as an integrated whole. By focusing on Aristotle’s account of the faculty of touch, I believe I have come close to capturing the essence of what Aristotle means by entelecheia. Soul understood as an entelecheia amounts to the location of the soul’s highest possibilities in the activity of learning rather than knowing. Aristotle is much more Socratic than he might at first appear. (shrink)

This paper on Aristotle’s De Amilla attempts to understand the treatise as a unified whole---a unity, it may be argued, that is only as problematic as is the unity of the soul of which it speaks. Aristotle’s treatise on the soul must strike its reader as being all too perplexing, and the subject of touch in particular seems to arouse such perplexity. But Aristotle would have it that “in our inquiry into the soul, in going forward, we must be thoroughly (...) perplexed” (403b20). Touch, as a locus of perplexity in the De Amina, thus seems to provoke the kind of forward motion that leads to the human soul’s knowledge of itself. As such a locus of perplexity, I hope to show, the discussion of touch serves as a thread that provides the seams needed to tie the text together as an integrated whole. By focusing on Aristotle’s account of the faculty of touch, I believe I have come close to capturing the essence of what Aristotle means by entelecheia. Soul understood as an entelecheia amounts to the location of the soul’s highest possibilities in the activity of learning rather than knowing. Aristotle is much more Socratic than he might at first appear. (shrink)

The idea of a self-organized system brings both political and biological discourses together, for they both aim at explaining how a certain compound can achieve self-unity out of plurality. Whereas biological metaphors in politics have been much examined, political metaphors in biology have not. In this paper I intend to show how political metaphors can enlighten biological discourses, taking the work of Aristotle as a case-study. The relationship between the main elements of a living-body could be better understood within a (...) political scheme: the soul rules over the body through pneuma, its prime minister. This scheme entails, thus, to re-examine Aristotle’s definition of soul in the light of the key concept of pneuma, and to replace the hylemorphic explanation with a triadic one. On the one hand, soul is the entelecheia of the body as it keeps both the form and the end of the organism, which is its unity. On the other hand, the moving-efficacious principle that performs unity by circulating through the body, and by linking the body to its environment is pneuma. Therefore, the political formula: “the king does not govern” could shed light upon the structure of the living body: whereas the soul rules the body, pneuma governs it. Although Aristotle does not build his biology upon political concepts, metaphors are already there, shaping his explanations, within the bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy. (shrink)

This book is based on arguments presented in Achtenberg’s 1982 doctoral dissertation and several of her recent articles. In this book, Achtenberg forcefully and convincingly argues that a crucial connection exists between Aristotle’s metaphysics and ethics and that Aristotle’s ethics can be read on two levels—“in terms of its imprecise but fully justified claims,” or “in terms of the more precise metaphysical, physical, and psychological principles and arguments consideration of which gives the ethics greater articulation or depth”. She argues that (...) ethical virtue and emotions for Aristotle are cognitive: they involve cognition, not simply of particulars, but of the value of the particulars. In this, Achtenberg presents a sort of value realism that is, paradoxically, relative and relational at the same time. For Aristotle, she contends, “there are two principal types of value,” “the good and the beautiful”. The good is an analogical equivocal, that is, an imprecise universal that shares some important similarity among its instantiations but will show up in the particulars in varied and oftentimes wholly unexpected ways. Achtenberg further argues that the good and the beautiful can be understood in terms of metaphysical concepts of telos, entelecheia, or energeia of a thing, a person, or an act because telos is what makes a thing complete, truly being “what it is.” In sum, “[a] telos is a principle of preservation or enrichment” for the things of which it is the telos, just as sight is the telos of the eyes, and virtue is “energeia of the soul”. Although telos sets a limit concerning what is to be done and what is not, it is the kind of limit that is properly called “constitutive limit” as opposed to harmful or destructive limit. Ethical virtue, friendship, and just government are examples of telos as constitutive limitation because they make the subjects that possess them flourish, whereas moral vice, animosity, and unjust government are examples of destructive limitation. In light of this, Achtenberg offers a new interpretation of the Aristotelian “mean,” which denotes neither a trivial middling amount nor an uninspiring routinized behavior, but what is “the appropriate or the needed” in each situation. She concludes that, contrary to many other moral theorists, Aristotle’s appreciation of the perception of the value of the particulars as constituents of a flourishing life is an example of “imaginative construction” that makes parts meaningful in light of the whole, rather than an imaginative deconstruction that reduces a whole into senseless parts. She sums up the book by providing an assessment of Aristotle’s ethics in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)