Aristotle: The Good Life

This book offers inter alia a systematic investigation of the actual argumentative strategy of Socratic conversation and explorations of Socratic and Platonic morality including an examination ofeudaimonia and the mental conception of health in the Republic as self-control, with a view to the relation of individual health/happiness to social order. The essays cover a period from 1968 to 2012. Some of them are now published for the first time. Self-motion in the later dialogues involves tripartition and tripartition in turn involves (...) embodiment. The Philebus psychology too anticipates Aristotle. The Forms of the Timaeus are patterns, but the two-world picture is abandoned: there is one world constituted by Forms and Place. The Epinomis is arguably genuine. More generally, denying that Plato develops, e.g. exegetically and psychologically, is absurd. There are too many contradictions in the Corpus. The dialogues are artistic wholes and the author's message must be interpreted accordingly: hence in a sense every character is Plato's mouthpiece. Aristotle's idea of the human good or quality of life as optimal mental activity according to the special human capabilities is the root of the modern selfactualization projects. Panaetius (free reason) and Posidonius (science) mark the end of the older Stoa's hard-core materialism and the beginning of a new more 'modern' era. -/- . (shrink)

Friendship is an important part of the good life. While many roboticists are eager to create friend-like robots, many philosophers and ethicists are concerned. They argue that robots cannot really be our friends. Robots can only fake the emotional and behavioural cues we associate with friendship. Consequently, we should resist the drive to create robot friends. In this article, I argue that the philosophical critics are wrong. Using the classic virtue-ideal of friendship, I argue that robots can plausibly be considered (...) our virtue friends - that to do so is philosophically reasonable. Furthermore, I argue that even if you do not think that robots can be our virtue friends, they can fulfil other important friendship roles, and can complement and enhance the virtue friendships between human beings. (shrink)

This book faces the problem of how is it possible to conceive Aristotelian philosophy as a way of life, and not as a discipline or profession. If there are any of his texts where this concerns are to be found, it is in his practical treatises, in which he defends a philosophy of human affairs. However, Aristotle insists on the fact that philosophy, in its greatest expression, is the first philosophy, to which the idea of contemplation seems to refer to, (...) at the end of the Nicomachean ethics. How is this tension between human and first philosophy to be understood? Which one was more important in Aristotle’s conception of the good life? What will we be claiming here is that there’s no dichotomy between active and contemplative life beyond the conceptual analysis. On the contrary, the Aristotelian proposal is that choosing between action and contemplation is impossible without appealing to philosophy itself. The intellect, in his role as ruler of life, requires contemplation to lead action, in the same way as a medical practitioner requires natural science in order to guide his deeds. (shrink)

Aristotle is the first philosopher on record to subject the meaning of life to systematic philosophical examination: he approaches the issue from logical, psychological, biological, and anthropological perspectives in some of the central passages in the Corpus Aristotelicum and, it turns out, in some fragments from his (lost) early popular work the Protrepticus (Exhortation to Philosophy). From an Aristotelian perspective, in asking about life’s “meaning”, we may be asking either a theoretical question about the definition of the term life (and (...) this either generically or with specific reference to human life), or a practical question about the final end or purpose of life (or human life). Aristotle carefully considered both questions, and in his view answering the theoretical question is the key to answering the practical question. In brief, his theoretical view is that humans are distinguished from all other living things, and thus defined by their ability to use reason; thus his practical view is that the end or purpose of human existence is intellectual activity, especially doing philosophy. (shrink)

I discuss how Aristotle’s formulation of the problem of moral luck relates to his natural philosophy. I review well-known passages from Nicomachean Ethics I/X and Eudemian Ethics I/VII and Physics II, but in the main focus on EE VII 14 (= VIII 2). I argue that Aristotle’s position there (rejecting the elimination of luck, but reducing luck so far as possible to incidental natural and intelligent causes) is not only consistent with his treatment of luck in Physics II, but is (...) to be expected, given that the dialectical path of EE VII 14 runs exactly parallel to that of Physics II 4-6. Although Aristotle resolves some issues that he raises, he cannot avoid the problem of constitutive moral luck that, as Thomas Nagel puts it, pertains to ‘the kind of person you are, where this is not just a question of what you deliberately do, but of your inclinations, capacities, and temperament’. The problem for Aristotle follows not only from his ethical positions, but also directly from his more general physical and political principles and assumptions. Furthermore, the problem touches the very essence of Aristotle’s moral theory. (shrink)

This paper assesses the aesthetic components of the experience of forgiveness to develop a procedural model of the phenomenological process that negotiates cognitive judgments and understanding with emotional affective states. By bringing the Greek concepts of kalokagathia and eudaimonia into conversation with Ricoeur’s “solicitude,” I suggest that the impetus for engaging in the process of forgiveness is best understood narratively as the pursuit of a life well lived (in terms of beauty). Consequently, forgiveness is revealed as a technique for developing (...) both an optimal personal and public character (in both moral and aesthetic terms). (shrink)

According to the traditional interpretation, Aristotle’s ethics, and ancient virtue ethics more generally, is fundamentally grounded in self-interest, and so in some sense egoistic. Most contemporary ethical theorists regard egoism as morally repellent, and so dismiss Aristotle’s approach. But recent traditional interpreters have argued that Aristotle’s egoism is not vulnerable to this criticism. Indeed, they claim that Aristotle’s egoism actually accommodates morality. For, they say, Aristotle’s view is that an agent’s best interests are partially constituted by acting morally, so that (...) the virtuous person sees morality as essential to her happiness. (Call this, ‘the Constitutive Thesis’.) In this paper, I argue that the constitutive thesis is unpersuasive, both from a theoretical standpoint and (for similar reasons) as an interpretation of Aristotle. It is unpersuasive because it is much more demanding in both respects than several nonegoist alternatives. My argument builds on an objection originally offered by John McDowell. McDowell claimed (1) that the Constitutive Thesis requires that there are independent standards of self-interest that can be agreed upon in advance by all parties to the dispute, both virtuous and nonvirtuous; and (2) that there are no such standards. I argue that McDowell is mistaken. The orthodox position requires much less than McDowell claims if it makes an appeal to the distinctiveness of the virtuous person’s point of view. However, unfortunately for traditionalists, the price of this point of view defence is high. First, to be even remotely plausible, the revised orthodox view must be almost frighteningly complex. Second, once this complexity is exposed, the orthodox view is much less plausible than its major rivals, in particular those which appeal directly to moral reasons. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 60, Issue 1, pp 60 - 87 Aristotle invokes a specifically human desire, namely wish, to provide a teleological explanation of the pursuit of the specifically human good in terms of virtuous activity. Wish is a basic, unreasoned desire which, independently of other desires, or evaluative attitudes, motivates the pursuit of the human good. Even a person who pursues what she mistakenly believes to be good is motivated by wish for what in fact is good, although she (...) is oblivious of it. (shrink)

This chapter is an overview of Giorgio Agamben's engagement, in the Homo Sacer series (1995–2014), with Aristotelian philosophy. It specifically studies Agamben's attempt to deconstruct two Aristotelian conceptual oppositions fundamental for the Western tradition of political thought: (1) that between the bare fact of being alive and "qualified" living (associated by Agamben with an alleged distinction between zōē and bios) and (2) that between potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (energeia). Agamben's concept of form-of-life (forma-di-vita), a life that is never "bare" but (...) always in the process of qualifying itself, is designed to deactivate and overcome these distinctions. In the final volume of the series, The Use of Bodies (2014), this is done with the help of the Aristotelian concepts of use (chrēsis) and habit (hexis). (shrink)

Kraut and other neo-Aristotelians have argued that there is no such thing as absolute goodness. They admit only good in a kind, e.g. a good sculptor, and good for something, e.g. good for fish. What is the view of Aristotle? Mostly limiting myself to the Nicomachean Ethics, I argue that Aristotle is committed to things being absolutely good and also to a metaphysics of absolute goodness where there is a maximally best good that is the cause of the goodness of (...) all other things in virtue of being their end. I begin by suggesting that the notion of good as an end, which is present in the first lines of the NE, is not obviously accounted for by good in a kind or good for something. I then give evidence that good in a kind and good for something can explain neither certain distinctions drawn between virtues nor the determinacy ascribed to what is good “in itself.” I argue contra Gotthelf that because several important arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics rely on comparative judgments of absolute value—e.g. “Man is the best of all animals”—Aristotle is committed to the existence of both absolute goodness and an absolutely best being. I focus on one passage, Aristotle’s division of goods in NE I 12, which presupposes this metaphysical picture. (shrink)

This paper begins with a vignette of Juan Carlos, an immigrant to America who works to support his family, attends classes at a community college, and cares for his ill daughter. It argues that an Aristotelian virtue ethicist could condone a safe, legal, and virtuous use of cognitive enhancements in Juan Carlos’s case. The argument is that if an enhancement can lead him closer to eudaimonia (i.e., flourishing, or a good life), then it is morally permissible to use it. The (...) paper closes by demonstrating how common objections to cognitive enhancement fail to undermine Juan Carlos’s justifiable use of the technology. The particularities of his case make it morally acceptable for him to use enhancements in certain situations. The paper, thus, constructs a limited, positive case for the virtuous use of pharmaceutical cognitive enhancements. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

A new English translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. This ongoing project aims to translate accurately the meaning of Aristotle's terse Greek into readable American English for students and the general reader.

A new translation and edition of Aristotle's Protrepticus (with critical comments on the fragments) -/- Welcome -/- The Protrepticus was an early work of Aristotle, written while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, but it soon became one of the most famous works in the whole history of philosophy. Unfortunately it was not directly copied in the middle ages and so did not survive in its own manuscript tradition. But substantial fragments of it have been preserved in several (...) works by Iamblichus of Chalcis, a third century A.D. neo-Pythagorean philosopher and educator. On the basis of a close study of Iamblichus' extensive use and excerption of Aristotle's Protrepticus, it is possible to reconstruct the backbone of the lost work, and then to flesh it out with the other surviving reports about the work from antiquity (for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and other ancient commentators on Aristotle). It is also possible to identify several papyrus fragments of the work, and many references and literary allusions in later authors, especially Cicero, whose own lost dialogue Hortensius was a defense of philosophy modeleld on Aristotle's. (shrink)

Aristotle, though not the first Greek virtue ethicist, was the first to establish virtue ethics as a distinct philosophical discipline. His exposition of the subject in his Nicomachean Ethics set the terms of subsequent debate in the European and Arabic traditions by proposing a set of plausible assumptions from which virtue ethics should proceed. His conception of human well-being and virtue as well as his brand of ethical naturalism were influential from antiquity through the Middle Ages and continue to be (...) influential today. (shrink)

Aristotle was the last, and the most influential of the Greek philosophers. Aristotle studied philosophy as well as different branches of natural sciences. In fact, he had a keen interest in the world of experience and is the founder of at least two sciences: (1) Logic and (2) Biology. Aristotle’s system of philosophy falls into the fivefold division of Logic, metaphysics, physics, ethics and aesthetics. Aristotle talks about the ultimate good being eudaimonia – a good life, a flourishing life, a (...) fulfilled and worthwhile life. Reflecting on ideals and connecting them to reality is only the first step in the search for the good life. A For Aristotle the final end of human life is to flourish, to live well, to have a good life. All acts should aim at this end. According to Aristotle, the good life consists in the possession, over the course of a lifetime, of all those things that are really good for us. Aristotle’s purpose in the Nicomachean Ethics is not just to explain the philosophy of the excellence for human beings but also to demonstrate specifically how human beings can lead lives of excellence as activity in accordance with practical and theoretical reason. The objective of this paper is to study the concept of happiness and the good life according to Aristotle. (shrink)

In Book I of his Nicomachean Ethics (NE), Aristotle defines happiness, or eudaimonia, in accordance with an argument he makes regarding the distinctive function of human beings. In this paper, I argue that, despite this argument, there are moments in the NE where Aristotle appeals to elements of happiness that don’t follow from the function argument itself. The place of these elements in Aristotle’s account of happiness should, therefore, be a matter of perplexity. For, how can Aristotle appeal to elements (...) of happiness not entailed by his argument for what happiness involves? I will examine two instances that exemplify the sort of appeal to outside elements that I have in mind. The first deals with Aristotle’s reference, in NE, I, 8, to certain goods—ancestry, children, beauty—goods unrelated to man’s function or his fulfillment of it, but nevertheless required for his happiness. The second instance involves pleasure. Aristotle makes various arguments, both in Books I and X of the NE, that tie pleasure to the activity of the soul, and the function argument in turn. However, none of these arguments succeeds in demonstrating that pleasure would necessarily follow from this activity. Taken together then, these two examples demonstrate the extent to which Aristotle’s definition of happiness is more inclusive than his function argument permits. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses the relation between teachers and students during his treatment of “non-uniform friends.” These friends exchange goods differing in kind . Such friendships depend on the needs of the friends, and we are invited to ask whether some need induces a philosopher to teach a not-yet-philosophical student. In this paper I argue that the philosophical teacher does not approach his pupil out of need nor as he would approach a contemplative friend who is an equal. The (...) teacher chooses to benefit students as a morally virtuous human being would, although not as if his happiness depends upon their success in learning. A teacher is not an ordinary benefactor, intent upon seeing his power made actual in some other person. Aristotle’s philosophical teachers seem to be simultaneously more generous and less interested in their students. (shrink)

The ethics of Aristotle , and virtue ethics in general, have enjoyed a resurgence of interest over the past few decades. Aristotelian themes, with such issues as the importance of friendship and emotions in a good life, the role of moral perception in wise choice, the nature of happiness and its constitution, moral education and habituation, are finding an important place in contemporary moral debates. Taken together, the essays in this volume provide a close analysis of central arguments in Aristotle's (...) Nicomachean Ethics and show the enduring interest of the questions Aristotle raises. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s two forms of human happiness correspond to two forms of human virtue and, I argue, to two forms of virtuous friendship. I propose that the most properly human form of happiness is achieved in contemplative friendship. This friendship is a genuinely contemplative approximation of divine life and still a specifically human life consisting in discursivespeech with others. Contemplative friends wish the good to one another as human beings and thus fulfill what friendship is more completely than (...) do friends occupied with moral virtue. Aristotle’s text shows, first, that discussion and thinking can be shared more perfectly than can moral action and, second, that intellectual virtue completes human nature more fully than does moral virtue. (shrink)

The article re-examines the Aristotelian backdrop of Arendt’s notion of action. On the one hand, Backman takes up Arendt’s critique of the hierarchy of human activities in Aristotle, according to which Aristotle subordinates action (praxis) to production (poiesis) and contemplation (theoria). Backman argues that this is not the case since Aristotle conceives theoria as the most perfect form of praxis. On the other hand, Backman stresses that Arendt’s notion of action is in fact very different from Aristotle’s praxis, to the (...) extent that Arendt thinks of action as an external to the means-ends scheme, whereas Aristotle ultimately remains caught in this scheme proper to poiesis in thinking of praxis as its own end. According to Backman, Arendt’s concept of action can therefore be understood as a critique, rather than as a rehabilitation, of Aristotelian praxis. (shrink)

The paper discusses Heidegger's early notion of the “movedness of life” (Lebensbewegtheit) and its intimate connection with Aristotle's concept of movement (kinēsis). Heidegger's aim in the period of Being and Time was to “overcome” the Greek ideal of being as ousia – constant and complete presence and availability – by showing that the background for all meaningful presence is Dasein, the ecstatically temporal context of human being. Life as the event of finitude is characterized by an essential lack and incompleteness, (...) and the living present therefore gains meaning only in relation to a horizon of un-presence and un-availability. Whereas the “theological” culmination of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics finds the supreme fulfillment of human life in the semi-divine self-immanence and self-sufficiency of the bios theōrētikos, a radical Heideggerian interpretation of kinēsis may permit us to find in Aristotle the fundamental structures of mortal living as self-transcendent movement. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 1. 7, Aristotle gives a definition of the human good, and he does so by means of the “ ergon argument.” I clear the way for a new interpretation of this argument by arguing that Aristotle does not think that the ergon of something is always the proper activity of that thing. Though he has a single concept of an ergon, Aristotle identifies the ergon of an X as an activity in some cases but a product in (...) others, depending on the sort of thing the X is—for while the ergon of the eye is seeing, the ergon of a sculptor is a sculpture. This alternative interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of an ergon allows the key explanatory middle term of the ergon argument to be what, I argue, it ought to be: “the best achievement of a human.”. (shrink)

In the following paper I discuss the under-appreciated role that the concept of the morally serious person plays in Aristotle’s moral philosophy. I argue that the conventional English rendering of spoudaios as “good” has a tendency to cut us off from important nuances in Aristotle’s consideration of the virtuous person. After discussing aspects of his use of the concept in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics I dismiss a misunderstanding of seriousness as a kind of morally indifferent personality trait. I (...) close by briefly reflecting on how an absence of moral seriousness characterizes much contemporary moral theorizing and produces what Anscombe described as the “corrupt mind.”. (shrink)

Recent interest among both philosophers and the wider public in the tradition of virtue ethics often takes its inspiration from Aristotle or from Thomas Aquinas. In this essay I briefly outline the ethical approaches of these two towering figures, and then describe more fully the virtue ethics of Meister Eckhart, a medieval thinker who admired, though critically, both Aristotle and Aquinas. His related but distinctively original approach to the virtuous life is marked by a striking and seemingly paradoxical injunction to (...) “live without why.”. (shrink)

Among scholars of ancient economic thought, it is widely recognized that Aristotle established an upper limit to money-making. This “natural limit” has been variously construed, with some claiming that it might be settled independently of Aristotle’s ethical theory. This paper defends the opposite thesis: Aristotle’s natural limit is inextricably tied to his account of human flourishing. It also argues that Aristotle precludes the wealth-seeking path as coincident with a flourishing life. Why? For Aristotle, money-making as an end in itself is (...) endemic to the life of pleasure, not the good life. Moreover, the unchecked pursuit of ever more money is likely to crowd out other intrinsically valuable goods, such as friendship, agency, and autonomy. Finally, from the standpoint of Aristotle’s virtue ethics, wealth acquisition beyond the natural limit is considered to be a vice, not a virtue. (shrink)

There has been a long controversy about the opinions of Aristotle and Maimonides on the best way of life for human beings. They often seem to emphasize a life based on intellectual pursuits as the highest form of existence and to deprecate more social but less rationally demanding forms of existence. This is particularly problematic for Maimonides, for it would imply that the life of a pious person is of little value unless it is combined with intellectual excellence. It is (...) argued that this is not the view of Maimonides, and that he has enough resources in his system to show how a whole gamut of human activities and the lifestyles which go along with them are worthy of respect. (shrink)