Aristotle

In Metaphysics B 3 Aristotle sets out a famous argument for the thesis that being is not a genus. In his commentary on Metaphysics B, Syrianus criticizes this argument and explains in what sense being is to be regarded as a genus. I reconstruct both Syrianus’ criticisms and his own view. I bring out ways in which they can help us rethink key assumptions of Aristotle’s ontology and shed light both on Syrianus’ critical attitude towards Aristotle and on some of (...) Syrianus’ main views in metaphysics. (shrink)

When Gadamer elaborates his conception of philosophical hermeneutics as a transcendental inquiry, he appeals to Aristotle’s practical philosophy as a “model”, which can elucidate his own conceptual...

In this paper, we argue that the neo-Aristotelian conception of “friendships of character” appears to misrepresent the essential nature of "genuine", or "true", friendship. We question the neo-Aristotelian imperative that true friendship entails disinterested love of the other “for their own sake” and strives at enhancing moral virtue. We propose an alternative conception of true friendship as involving affective and motivational features which we call closeness, intimacy, identity, and trust. Even on this minimal construal, however, friendship can turn vicious when (...) one of its characteristics becomes overpowering and thereby destroys the very goods for which the friendship was originally sought. (shrink)

This article is part of a larger project that explores how to channel people’s passion for popular arts into legal social justice by reconceiving law as a kind of poetry and justice as dance, and exploring different possible relationships between said legal poetry and dancing justice. I begin by rehearsing my previous new conception of social justice as organismic empowerment, and my interpretive method of dancing-with. I then apply this method to the following four “ethico-political choreographies of justice”: the choral (...) dance of souls qua winged chariot-teams, a dancingly beautiful friendship with the community, a tightrope-dance of the cool, and humans dancingly reimagined as positioned actors in fluidly moving groups. I then synthesize these analyses into “dancing justice,” defined as the dynamic equilibrium sustained by a critical mass of a community’s members comporting themselves like social dancers. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to examine the thought of John Philoponus contra Aristotle, as it pertains to consciousness and its emergence, in light of both contemporary cosmology and philosophy. It will be argued that in an eternal universe the emergence of consciousness is an impossibility. The inspiration for this line of reasoning is found in Philoponus’ sixth century arguments against Aristotle on the eternity of the world. It will be shown that much of Philoponus’ argumentation is corroborated by (...) contemporary cosmology and philosophy. (shrink)

Bernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being ‘principally about how things are in moral philosophy’? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. This was Williams’s solution (...) to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique. Taking the epigraphs as interpretative keys to the wider resonances of the book, we show how they reveal Williams’s philosophical concerns – with the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life in a disillusioned world – to be recognisably rooted in the cultural concerns of post-war Britain. In the light of its epigraphs, the book emerges as the critique of a philosophical tradition’s inadequacies to the special difficulties of its cultural moment. (shrink)

Review of Karbowski, J.. Aristotle’s Method in Ethics: Philosophy in Practice. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.

The essential thought of Eudaimonia prescribes for an intellectual platform in Greek philosophy towards the ultimate happiness in human life; hence, it necessarily intends to emphasise a vast array of moral components such as voluntary actions, internal goods and external goods, capacities and cognitive functions, practical reason, as well as mindfulness or sensory awareness. In addition to these prominent features of Eudaimonia, it certainly demonstrates a few contextual meanings: satisfaction, inner contentment, well-being, and wholesome. In fact, it has commonly been (...) assumed that there appears to be a significant ground for the eternal essence of human life, too. Then, this analytical article explores to what extent the Aristotelian attitude of Eudaimonia could be credible? With regards to this debatable issue, I will, arguably, discuss very limited findings in terms of theoretical and pragmatic applicability of Eudaimonia: the central thesis of Eudaimonia, the analysis of De Anima, the discourse of the mean alongside the role of phronesis. However, due to practical constraints, this paper cannot provide a comprehensive overview of Aristotle’s understanding of Eudaimonia. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Aristotle’s discussion of PNC in Metaphysics Gamma and argues that the argument operates at three different levels: ontological, doxastic, and semantic through the invocation of three philosophical personae: the first one can only state what is otherwise unprovable, the second one can only confirm that we should trust PNC, the third one denies PNC and must be silenced. Aristotle cannot prove what is beyond proof. This situation results in a fundamental ambiguity in the figure of the (...) philosopher. The Metaphysics is written from the standpoint of an investigative thinker who admits her puzzlement before a question that will forever remain open and imagines another philosopher who has achieved a god-like insight into the first principles of all things. The path from the first figure to the second one, however, remains an enigmatic leap. (shrink)

This paper sets out to analyze Proclus’ exegesis of Socrates’ suggestion in Parmenides 132d1-3 that Forms stand fixed as patterns, as it were, in the nature, with the other things being images and likenesses of them. Proclus’ analysis of the notion of being pattern reveals the impact of the Aristotelian conception of the form as paradigm on his views, as we can infer from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ and Simplicius’ explanation of the paradigmatic character of the Aristotelian form. Whereas Aristotle and (...) Alexander of Aphrodisias refute the efficient causality of the Platonic Forms and support that μέθεξις is just a metaphor, Syrianus, Proclus and Asclepius defend the Platonic theory, and specifically Proclus, who brings to the fore the multilateral role of the Forms as patterns with regard to the secondary things of this realm.[1] [1] An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Symposium Platonicum XII: Plato’s Parmenides, organized by the International Plato Society, Paris, 15-19 July 2019. (shrink)

Aristotle maintains that vicious people are blameworthy despite their moral ignorance, since becoming vicious was up to them and whatever is up to us we are able to do or not do. However, one’s upbringing shapes one’s moral character. Together, these claims invite an objection I call the horrible childhood challenge. According to this objection, vicious adults who suffered horrible childhoods through which they were taught to adopt bad ends as though they were good should not be held accountable for (...) their vice. Aristotle’s likely answer to this challenge reveals that, for Aristotle, a minimal degree of rationality is necessary for moral responsibility. I argue that, for Aristotle, a vicious agent is responsible for her vice only if 1) she is rational, which implies 2) she grasps a specific basic principle, thus consenting to become a certain kind of person through action. The thoroughly bad who satisfy both claims are moral idiots; those who do not may be blameless brutes. (shrink)

Aristotle claims that the virtuous motive in benefitting others is altruistic. But he also claims in Nicomachean Ethics 9.7 that benefaction is an expression of self-love. This essay examines the account of benefaction with an eye to resolving the tension between these claims. By drawing out Aristotle’s comparison between reproduction and benefaction, I show that Aristotle conceives of self-love principally in terms of activities whose causal effects redound not only to the beneficiary but also to the benefactor. With this understanding (...) of self-love, we better understand the relationship between self-love and benefaction and between self-love and friendship. (shrink)

Chapter Θ10 of Aristotle's Metaphysics is traditionally taken to be about the truth of intuitions, namely episodes of an immediate and sub-propositional grasp of entities. This exegesis however sad...

With a novel approach to Aristotle's zoology, this study looks at animals as creatures of nature and reveals a scientific discourse that, in response to his predecessors, exiles logos as reason and pursues the logos intrinsic to animals' bodies empowering them to sense the world and live. The volume explores Aristotle's conception of animals through a discussion of his ad hoc methodology to study them, including the pertinence of the soul to such a study, and the rise of zoology as (...) a branch of natural philosophy. For Aristotle, animal life stems from the body in the space of existence and revolves around sensation, which is entwined with pleasure, pain, and desire. Lack of human reason is irrelevant to an understanding of the richness of animal life and cognition. In sum, the reader will acquire knowledge of the animal as such, which lay at the core of Aristotle's agenda and required a study of its own, separate from plants and the elements. This book is intended for students of history of science, ancient biology and philosophy and all those who, from different fields, are interested in animal studies and the human/animal relation. (shrink)

Truth and Wonder is an accessible introduction to Plato and Aristotle, showing their crucial influence for literary and cultural studies, modern languages and related disciplines. It demonstrates the ways their philosophies still shape our reading, thinking and living.

This book offers a new account of Aristotle's practical philosophy. Pavlos Kontos argues that Aristotle does not restrict practical reason to its action-guiding and motivational role; rather, practical reason remains practical in the full sense of the term even when its exercise does not immediately concern the guidance of our present actions. To elucidate why this wider scope of practical reason is important, Kontos brings into the foreground five protagonists that have long been overlooked: spectators or judges who make non-motivational (...) judgments about practical matters that do not interact with their present deliberations and actions; legislators who exercise practical reason to establish constitutions and laws; hopes as an active engagement with moral luck and its impact on our individual lives; prayers as legislators' way to deal with the moral luck hovering around the birth of constitutions and the prospect of a utopia; and people who are outsiders or marginal cases of the responsibility community because they are totally deprived of practical reason. Building on a wide range of interpretations of Aristotle's practical philosophy, Kontos offers new insights about Aristotle's philosophical contribution to the current debates about radical evil, moral luck, hope, utopia, internalism and externalism, and the philosophy of law. Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Aristotle's ethics, ancient philosophy, and the history of practical philosophy. (shrink)

Through his clinical work and extensive engagement with major figures of the philosophical tradition, Jung developed an original and pluralistic psycho-ethical model based on the cooperation of consciousness with the unconscious mind. By drawing on direct quotes from all of Jung's collected works, The Red Book, and his interviews and seminars - as well as from seminal texts by Kant, Nietzsche, Aristotle and Augustine - Giovanni Colacicchi provides a philosophically-grounded analysis of the ethical relevance of Jung's analytical psychology and of (...) the concept of individuation which is at its core. The author argues that in Jung's depth-psychological thinking Kantian deontology, Nietzschean perspectivism, Aristotelian virtue ethics and Christian morality all take part in shaping a moral and ethical character. Psychology as Ethics will be essential reading for researchers with an interest in the history of ideas and the philosophy of the unconscious, as well as for therapists and counsellors who wish to ground their psychodynamic work in its philosophical context. It will also be a key reference for undergraduate and postgraduate courses and seminars in Jungian and post-Jungian studies, philosophy, psychoanalytic studies, psychology, religious studies and the social sciences. (shrink)

This book presents a positive account of Aristotle's theory of political economy, arguing that it contains elements that may help us better understand and resolve contemporary social and economic problems. The book considers how Aristotle's work has been utilized by scholars including Marx, Polanyi, Rawls, Nussbaum and Sen to develop solutions to the problem of injustice. It then goes on to present a new Social Welfare Function as an application of Aristotle's theory. In exploring how Aristotle's theories can be applied (...) to contemporary social welfare analysis, the book offers a study that will be of relevance to scholars of the history of economic thought, political theory and the philosophy of economics. (shrink)

This book offers new translations of Aristotle's Politics 5 and 6, accompanied by an introduction and commentary, targeted at historians and those who like to read political science in the context in which it was produced. Philosophical analysis remains essential and there is no intention to detract from the books as political theory, but the focus of this volume is the text as a crucial element in the discourse of fourth-century Greece, and the conflict throughout the Greek world between democracy, (...) oligarchy, and the rise of the Macedonian monarchy. (shrink)

In this stunning act of synthesis, Abraham Edel captures the entire range of Aristotle's thought in a manner that will prove attractive and convincing to a contemporary audience. Many philosophers approach Aristotle with their own, rather than his, questions. Some cast him as a partisan of a contemporary school. Even the neutral approach of classical scholarship often takes for granted questions that reflect our modern ways of dissecting the world. Aristotle and His Philosophy shows him at work in asking and (...) answering questions. Abraham Edel fashions a sound comparative way of using current analysis to deepen our understanding of Aristotle rather than argue with or simply appropriate him. Edel examines how Aristotle's basic ideas operated in his scientific and humanistic works, what they enabled him to do, what they kept him from doing, and what in turn we can learn from his philosophical experimentation. The purpose of this volume is twofold: to provide a comprehensive introduction to Aristotle's thought, and to throw fresh light on its patterned and systematic character. First, tracing the pattern in Aristotle's metaphysical and physical writings, he then explores the psychology, epistemology, ethics and politics, rhetoric and poetics. In the process, Edel discusses the way interpretations of Aristotle are built up and how different philosophical outlooks¿Catholic, Hegelian, Marxian, linguistic, naturalistic, and pragmatic¿have affected the reading of Aristotelian texts and ideas. The new introduction probes the general problem of interpreting a philosophy, and suggests how working through the different interpretations can contribute to a fuller understanding. This methodological self-consciousness makes Aristotle and His Philosophy markedly different from other studies of Aristotle. Martha C. Nussbaum of Brown University has described Edel as having "philosophical sensitivity and good sense throughout. His scholarship is comprehensive, but handled with grace and clarity.". (shrink)

It is possible that the School of Aristotle had a ‘broad’ model as a point of reference for the Politeia of a community. The differences in character or structure will have been determined by the characteristics of the community and the documentation that the School in its in own time unearthed on each community. Although there undoubtedly was a tendency towards a certain form of structure and this is evident, the structuring of an opusculum into obligatory parts, as fixed contents, (...) is rather a tendency of modern analysis. A definition of the Athenaion Politeia as ‘atypical’ must therefore be avoided since, in their variety, the quoted sources and the Heraclidean extracts demonstrate that such a fixed model does not exist. (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle’s theory of ‘factional conflict’ in Book 5 of the Politics and claims that it is mainly directed against the a-historical account of constitutional change Plato develops in the Republic. Aristotle’s investigation of the causes of stasis is oriented towards the normative political goal of stabilizing political orders and preventing their ‘change’ into different ones. This article argues that the constitution Aristotle calls ‘polity’ constitutes his solution to the challenge of stabilizing democracies and oligarchies. The paper also (...) aims at elucidating Aristotle’s conception of an empirical political science, his political realism, and the method he applies in conjunction with it in the ‘empirical’ Books of the Politics. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to bring to light the role played by concern for the ēthos of citizens in the establishment and preservation of regimes by virtuous legislative activity, with special reference to democratic forms of government. To this goal, I will lay stress on the idea of “political friendship”, which Aristotle explores in his ethical works in relation to the power of virtuous legislative activity to shape the habits of citizens. An analysis of different types of democratic (...) regimes will show that they lack of authentic political friendship. I will also contend that, although democratic measures might occasionally ameliorate and preserve imperfect regimes, Aristotle continues to maintain a negative view of such politeiai. (shrink)

Aristotle normally used historical notations to support his arguments. This is somewhat true for all the works of the corpus, but above all for Politics: the nature, objectives, and methodology of the investigations in this treatise present the strongest links with actual and concrete data, and therefore with historia. Obviously even the Aristotle of Politics is not a historian who wants to report known historiographical traditions; however, regardless of his intentions, there is no doubt that the work in question contains (...) precious ‘fragments’ of history which, in general, confirm or supplement our knowledge. There are, however, cases in which the Aristotelian exempla end up filling in the omissions and gaps of the available sources, such as the cursory reference to the nomos of the Aphytaians, which appears in the section of book 6 dedicated to the so-called agricultural democracy. (shrink)

Excepting the first half of Athēnaiōn Politeia, whose authorship remains controversial, there are no works of historical inquiry in the Aristotelian corpus. This contributes to the impression that Aristotle’s political theory abstracts from history. This judgment is reinforced by statements in the Poetics diminishing history and historians in favor of poetry and the poets. I offer a more nuanced interpretation, relying principally on an intertextual reading of the Athēnaiōn Politeia and Book Five of the Politics. Both texts direct the reader’s (...) attention to history, though in dramatically different ways. I argue that Aristotle’s uses of history are essential to his conversational engagements with the narratives that human beings construct in order to make sense of their experiences and to clarify options for choice. Read in a dialogic spirit, these texts underscore the possibilities and hazards of civic agency and preserve the importance of history, as well as poetry, for Aristotle’s political theory. (shrink)

The current study argues that different cultures can coexist better today if we focus not only on what separates them but also on what connects them. To do so, the author discusses how both Aristotle and Confucius see rhetoric as a mode of thinking that is indispensable to the human understanding of the truths of things or dao-the-way, or, how both see the human understanding of the truths of things or dao-the-way as necessarily communal, open-ended, and discursive. Based on this (...) similarity, the author aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of differences to help foster better cross-cultural communication. In making the argument, she critically examines two stereotyped views: that Aristotle s concept of essence or truth is too static to be relevant to the rhetorical focus on the realm of human affairs and that Confucius concept of dao-the-way is too decentered to be compatible with the inferential/discursive thinking. In addition, the author relies primarily on the interpretations of the Analects by two 20th-century Chinese Confucians to supplement the overreliance on renderings of the Analects in recent comparative rhetorical scholarship. The study shows that we need an in-depth understanding of both the other and the self to comprehend the relation between the two. ". (shrink)

The world has seen several financial and economic crises in the past few years. Psychological, ethical and philosophical levels of causal analysis have been discussed, and in this context, an interest in classical thinkers has emerged. The work of Aristotle has influenced writers from Marx and Menger to Amartya Sen. This book introduces us to Aristotle's thought on 'the economic' and on its influences on economists. First, it focuses on Aristotle´s ideas, situating Aristotle in his historical context, describing his positions (...) on the economic and analysing what kind of reality the economic is, its relation with ethics and with politics. Then, it determines what kind of science is concerned with the economic. Later, it analyses related topics and shows the influence of Aristotle's ideas on contemporary economists. It concludes by highlighting the Aristotelian contributions to today's economy. This scholarly volume offers important new insights into the Aristotelian approach to the economy itself, as well as to the idea of economics as a science, bringing Aristotle's views to bear on the modern economy. (shrink)

Among the works on ethics in the Aristotelian corpus, there is no serious dispute among scholars that the "Eudemian Ethics "is authentic. The "Eudemian Ethics "is" "increasingly read and used by scholars as a useful support and confirmation and sometimes contrast to the "Nicomachean Ethics." Yet, it remains a largely neglected work in the study of Aristotle's ethics, both among scholars and moral philosophers. Peter L. P. Simpson provides an analytical outline of the entire work together with summaries of each (...) individual section, making the overall structure and detailed argument clear. His translation and explanatory notes include the common books that the "Eudemian" "Ethics" shares with the "Nicomachean." This translation contains renderings of words and phrases, and proposals for emending the text that differ from what other translators and scholars have adopted. This translation is literal, without expansion or paraphrase, and yet also readable. A readable but literal translation is necessary because in the "Eudemian Ethics," more than usual in Aristotle's writings, the logic of the argumentation can turn on the peculiar wording or order. Simpson explains the argumentation where necessary in notes and separate explanatory comments. This book is a fresh, twenty-first-century rendition of the work of one of the most eminent philosophers of all time. (shrink)

With an new foreword by James Warren Long renowned as one of the clearest and best introductions to ancient Greek philosophy for non-specialists, W.K.C Guthrie s The Greek Philosophers offers us a brilliant insight into the hidden foundations of Greek philosophy foundations that underpin Western thought today. Guthrie explores the great age of Greek Philosophy from Thales to Aristotle whilst combining comprehensiveness with brevity. He unpacks the ideas and arguments of Plato and Aristotle in the light of their predecessors rather (...) than their successors and describes the characteristic features of the Greek way of thinking, emphasising what he calls the cultural soil of their ideas. He also highlights the achievements of thinkers such as Pythagoras, who in contemporary accounts of Greek philosophy are frequently overlooked. Combining philosophical insight and historical sensitivity, The Greek Philosophers offers newcomers a brilliant introduction to the greatest thinkers in ancient Greek philosophy and the very origins of Western thought. ". (shrink)

This book traces the historical roots of the cognitive sciences and examines pre-modern conceptualizations of the mind as presented and discussed in the tradition of commentaries on Aristotle's De anima from 1200 until 1650. It explores medieval and Renai.

In a formidable display of boundary-breaking scholarship, Kristján Kristjánsson analyzes and dispels misconceptions about Aristotle's views on morality, emotions and education that abound in the current literature - including claims of the emotional intelligence theorists that they have revitalized Aristotle's message for the present day. This is an arresting book that deepens the contemporary discourse on emotion cultivation and one that will excite any student of moral education, whether academic or practitioner.

Pendlebury alleges that abstraction and rationalization have had a strong and malign influence on normative moral philosophy in the 20th century. Criticizing writers such as Hare, Rawls and Scanlon for pursuing a conception of moral philosophy that bears little resemblance to the way in which human beings actually think and conduct themselves. Pendlebury, instead, suggests a 'Virtue Ethics' inspired by Hegel's and Aristotle's accounts of action as a corrective to this trend, showing that moral activity is historically and socially based (...) and must address the formed character of individual agents. (shrink)

For centuries philosophers have wrestled with the dichotomy between individual freedom on the one hand and collective solidarity on the other. Yet today there is a growing realization that this template is fundamentally flawed. In this book, Mark Young embraces and advocates a more holistic concept of freedom; one which is not merely defined negatively but which positively provides the preconditions for individuals to actively exercise their autonomy and to flourish as human beings in the process. Young posits the idea (...) of 'freedom in community' and traces its origin back to Aristotle. Taking as his premise that humans are deeply social beings who live their lives intricately interwoven with each other, he examines what type of political community is relevant for us in this post-Classical, post-Enlightenment and, indeed, post-Existential world. Identifying the failure of traditional 'statist' models of politics, Young instead argues for a civil society: a globally interlinked and free set of liberal communities as the best context for nourishing human flourishing. In this way we can achieve a proper setting for Eudaimonia in a modern sense. (shrink)

First published in 1999, this volume from Dr. Jonathan E. Pike is original and provocative and integrates sources from the history of ideas, analytical philosophy, and contemporary social theory. Pike has produced an overall account of Marx which focuses on the concept of human potential and clearly explains its ontological basis. Anyone interested in Marx studies will be indebted to this incisive discussion of the philosophical foundations of Marx's work.

Originally published in 1949. This meticulously researched book presents a comprehensive outline and discussion of Aristotle's mathematics with the author's translations of the greek. To Aristotle, mathematics was one of the three theoretical sciences, the others being theology and the philosophy of nature. Arranged thematically, this book considers his thinking in relation to the other sciences and looks into such specifics as squaring of the circle, syllogism, parallels, incommensurability of the diagonal, angles, universal proof, gnomons, infinity, agelessness of the universe, (...) surface of water, meteorology, metaphysics and mechanics such as levers, rudders, wedges, wheels and inertia. The last few short chapters address 'problems' that Aristotle posed but couldn't answer, related ethics issues and a summary of some short treatises that only briefly touch on mathematics. (shrink)

Written by renowned Aristotle scholar Sir David Ross, this study has long been established as one of the foremost surveys of Aristotle's life, work and philosophy. With John L. Ackrill's introduction and updated bibliography, created for the sixth edition, the book continues to serve as a standard guide, both for the student of ancient history and the general reader.