Aristotle

I examine and compare Confucian wu-wei rule and Aristotelian non-imperative rule as two models of non-impositional rule. How exactly do non-impositional rulers, according to these thinkers, generate order? And how might a Confucian/Aristotelian dialogue concerning non-impositional rule in distinctively political contexts proceed? Are Confucians and Aristotelians in deep disagreement, or do they actually have more in common than they initially seem?

Diogenes Laertius (8.63-6) preserves a fascinating account of the Presocratic philosopher Empedocles' life. There, drawing on evidence from Aristotle, Xanthus, and Timaeus of Tauromenium, the biographer provides several anecdotes which are meant to demonstrate how Empedocles had, contrary to expectation, been a democratic philosopher - a paradox of itself in Ancient Greece. This article unpacks the complex web woven by Diogenes and argues that there is no good reason to assume that Empedocles was indeed a democratic philosopher, and moreover, that (...) neither Xanthus nor Aristotle thought him so. Indeed, what Diogenes actually preserves for us is the Hellenistic biographer Timaeus' critical dialectical engagement with the versions Aristotle and Xanthus, in his anachronistic bid to render Empedocles a democratic hero. (shrink)

The present paper proposes to analyse the role of the practical syllogism in G.E.M. Anscombe’s theory of action. To this end, I have rst of all chosen to examine, even if in broad terms, the conception of practical syllogism as it is present in the Aristotelian doctrine, and to reveal/delineate some critical points found within it. The following section is the central part of the paper, where, starting from § 33 of Intention, a re ection is carried out on the (...) practical syllogism, which is among Aristotle’s most signi cant discoveries, chie y bringing into focus its teleological prospective. Action, in Anscombe’s thought, almost seems be the cornerstone of a profound, and in a certain sense “contextual”, comprehension of the subject. (shrink)

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IT_Nel panorama analitico emerge la gura di Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe. Ella, accanto a suo marito Peter Geach e al losofo Anthony Kenny, è stata indicata da John Haldane, tra i promotori di una nuova corrente denominata “tomismo analitico”. In questo saggio, oltre a sottolineare le debolezze che sono presenti in tale dicitura e allo stesso tempo il carattere innovativo della ri essione di questi loso , si è scelto di ripercorrere in modo critico le pagine che Anscombe dedica ad (...) un tema caro ai loso sin dalla classicità, vale a dire il tema della “sostanza”. È possibile, così, mostrare come tale concetto abbia subito delle modi che lungo tutta la storia del pensiero e, in ne, chiarire la de nizione che ne dà Anscombe. In conclusione, vengono presi in considerazioni quelli che possono essere con- siderati, sia in positivo che in negativo, i punti rilevanti della questione. EN_In the analytic philosophical panorama it is very relevant the gure of Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe. Along her husband Peter Geach and the philosopher Anthony Kenny, she was identi ed by John Haldane as one of the promoters of a new philosophical current called “Analytical Thomism”. In this paper, in addition to highlighting the weaknesses that is present in this statement and at the same time the character of innovation o ered by the re ection of these philosophers, the Author choses to analyze the topic of substance, considered by philosophers since the classical antiquity. She will show brie y how this con- cept has been changed in the history of thought, culminating in the elaboration developed by Anscombe. In the conclusion the Author shows the fallacy and the strong points of the problem. (shrink)

Plato’s nephew Speusippus has been widely accepted as the historical person behind the mask of the anti-hedonists in Phlb. 42b–44c. This hypothesis is supported by, inter alia, the link between Socrates’ char- acterization of them as δυσχερεῖς and the frequent references of δυσχέρεια as ἀπορία to Speusippus in Aristotle’s Metaphysics MN. This study argues against assigning any privileged status to Speusippus in the assimilation of δυσχέρεια with ἀπορία. Instead, based on a comprehensive survey of how δυσχερ- words were used in (...) classical antiquity, the semantic shift of δυσχέρεια can be explained in an alternative way. (shrink)

A simple transposition in the text would, I venture to suggest, remove one or two of the many difficulties of this obscure chapter.

In the June issue of the Classical Review Professor Cook Wilson announces his conversion to the view that in ‘a well-defined group’ of passages in the Nicomachean Ethics λόγος means Reason. While I cannot hope to re-convert Professor Cook Wilson, I feel that it is worth while to try to express the reasons for which it seems difficult to follow him.

Our understanding of the moral philosophy of Aristotle is hampered by a number of modern assumptions we make about the subject. For a start, we are accustomed to thinking about ethics or moral philosophy as being concerned with theoretical questions about actions—what makes an action right or wrong? Modern moral philosophy gives two different sorts of answers to this question. One is in terms of a substantial ethical theory—what makes an action right or wrong is whether it promotes the greatest (...) happiness, or whether it is in accordance with or violates a moral rule, or whether it promotes or violates a moral right. The other sort gives a meta-ethical answer—rightness and wrongness are not really properties of actions, but in describing actions as right or wrong we commend or object to them, express our approval or disapproval or our emotions concerning them. But the ancient Greeks start with a totally different question. Ethics is supposed to answer, for each one of us, the question ‘How am I to live well?’ What this question means calls for some discussion. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that Aristotle's ethical theory shares deep structural similarities with neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. I argue that this assumption is a mistake, and that Aristotle's ethical theory is both importantly distinct from the theories his work has inspired, and independently compelling. I take neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics to be characterized by two central commitments: (i) virtues of character are defined as traits that reliably promote an agent's own flourishing, and (ii) virtuous actions are defined as the sorts of actions (...) a virtuous agent reliably performs under the relevant circumstances. I argue that neither of these commitments are features of Aristotle's own view, and I sketch an alternative explanation for the relationship between virtue and happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics. Although, on the interpretation I defend, we do not find in Aristotle a distinctive normative theory alongside deontology and consequentialism, what we do find is a way of thinking about how prudential and moral reasons can come to be aligned through a certain conception of practical agency. (shrink)

Diese Einleitung skizziert verschiedene Problemfelder des Verhältnisses von Ethik und Ontologie bei Aristoteles und diskutiert überblicksartig entsprechende Lösungsansätze, die innerhalb des zeitgenössischen Neo-Aristotelismus entwickelt wurden.

In this book Timothy Clarke examines Aristotle's response to Eleatic monism, the theory of Parmenides of Elea and his followers that reality is 'one'. Clarke argues that Aristotle interprets the Eleatics as thoroughgoing monists, for whom the pluralistic, changing world of the senses is a mere illusion. Understood in this way, the Eleatic theory constitutes a radical challenge to the possibility of natural philosophy. Aristotle discusses the Eleatics in several works, including De Caelo, De Generatione et Corruptione, and the Metaphysics. (...) But his most extensive treatment of their monism comes at the beginning of the Physics, where he criticizes them for overlooking the fact that 'being is said in many ways' – in other words, that there are many ways of being. Through a careful analysis of this and other criticisms, Clarke explains how Aristotle's engagement with the Eleatics prepares the ground for his own theory of the principles of nature. Aristotle is commonly thought to be an unreliable interpreter of his Presocratic predecessors; in contrast, this book argues that his critique can shed valuable light on the motivation of the Eleatic theory and its influence on the later philosophical tradition. (shrink)

What makes Christopher P. Long’s study of Aristotle’s ontology especially rewarding is that it is philosophically motivated. The goal is not simply to “get right what Aristotle said,” but rather to think in dialogue with Aristotle, which implies a willingness to think beyond and even against him. Long makes the general philosophical motivation of his book perfectly clear: it is the desire to find “a way between the totalizing tendencies of modernism and the anarchy of postmodernism”. This is an ethical (...) motivation, since for Long justice requires both a recognition of the fundamental autarchy of each being and a recognition of principles. But why turn back to an ancient Greek philosopher in this contemporary debate? The reason is that Long sees Aristotle as pointing “to a form of knowledge that is neither totalizing nor anarchic”. This third way of knowing is described by Long as a matter of conceptualizing the individual in such a way as to acknowledge its singularity and not reduce it to the mere instantiation of a concept. It is to see the individual neither as an inexplicable singularity nor as only the particular instantiation of a universal. Long finds this neither/nor in Aristotle’s concept of the τόδε τι, which he at one point aptly describes as “the very conceptualization of that which always escapes the concept” : “The term τόδε τι designates this individual emerging out of its isolated singularity, prior to its being reduced to particularity, the mere instantiation of a dominating concept”. Thus we get the following account of what a non-totalizing and non-anarchic form of knowledge would be like and therefore of what Long seeks to find in Aristotle. (shrink)

Apart from the editors' introduction, the book consists of ten essays originally delivered at a conference at which Greek philosophy specialists were paired with their Kantian counterparts: John McDowell and Barbara Herman on deliberation and moral development; T. H. Irwin and Stephen Engstrom on eudaimonism; Allen Wood and Jennifer Whiting on self-love and self-worth; Christine Korsgaard and Julia Annas on moral worth and practical reason; and John Cooper and J. B. Schneewind on the Stoics and Kant.

In Nicomachean Ethics X.5, Aristotle gives a series of arguments for the claim that pleasures differ from one another in kind in accordance with the differences in kind among the activities they arise in connection with. I develop an interpretation of these arguments based on an interpretation of his theory of pleasure (which I have defended elsewhere) according to which pleasure is the perfection of perfect activity. In the course of developing this interpretation, I reconstruct Aristotle’s phenomenology of pleasure, arguing (...) that while he denies that all pleasures share any given phenomenal element, he does think that all pleasures have a common phenomenal structure. Finally, I argue that Aristotle’s view that pleasures differ in kind does not imply that they cannot be compared in pleasantness. (shrink)