An outstanding group of leaders left evidence that a richer and more sustainable democracy could be achieved with American independence and democratic principles integrated into a new republican form of government. They were moved by principles that are the very spirit of democracy. These principles are needed to enhance democracy and improve well-being. Using the constructivist tradition of grounded theory and Aristotle’s conception of abstraction, the article proposes a theory of the first principles of (...) democracy based on substantive data: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers, and the United States Constitution. Knowledge, fairness, human dignity, hope, unity, and security are the first principles of democracy and are regarded as the bedrock of democracy and a government framework for the people. This theory contributed to a formal model of democratic social change. It also contributes a conceptual framework that supports Solum’s semantic originalism, a theory of constitutional interpretation. The principles of democracy can revitalize democracy and provide new possibilities by protecting education as an innate human right, abolishing capital punishment, criminalizing private prisons on the stock market, and reevaluating the proportionality of prison sentences. (shrink)

Aristotle's cognitive ideal is a form of understanding that requires a sophisticated grasp of scientific first principles. At the end of the Analytics, Aristotle tells us that we learn these principles by induction. But on the whole, commentators have found this an implausible claim: induction seems far too basic a process to yield the sort of knowledge Aristotle's account requires. In this paper I argue that this criticism is misguided. I defend a broader reading (...) of Aristotelian induction, on which there's good sense to be made of the claim that we come to grasp first principles inductively, and show that this reading is a natural one given Aristotle's broader views on scientific learning. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the three main varieties of soul – nutritive, perceptual, and rational – are hierarchically ordered. I develop and defend an interpretation of the soul’s unity that centers on Aristotle’s attempt to explain this hierarchy’s organizing cause. Aristotle draws an analogy between this series of souls and the series of figures. I first elucidate the fundamental feature both series share: each series’ prior members are present in capacity in its posterior members. I do so (...) by examining several other cases – mathematical, biological, and physical – where Aristotle appeals to presence in capacity. I then argue that an organism’s living body is continuous by nature. That is, an organism’s soul is the principle, cause, and end of a single, articulate activity of living and each of an organism’s vital bodily movements are aspects or partial manifestations of this unitary, natural activity. This account of natural continuity is, I contend, the key to understanding what it is for one soul to be present in capacity in another. And this account of presence in capacity is, I contend, the key to understanding what it is for a soul that comprises parts to be a unity. (shrink)

Scholars have long debated how exactly Aristotle thinks that agents acquire the distinctive archai (“principles” or “starting‐points”) that govern their practical reasoning. The debate has traditionally been dominated by anti‐intellectualists, who hold that for Aristotle all agents acquire their archai solely through a process of habituation in the nonrational soul. Their traditional opponents, the intellectualists, focus their argument on the case of the virtuous person, arguing that in Aristotle’s view virtuous agents acquire their archai through a (...) process of reasoning. I intervene in this debate in two main ways: first, I press a heretofore underappreciated objection against anti‐intellectualism, that it is inconsistent with Aristotle’s account of akrasia; and second, I urge that all sides in the debate would benefit from more sustained attention to Aristotle’s nonvirtuous character types. In the final section, I suggest that proper consideration of the full breadth of Aristotle’s account of character points in the direction of a new approach that I call “character pluralism,” according to which Aristotle’s moral psychology does not involve a single conception of psychic structure or moral development that is equally applicable to all character types. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle on the Etruscan Robbers:A Core Text of "Aristotelian Dualism"Abraham P. Bos (bio)1. A Non-Platonic Dualism in Aristotle's Lost WorksThe Soul of a Mortal on Earth is not "At Home," says Aristotle in his dialogue Eudemus. The story about the mantic dream of the expatriate Eudemus and his expectation that he "will return home"1 is well known. It makes clear that, in Aristotle's view, the (...) death of the human individual should be interpreted as the soul's "return to its homeland."2 This is strongly suggested by "the revelation of Silenus" which Plutarch (first century CE) passes down in a literal quotation from the Eudemus.3 It contains the theme of human life on earth as a punishment (timôria). The motif of human life as a punishment is central to two texts by Iamblichus (250-325 CE) and Augustine (354-430 CE), which are usually connected with Aristotle's Protrepticus.4 I want to examine these texts in more detail here. My intention in the following exposition is to propose a non-Platonistic explanation of these texts. In my opinion they have wrongly been read as testimonies of a "Platonistic" phase in Aristotle. The existence of such a phase in Aristotle's development has never been proved. Besides, the interpretation of these texts suffered from the fact that [End Page 289] Aristotle's De anima had also been explained in an unhistorical way since Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE.2. Revising the Modern View of AristotleWe have to make a different assessment of Aristotle's contribution to the discussion on the soul compared with what was current until recently. For after W. Jaeger5 and F. Nuyens6, modern scholars became inclined to leave Aristotle's dialogues out of consideration, because they regarded them as "Platonizing." But a fundamental correction is necessary on this point.7 Jaeger led modern Aristotle studies in a wrong direction by assuming a sharp distinction between Aristotle's lost dialogue Eudemus and his surviving treatise De anima. Although nowadays Jaeger's theory for many scholars is something of a dead horse, nevertheless a real alternative has not been proposed. We still have to get rid of the consequences of the Jaegerian paradigm and develop a unitary interpretation of Aristotle's entire oeuvre. Even more consistently than O. Gigon has already done,8 we should assume that Aristotle's lost works and his surviving biological writings and De anima did not propose two (or more) different psychological theories but one and the same. Because this one Aristotelian psychology was a non-Platonistic but nevertheless dualistic psychology, we have much more reason than could be recognized in the past to assume Aristotelian influence on this discussion.On one essential issue Aristotle disagreed with his teacher Plato: the soul,9 more particularly the indissoluble bond of the soul with a body. Aristotle radically and [End Page 290] consistently argued for the distinction between nous and psychè.10 For Aristotle the nous-in-act is always wholly incorporeal. But he considered it characteristic of the soul that it cannot carry out its functions "without body."11However, the crucial question is: what body does Aristotle mean when he says that the soul cannot perform its specific activities "without body"? Jaeger and Nuyens were wholly convinced that Aristotle was referring to the visible, external body of a human being, animal, or plant. Hence they saw a yawning gap between Aristotle's views in De anima and his position in the dialogue the Eudemus. In the Eudemus Aristotle had clearly argued that the soul can perform its own functions very well, indeed better, without the galling and oppressive visible body.12 But in De anima II 1, in his famous definition of "the soul," Aristotle says that the soul is inextricably bound up with a "sôma physikon organikon."13 Jaeger and Nuyens, following an almost unanimous tradition since Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE, interpreted this sentence in the sense that the soul is the formal principle or entelechy of an "organic body" or a "natural body equipped with organs," i.e., the visible body... (shrink)

This monograph is a fundamental theme in Thomism. It deals with the basic ontological principles. From the Thomistic perspective and based on Aristotle, it studies the nature and roles of the essential principles on which reality itself is constructed. <BR> The work starts with a brief historical survey of first principles from the classical period through the modern/post-modern philosophical schools. <BR> The monograph proceeds to study Thomas Aquinas' understanding and use of the principles along (...) with the possibility of the knowledge of these first principles especially through their habits. It underlines the central position of the habits of the first principles in realistic philosophy.<BR> To determine their proper character, the volume juxtaposes the first ontological principles with some transcendental notions followed by the most basic practical ethical principles. Since there are no demonstrations for the first principles, the work further investigates the evidence and indirect demonstration of these first realistic crucial principles and ends with an accent on transition from principles to a wise vision that culminates in man's relationship to reality and especially to God. (shrink)

This book reconsiders the Aristotelian analogy. Focusing primarily on Aristotle’s Physics Alpha, a structure of analogy emerges within Aristotle’s discussion of the principles of “becoming.” Eric Schumacher argues that logos, the first of these principles, is rooted in analogy and entails a type of mobility fit to reflect the be-coming of nature.

Aristotle maintains that paideia enables one to judge the method used by a given speaker without judging the conclusions drawn as well. He contends that this "paideia of principles" requires three things: seeing that principles are not derived from one another; seeing that there is nothing before them within reason; and, seeing that they are the source of much knowledge. In order to grasp these principles, one must respectively learn to recognize what distinguishes the subject matters (...) studied in different disciplines, see first principles as coming from experience and acquire the habit of seeking them in one’s experience and, finally, see first principles as being the source of conclusions. While the second and third points might at first seem to pertain to "nous" and science, respectively, rather than to paideia, the case can be made that paideia involves more of a firm grasp of principles than "nous" and a less perfect way of relating conclusion to principles than science. (shrink)

David Bronstein sheds new light on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics--one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy--by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. He argues that the Posterior Analytics is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge, an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind's ascent from sense-perception of particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. Bronstein goes on to highlight (...) Plato's influence on Aristotle's text, and argues against current orthodoxy that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing's essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes. (shrink)

In his commentary on Euclid, Proclus says both that the first principle of geometry are self-evident and that they are hypotheses received from the single, highest, unhypothetical science, which is probably dialectic. The implication of this seems to be that a geometer both does and does not know geometrical truths. This dilemma only exists if we assume that Proclus follows Aristotle in his understanding of these terms. This paper shows that this is not the case, and explains what (...) Proclus himself means by definition, hypothesis, axiom, postulate, and the self-evident, and how geometry is a science that receives its principles from dialectic. (shrink)

Aristotle and Plotinus both demonstrate the existence of a first principle as cause of the existence of all things. Aristotle puts forward that this first principle is a divine intellect which thinks on itself, and in being the highest being in complete actuality and without potentiality, it is also absolutely simple. Plotinus, on the other hand, sees reason to assert that the divine intellect can not be absolutely simple but a duality of some sort, and thus (...) the first principle, as a cause of unity for all things, must be beyond the divine intellect and thus beyond being in being, itself, absolutely simple. Comparing Plotinus to Aristotle, Plotinus’ position appears odd at the outset given that he also holds to the divine intellect being completely in act and that it thinks on itself. Why thinking should be dual even when it is self-referential and unified in its activity is not apparent, and so Aristotle’s position seems the more coherent one. Yet, through an analysis of both positions, this dissertation proposes that Plotinus better accounts for the problem of self-intellection as requiring some form of distinction in thought while maintaining an identity between the subject and object of thought. If absolute simplicity is an essential attribute to being the first principle, Plotinus’ position is ultimately more consistent in positing a first principle beyond the divine intellect while also holding to a more coherent understanding of thinking with his understanding of divine intellect as a duality instead of an absolute simplicity. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is an apparent contradiction, often pointed out by commentators of the Poetics. In his treatise on poetry, whose object is human action, why does Aristotle assign a major role to necessity, while in the Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics he clearly states that in the field of human action there is no place for necessity but only for probability? One answer has been, that in the Poetics Aristotle refers to a weaker type (...) of necessity, which in the end is more or less the same as probability. The fact that Aristotle (the argument continues) speaks almost always not only of necessity but also of probability, is proof of this weakening of necessity. I argue, on the contrary, that in the Poetics necessity and probability are two distinct principles, which concern different aspects of the tragedy (i. e. the most accomplished poetical work according to Aristotle), and which therefore should not be blurred. The first step is to make clear that the alleged contradiction is only apparent. It is in fact true that in the world of action, according to Aristotle, there can be no necessity, but action is only the object of poetry and not poetry itself. Poetry as such is a technique, which differs from other techniques (like medicine) on account of its ends, and, consequently, also on account of its object. In the world of technique, as is clearly stated both in the Methaphysics and in the Posterior Analytics, there is necessity, in the sense that to reach this or that end you have – necessarily – to do this or that. But then – this is the second step – what is the relation between technical necessity and the principle of probability? Evidently probability concerns the world of action, the object of poetry. This brings me to the following conclusion: When Aristotle tells us that the aim of the poet is to say what is possible according to probability and necessity, he means that the poet should take probable actions as objects and use them as necessary means to reach a particular end. This end, in the case of tragedy, is the tragic plot. The two principles are then strictly connected (every moment of the tragedy has to be looked at from one side and the other), but nonetheless distinct. (shrink)

Aristotle’s notion of experience occupies an important place in his account of scientific understanding and its methodology. It is linked, not only to sense-perception and the principles of skill and scientific understanding, but also, methodologically, to ἐπαγωγή. Due to its various involvements it has a complex job to perform. Such a complexity – or Janus-face – gives rise to many questions concerning its status and content. Many of these questions were raised in later antiquity. In the introductory part (...) of the paper I shall give a very brief summary of Aristotle’s notion of experience, concentrating on issues that will be relevant next, and then discuss the explanation we find in a commentary which has come down to us under the name of Philoponus. I do it in the hope that the discussion sheds light on novelties in the commentator’s approach which deserve attention. (shrink)

According to the standard and largely traditional interpretation, Aristotle’s conception of nous, at least as it occurs in the Posterior Analytics, is geared against a certain set of skeptical worries about the possibility of scientific knowledge, and ultimately of the knowledge of Aristotelian first principles. On this view, Aristotle introduces nous as an intuitive faculty that grasps the first principles once and for all as true in such a way that it does not leave (...) any room for the skeptic to press his skeptical point any further. Thus the tradi- tional interpretation views Aristotelian nous as having an internalist justificatory role in Aristotelian epistemology. In contrast, a minority (empiricist) view that has emerged recently holds the same internalist justificatory view of nous but rejects its internally certifiable infallibility by stressing the connection between nous and Aristotelian induction. I argue that both approaches are flawed in that Aristotle’s project in the Posterior Analytics is not to answer the skeptic on internalist justificatory grounds, but rather lay out a largely externalist explication of scientific knowledge, i.e. what scientific knowledge consists in, without worrying as to whether we can ever show the skeptic to his satisfaction that we do ever possess knowledge so defined. (shrink)

The claim that knowledge is grounded on a basic, non-inferentially grasped set of principles, which seems to be Aristotle’s view, in contemporary epistemology can be seen as part of a wider foundationalist account. Foundationalists assume that there must be some premise-beliefs at the basis of every felicitous reasoning which cannot be themselves in need of justification and may not be challenged. They provide justification for truths based on these premises, which Aristotle unusually call principles (archái). Can (...) Aristotle be considered a foundationalist? Are his first principles necessary premises to right inferences? We will look at the issue here. (shrink)

This volume draws together Allan Gotthelf's pioneering work on Aristotle's biology. He examines Aristotle's natural teleology, the axiomatic structure of biological explanation, and the reliance on scientifically organized data in the three great works with which Aristotle laid the foundations of biological science.

With the systematic aim of clarifying the phenomenon sometimes described as “the intellectual apprehension of first principles,” Descartes’ first principle par excellence is interpreted before the historical backcloth of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. To begin with, three “faces” of the cogito are distinguished: (1) the proto-cogito (“I think”), (2) the cogito proper (“I think, therefore I am”), and (3) the cogito principle (“Whatever thinks, is”). There follows a detailed (though inevitably somewhat conjectural) reconstruction of the transition of (...) the mind from (1) via (3) to (2) and back again to (3). What emerges is, surprisingly, a non-circular, non-logical, and ultimately non-mysterious process by which first principles implicitly contained in a complex intuition are gradually rendered explicit (and, if abstract, grasped in their abstract universality). This process bears a striking family resemblance to that intuitive induction (“grasping the universal in the particular”) which Aristotle scholars have distinguished from empirical forms of induction. (shrink)

Łukasiewicz distinguishes three formulations of the principle of contradiction in Aristotle’s works: ontological, logical, and psychological. The first two formulations are equivalent though not synonymous, but neither of them is equivalent to the psychological one, which expresses not a principle but only an empirical law. Furthermore, the principle of contradiction is neither a simple and ultimate law nor is it necessary for conducting an inference, because the syllogism is independent of it. The further explanation of this concept leads (...) Łukasiewicz to formulate the idea of a non-Aristotelian logic, that is, a logic operating without the principle of contradiction. If the principle of contradiction shall be valid, it must be proved. A proof can be supplied only on the basis of a definition of object, as something that cannot have and not have the same property at the same time. However, this definition does not hold for all objects, i.e., for contradictory objects. In virtue of its ontological character the Aristotelian principle of contradiction is then different from that of symbolic logic. (shrink)

Exploring Aristotle's philosophical method and the merits of his conclusions, Irwin here shows how Aristotle defends dialectic against the objection that it cannot justify a metaphysical realist's claims. He focuses particularly on Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics, stressing the connections between doctrines that are often discussed separately.

Łukasiewicz distinguishes three formulations of the principle of contradiction in Aristotle’s works: ontological, logical, and psychological. The first two formulations are equivalent though not synonymous, but neither of them is equivalent to the psychological one, which expresses not a principle but only an empirical law. Furthermore, the principle of contradiction is neither a simple and ultimate law nor is it necessary for conducting an inference, because the syllogism is independent of it. The further explanation of this concept leads (...) Łukasiewicz to formulate the idea of a non-Aristotelian logic, that is, a logic operating without the principle of contradiction. If the principle of contradiction shall be valid, it must be proved. A proof can be supplied only on the basis of a definition of object, as something that cannot have and not have the same property at the same time. However, this definition does not hold for all objects, i.e., for contradictory objects. In virtue of its ontological character the Aristotelian principle of contradiction is then different from that of symbolic logic. (shrink)

Feminist critics have charged that Aristotle's mistaken and harmful remarks about women and slaves show inconsistency or bias-driven arbitrariness. However, this analysis shows that these remarks function within a consistent and coherent theoretical corpus. Thus, both Aristotle's hierarchical and dualistic first principles and the methodology on which his entire corpus is based must be unreliable. Moreover, consistency and coherence must be insufficient warrants of theoretical insightfulness. Aristotle's mistakes suggest caveats for feminist philosophical reconstruction.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical RefutationsMarina Berzins McCoyAristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations. Scott Schreiber. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. pp. 240. $68.50, hardcover; $22.95, paperback.Scott Schreiber's Aristotle on False Reasoning is the first full-length English commentary on Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations in the last century. Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations is a text that (...) has received relatively little attention in the last century of scholarship, despite a revival of interest in other aspects of Aristotle's work concerned with the nature of good argument and rhetoric. (The 1995 French translation and commentary by Loius-Andre Dorion is a notable exception.) Schreiber finds the primary reason [End Page 92] for inattention to this text to lie in the tendency of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy to resolve problems in reasoning through linguistic clarification (xiv). Aristotle's claim that some errors are due to language while others lie outside the realm of linguistic error is not one to which contemporary analytic philosophy has been particularly sympathetic. The Sophistical Refutations has been neglected in light of contemporary logic. Schreiber's book attempts to return to Aristotle's project on his own philosophical terms, in order to better understand why Aristotle classified errors in reasoning as he did. Schreiber's approach is to examine each of the twelve types of false reasoning that Aristotle lays out in the Sophistical Refutations, with particular attention to Aristotle's examples, in order to understand the principles behind the overall system.Schreiber argues that Aristotle had good reason for separating errors due to language from those outside of language: Aristotle's classification of error is tied to his notion of the resolution of false arguments. To understand how to resolve a sophistical argument, we must first understand how it could have been believed to be true. Since Aristotle's aim in the Sophistical Refutations is to show why certain sorts of arguments are deceptive to some who hear them, his method of explaining errors is less a pure examination of their logical errors than of how such erroneous arguments can deceive. Aristotle is concerned with two types of problems with sophistical argument: first, why such an argument is false; and second, why it might appear to be true. Schreiber shows that most commentators have not given sufficient attention to the second of these concerns in their attempts to understand Aristotle's taxonomy. As Schreiber puts it, "Examples of false reasoning are unified into groups and differentiated into subgroups not by the nature of the confusions that they engender but by the different ways that confusion is cleared up" (54). False reasoning is due not only to mistakes in logic, but also to mistaken beliefs about language and reality. Careful examination of Aristotle's thinking allows us to see the importance of beliefs about the world in good and bad argument.For the most part, Schreiber's examinations of Aristotle's examples are lucid and helpful in understanding both the particular example at hand as well as the general picture of Aristotle's classifications. Schreiber continually returns to the importance of Aristotle's own view of language and argument in contrast to the approaches of contemporary linguistics and logic. For example, while some twentieth-century scholars have attempted to explain Aristotle's distinction between homonymy and amphiboly in terms of the contemporary distinction between semantics and syntax, [End Page 93] Aristotle seems to distinguish the two according to whether a general predicate signifies many particulars regardless of context, or in a propositional context (31). In the end, Schreiber does not think that the categories of homonymy and amphiboly can be completely distinct, even on Aristotle's own grounds, but still finds the categories useful. Schreiber is also careful to provide criticism of Aristotle's categories when warranted, both defending Aristotle against his contemporary critics when he thinks they have misunderstood him, and pointing out genuine weaknesses in Aristotle's arguments.Schreiber's book is clearly intended as a response to the contemporary Anglo-American reading of Aristotle. Much of the book assumes at least some familiarity with the ways in... (shrink)

The relation of the special and the general principle of relativity to the principle of covariance, the principle of equivalence and Mach's principle, is discussed. In particular, the connection between Lorentz covariance and the special principle of relativity is illustrated by giving Lorentz covariant formulations of laws that violate the special principle of relativity: Ohm's law and what we call “Aristotle's first and second laws.” An “Aristotelian” universe in which all motion is relative to “absolute space” is considered. (...) The first law: a free particle is at rest. The second law: force is proportional to velocity. Ohm's law: the current density is proportional to the electrical field strength. Neither of these laws fulfills the principle of relativity. The examples illustrate, in the context of Lorentz covariance and special relativity, Kretschmann's critique of founding Einstein's general principle of relativity on the principle of general covariance. A modification of the principle of covariance is suggested, which may serve as a restricted criterium for a physical law to satisfy Einstein's general principle of relativity. Other objections that have been raised to the validity of Einstein's general principle of relativity are based upon the preferred state of inertial frames in the general, as well as in the special theory, the existence of tidal effects in “true” gravitational fields, doubts as to the validity of Mach's principle, whether electromagnetic phenomena obey the principle, and, finally, the anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation. These objections are reviewed and discussed. (shrink)

The scope of this book is to revisit the ancient Aristotelian and Plotinian philosophical and metaphysical problem of dualism and monism with respect to the first principle. Essentially, it defends Aristotle’s position of the primacy of an intelligible first principle over the Plotinian philosophical move to affirm a principle above Intellect.

We have it on the authority of Aristotle that “reason (nous) is the best thing in us” (EN X.7, 1177a20). This idealization of reason permeates his account of eudaimonia, a term commonly translated as ‘happiness’, which Aristotle identifies with living and doing well (EN I.4, 1095a18-20). In harmony with a certain intellectualism peculiar to the mainstream of ancient philosophical accounts of eudaimonia, Aristotle holds that living well requires the unique practical application of rationality of which only humans (...) are capable (EN I.7, 1098a13-15/EE I.7, 1217a25-27). This dissertation investigates Aristotle’s substantive view on the practical application of reason by examining how, according to him, human agents use reason to decide what to do, what kind of person to be, and indeed how to live well. A distinctively human way of making decisions is deliberation (bouleusis), an exercise of practical reason par excellence. The first chapter reconstructs Aristotle’s account of deliberation from a wide range of texts in the corpus. It argues that deliberation is a complex decision-making process that, for the most part, unfolds into four stages: (1) positing a provisional goal; (2) constructing a set of alternatives; (3) identifying the best alternative; (4) forming an intention to do the most proximate action as identified in the penultimate stage. This reading offers a comprehensive representation of Aristotle’s theory while rendering his theory more sophisticated—and indeed more modern—than the alternatives in recent years. Deciding what to do often requires that we confront the question, “Which is preferable (hairetōteron) or better (beltion) between two or more options?” In Topics III, a text widely acknowledged as the inaugural treatment of the logic of preference, Aristotle articulates a set of principles to guide our preference-ranking. While scholars pay historical homage to Aristotle, there is little engagement with his treatment of preference logic. The second chapter addresses the need for a current study and reassessment of Aristotle’s preference-ranking principles. It argues that, despite differences in scope and methodology between the Aristotelian and modern systems, the description inaugural treatment of preference logic comfortably, and accurately, applies to Topics III. When one looks at the role that Aristotle allows reason to play in the production and motivation of action, it is tempting to conclude that Aristotle endorses the Humean division of labor. For Aristotle claims that deliberation is about “the things towards the goal” (EN III.3, 1112b11-16) and that virtue (aretē) makes our goals right (EN VI.12, 1144a7-9). Chapter three seeks to show, against a recent influential quasi-Humean interpretation, that the primary function of practical reason is mapping the landscape of value corresponding to the agent’s reasoned conception of what eudaimonia consists in, as a rational being that she is. Aristotle notoriously defends the political subordination of individuals he believes to have a defective deliberative capacity. In Politics I.13, he claims that the deliberative faculty is undeveloped in children and “ineffectual” (akuron) in women (1260a12). The concluding chapter considers a puzzle about the development of the female’s deliberative faculty: How do women become ineffective in their deliberation, but freemen do not, given that all children have deliberative faculties that are unperfected? Drawing from the theories defended in previous chapters, I argue that the female’s deliberative defect is primarily due to her lack of moral education rather than inalterable sexual, biological differences—a thesis widely endorsed by scholars lately. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Aristotle's basic principle, that all friends love only because of the lovable, is egoistic. First, I argue that 'the lovable' (τὸ φιλητὸν) refers to that which appears to contribute to one's own happiness. Second, I argue that the lovable is the final cause of love. This means that in loving only because of the lovable, all friends love only for the sake of what appears to contribute to their own happiness. Further, Aristotelian (...) love for others not only requires that these others appear to contribute to one's own happiness but also prioritizes one's own happiness; Aristotelian love is therefore in some sense egoistic. (shrink)

There is a tension in scholarship about Aristotle’s philosophy, especially his philosophy of science, between empiricist readings and rationalist readings. A prime site of conflict is Posterior Analytics II.19 where Aristotle, after having said that we know the first principles by induction suddenly says that we know them by nous. Those taking the rationalist side find in nous something like a faculty of “intuition” and are led to the conclusion that by “induction” Aristotle has some (...) kind of idea of “intuitive induction”. Those taking the empiricist side resist this temptation but then struggle to explain how we can know first principles by induction and usually end by relegating induction to a mere subsidiary role; well-known problems of induction, with which Aristotle shows some familiarity, militate against taking anything we learn from induction to be a first principle or even certain. I am on the side of the empiricists, and would like to adopt as a methodological assumption that no concept of intuition occurs in any of Aristotle’s works. That is a far more ambitious project than I am attempting here, however. Here, I want to defend a non-intuitive, enumerative kind of induction against a raft of criticisms raised against it in the collection Shifting the Paradigm: Alternative Approaches to Induction. I want to defend the position that Hume and Aristotle have basically the same conception of induction and of what it can and cannot do. What it cannot do, for both, is prove natural necessities. A paradigm shift is neither necessary nor desirable for a proper understanding of Aristotle’s philosophy of science. Aristotle is still the empiricist philosopher we all thought he was before reading Posterior Analytics II.19. (shrink)

What role do the first principles of morals play in Reid's moral theory? Reid has an official line regarding their role, which identifies these principles as foundational propositions that evidentially ground other moral propositions. I claim that, by Reid's own lights, this line of thought is mistaken. There is, however, another line of thought in Reid, one which identifies the first principles of morals as constitutive of moral thought. I explore this interpretation, arguing that it (...) is a fruitful way of understanding much of what Reid wants to say about the role of moral first principles and drawing some connections between it and recent work on moral nonnaturalism. (shrink)

This chapter has two objectives. The first is to clarify Aristotle’s view of the first principles of the sciences. The second is to stake out a critical position with respect to this view. The paper sketches an alternative to Aristotle’s intuitionism based in part on the use of quantitative inductive logics.

There have in recent years been at least two important attempts to get to grips with Aristotle's conception of dialectic. I have in mind those by Martha C. Nussbaum in ‘Saving Aristotle's appearances’, which is chapter 8 of her The Fragility of Goodness, and by Terence H. Irwin in his important, though in my opinion somewhat misguided, book Aristotle's First Principles. There is a sense in which both of these writers are reacting to the work (...) of G. E. L. Owen on cognate matters, particularly his well-known paper ‘Tithenai ta phainomena’. Owen himself was in part reacting to what I suppose is the traditional view of how Aristotle regarded dialectic, as revealed in Topics I. 1. On that view dialectic is for Aristotle a lesser way of proceeding than is demonstration, the method of science. For demonstration proceeds from premises which are accepted as true in themselves and moves from them to conclusions which follow necessarily from those premises; and the middle term of such a demonstrative syllogism then provides the ‘reason why’ for the truth of the conclusion. Dialectic proceeds from premises which are accepted on a lesser basis ‘by everyone or by the majority or by the wise, i.e. by all, or by the majority, or by the most notable and reputable of them’, and proceeds deductively from them to further conclusions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle's On the Soul: A Critical Guide ed. by Caleb M. CohoeAttila HangaiCaleb M. Cohoe, editor. Aristotle's On the Soul: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Hardback, $99.99.Guiding readers through Aristotle's science of the soul, this volume covers many major topics of De Anima (DA) and addresses specific questions, including perennial interpretive problems. The self-contained chapters approach the text either by illuminating its (...) context or by elucidating key psychological concepts. While some contributions refer to relevant [End Page 318] positions by Aristotle's predecessors or contemporary philosophers, connections drawn to other Aristotelian texts predominate. Throughout, the emphasis is on philosophical questions. The result is a first-rate philosophical guide through this densely written treatise, which allows experienced readers of DA to deepen their understanding of Aristotelian psychology. Since most chapters approach interpretive issues from new angles and presuppose familiarity with the existing scholarship, beginners may want to start elsewhere.In Reeve's reading (chapter 1), Aristotle pursues dialectic in DA to define the soul as the first principle for the science of life. He construes dialectic as "going through puzzles and solving them by appeal to endoxa" (21), and equates it with induction from perceptual experience to knowledge of principles and causes. Contesting this view, Carter (chapter 2) argues that the physicist's method is not dialectical because the predecessors' views, conflicting as they are, do not constitute endoxa. Through close readings of DA II.2–5, he shows that Aristotle investigates earlier theories to assess how well they explain the main functions of the soul. One pertinent theory takes the soul to be attunement (harmonia). Shields (chapter 4) elucidates Aristotle's case for hylomorphism as an advance over the harmonia theory. Although harmonia (as the proper arrangement of parts) implies normativity, it falls short of rendering the soul as a final cause with its own good, so it cannot explain the unity of the body. Frey's chapter 5 on the soul's unity deals with this latter function. The problem of unity stems from the fact that each level in the hierarchy of souls—nutritive, perceptual, rational—can be defined independently, yet a posterior soul presupposes the existence of all prior ones. The key Frey uses to understand unity is potential presence. Just as a triangle is present potentially in a quadrangle—for division of the latter yields triangles—so too is the nutritive soul present potentially in the perceptual soul, although not due to a separating act. This, however, has counterintuitive implications: animal nutrition would be the function of a perceptual soul; furthermore, the nutritive soul of the embryo (in Frey's biological example) would first be present potentially (as undeveloped) and, once actualized (when developed), would revert to potentiality (at the development of the perceptual soul). Frey's other proposal is more promising. It turns on the notion of natural continuity: having an internal cause for a characteristic change with a unitary goal. Thus, the soul's unity for Frey (despite his reservations) seems to boil down to teleology: the soul sets a goal achieved through the manifestation of species-specific life functions. Invoking the biology of animal reproduction, Gelber (chapter 6) complements the teleological unity regarding the nutritive soul-part with the unity constituted by the continuity of the processes of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, namely, unity by material and efficient causes.Among the three contributions on reason (nous), Scheiter (chapter 3), examining its separability, breaks with the traditional interpretation and takes Aristotle to show (in DA III.4 and I.3) that reason is independent not only of bodily organs but of any magnitude (megethos). This envisages DA III.4–8 as an investigation into how reason functions as a different kind of capacity. It turns out, according to Kelsey's insightful chapter 11, that reason's actuality—insight (noēsis)—is the same as its intelligible object (noēton), and so intelligibility depends on separation from matter by the actuality of reason, making all and only the immaterial things intelligible and intelligent. Cohoe (chapter 12) draws the conclusion: human reason for Aristotle—being the defining part of the human soul, most... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE ARISTOTELIAN FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J. Pontijicia Universitas Gregoriana Rome, Italy INTRODUCTION* I N THE Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, a. 2,1 Thomas Aquinas identifies what is often spoken of as "the first principle of practical reason"-that is, "that good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." Thomas explains: All other precepts of the natural law are (...) based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) *I am grateful to Peter Ryan, S.J. and Stephen Brock for commenting on a draft of this paper. 1I shall use a number of abbreviations: ST= Summa Theologiae; An.Post. =Posterior analytics; An.Pr. =Prior analytics; DA =De anima; EE =Eudemian ethics; EN = Nicomachean Ethics; GA =De generatione animalium; lnsomn. =De insomniis; Int. = De interpretatione; Metaph. =Metaphysics; MM= Magna moralia; Phys. =Physics; R. =Republic; Rhet. =Rhetorica; SE =Sophistici elenchi; FPPR =the first principle of practical reason; PNC =the principle of non-contradiction. I also use a number of transliterated Greek terms such as akolasia (depravity), akolastos (depraved person), akrasia (weakness of will), akrates (person subject to weakness of will), egkrateia (continence in spite of temptation), egkrates (person who remains continent in spite of temptation ), and phronesis (practical wisdom). I use them for brevity's sake and since they have also found their way into the standard philosophical vocabulary, at least in Aristotelian studies. I also speak in this essay as if Aristotle was the author of MM. For an argument in favor of a qualified understanding of this thesis, see note 14. For the Greek text of the works of Aristotle I have for the most part used the Oxford Classical Texts. The one major exception is Susemihl's edition of the MM: Franz Susemihl, ed., Aristotelis: Magna moralia (Leipzig: Tuubner, 1883). For most (but not all) of the translations from Aristotle, I have made use of Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle: the Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). For English translations of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, I have used the translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1920). 441 442 KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J. belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided. Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law.' As its name suggests, the first principle of practical reason (FPPR) is no incidental tenet. Thomas compares it in this same article to the first principle of theoretical reason, better known as the principle of non-contradiction (PNC): "that the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time."3 On the other hand, it is also commonly acknowledged that Thomas's (philosophical) ethical theory is Aristotelian. How is it then that we never hear of an Aristotelian first principle of practical reason, either in the secondary literature or (as it seems) in Aristotle himself? I shall argue in this essay that there is such a principle in Aristotle's ethical theory and that it has the logical status that Thomas attributes to it. It is none other than the well-known paradoxical Socratic principle that no one deliberately does wrong4-understood in a certain way. (I shall refer to this principle as "the Socratic Principle.") I shall also argue that Aristotle has a fairly elaborate theory about how, psychologically, a person accommodates himself to a violatiqn of the first principle of practical reason. I shall leave one issue unaddressed: whether (as in the question from ST above) Aristotle's FPPR includes "all other precepts of the natural law." It will be apparent, however, 2 The best exegesis of this article of ST is Germain Grisez, "The First Principle of Practical Reason: A... (shrink)

Sidgwick discusses the dilemma confronting the ethical theorist whose first principles, as first principles, do not require a proof, and yet are rarely accepted without a defence. The solution lies in Aristotle's distinction between logical priority and priority in the mind of one person. While a proposition may be self‐evident, that is to say, cognizable without reference to other propositions, some rational process may be required to connect it to propositions already accepted in the mind (...) of one individual. (shrink)

There have in recent years been at least two important attempts to get to grips with Aristotle's conception of dialectic. I have in mind those by Martha C. Nussbaum in ‘Saving Aristotle's appearances’, which is chapter 8 of her The Fragility of Goodness, and by Terence H. Irwin in his important, though in my opinion somewhat misguided, book Aristotle's First Principles. There is a sense in which both of these writers are reacting to the work (...) of G. E. L. Owen on cognate matters, particularly his well-known paper ‘Tithenai ta phainomena’. Owen himself was in part reacting to what I suppose is the traditional view of how Aristotle regarded dialectic, as revealed in Topics I. 1. On that view dialectic is for Aristotle a lesser way of proceeding than is demonstration, the method of science. For demonstration proceeds from premises which are accepted as true in themselves and moves from them to conclusions which follow necessarily from those premises; and the middle term of such a demonstrative syllogism then provides the ‘reason why’ for the truth of the conclusion. Dialectic proceeds from premises which are accepted on a lesser basis ‘by everyone or by the majority or by the wise, i.e. by all, or by the majority, or by the most notable and reputable of them’, and proceeds deductively from them to further conclusions. (shrink)

In 1910, Jan Łukasiewicz published a groundbreaking book, On the Principle of Contradiction in Aristotle. The book contained a critique of the traditional attitude to the Principle of Non-Contradiction, and a reevaluation of its significance in the light of contemporary developments in logic. In the first half of the book, Łukasiewicz produced an analysis of Aristotle’s defence of the Principle in the Metaphysics, showing its deep inadequacy. In the second half of the book, Łukasiewicz, in his own (...) terms, considers the pros and cons of the principle. The present paper provides an analysis and commentary on the second half of the book. Łukasiewicz is seen to be badly torn. Though he eventually endorses the principle, he does so, not in virtue of the evidence he considers, but in despite of it. In particular, he considers arguments against the Principle, drawn from Hegel, Meinong, and the paradoxes of self-reference, but rejects them for what appear to be patently inadequate reasons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical RefutationsMarina Berzins McCoyAristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations. Scott Schreiber. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. pp. 240. $68.50, hardcover; $22.95, paperback.Scott Schreiber's Aristotle on False Reasoning is the first full-length English commentary on Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations in the last century. Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations is a text that (...) has received relatively little attention in the last century of scholarship, despite a revival of interest in other aspects of Aristotle's work concerned with the nature of good argument and rhetoric. (The 1995 French translation and commentary by Loius-Andre Dorion is a notable exception.) Schreiber finds the primary reason [End Page 92] for inattention to this text to lie in the tendency of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy to resolve problems in reasoning through linguistic clarification (xiv). Aristotle's claim that some errors are due to language while others lie outside the realm of linguistic error is not one to which contemporary analytic philosophy has been particularly sympathetic. The Sophistical Refutations has been neglected in light of contemporary logic. Schreiber's book attempts to return to Aristotle's project on his own philosophical terms, in order to better understand why Aristotle classified errors in reasoning as he did. Schreiber's approach is to examine each of the twelve types of false reasoning that Aristotle lays out in the Sophistical Refutations, with particular attention to Aristotle's examples, in order to understand the principles behind the overall system.Schreiber argues that Aristotle had good reason for separating errors due to language from those outside of language: Aristotle's classification of error is tied to his notion of the resolution of false arguments. To understand how to resolve a sophistical argument, we must first understand how it could have been believed to be true. Since Aristotle's aim in the Sophistical Refutations is to show why certain sorts of arguments are deceptive to some who hear them, his method of explaining errors is less a pure examination of their logical errors than of how such erroneous arguments can deceive. Aristotle is concerned with two types of problems with sophistical argument: first, why such an argument is false; and second, why it might appear to be true. Schreiber shows that most commentators have not given sufficient attention to the second of these concerns in their attempts to understand Aristotle's taxonomy. As Schreiber puts it, "Examples of false reasoning are unified into groups and differentiated into subgroups not by the nature of the confusions that they engender but by the different ways that confusion is cleared up" (54). False reasoning is due not only to mistakes in logic, but also to mistaken beliefs about language and reality. Careful examination of Aristotle's thinking allows us to see the importance of beliefs about the world in good and bad argument.For the most part, Schreiber's examinations of Aristotle's examples are lucid and helpful in understanding both the particular example at hand as well as the general picture of Aristotle's classifications. Schreiber continually returns to the importance of Aristotle's own view of language and argument in contrast to the approaches of contemporary linguistics and logic. For example, while some twentieth-century scholars have attempted to explain Aristotle's distinction between homonymy and amphiboly in terms of the contemporary distinction between semantics and syntax, [End Page 93] Aristotle seems to distinguish the two according to whether a general predicate signifies many particulars regardless of context, or in a propositional context (31). In the end, Schreiber does not think that the categories of homonymy and amphiboly can be completely distinct, even on Aristotle's own grounds, but still finds the categories useful. Schreiber is also careful to provide criticism of Aristotle's categories when warranted, both defending Aristotle against his contemporary critics when he thinks they have misunderstood him, and pointing out genuine weaknesses in Aristotle's arguments.Schreiber's book is clearly intended as a response to the contemporary Anglo-American reading of Aristotle. Much of the book assumes at least some familiarity with the ways in... (shrink)

Proceedings from the Symposium Philosophiae Antiquae Secundum Therense, which took place in Santorini, 30th June - 7th July 2002. The theme of this second symposium was Aristotle's account and criticism of Plato's metaphysical theory regarding the fundamental structure of reality, in effect his examination of Plato's theory of concrete things, mathematicals, ideas, and first principles. Contributors: Harold Tarrant; Margherita Isnardi-Parente; David Fowler; Klaus Brinkmann; Andrew Smith; Ian Mueller; Elisabetta Cattanei; Mary Louise Gill; Andreas Graeser; David Ambuel; Kenneth (...) Sayre; and Apostolos Pierris. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on Happiness, Virtue, and Wisdom by Bryan ReeceJakub JirsaREECE, Bryan. Aristotle on Happiness, Virtue, and Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 240 pp. Cloth, $99.99In contemporary discussions about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, dissatisfaction is growing with the exclusivist and inclusivist interpretations. Bryan Reece's book stands out for two reasons: He conducts extensive analysis, pinpointing conflicting principles in previous interpretations of happiness, and he persuasively (...) bridges the gap between exclusive and inclusive readings of Aristotle's text.Reece rebrands the two families of interpretation as "monism" and "pluralism." According to monists, happiness is contemplative activity, which does not include ethically virtuous activities as parts. According to [End Page 552] pluralists, happiness is virtuous activity, a composite that includes not only contemplative activity but also ethically virtuous activities as parts. It is another virtue of this book that Reece is generous and charitable; he looks for convincing arguments for each theory and viewpoint in question.In the second chapter Reece turns to what he calls the "divergence thesis," namely, the claim that Aristotle believes "that it is possible to possess theoretical wisdom and reliably manifest it in contemplation without possessing practical wisdom." Reece's argument against this thesis is that since the manifestation of theoretical wisdom in contemplation is a voluntary, reliably performed, fine activity, it must imply the activity of the practical intellect. This in turn implies the manifestation of practical virtue. For a reliably performed contemplation one needs tamed passions and properly managed leisure (see Politics 7.15.133a24–34). Moreover, the voluntary nature of theoretical knowledge (see De anima 2.5.417b18–25) implies the role of practical wisdom as well.Chapter 4 discusses whether there are two kinds of happiness, one corresponding to contemplation, the other to the ethically virtuous activities (the "duality thesis"). The claim that there are two kinds of happiness is usually based on lines Nicomachean Ethics 1178a6–10. Here Reece suggests a novel reading: "Life in accordance with intellect is proper to a human being, since intellect is a human being most of all. So, this life also is happiest. (Life) in accordance with the other kind of virtue is (proper to a human being) in a secondary way, for activities in accordance with this (kind of virtue) are properly human." The comparison in these lines is then between life in accordance with intellect and life in accordance with the virtues of character. The first life is proper to us, because we are above all our intellect. The life in accordance with moral virtue reflects our complex nature, and it is proper to us due to this complexity of our human nature.How could Aristotle claim that it is human to live in accordance with the intellect? According to Aristotle, the gods contemplate, and so contemplation cannot be proper to human beings. Reece calls this statement "the divinity thesis" and deals with it in chapter 5. Reece's argument for the difference in type between divine and human contemplation is based on the fact that human contemplation is manifestation of theoretical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom includes intellect (nous) and knowledge (epistēmē). Reece then goes through possible contemplating divine beings and shows why their formal cause of contemplation cannot be theoretical wisdom. Formal differences between activities mark type distinctions. Therefore, divine and human contemplation are of different types.Chapters 2 through 4 paved the way for Reece's own conclusion: "[H]appiness belongs to all and only those to whom contemplation and ethically virtuous activities belong, and contemplation is proper to happiness in a primary way, whereas ethically virtuous activities are proper to that same kind of happiness in a secondary way." According to [End Page 553] Reece, Aristotle claims that something can be said to be proper to x as its essence or as its idia (from idios, proper or own). To be proper in the sense of an essence is to be proper in a primary way; idia are then proper in a secondary way. Therefore, Reece says, contemplation is proper to happiness in a primary way, whereas virtuous activities are proper to happiness in a secondary way.I have concerns about Reece's argument... (shrink)

The passage 18a34-⁠b5 of Aristotle’s famous sea-battle chapter has often been misunderstood. My aim is to show, firstly, that Aristotle in this passage attempts to prove that the unrestricted validity of the Principle of Bivalence entails, in the case of singular statements, the validity of the Principle of Truth-value Distribution for the contradictory pairs they are members of. According to the latter principle either the affirmative member of a contradictory pair of statements must be true and the negative (...) false or vice versa. Secondly, I want to show what consequences the correct understanding of the passage in question has for the understanding of the introductory passage of the chapter (18a28-⁠33) and for the dispute over whether Aristotle exempts singular statements about contingent future events from the domain of the Principle of Bivalence. The thesis, advanced by some modern interpreters, that Aristotle refrains from doing so even though he exempts the contradictory pairs such statements are members of from the domain of the Principle of Truth-value Distribution will be rebutted as resulting from a fallacious line of reasoning. (shrink)

FOR PLATO, PRINCIPLES WERE THE ROOT-SOURCE of being or of knowledge. For Aristotle, they were the “first cause” of being, of becoming, or of being known. Much the same conception is at issue in Thomas of Aquinas, for whom a principle was something primary in the being of a thing, or in its becoming, or in knowledge of it. As standard philosophical usage has evolved in the light of these ideas, a principle is as something basic—as a (...) fundamentum or archê. It either admits no proof or it needs not proof. Moreover, it must be abstract by way of applying to a broad range of cases. Thus, all concerned seem agreed that principles are fundamental generalities governing our understanding of the modus operandi of some knowledge-accessible domain. (shrink)

In the debate concerning the education of nurses that is currently taking place in Denmark, two widely differing views are apparent regarding the best way of training nurses such that the ethical aspect of their work is adequately considered. The first of these is based on the premise that practical care is fundamental to and justified by theories on nursing, care and ethics, which is why the theoretical part of nurse education deserves a higher priority. The second view is (...) based on the premise that social care cannot be taught by means of theories, but can be learnt only through practice. The master-apprentice principle of ancient Greece is stressed in connection with this as being a viable alternative to the theoretical model of education. These two very different views can be traced back to Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas on ethics and teaching respectively; indeed, those engaged in the debate make specific reference to these philosophers. In Denmark, a third fundamental viewpoint exists, known as ‘ontological ethics’. Phenomenologist KE Løgstrup is one of the best-known representatives of this view. Basing the line of argument on Løgstrup’s ethics and the view of education associated with this, this article questions the relevance of ancient Greek thought to today’s world by illustrating a number of problems that are connected with the theoretical model of nurse education and with the master-apprentice principle. Løgstrup associates ethics with the aesthetic principle that ‘the useless is the most useful’ in human life and with the view we also see in Kierkegaard’s and NFS Grundtvig’s writings that ethics can be imparted only by indirect means. Løgstrup bases his understanding of ethics on the Judaeo-Christian concept of Genesis and the view that human beings were created with an ethical potential that is best nourished by aesthetic impressions. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the thought of Aristotle can shed much light on the irksome problems that lurk around the philosophical foundations of neuroscience. First, we will explore the ramifications of Aristotle’s mereological principle, namely, that it is not the eye that sees, but the human person that sees by the eye. Next, we shall draw upon the riches of Maxwell Bennett’s and Peter Hacker’s Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience in order to elucidate how Aristotle’s (...) mereological principle can be of service to contemporary neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. In the third and fourth parts we aim to complement the project of PFN by showing how Aristotle’s philosophical anthropology and doctrine of pros hen equivocation can strengthen PFN’s response to eliminativists, reductionists, and other critics of “folk psychology.” Finally, our last section will investigate the kinds of correlations involved in brain scanning techniques, such as fMRI, so as to determine whether the most recent empirical discoveries do in fact support various critics’ rejection of “folk psychology.” We will show that the empirical evidence does not in fact favor eliminativist or reductionist views, and that we would do well to turn to the more Aristotelian approaches to neuroscience adopted by PFN and ourselves. (shrink)

Aristotle’s principle that “nature does nothing in vain” (NDNIV) is central to his teleological approach to understanding organisms. First, we argue that James G. Lennox’s influential account of NDNIV is unsuccessful. Second, we propose an alternative account that includes a natural state model. According to a natural state model of development, an organism will develop toward its natural state unless interfering forces prevent that from happening. Third, we argue that this account also fits Aristotle’s discussion in the (...) Generation of Animals and can explain monstrosities in nature that at first sight seem to be counterexamples to NDNIV. Fourth, we take a broader look at NDNIV, arguing that it does not entail that all structures are teleological (since it accommodates the thought that by-products and some neglected items that Aristotle calls “tokens” are nonteleological), that it does not entail that there is only one function per organ, that NDNIV is not an anthropocentric principle, and that, perhaps surprisingly, the teleological structures of an organism can benefit others apart from the organism and its progeny. Finally, we argue that Aristotle endorsed an empirical justification of NDNIV wherein the principle is justified by its many successful applications. (shrink)

This paper highlights the decisive role played in the longer course of Aristotelian tradition by Giles’ Sententia de bona fortuna, a work that constitutes a telling example of the radical transformations imposed by Latin thinkers on the Aristotelian philosophical system. The impact of this commentary was decisive for the subsequent discussions on fortune, contingency and “divine government” - that is, the issue of how God, as the First Principle of all beings, leads them all to their ends or their (...) ultimate “good”. In so doing, the article shows that Giles’ reading of the Aristotelian treatise called Liber de bona fortuna marked the birth of a coherent ‘natural theology’ in the Latin West. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle on Pictures of Ignoble AnimalsDavid Socher (bio)The Poetics is a widely read, accessible classic. I think it has a minor flaw of some interest. In a well-known passage early in the Poetics, Aristotle is in error about pictures, or so I shall argue. He writes:And it is natural for all to delight in works of imitation. The truth of this second point is shown by experience: (...) though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations of them in art, the forms for example of the lowest animals and of dead bodies. The explanation is to be found in a further fact: to be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it; the reason for the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time learning — gathering the meaning of things, e.g. that the man there is so-and-so; for if one has not seen the thing before, one's pleasure will not be in the picture as an imitation of itbutwill be due to the execution or colouring or some similar cause.1I set out Aristotle's position as follows:1. It is natural to delight in imitation.2. In spite of it being unpleasant to look at a low animal, we delight in looking at an imitation of one — a picture.3. The pleasure in appreciating a picture comes from gathering the meaning, that is, recognizing the subject.4. Therefore if I look at a portrait of someone I don't know, I can't enjoy the imitation as such, because I don't recognize the person.5. And therefore if I do take pleasure in such a picture, it is not pleasure in the imitation as such but perhaps in the color, line, form, etc.My dispute is with points 4 and 5. Points 1 through 3 take for granted something that points 4 and 5 overlook and, in effect, deny: that is, that imitation comes in two levels: imitation of a kind and imitation of an individual. Aristotle illicitly slips from the first level to the second. The beginning of the [End Page 27] passage concerns imitations of, and fidelity to, a kind; the end concerns imitations of, and fidelity to, an individual.Before pursuing this complaint, a general remark: Aristotle's slip is a small one, incidental to his point. He speaks to the old paradox that "we enjoy the distress of tragedy."2 In bringing up pictures, he does not intend to dwell on them but is merely demonstrating the general principle that the very thing we find painful in the flesh can be enjoyed in make-believe.3 Why then, if the error is so small, discuss it at all? Because its examination reveals a significant distinction between types of picture, and because a minor slip in a major and influential classic is worth pointing out on that count alone.Let us look at the opening subject: pictures of ignoble animals — of snakes and snails and puppy dog tails. Are these portraits of individuals, like a portrait of the family dog or of the great racehorse Seabiscuit? No. The scientific spirit in us enjoys the most realistic representations of a fly, spider, and slug as an accurate anatomical rendering of a specimen sample, which is not a particular actual individual. It is the fidelity to its kind that we admire here (especially in times before photography). Examine, for example, the goal and the achievement of John Audubon. In his quest for accuracy, Audubon killed a dozen or so birds for each painting so as to always have a fresh model. Would anyone be so foolish as to ask Audubon if such a painting were a portrait of the fifth or of the sixth now-dead red-breasted robin? No, he preserves and presents visual knowledge of kinds, of the looks of kinds of thing.At the close of the passage, Aristotle discusses recognizing an acquaintance in a portrait. Had I not known him, I could only take... (shrink)

In the first book of Physics, Aristotle is concerned with the question “What is Being?” Ti to on? The determinations of Being are obtained from our experience of things in movement: on kinoumenon. His discussion on Being and One, on matter and form, on subject and privation, etc. does not differ from metaphysics. Contents of the translated chapters: 1. Method, 2-3. Theories of the Presocratic physicists on the principles of nature; the essent exists not as one the (...) way Parmenides and Melissus supposed; the multiplicity of Being, 7. Analysis of becoming: the pair of contraries presupposes something third – a substratum, 9. Not-Being as the condition of becoming: Aristotle’s notion of matter. (shrink)