What is the good life? Posing this question today would likely elicit very different answers. Some might say that the good life means doing good—improving one’s community and the lives of others. Others might respond that it means doing well—cultivating one’s own abilities in a meaningful way. But for Aristotle these two distinct ideas—doing good and doing well—were one and the same and could be realized in a single life. In Confronting Aristotle’s Ethics, Eugene Garver examines how we can draw (...) this conclusion from Aristotle's works, while also studying how this conception of the good life relates to contemporary ideas ofmorality. The key to Aristotle’s views on ethics, argues Garver, lies in the Metaphysics or, more specifically, in his thoughts on activities, actions, and capacities . For Aristotle, Garver shows, it is only possible to be truly active when acting for the common good, and it is only possible to be truly happy when active to the extent of one’s own powers. But does this mean we should aspire to Aristotle’s impossibly demanding vision of the good life? In a word, no. Garver stresses the enormous gap between life in Aristotle’s time and ours. As a result, this book will be a welcome rumination on not only Aristotle, but the relationship between the individual and society in everyday life. (shrink)
In this major contribution to philosophy and rhetoric, Eugene Garver shows how Aristotle integrates logic and virtue in his great treatise, the _Rhetoric._ He raises and answers a central question: can there be a civic art of rhetoric, an art that forms the character of citizens? By demonstrating the importance of the _Rhetoric_ for understanding current philosophical problems of practical reason, virtue, and character, Garver has written the first work to treat the _Rhetoric_ as philosophy and to connect its themes (...) with parallel problems in Aristotle's _Ethics_ and _Politics._ Garver's study will help put rhetoric at the center of investigations of practice and practical reason. (shrink)
What role should it play? And are claims to rationality liberating or oppressive? For the Sake of Argument addresses questions such as these to consider the relationship between thought and character.
Central to Aristotle’s Ethics is the virtue of phronēsis, a good condition of the rational part of the soul that determines the means to ends set by the ethical virtues. Central to the Rhetoric is the art of presenting persuasive deliberative arguments about how to secure the ends set by the audience and its constitution. What is the relation between the art and the virtue of deliberation? Rhetorical facility can be a deceptive facsimile of virtuous reasoning, but there can be (...) more fruitful connections as well. In particular, the experience of judging rhetorical arguments can aid in the development of phronēsis through exercising those aspects of phronēsis that are not so intimately tied to the ethical virtues. Judging the advice given by others leads to excellence in reasoning practically for oneself. (shrink)
Scholars of classical philosophy have long disputed whether Aristotle was a dialectical thinker. Most agree that Aristotle contrasts dialectical reasoning with demonstrative reasoning, where the former reasons from generally accepted opinions and the latter reasons from the true and primary. Starting with a grasp on truth, demonstration never relinquishes it. Starting with opinion, how could dialectical reasoning ever reach truth, much less the truth about first principles? Is dialectic then an exercise that reiterates the prejudices of one's times and at (...) best allows one to persuade others by appealing to these prejudices, or is it the royal road to first principles and philosophical wisdom? In From Puzzles to Principles? May Sim gathers experts to argue both these positions and offer a variety of interpretive possibilities. The contributors' thoughtful reflections on the nature and limits of dialectic should play a crucial role in Aristotelian scholarship. (shrink)
Spinoza presents a picture of the good human life in which being rational and being reasonable or sociable are mutually supporting: the philosopher makes the best citizen, and citizenship is the best route to philosophy and adequate ideas. Crucial to this mutual implication are the roles of religion and politics in promoting obedience. It is through obedience that people can become "of one mind and one body" in the absence of adequate ideas, through the presence of shared empowering imaginations and (...) emotions. (shrink)
Pluralism in Theory and Practice not only brings McKeon to the attention of contemporary philosophers and students; it also puts his theories into practice. Some of the essays explicate aspects of McKeon's thought or situate him in the context of American intellectual and practical engagement. Others take the concerns he raised as starting points for inquiries into urgent contemporary problems, or, in some cases, for reexamining McKeon's work as fertile ground for shaping the direction of new investigation.
The Charmides, searching for a definition of temperance, constantly confronts problems of reflexivity, transparency and opacity. Transparency and opacity structures the Charmides, from the dramatic beginning of Socrates peeking inside Charmides’ cloak, to Charmides’ initial depiction of sôphrosynê as concealing what one can do. The final two proposed definitions of temperance in the Charmides, self-knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge, are explicitly reflexive. That reflexivity is best understood by juxtaposing it to transparency and opacity, in the issue of whether someone (...) with knowledge of, say, the science of medicine, also knows the subject of medicine, health, or whether health is opaque to that second-order knowledge, and whether such opacity would be a defect or an advantage. In identifying self-knowledge with the knowledge of knowledge, as in many other things, Critias is a parody of Socrates. Critias’s knowledge of knowledge is a form of architectonic knowledge that, because of opacity, makes unnecessary any appeal to an objective truth and goodness beyond their political determinations. As such, it creates a serious challenge to Socratic claims that such appeals are unavoidable. (shrink)
The distinction from the "metaphysics" between rational and irrational potencies is inadequate to explicate the idea of moral virtue as a "hexis prohairetike", A habit concerned with choice. Aristotle's definition of virtue articulates a connection between potency and act more complex than either possible or necessary in the theoretical sciences. In ethics, The actuality to be explained is not this good action but this action "qua" the action of a good man. Analysis of that relation allows us to see more (...) of the complexities of the relation of passion to action, And to give more meaning to aristotle's conception of choice. (shrink)
The Preface to Part 4 of Spinoza’s Ethics claims that we all desire to formulate a model of human nature. I show how that model serves the same function in ethics as the creed or articles of faith do in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the function of allowing the imagination to provide a simularcrrum of rationality for finite, practical human beings.
The Preface to Part 4 of Spinoza’s Ethics claims that we all desire to formulate a model of human nature. I show how that model serves the same function in ethics as the creed or articles of faith do in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the function of allowing the imagination to provide a simularcrrum of rationality for finite, practical human beings.
We are all pluralists today. Ecumenism—in religion, in literary criticism, in philosophy—seems obligatory, although what it requires and how sincere its professions are both are open to dispute. Some people are reluctant pluraliste, disappointed with the inescapable fact of plurality, while others embrace it with delight and hope. Everyone is a pluralist—even people whom no one else thinks of as pluralists assert that they are themselves pluralists. It takes no high theory but brute observation alone to see the omnipresence and (...) inevitability of plurality. The plurality of philosophies seems a permanent part of philosophy in a way that it never did before. A standard introductory ethics course must include sections on Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Mill, but none of those thinkers would have taught ethics by presenting a series of rival points of view; students evaluating my courses have to testify that I encourage the examination and expression of different points of view. Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant were not pluralists and saw no need to try to do justice to competing views, but instead expressed conviction that they were about to put an end to debate and disagreement by putting philosophy on a firm scientific basis. If those older ambitions still exist, they are no longer displayed in public. (shrink)
Spinoza is the great philosopher of the imagination and the first great philosopher of democracy. Rather than seeing democracy as a form of government that has overcome the need for imagination and symbols, he shows in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus that an enlightened state depends on three myths: the myth of the sovereignty of the people so as to reconcile democracy as rule by the people with each individual living as he or she wants to live; the myth that we are (...) a people, emotionally and morally tied to some people more than to others; and, finally, the myth that the people comprises individuals who are responsible for their own destinies. The democratic imagination differs from earlier forms of politics in that the people construct the social imaginary for themselves and are guided by it without deception. It is the social imaginary thus created, or these three myths, that make room for freedom of thought and therefore for democracy. (shrink)
The great challenge of rhetorical argument is to make discourse ethical without making it less logical. This challenge is of central importance throughout the full range of practical argument, and understanding the relation of the ethical to the logical is one of the principal contributions the humanities, in this case the study of rhetoric, can make to legal scholarship. Aristotle’s Rhetoric shows how arguments can be ethical and can create ethical relations between speaker and hearer. I intend to apply Aristotle’s (...) analysis to a phenomenon that did not yet exist for him, that of authority, by asking how the acts of asserting and accepting authority can be ethical acts. I take as a test case a peculiarly unfortunate and inept appeal to authority, that offered by the counsel for the District of Columbia in arguing Bolling v Sharp who cited Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott to clinch his point. By seeing just what goes wrong in such a maladroit appeal, I explore the rational, voluntary and ethical dimensions of a decision to accept a given commitment to authority. I use Joseph Raz’s analysis of authority and the relation of reason to authority, yet think I go beyond Raz by exploring the deliberate and voluntary nature of submission to authority. Choosing to be bound by an authority is an ethical act. As such it is always rational and yet never purely rational. The Supreme Court’s choice of authorities is part of its making itself into an authority, and is a paradigm of the ethical act of choosing to be obligated. Choosing to be committed or obligated is a central paradox of political theory and considerations of authority and obligation, at least since early social contract theorists. However, its importance for judicial reasoning, which at the same time chooses to submit to authority and itself becomes an authority, has not been noted. Consideration of the relations between the ethical and the logical can help us better to articulate the constitution of ethical authority. (shrink)
