This book consolidates emerging research on Aristotle's science and ethics in order to explore the extent to which the concepts, methods, and practices he developed for scientific inquiry and explanation are used to investigate moral phenomena. Each chapter shows, in a different way, that Aristotle's ethics is much more like a science than it is typically represented. The upshot of this is twofold. First, uncovering the links between Aristotle's science and ethics promises to open up new and innovative directions for (...) research into his moral philosophy. Second, showing why Aristotle thinks ethics can never be fully assimilated to the model of science will help shed new light on his views about the limits of science. The volume thus promises to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological foundations of Aristotle's ethics. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 62, Issue 1, pp 1 - 25 This paper aims to articulate Aristotle’s general account of vice, an account that applies to all special vices, regardless of their spheres of action and emotion, and whether they are states of excess or deficiency. Vice is ignorance in the decision : the paper explains what this means.

The analysis of 'mixed acts' in Nicomachean Ethics III, 1 has led scholars to attribute a theory of 'dirty hands' and 'impossible oughts' to Aristode. Michael Stocker argues that Aristode recognizes particular acts that are simultaneously 'right, even obligatory', but nevertheless 'wrong, shameful and the like'. And Martha Nussbaum commends Aristotle for not sympathizing 'with those who, in politics or in private affairs, would so shrink from blame and from unacceptable action that they would be unable to take a necessary (...) decision for the best'. In this paper I reexamine Aristotle's analysis of putatively 'mixed acts' in Nicomachean Ethics III, 1, maintaining that Aristode denies that there are acts that are (i) voluntary under the circumstances, (ii) right, all things considered, under the circumstances, but nevertheless (iii) shameful or wrong for moral or prudential reasons under the circumstances. The paper defends this interpretation with reference to Aristode's discussion of shame in EN IV, 9 and Rhetoric II, 6, as well as his overall meta-ethical commitment to a position I call 'mitigated circumstantial relativism'. By focusing on Aristotle's analysis of putatively 'mixed acts', we come closer to a true appreciation of Aristode's ethical theory, even though 'mixed act' is not, I argue, a category in Aristode's considered ontology of action. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Aristotle's account of sexual difference in Generation of Animals, arguing that Aristotle conceives of the production of males as the result of a successful teleological process, while he sees the production of females as due to material forces that defeat the norms of nature. My suggestion is that Aristotle endorses what I call the "degrees of perfection" model. I challenge Devin Henry's attempt to argue that Aristotle explains sex determination exclusively with reference to material necessity (...) (in particular, levels of "vital heat" in the male semen), for Aristotle's notion of "sufficient" or "deficient" vital heat is itself teleological. If, as Aristotle is aware, male and female embryos appear with approximately equal frequency in most species, how, in light of Physics II, can he conceive of the former as in accordance with nature, and the latter as somehow contrary to nature? My proposal is that Aristotle's notion of what happens usually (ως επì τò πoλυ) is bifurcated: the usual need not be more frequent. (shrink)

Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, by ScottDominic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

In this fine study, Hendrik Lorenz revisits Plato's argument for a tripartite soul in Republic IV. He proposes an interpretation that seeks to explain how the Principle of Opposites when supplemented by examples of motivational conflict, can show that reason, spirit, and appetite are basic, non-composite parts of the human soul.The discussion of parts of soul is merely a prelude to Lorenz's discussion of non-rational cognition in Plato and Aristotle in the final two parts of the book. Even readers who (...) wish to quibble with Lorenz's analysis of psychic parts are likely to find his detailed and textually astute analysis of non-rational cognition intrinsically rewarding. Here is how the themes connect: Lorenz holds that in order to prevent the principle of opposites from running amok, yielding a number of psychic subparts, Plato must deny the ability to reason, or even to understand the deliverances of reason, to the non-rational parts of the soul. How, then, can Plato account for the fact that non-rational parts are capable of giving rise to fully formed. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to examine Aristotle's puzzling and contentious claim inPolitics1.13 that the deliberative faculty in women is ‘without authority’ :The freeman rules over the slave after another manner from that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in all of them, they are present in different ways. For the slave lacks the deliberative faculty altogether; the woman has it, but it is (...) without authority, and the child has it, but it is immature. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 62, Issue 1, pp 1 - 25 This paper aims to articulate Aristotle’s general account of vice, an account that applies to all special vices, regardless of their spheres of action and emotion, and whether they are states of excess or deficiency. Vice is ignorance in the decision : the paper explains what this means.