In recent years, the growing number of persons to whom basic human rights have been explicitly denied—stateless persons, refugees, undocumented workers, sans papiers and unlawful combatants—has evidenced the logic of contemporary nation-state politics. According to this logic, the state defines itself by virtue of what it excludes while what is excluded is given no other recourse than the state for its protection. Hannah Arendt elucidates this logic when she observes that the stateless and the refugee can only be recognized as (...) human beings when they have already been recognized as citizens. Their appeal to human rights for protection was fruitless because they needed to have citizen rights, the recognition of a government, or of other citizens who can appeal to that government, in order to invoke these rights. In the terms Arendt uses to name political action, one needs to be seen and heard already, the privileges of those who are citizens, in order to appeal to be seen and heard. Just as political life (bios), in order to be free, was only possible once the necessities were accounted for in natural life (zoē), so citizenship is recognized to the exclusion of the non-citizen, that is, the merely human. -/- . (shrink)

I argue that the human being fits squarely within the natural world in Aristotle’s anthropology. Like other natural beings, we strive to fulfill our end from the potential within us to achieve that end. Logos does not make human beings unnatural but makes us responsible for our actualization. As rational, the human can never be reduced to mere living animal but is always already concerned with living well; yet, as natural, she is not separated from the animal world, a dangerous (...) distinction which inevitably leaves some persons reduced to mere animality. (shrink)

Aristotle’s political theory is often dismissed as undemocratic due to his treatment of natural slavery and women and to his conception of political rule as rule by turns. The second reason presents no less serious challenges than the first for finding democracy in Aristotle’s political theory. This article argues that Aristotle’s account of ruling in turns hinges on a critique of master rule and an affirmation of political rule, which involves both the rulers and the ruled in the project of (...) ruling. Ruling in turns makes the rule shared, not merely an exchange of opportunities to rule as a despot. (shrink)

This article addresses Rancière’s critique of Aristotle’s political theory as parapolitics in order to show that Aristotle is a resource for developing an inclusionary notion of political community. Rancière argues that Aristotle attempts to cut off politics and merely police (maintain) the community by eliminating the political claim of the poor by including it. I respond to three critiques that Rancière makes of Aristotle: that he ends the political dispute by including the demos in the government; that he includes the (...) free masses only incidentally because, by chance, the rule is political, not based on mastery; and that he attempts to close off politics by determining in advance what speech counts as speech. I argue that Aristotle attempts to institute this contest by accepting the incommensurable claims of arithmetic and geometric equality. Aristotle puts this conflict at the root of political life in such a way that serves Rancière’s larger project of perpetuating politics. (shrink)

In her “Saving the Appearances in Plato’s Cave,” Dr. Adriel M. Trott argues that “the philosopher’s claim to true knowledge always operates within the realm of the cave.” In order to probe her claim, I challenge her to make sense of “politics in the cave,” namely the status and practices of two categories of people in the cave: “woke” cave dwellers (namely, those who recognize shadows as shadows but have not left the cave) and “woke” puppeteers (namely, philosophers (...) ruling within the cave). (shrink)

Aristotle's Politics claims that the polis or city-state "exists by nature" (Pol. 1.2.1252630). Thinkers as diverse as Marsilius of Padua, Thomas Hobbes, and Martha Nussbaum have struggled with how to interpret such a claim-some finding in it a salutary alternative to existing political theories, others finding in it the basis of deeply wrong-headed political thinking. In Aristotle on the Nature of Community, Adriel Trott seeks both to elucidate and to defend Aristotle's claim about the naturalness of the polis (...) by interpreting nature in the Politics through the notion of nature as an internal principle of motion ( a notion central to the understanding of natural things articulated in his treatise thereupon, viz. Physics2.1). (shrink)

Every higher education institution (HEI) needs to monitor the employability status of its graduates as this reflects the quality education that HEIs provide to their students. In this study, a retrospective approach was used to analyze the employment status of graduates of a state university in the Philippines from 2015 to 2019. A data mining procedure was adopted to obtain necessary data and analysis. It was hypothesized in the study that the employment rates are the same across programs per year. (...) Also, the employment rates from 2015 to 2019 are the same as the targeted employment rate in the strategic plan of the university. Statistical treatments such as mean, median, and standard deviation, Shapiro-Wilk test, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to test the hypothesis. Results show that the employment rate of graduates of 2015-2019 is in the high-level category and significantly higher than the targeted employment rate in the university strategic plan. Similarly, findings show significant differences in the employability rates of graduates considering the programs they enrolled in. On the contrary, no significant difference in the employment rate of graduates per year graduated. The study concluded that the university is consistent in producing employable graduates. (shrink)

Pierre Pellegrin has devoted his scholarly life to the understanding of Aristotle the political philosopher, Aristotle the life-scientist, and—perhaps most importantly—Aristotle the analyst of life-science who is also a political philosopher. Like D. M. Balme, Allan Gotthelf, and James Lennox—Pellegrin is one of the foremost scholars who has sought to understand Aristotle’s biological writings in a philosophically and philologically sophisticated fashion. Pellegrin is also one of the foremost scholars who has sought to understand the intersection between Aristotle’s biological studies and (...) his other works, especially the ethical/political writings, like current scholars such as Sophia Connell, Mariska Leunissen, and Adriel M. Trott. The volume under-review, Anthony Preus’ translation of Pellegrin’s L'Excellence menacée: Sur la philosophie politique d'Aristote (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017, reviewed by J.J. Mulhern for BMCR) is especially welcome because it brings together in one volume—ably rendered into English by Preus—analytical threads that Pellegrin has pursued in a number of independent essays on topics such as natural teleology and the Politics, slavery, the composition of the Politics, the nature of political friendship, and the structure and diversity of Aristotelian constitutions. (shrink)

In their work The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada 1850-1 950, Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott consider that the Canadian way of doing philosophy uses reason in an accommodationist manner. I propose in this thesis that William Lyall's Intellect, the Emotions and the Moral Nature represents a splendid example of the accomodationist use of reason. The Maritimes philosopher advances the idea that emotions have a cognitive value, a claim which I support by (...) trying to put Lyall's ideas in a modern framework offered by French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. Latent in Lyall's work can also be found a theory of metaphor which I try to revive with the help of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Thus, following Lyall, emotions and reason are always in a balance and they work together in order to give us a more consistent and fuller grasp of reality. (shrink)