Este artigo contribui para o debate sobre a relação da filosofia prática e teórica de Aristóteles. Ele argumenta que sua filosofia prática depende em grande parte de sua concepção teleológica da natureza. Esta tese é dirigida principalmente contra os estudiosos que sustentam que Aristóteles não deriva de relações políticas e humanas de condições naturais ou cósmicas. O artigo defende a interpretação antropocêntrica de David Sedley da teleologia natural de Aristóteles e mostra como Aristóteles aplica explicações teleológicas às relações de poder (...) entre os seres humanos - entre homens e mulheres e entre homens livres e escravos naturais - e seus propósitos e objetivos. O artigo enfoca o argumento da “função” (ergonomia) humana de Aristóteles, que é um argumento teleológico no centro de sua filosofia prática. Argumenta que este argumento, que Aristóteles apresenta para definir ‘florescimento humano’ ou ‘felicidade’ (eudaimonia), depende de sua definição de homem como o único ‘ser vivo que tem linguagem e razão’ (zôon logon echon). Alega ainda que a disputa sobre se Aristóteles identifica eudaimonia apenas com uma vida de contemplação ou se eudaimonia inclui uma vida política pode ser esclarecida referindo-se ao propósito natural dos logotipos. (shrink)

The intersection between virtue and care ethics is underexplored in contemporary moral philosophy. This thesis approaches care ethics from a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethical perspective, comparing the two frameworks and drawing on recent work on care to develop a theory thereof. It is split into seven substantive chapters serving three major argumentative purposes, namely the establishment of significant intertheoretical agreement, the compilation and analysis of extant and new distinctions between the two theories, and the synthesis of care ethical insights with neo-Aristotelianism (...) to generate a virtue ethical theory of care. In the first two chapters, I outline virtue ethics and care ethics, and argue for considerable agreement over central premises. Chapter 2 summarises the foundational commitments of care ethics, focusing particularly on their relational ontology and its links to the other ethical claims care ethicists universally ascribe to, namely particularism, partialism, the moral salience of emotions, and the rejection of hard public/private distinctions. Chapter 3 lays out the central concepts in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, including eudaimonism, virtue, and character traits, and drawing a number of comparisons between virtue and care ethics specifically with regard to relational ontology and the meta-ethical commitments it underpins. In addition to doing the necessary expository work for the remainder of the thesis, Chapters 2 and 3 also argue that care ethics and virtue ethics have much more in common than is typically acknowledged – the first major contribution of this thesis to the literature. Chapters 2 and 3 to provide at least a prima facie justification for pursuit of the questions I confront in the remainder of the thesis. In Chapter 4, I ask what differentiates these two ethical theories. I survey some of the differences which philosophers in either camp have identified and offer some of my own. I suggest that several of those differences either rest on misunderstandings of one ethic or the other, or that in erecting a divide between virtue and care ethics they also disunify ethics of care. I do, however, identify two differences which seem defensible. Specifically, they are that virtue ethics seems to lack an account of care, which I define minimally as a response or responsiveness to need, and that virtue and care ethics organise their meta-ethical and normative concepts differently. This chapter thus presents a second contribution to the literature: a study of the differences between virtue ethics and care ethics. It also serves to set the trajectory for the remaining chapters, where I respond to the claim that virtue ethics lack an account of care. I spend the remainder of the thesis constructing what I take to be a satisfying foundation for a virtue ethical theory of care. In Chapter 5, I offer three initially viable means of incorporating care into virtue ethics, all of which treat care as a virtue. These are the analogical approach, according to which care is analogous to an existing virtue; the additive approach, according to which care is a novel virtue; and the bundling approach, according to which care is a bundle of virtues. I also offer and evaluate reasons to reject the claim that care is a virtue, concluding that the claim is indeed a viable one so long as the concept of care is sufficiently thick, and I contend that analogical approaches, and particularly analogies with charity, outperform the others. Chapter 5 therefore serves two ends. First, it proffers a novel meta-analysis of concepts of care as a virtue, and thus makes a third contribution to the literature. In doing so, it makes an inroad into the second: the development of a neo-Aristotelian theory of care. Chapter 6 continues this project. I attempt to show how care can be construed as an act-type and a practice. I argue in this chapter that practices are a subcategory of actions, and that care qualifies as an Anscombean act-type which aims at the meeting of needs relating to the care-recipient’s flourishing. I go on to consider the implications of this account for ethics which deploy care as a moral concept, maintaining that it not only offers a better account of consequences than theories of care which include success criteria, but also that it affords us interesting insights into the distinction between ‘caring about’ and ‘caring for’ which allow us to make sense of certain tenets of neo-Aristotelianism. This represents a contribution to both discourses, since neither care nor virtue ethicists working at the intersection of their respective normative theories have delved very deeply into the philosophy of action. Chapter 7 discusses caring relations, suggesting that a virtue ethical theory of caring relations can lean on the work care ethicists have done, and adding some necessary refinements, such as a distinction between ideal and non-ideal caring relations, and a theory of caring relations as reasons for action. This final chapter also draws these three concepts of care together by arguing that virtuous caregivers who are invested in the flourishing of those for whom they care are also sensitive to the relations those care-recipients bear to their institutional environment. I argue that because they are caring participants in caring relations, virtuous agents are characteristically motivated by states of need and dependency to engage in certain sorts of conventionally political practices. In other words, the virtue or virtues of caring characteristically manifest in certain sorts of political or social practices, relating specifically to those areas of moral life. This allows us to build upon recent work in feminist virtue ethics of the sort offered by Tessman and Friedman. I also offer a novel analysis of migration, suggesting that the account of care presenting here is analytically useful both when it comes to historical cases of migration such as the underground railroads and escapes from Nazi-occupied Europe, but also for contemporary issues such as the migrations occurring in the Southern United States and in much of Europe. I thus conclude not only that virtue ethicists ought to incorporate care into their normative framework, and that the theory of care presented here is a coherent one, but that this leads us naturally into applied topics such as virtue politics. I conclude the thesis by considering some its implications and by identifying some further avenues for research. (shrink)

This paper presents a new analysis of the concept of non-instrumental need, and, using it, demonstrates how a need-satisfaction theory of well-being is much more plausible than might otherwise be supposed. Its thesis is that in at least some contexts of evaluation a central part of some persons’ well-being consists in their satisfying certain “personal needs”. Unlike common conceptions of other non-instrumental needs, which make those out to be moralised, universal, and minimal, personal needs are expansive and particular to particular (...) persons, generated rather by persons’ non-moral personal commitments. Against objections to the contrary, I show how these are genuine necessities, since unlike mere desires and freely escapable aims, personal needs constitute objective, inescapable, and non-compensable practical requirements. The personal-need-satisfaction theory of well-being combines objectivity with subject-dependence in novel ways, and motivates well-being pluralism at the level of individual agency. Implicating necessity as it does in the structure of individual well-being, this account presents a robust challenge to ethical and political theories that rely on the intrapersonal aggregation of well-being to be unproblematic. (shrink)

Aristotle thinks that happiness is an activity---it consists in doing something---rather than a feeling. It is the best activity of which humans are capable and is spread out over the course of a life. But what kind of activity is it? Some of his remarks indicate that it is a single best kind of activity, intellectual contemplation. Other evidence suggests that it is an overarching activity that has various virtuous activities, ethical and intellectual, as parts. At stake are questions about (...) how we should live and the correct balance of theoretical and practical activity. Numerous interpreters have sharply disagreed about Aristotle's answers to such questions. This book offers a fundamentally new approach to determining what kind of activity Aristotle thinks happiness is, one that challenges widespread assumptions that have until now prevented a dialectically satisfactory interpretation. This approach displays the boldness and systematicity of Aristotle's practical philosophy. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the function argument of Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics 2.1. The argument seeks to define happiness through the method of division; shows that the highest good is better than all four of the goods of the soul, not only two, as commentators have thought; and unlike the Nicomachean argument, makes the highest good definitionally independent of the human function.

According to Aristotle, the medical art aims at health, which is a virtue of the body, and does so in an unlimited way. Consequently, medicine does not determine the extent to which health should be pursued, and “mental health” falls under medicine only via pros hen predication. Because medicine is inherently oriented to its end, it produces health in accordance with its nature and disease contrary to its nature—even when disease is good for the patient. Aristotle’s politician understands that this (...) inherent orientation can be systematically distorted, and so would see the need for something like the Hippocratic Oath. (shrink)

In this paper, I challenge the standard reading of complete virtue (ἀρετή τελεία) in those disputed passages of Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. I argue that, for Aristotle, complete virtue is neither (i) wisdom nor (ii) a whole set of all virtues. Rather, it is a term used by Aristotle to denote any virtue that is in its complete or perfect form. In light of this reading, I offer a pluralist interpretation of Aristotelian happiness. I argue that for Aristotle, the (...) life-long exercise of a predominant virtue—as long as it is exercised in its complete or perfect form—will suffice for human happiness. The so-called inclusivist and intellectualist notions of Aristotelian happiness, thus understood, are merely two forms (viz. the composite and the non-composite form) of the pluralist notion of Aristotelian happiness. And if I am right, my pluralist interpretation provides an alternative, if not better, solution to the long-standing problem of “dual happiness” in Aristotle. (shrink)

Aristotle’s theory of human happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics explicitly depends on the claim that contemplation (theôria) is peculiar to human beings, whether it is our function or only part of it. But there is a notorious problem: Aristotle says that divine beings also contemplate. Various solutions have been proposed, but each has difficulties. Drawing on an analysis of what divine contemplation involves according to Aristotle, I identify an assumption common to all of these proposals and argue for rejecting it. (...) This allows a straightforward solution to the problem and there is evidence that Aristotle would have adopted it. (shrink)

Bernard Suits’ account of play as an autotelic activity has been greatly influential in the philosophy of sport. Suits borrows the notion of ‘autotelicity’ from Aristotle’s ethics, formulating diff...

The academic literature on management consulting raises many questions about the ethics of management consulting. The uncertain, emergent, and often socially constructed nature of management consultancy knowledge limits the scope both for regulating the industry in the manner of the established professions, and for evaluating management consultants’ work objectively. The character of management consultants is therefore a central issue in how far clients and other stakeholders can trust them. This paper considers three questions, using Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethicsas a guide. These are, (...) first, ‘What is the function of a management consultant?’, second, ‘How should a management consultant act in order to be a good management consultant?’, and third, ‘Where does the boundary lie between the ethical responsibilities of the management consultant and those of the client and other stakeholders?’ Aristotelian virtue ethics are valuable in answering these questions. Their focus on character is well suited to the distinct ethical problems of management consulting. Aristotle’s overarching concern with human flourishing, and an ethically balanced approach towards benefiting from the good things to which a virtuous person may aspire, has more promise as an influence on consultants’ behaviour than the lists of prohibitions that typify codes of ethical practice in the industry. Aristotle’s call for leaders to habituate their people to ethical behaviour should be heard by the leaders of management consultancy firms. In accordance with Aristotle’s philosophy, this paper proposes a positive target at which management consultants can aim in shooting for ethical practice. (shrink)

El presente libro se enfrenta al problema de cómo es posible concebir la filosofía aristotélica como una forma de vida, y no como una disciplina o profesión. Si en alguno de sus textos se pueden encontrar sus preocupaciones más vitales, sería en sus tratados prácticos, en los que defiende una filosofía de lo humano. Pero, pese a esto, Aristóteles insiste en que la filosofía, en su mayor grado, parece ser la filosofía primera a la que parece referirse con la contemplación (...) propuesta al final de la Ética nicomaquea. ¿Cómo entender esta tensión entre una filosofía humana y una filosofía primera? ¿A qué dio Aristóteles prelación para el buen vivir? Lo que queremos defender es que no hay una dicotomía entre vida activa y vida contemplativa m´ás allá del análisis puramente conceptual. Por el contrario, lo que propone Aristóteles es que es imposible decidir entre la acción y la contemplación sin recurrir a la filosofía misma. El intelecto, en su papel de rector de la vida, requiere contemplación para orientar a la acción, así como el médico requiere de la ciencia natural para orientar su acción. (shrink)

This study will answer the question, what do students expect to learn from philosophy teachers in the 21st century. by framing a response based on the following: The researcher’s teaching philosophy developed over 30 years, a survey conducted of UAEU students, and a discussion of the changing role and purpose of philosophy in the academy and current pedagogical philosophy in teaching. The study has focused on how philosophical questions have been changed over time, using new technology to teach philosophy, what (...) are the characteristics of philosophy teachers and students, the new direction for teaching philosophy, and career opportunities. The practical frame of this research will be analyzed students survey conducted on female students from United Arab Emirates University. I will use the method of content analysis to investigate and trace this phenomenon to determine its meaning, developing philosophical questions, and the new direction for teaching philosophy. Then I will examine the data taken from the theoretical and practical sources for the purpose of diagnosing and reaching conclusions a process which is called in philosophy synthesis, therefore the approach of the research would be analysis and synthesis. (shrink)

Departing from Aristotle's two-fold definition of anthrōpos (human) as having logos and being political, the argument of this article is that human beings are always fundamentally political for Aristotle. This position challenges the view that ethical life is prior to or beyond the scope of political life. Aristotle's conception of the political nature of the human is developed through a reading of the linguistic argument at Politics 1.2; a careful treatment of autos, or self, in Aristotle; and an examination of (...) the political nature of anthrōpos in the context of Aristotle's candidates for the best life in Politics VII.l-3 and Nicomachean Ethics X.6-8. From this consideration the compatibility between Aristotle's claims that anthrōpos is fundamentally political and that the highest end of the human is achieved in theoria is maintained, since even in pursuing the theoretic life, human beings take up the practical question of what the best life is. (shrink)

Tradicionalmente, se ha argumentado que el concepto de eudaimonía en Aristóteles se encuentra anclado en el contexto de una comprensión teleológica del universo, por cuanto dicha noción parece radicar en una definición funcionalista de la naturaleza humana. Teniendo esto en mente, Bernard Williams ha desarrollado una crítica en contra de la propuesta ética de Aristóteles, acusándola de una cierta ambición científica en el campo del razonamiento práctico que resulta insostenible actualmente. Este ensayo busca discutir si, en efecto, estos señalamientos tienen (...) un sustento plausible o si, por el contrario, se basan en una interpretación debatible de los fundamentos de la ética aristotélica. Con este propósito, se analiza la justificación del razonamiento ético de Aristóteles a la luz de los argumentos de Williams y de algunos de sus contradictores. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 1.8, Aristotle seems to argue that certain external goods are needed for happiness because, in the first place, they are needed for virtuous activity. This has puzzled scholars. After all, it seems possible for a virtuous agent to exercise her virtuous character even under conditions of extreme hardship or deprivation. Indeed, it is natural to think these are precisely the conditions under which one's virtue shines through most clearly. Why then does Aristotle think that a wide range (...) of external goods is required for virtuous activity, and therefore, for happiness? -/- I argue that there is good sense to be made of Aristotle's stance on external goods. Specifically, I explain how, on this view, a range of external goods is required for the full exercise of virtue, and I show that it is only this full exercise that is constitutive of eudaimonia. Drawing on passages in Politics 7.13 and Nicomachean Ethics 3.1, I develop and defend a distinction between the "mere" exercise of virtue, and the full or complete exercise of virtue. I argue that, for Aristotle, the distinguishing feature of this distinction is the value of the virtuous action's ends. An action that fully expresses virtue aims at an end that is unqualifiedly good, while an action that merely exercises virtue does not. I argue that the external goods Aristotle mentions in NE 1.8 are necessary for performing actions with unqualifiedly good ends, and so necessary for the complete exercise of virtue. In addition to providing a more satisfactory account than existing proposals of the role of external goods in Aristotelian happiness, my interpretation has two additional upshots. First, it brings to light an under-appreciated and independently compelling feature of Aristotle's ethical thought: the value of virtuous actions depends in part on the value of the ends they aim to realize. Second, it finds in Aristotle a distinct and powerful way of thinking about the badness of certain kinds of misfortune and deprivation: they are bad in part because they prevent us from fully realizing our capacity for moral agency, from fully engaging with value in the world. (shrink)

We can clarify a certain difficulty with regard to the phrase ‘the best and most perfect virtue’ in Aristotle’s definition of the human good in Nicomachean Ethics I 7 if we make use of two related distinctions: Donnellan’s attributive–referential distinction and Kripke’s distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference. I suggest that Aristotle is using the phrase ‘the best and most perfect virtue’ attributively, not referentially, and further that even though the phrase may refer to a specific virtue (semantic reference), (...) Aristotle is not using the phrase to refer to a specific virtue (speaker’s reference). (shrink)

This book faces the problem of how is it possible to conceive Aristotelian philosophy as a way of life, and not as a discipline or profession. If there are any of his texts where this concerns are to be found, it is in his practical treatises, in which he defends a philosophy of human affairs. However, Aristotle insists on the fact that philosophy, in its greatest expression, is the first philosophy, to which the idea of contemplation seems to refer to, (...) at the end of the Nicomachean ethics. How is this tension between human and first philosophy to be understood? Which one was more important in Aristotle’s conception of the good life? What will we be claiming here is that there’s no dichotomy between active and contemplative life beyond the conceptual analysis. On the contrary, the Aristotelian proposal is that choosing between action and contemplation is impossible without appealing to philosophy itself. The intellect, in his role as ruler of life, requires contemplation to lead action, in the same way as a medical practitioner requires natural science in order to guide his deeds. (shrink)

I argue that, for Aristotle, virtues of character like bravery and generosity are, like the emotions, properties that require a hylomorphic analysis. In order to understand what the virtues are and how they come about, one needs to take into account their formal components and their material components. The formal component of a virtue of character is a psychic disposition, its material component is the appropriate state and composition of the blood. I defend this thesis against two potential objections and (...) I show that it is relevant for a study of Aristotle’s ethics. (shrink)

Sometimes, in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), Aristotle describes virtuous actions as the sorts of actions that are ends; it is important for Aristotle to do so if he wants to maintain, as he seems to at least until NE 10.7-8, that virtuous actions are a constituent of eudaimonia. At other times, he claims that virtuous actions are the sorts of actions that are for the sake of ends beyond themselves; after all, no one would choose to go into battle or (...) give away a significant portion of their wealth if it did not realize some good end. In this paper, I review the familiar problem raised by Aristotle's discussion of the nature of virtuous actions, propose a solution to this problem by appealing to a distinction between virtuous actions and 'acting virtuously', and sketch the significance of this solution for understanding the relationship between virtue and human happiness. (shrink)

Aristotle tells us that contemplation is the most self-sufficient form of virtuous activity: we can contemplate alone, and with minimal resources, while moral virtues like courage require other individuals to be courageous towards, or courageous with. This is hard to square with the rest of his discussion of self-sufficiency in the Ethics: Aristotle doesn't generally seek to minimize the number of resources necessary for a flourishing human life, and seems happy to grant that such a life will be self-sufficient despite (...) requiring a lot of external goods. In this paper I develop an interpretation of self-sufficiency as a form of independence from external contributors to our activity, and argue that this interpretation accounts both for Aristotle's views on contemplation and for the role self-sufficiency plays in his broader account of human happiness. (shrink)

A presente pesquisa visa caracterizar o método empregado por Aristóteles na Ethica Nicomachea a partir de uma análise que contrasta duas interpretações: de um lado, a tese já tradicional que busca ver na filosofia prática do Estagirita um método estritamente dialético; de outro, a tese alternativa, explorada apenas recentemente, que aponta o uso, na EN, de um procedimento filosófico próximo das prescrições sugeridas nos Segundos Analíticos para a busca definicional nas ciências. O núcleo da primeira tese deverá ser analisado sob (...) duas perspectivas: (i) examinando um conjunto de textos que revelam o teor dialético da filosofia aristotélica; e (ii) avaliando o processo de expansão da noção de dialética e suas implicações para os estudos aristotélicos. Alternativamente, (i) será examinado como um modelo de tipo definicional pode reaproximar a ética do registro científico dos Segundos Analíticos sem necessariamente se valer de argumentos dialéticos. Por fim (ii), proponho uma versão deflacionária do que deve contar como método dialético em Aristóteles. (shrink)

Eudaemonism is the common structure of the family of theories in which the central moral conception is eudaemonia , understood as "living well" or "having a good life." In its best form, the virtues are understood as constitutive and therefore essential means to achieving or having such a life. What I seek to do is to lay the groundwork for an approach to eudaemonism grounded in practical reason, and especially in instrumental reasoning, rather than in natural teleology. In the first (...) chapter, I argue that an approach based in natural teleology will not work. In the second, the claims of decision theory to be an adequate formal representation of instrumental reasoning are examined and found wanting. In the third, I develop an account of ordinary instrumental reasoning. In the fourth, I discuss the structure of eudaemonism, with the aim of showing that there is an intelligible and attractive doctrine that can be disentangled from the natural teleology. In the fifth, I sketch an argument showing that instrumental reasoning, as explicated in the third chapter, can bear on the selection of final and ultimate ends, and that it is plausible that the instrumental approach to moral theory that I am urging yields conclusions with a eudaemonistic structure. I also indicate directions for further development and exploration. (shrink)

Scholarship on Aristotle’s NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (hereafter “the Ethics”) flourishes in an almost unprecedented fashion. In the last ten years, universities in North America have produced on average over ten doctoral dissertations a year that discuss the practical philosophy that Aristotle espouses in his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and Politics. Since the beginning of the millennium there have been three new translations of the entire Ethics into English alone, several more that translate parts of the work into English and other modern (...) languages, and half a dozen collections of new articles discussing Aristotle’s Ethics. Such an outpouring of scholarship has produced an almost unmanageable wave of books, articles, and reviews. Through my topical bibliography, I seek to organize this wealth of scholarly writing so as to make it manageable both to scholars working across the disciplines of philosophy, classics, history, and politics, and to scholars pursuing theses on specific topics within the Ethics. The bibliography takes as its model and is much indebted to that compiled by Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji in their Articles on Aristotle, Volume 2: Ethics and Politics (1977), which was further updated and incorporated into the complete bibliography to all of Aristotle’s writings in Barnes’s Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995). Although I have taken guidance from their model, my bibliography differs in one main respect. Whereas Barnes et al. were more selective and annotated their bibliography, I have been more comprehensive in my inclusion of items. I have sought to include all books and journal articles concerned with the Ethics written in English over the last 120 years; additionally, I have sought to include representative and central works of scholarship written on the Ethics in French, German, and Italian during the same period of time. (shrink)

In Book I of his Nicomachean Ethics (NE), Aristotle defines happiness, or eudaimonia, in accordance with an argument he makes regarding the distinctive function of human beings. In this paper, I argue that, despite this argument, there are moments in the NE where Aristotle appeals to elements of happiness that don’t follow from the function argument itself. The place of these elements in Aristotle’s account of happiness should, therefore, be a matter of perplexity. For, how can Aristotle appeal to elements (...) of happiness not entailed by his argument for what happiness involves? I will examine two instances that exemplify the sort of appeal to outside elements that I have in mind. The first deals with Aristotle’s reference, in NE, I, 8, to certain goods—ancestry, children, beauty—goods unrelated to man’s function or his fulfillment of it, but nevertheless required for his happiness. The second instance involves pleasure. Aristotle makes various arguments, both in Books I and X of the NE, that tie pleasure to the activity of the soul, and the function argument in turn. However, none of these arguments succeeds in demonstrating that pleasure would necessarily follow from this activity. Taken together then, these two examples demonstrate the extent to which Aristotle’s definition of happiness is more inclusive than his function argument permits. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotelian decisions (προαιρέσεις) cannot be conceived of as based solely on wish (βούλησις) and deliberation (βούλευσις), as the standard picture (most influentially argued for in Anscombe's "Thought and Action in Aristotle", in R. Bambrough ed. New Essays on Plato and Aristotle. London: Routledge, 1965) suggests. Although some features of the standard view are correct (such as that decisions have essential connection to deliberation and that wish always plays a crucial role in the formation of a decision), Aristotelian (...) decisions sometimes must include non-rational desires such as appetite. Consequently, any exegetical account of Aristotle’s notion of decision must be able to accommodate this feature. (shrink)

Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox is about Mr. Fox's attempt to flourish as both a wild animal and a consumer. As such, this film raises some interesting and difficult questions about what it means to be a member of a certain kind, what is required to flourish as a member of that kind, and how consumerism either promotes or inhibits such flourishing. In this paper I use Fantastic Mr. Fox as an entry point into an examination of the relationship between (...) consumerism and human flourishing. More specifically, I use this film as a way to engage with a worry that many philosophers have expressed: namely, the worry that consumerism threatens the identity of individual consumers. I begin by bringing certain of Mr. Fox's worries into contact with an Aristotelian account of flourishing. I then press Aristotle's account further by arguing that consumerism threatens one's ability to flourish as a human being because it tends to discourage one from engaging in distinctly human activities. I then conclude by looking to Aristotle and Mr. Fox for some ways to respond to this threat. My ultimate goals are, first, to shed light on certain dangers that are associated with consumerism, and second, to indicate how people living in consumerist societies might nonetheless overcome those dangers. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 1. 7, Aristotle gives a definition of the human good, and he does so by means of the “ ergon argument.” I clear the way for a new interpretation of this argument by arguing that Aristotle does not think that the ergon of something is always the proper activity of that thing. Though he has a single concept of an ergon, Aristotle identifies the ergon of an X as an activity in some cases but a product in (...) others, depending on the sort of thing the X is—for while the ergon of the eye is seeing, the ergon of a sculptor is a sculpture. This alternative interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of an ergon allows the key explanatory middle term of the ergon argument to be what, I argue, it ought to be: “the best achievement of a human.”. (shrink)

In recent decades "virtue ethics" has become an accepted theoretical structure for thinking about normative ethical principles. However, few contemporary virtue ethicists endorse the commitments of the first virtue theorists---the ancient Greeks, who developed their virtue theories within a commitment to eudaimonism. Why? I believe the objections of modern theorists boil down to concerns that eudaimonist theories cannot properly account for two prominent moral requirements on our treatment of others. ;First, we think that the interests and welfare of at least (...) some others ought to give us non-instrumental reason for acting---that is, reason independent of consideration of our own welfare. Second, we think others are entitled to what we might call respect, just in virtue of their being persons. Eudaimonist accounts either cannot account for these intuitions at all, or they give the wrong sort of account. ;My dissertation assesses the resources of eudaimonism to meet these lines of criticism. Chapter 2, 3, and 4 survey the views of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, to discover insights that are important for a successful response. In Chapters 5 and 6, I offer my own account, based on what I call empathic identification. This is the habit or disposition of seeing things, in effect, through the eyes of others. Empathic identification is a process through which the interpersonal transmission of reasons for actions between persons becomes possible. I argue first that our interest in our own eudaimonia justifies us in identifying empathically with others as a general habit or disposition. Second, I argue that empathic identification explains our intuitions about the respect others are due. So empathic identification generates the right sort of explanation of our intuitions about the constraints others and their interests impose upon us after all, and renders eudaimonist virtue ethics a viable form of ethical theory. (shrink)

Aristotle’s views on the choiceworthiness of friends might seem both internally inconsistent and objectionably instrumentalizing. On the one hand, Aristotle maintains that perfect friends or virtue friends are choiceworthy and lovable for their own sake, and not merely for the sake of further ends. On the other hand, in Nicomachean Ethics IX.9, Aristotle appears somehow to account for the choiceworthiness of such friends by reference to their utility as sources of a virtuous agent’s robust self-awareness. I examine Aristotle’s views on (...) the utility and choiceworthiness of friends, and offer a novel reading of Nicomachean Ethics IX.9. On this reading, Aristotle accepts a version of instrumental conditionalism about final value, that is, the thesis that goods (including friends) can be choiceworthy for their own sake (i.e., possess final or end value) at least partly on account of their instrumental properties. In articulating what sort of instrumental conditionalism it is reasonable to attribute to Aristotle, I argue that Aristotle appeals to the utility of perfect friends as part of a broadly material causal account of why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. On this reading, perfect friends are not choiceworthy for the sake of their utility in eliciting self-awareness; rather, their choiceworthiness for their own sake is (at least partly) realized in, or constituted by, their conduciveness to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness. This reading, I argue, frees Aristotle from the charge of inconsistency: Aristotle can appeal to the conduciveness of perfect friends to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness as a way of explaining why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. (shrink)

Rachlin's hyperbolic-discounting model captures basic features of the subtlety of human impulsiveness and self-control and has received convincing experimental support. His distinction between self-control patterns and impulsive acts expands his earlier work to a greater range of self-control behaviors. Possible mechanisms that may weaken or strengthen patterns of self-control are considered.

Self-control, so important in the theory and practice of psychology, has usually been understood introspectively. This target article adopts a behavioral view of the self (as an abstract class of behavioral actions) and of self-control (as an abstract behavioral pattern dominating a particular act) according to which the development of self-control is a molar/molecular conflict in the development of behavioral patterns. This subsumes the more typical view of self-control as a now/later conflict in which an act of self-control is a (...) choice of a larger but later reinforcer over a smaller but sooner reinforcer. If at some future time the smaller-sooner reinforcer will be more valuable than the larger-later reinforcer, self-control may be achieved through a commitment to the largerlater reinforcer prior to that point. According to some, there is a progressive internalization of commitment in the development of self-control. This presents theoretical and empirical problems. In two experiments temporal patterning of choices increased self-control. (shrink)

According to Nicomachean Ethics I.7 1098a16–18, eudaimonia consists in activity of soul “according to the best and most final” virtue. Ongoing debate between inclusivist and exclusivist readers of this passage has focused on the referent of “the best and most final” virtue. I argue that even if one accepts the exclusivist's answer to this reference question, one still needs an account of what it means for activity of soul to accord with the best and most final virtue. I examine the (...) nature of this accordance relation and defend a novel inclusivist reading of the whole passage. (shrink)

Liberalism is a distinctively modern political conception. Only in modern times do we find, as the object of both systematic reflection and widespread allegiance and institutionalization, the idea that the principles of political association, being coercive, should be justifiable to all whom they are to bind. And so only here do we find the idea that these principles should rest, so far as possible, on a core, minimal morality which reasonable people can share, given their expectably divergent religious convictions and (...) conceptions of the meaning of life. No longer does it seem evident—as it did, let us say, before the seventeenth century—that the aim of political association must be to bring man into harmony with God's purposes or to serve some comprehensive vision of the good life. The causes of this transformation are various, and not all of them lie at the level of moral principle. But a change in moral consciousness has certainly been one of the factors involved. As Hegel observed, modern culture is inherently a reflective one: notions of principle are essential to our self-understanding and thus to the stability of the social forms in which we participate. Modern culture has no room for a dichotomy between “in principle” and “in practice.” It is worth determining, then, what new moral conceptions have been responsible for the emergence of modern liberalism. Not only will we thereby better understand how we have become who we are, we will also have a surer grasp of the principles that sustain our political life. (shrink)

[About the book] Although this collection of articles is not formally a commentary on Elizabeth Anscombe's famous article of the same title, in which she criticised the moral philosophy prevalent in 1958, a number of the contributors do take Anscombe's work as a starting point. Taken together the collection could be seen as a demonstration of the extent to which moral philosophers have since attempted to answer Anscombe's challenge, and to develop an approach to their subject which, while psychologically plausible, (...) is neither based on divine law nor permissive of the impermissible. (shrink)

Aristotle's treatment of the choice between the political and contemplative lives (in EN I 5 and X 7-8) can seem awkward. To offer one explanation of this, I argue that when he invokes self-sufficience (autarkeia) as a criterion for this choice, he appeals to two different and incompatible specifications of "lacking nothing." On one specification, suitable to a human being living as a political animal and thus seeking to realize his end as an engaged citizen of a polis, a person (...) lacks nothing by possessing a wide range of goods that directly require other people. On the other, more suitable to a god or a beast, a person lacks nothing by having no need of goods that directly require other people. The ambiguity of this criterion renders the choice between the political and contemplative lives difficult. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy, the will is often regarded as a sheer philosophical fiction. In Will as Commitment and Resolve , Davenport argues not only that the will is the central power of human agency that makes decisions and forms intentions but also that it includes the capacity to generate new motivation different in structure from prepurposive desires. The concept of "projective motivation" is the central innovation in Davenport's existential account of the everyday notion of striving will. Beginning with the contrast (...) between "eastern" and "western" attitudes toward assertive willing, Davenport traces the lineage of the idea of projective motivation from NeoPlatonic and Christian conceptions of divine motivation to Scotus, Kant, Marx, Arendt, and Levinas. Rich with historical detail, this book includes an extended examination of Platonic and Aristotelian eudaimonist theories of human motivation. Drawing on contemporary critiques of egoism, Davenport argues that happiness is primarily a byproduct of activities and pursuits aimed at other agent-transcending goods for their own sake. In particular, the motives involved in virtue and in its practice as understood by Alasdair MacIntyre are projective rather than eudaimonist. This theory is supported by analyses of radical evil, accounts of intrinsic motivation in existential psychology, and contemporary theories of identity-forming commitment in analytic moral psychology. Following Viktor Frankl, Joseph Raz, and others, Davenport argues that Harry Frankfurt's conception of caring requires objective values worth caring about, which serve as rational grounds for projecting new final ends. The argument concludes with a taxonomy of values or goods, devotion to which can make life meaningful for us. (shrink)

In this article, I present a neo-Confucian answer, by Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, to the question, "Why should I be moral?" I argue that this answer is better than some representative answers in the Western philosophical tradition. According to the Chengs, one should be moral because it is a joy to perform moral actions. Sometimes one finds it a pain, instead of a joy, to perform moral actions only because one lacks the necessary genuine moral knowledge—knowledge that is accessible (...) to every common person as long as one makes the effort to learn. One should make the effort to learn such knowledge—to seek joy in performing moral actions—because to be moral is a distinguishing mark of being human. This neo-Confucian answer seems to be egoistic, as its conception of motivation for morality is based on self-interest: to seek one's own joy. However, since it emphasizes that one's true self-interest is to seek joy in things uniquely human, which is to be moral, self-interest and morality become identical; the more a person seeks one's self-interest, the more moral the person is, and vice versa. (shrink)

Proponents of the legalization of assisted suicide often appeal to our supposed right to "die with dignity" to defend their case. I examine and assess different notions of "dignity" that are operating in many arguments for the legalization of assisted suicide, and I find them all to be deficient. I then consider an alternative conception of dignity that is based on Aristotle's conception of the conditions on the best life. I conclude that, while such a conception of dignity fits best (...) with our intuitions about the conditions under which a life has dignity, it supports the legalization of assisted suicide only under very limited circumstances. (shrink)

This thesis comprises a study of the ethical thought of Iris Murdoch with special emphasis, as evidenced by the title, on how morality is intimately connected to self-improvement aiming at perfection and how the study of fiction has an important role to play in our strive towards bettering ourselves within the framework set by Murdoch’s moral philosophy.

In this thesis I am going to explore the relationship between happiness and imprisonment. I will discuss three theories of happiness - hedonism, life satisfaction theories and emotional states theories. I will argue that the main problem of these theories is that they take happiness to consist only of psychological states. Because of this, I will turn my attention towards those theories that evaluate happiness in terms of how well life is going for the person who is living it. I (...) will argue that my Aristotelian account is the most plausible way to understand the relationship between happiness and imprisonment. This is because it takes into account both the external circumstances and the psychological and emotional life of pnsoners. Through this thesis, I will show that my account of happiness in prison accomplishes three tasks: i) it solves the problems encountered by the other theories of happiness in the evaluation of prisoners' happiness, ii) it does not suffer from two of the main objections to the other objectivist theories of happiness, and iii) it can help us to investigate the happiness of prisoners empirically more accurately. (shrink)

This paper attempts to mark out new ground in the connections between the philosophical writings of Martin Heidegger and Aristotle by posing an interesting question that has never been addressed. Both writers devote much of their early thoughts to questions concerning human beings' practical ways of understanding. However, in their later thoughts Heidegger and Aristotle suddenly seem to completely change the subject to ideal or transcendental ways of understanding. At first glance these ideal modes of human apprehension seem to have (...) nothing to do with each other. Yet, Heidegger and Aristotle seem to have similar motives for turning away from the practical realm and towards a transcendental realm, and they seem to have similar outcomes. My investigation of their respective motives and outcomes has led me to believe that although there are some similarities that are thought provoking, they are not strong enough to conclude that Heidegger's later writings are connected to his recovery of Aristotelian ideas. Given that the core of Heidegger's early questions of Being can be interpreted as a retrieval of Aristotle, to be able to demarcate the point at which Heidegger ceases his attempts at this recovery may allow us to examine the differences in Heidegger's later thought concerning Being. (shrink)

Self-control is in the eye of the beholder. However, we speak of if a person has come to think conscious thoughts that change the motivational value of stimuli in the outside world. It is claimed that conscious thinking, and not habits bordering on compulsion, is behind self-control.

Teleological behaviorism, unlike Skinnerian behaviorism, recognizes that are needed to account adequately for human behavior, but it rejects the essential role in behavioral explanations of the subjective perspective of the agent. I argue that teleological behaviorism fails because of this rejection.