Aristotle's account of external goods in Nicomachean Ethics I 8-12 is often thought to amend his narrow claim that happiness is virtuous activity. I argue, to the contrary, that on Aristotle's account, external goods are necessary for happiness only because they are necessary for virtuous activity. My case innovates in three main respects: I offer a new map of EN I 8-12; I identify two mechanisms to explain why virtuous activity requires external goods, including a psychological need for external goods; (...) and I show the relevance of Aristotle's distinction between wishing and choosing. On the view I attribute to Aristotle, our capacity to choose virtuously requires, first, that we wish for external goods (because virtue requires the right attitudes of evaluation) and, second, that these wishes are generally fulfilled (because the social consequences and psychological pain of unfulfilled wishes undermine our opportunity to act virtuously and to take pleasure in acting virtuously). I close with discussion of how Aristotelians should defend this approach. (shrink)

In this essay I revise, based on the notion of the ‘enlightened ruler’ or mingzhu and his critique of the literati of his time, the common belief that Han Fei was an amoralist and an advocate of tyranny. Instead, I will argue that his writings are dedicated to advising those who ought to rule in order to achieve the goal of a peaceful and stable society framed by laws in accordance with the dao.

I argue that central to Aristotle’s account of vice is a distinction between two varieties of vicious person: those for whom character change is possible (the curable), and those for whom it is not (the incurable). Recognizing this distinction and drawing out the ideas which ground it shows why Aristotle’s discussions of vice in EN vii and ix 4 are not inconsistent.

Aristotle contrasts episteme and doxa through the key notions of universal and necessary. These notions have played a central role in Aristotle’s characterization of scientific knowledge in the previous chapters of APo. They are not spelled out in APo I.33, but work as a sort of reminder that packs an adequate characterization of scientific knowledge and thereby gives a highly specified context for Aristotle’s contrast between episteme and doxa. I will try to show that this context introduces a contrast in (...) terms of explanatory claims: on the one hand, episteme covers those claims which capture explanatory connections that are universal and necessary and thereby deliver scientific understanding; on the other hand, doxa covers the explanatory attempts that fail at doing so. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 2.4 Aristotle raises a puzzle about moral habituation. Scholars take the puzzle to concern how a learner could perform virtuous actions, given the assumption that virtue is prior to virtuous action. I argue, instead, that Aristotle is concerned to defend the necessity of practice, given the assumption that virtue is reducible to virtuous action.

In fragments of the lost Protrepticus, preserved in Iamblichus, Aristotle responds to Isocrates’ worries about the excessive demandingness of theoretical philosophy. Contrary to Isocrates, Aristotle holds that such philosophy is generally feasible for human beings. In defense of this claim, Aristotle offers the progress argument, which appeals to early Greek philosophers’ rapid success in attaining exact understanding. In this paper, I explore and evaluate this argument. After making clarificatory exegetical points, I examine the argument’s premises in light of pressing worries (...) that the argument reasonably faces in its immediate intellectual context, the dispute between Isocrates and Aristotle. I also relate the argument to modern concerns about philosophical progress. I contend that the argument withstands these worries, and thereby constitutes a reasonable Aristotelian response to the Isocratean challenge. (shrink)

The mean has mostly been considered in the history of Aristotelian Ethics’ commentaries as the main idea of his ethical thought so that it transformed from an ethical concept to his ethical theory. Thus, the validity of the Aristotelian ethical attitude is evaluated by the mean as the central thesis. However, it becomes apparent by pursuing the procedure of the Aristotelian investigation in the text of the Nicomachean Ethics that the mean is first presented as a possibility for the necessity (...) of the best choice’s understanding in every given practical situation. The final signification and the substantial content of the mean is that the best choice must be chosen by every individual agent at any particular action considering all the multiple, variable and conditioned factors. Because the mean is an individual intuitive grasping, it needs a right rule; relying on which, as a universal criterion, we determine any particular mean in every special circumstance. The right rule itself consists of the right reason. Having surveyed various kinds of knowledge, Aristotle arrives at practical reason, which is an agent’s dispositional power generally and in comprehending and actualizing the best particular option particularly. The mean, therefore, depends on the right rule which itself relies on the correct reason or practical understanding. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, phainomena or “appearances” provide the basis from which researches proceed. This shows that in spite of phainomena often corresponding to what falsely appears to be the case, there is genuine cognition through them. In this paper, I focus on two features of phainomenal cognition: accessibility and epistemological limitation. A phainomenal cognition of x is limited in the sense that there is always a stronger cognition of x to be attained. In this way, a research always aims at (...) surpassing the phainomenal cognition of its subject matter. On the other hand, phainomenal cognition is always somehow accessible. Resorting to the relation between phainomena and the distinction between the more intelligible to us and the more intelligible by nature, I intend to put forward a relative (as opposed to an absolute) understanding of both accessibility and epistemological limitation of phainomena. (shrink)

Aristotle’s portrait of the man of great soul in both the Eudemian and the Nicomachean Ethics has long perplexed commentators. Although his portrait of the man of small soul has been all but ignored by commentators, it, too, contains a number of claims that are profoundly counter-intuitive to the modern cast of mind. The paper is an attempt at identifying the nature of the discrepancies between Aristotle’s values and our own, and at placing the ethical claims that he makes on (...) greatness and smallness of soul within the context of his ethics and political philosophy. The Aristotelian man of great-soul, it is here contended, is best understood as a man who assesses external and internal goods, both his own and those of others, at their true value. His overall excellence fits him to play a key political role, not only in states where the principle of distributive justice dictates that the best should rule, but also in states with a democratic constitution, in which citizens take it in turn to rule and be ruled. He is therefore paradigmatically capable of engaging in civic friendship, a relationship that Aristotle left largely undefined in spite of holding it to be a powerfully cohesive force in the state. The man of small-soul, by contrast, is best understood as a man whose disinclination to take risks of any kind makes him reluctant to contribute to the well-being of his city and who, as a result, proves incapable of engaging in civic friendship. (shrink)

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes the following claims: “the end cannot be a subject of deliberation, but only what contributes to the ends” (NE 1112b33-34) and “virtue makes the goal right, practical wisdom makes the things to- ward the goal right" (NE 1144a7-9). A problem arises from such claims: the ends as- sumed by a moral agent cannot be subject to rational choice. For deliberation, an intel- lectual procedure, is bound to deal with the things that contribute to the (...) ends, and the ends, in turn, fall within the realm of virtue of character, which is described by Aristotle as a virtue of the non-rational part of the soul. In order to understand how Aristotle sup- ports such thesis, this research investigates how virtue of character and practical wis- dom are related and their work to delimit the ends and the things that contribute to the ends in the moral actions. (shrink)

Fragments of Aristotle’s lost Protrepticus seem to offer inconsistent arguments for the value of contemplation (one argument appealing to contemplation's uselessness, the other appealing to its utility). In this paper, I argue that these arguments are mutually consistent. Further, I argue that, contrary to first appearances, Aristotle has resources in the Protrepticus for explaining how contemplation, even if it has divine objects, can nevertheless be useful in the way in which he claims, viz., for providing cognitive access to boundary markers (...) (horoi) of the human good. (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)

My paper argues that the Nicomachean Ethics endorses kingship (basileia) as the best regime (aristê politeia). In order to justify such a claim, I look at Aristotle’s discussion and rankings of regimes throughout the Ethics, specifically, the discussions of regime division in EN VIII.10, the inculcation of virtue in II.1, ethical habituation in X.9, and the “one regime which is best everywhere according to nature” in V.7.

Neste artigo, propõe-se uma leitura das categorias no tratado aristotélico homônimo como um primeiro esboço de uma ontologia regional, centrada nas substâncias sensíveis. Tendo por foco substância, quantidade, qualidade, relativo, agir e sofrer, este trabalho busca expor as duas estratégias principais que Aristóteles parece empregar para chegar a uma lista das categorias: (a) características básicas, cuja satisfação ou não satisfação de cada uma determina a natureza categorial de cada item e (b) a propriedade única que caracteriza cada categoria em contraste (...) com todas as outras. São, então, feitas considerações para vincular esse primeiro esboço ontológico a temas discutidos nos livros Lambda e Zeta da Metafísica, de modo a sugerir as direções principais que a sua ontologia nova (e geral) seguirá ao evoluir para uma teoria unificada da substância. (shrink)

Aristotle ’s claim that we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions raises a familiar problem: How can we perform virtuous actions unless we are already virtuous? I reject deflationary accounts of the answer given in _Nicomachean Ethics_ 2.4 and argue instead that proper habituation involves doing virtuous actions with the right motive, i.e. for the sake of the noble, even though learners do not yet have virtuous dispositions. My interpretation confers continuity to habituation and explains in a non-mysterious way how (...) we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions in the right way. (shrink)

I claim that, in the Topics, Aristotle advises dialectical questioners to intentionally argue fallaciously in order to escape from some dialectically awkward positions, and I work through the consequences of that claim. It will turn out that, although there are important exceptions, the techniques for finding arguments described in Topics I–VII are, by and large, locations that Aristotle thought of as appropriate for use in philosophical inquiry. The text that grounds this claim, however, raises a further problem: it highlights the (...) solitary nature of philosophical inquiry, which puts into question the philosophical relevance of Topics VIII. I find that the Topics provides inadequate grounds for thinking that Aristotle saw Topics VIII as describing standards or techniques of argument that were appropriate for philosophy, and so these texts cannot be used by contemporary commentators to shed light on Aristotle's philosophical practice. Finally, although Aristotle saw philosophy as a solitary activity, he th.. (shrink)

A standard thesis of contemporary Aristotelian virtue ethics and some recent Heideggerian scholarship is that virtuous behavior can be performed immediately and spontaneously without engaging conscious processes of deliberative thought. It is also claimed that phronēsis either enables or is consistent with this possibility. In the Nicomachean Ethics, however, Aristotle identifies phronesis as the excellence of the calculative part of the intellect, claims that calculation and deliberation are the same and that it is the mark of the phronimos to be (...) able to deliberate well. He also insists that for an action to count as virtuous it must issue from rational choice, which he characterizes as determined by deliberation. It thus seems that any exegetically respectable attempt to explain virtuous action within an Aristotelian framework would need to integrate with some account of deliberative choice. This creates a tension in Aristotelian scholarship. In this paper, I shall formalize this tension in terms of an apparently inconsistent triad of claims and shall examine the merits of at least one prominent interpretation of phronesis with respect to its reconciliation. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the first part of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics A-33, 88b30-89a10. I claim that Aristotle is not concerned with an epistemological distinction between knowledge and belief in general. He is rather making a contrast between scientific knowledge (which is equivalent to explanation by the primarily appropriate cause) and some explanatory beliefs that falls short of capturing the primarily appropriate cause.

Based on a reading of chapter 38 of the Daodejing, this article examines the relationship between the virtues and moral motivation. Laozi puts forward a view which might be termed a "paradox of virtue"--the phenomenon that a conscious pursuit of virtue can lead to a diminishing of virtue. It aims to show that Laozi's criticisms on the focus on the virtues and characters of agents, and his overall view on morality, pose challenges to a way of moral thinking that is (...) common in modern moral philosophy, including virtue ethics. (shrink)

I explore Aristotle’s account in the Nicomachean Ethics of how agents attain self-awareness through contemplation. I argue that Aristotle sets up an account of self-awareness through contemplating friends in Books VIII-IX that completes itself in Book X’s remarks on theoretical contemplation. I go on to provide an account of how contemplating the divine, on Aristotle’s view, elicits self-awareness.

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)

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)

El propósito de este trabajo consiste en destacar el papel central que tiene el problema de la divisibilidad del alma en los dos enfoques bajo los que se presenta la investigación psicológica aristotélica: el hilemórfico y el cardiocéntrico. Mientras que el primero sostiene que el alma es la forma o esencia del cuerpo entero, el segundo aboga por la localización del alma en el corazón, pues asegura que allí se manifiestan los principios de las partes o facultades anímicas. A simple (...) vista, podría suponerse que existe una incompatibilidad entre ambos enfoques, ya que no tendría mucho sentido afirmar que el alma se halla en todo el cuerpo y, al mismo tiempo, decir que se encuentra exclusivamente en uno de sus órganos específicos. Entonces, la tesis de este trabajo es que el pneuma ofrece la clave para la conciliación de estos dos enfoques, dado que es el instrumento empleado por las partes del alma para desplegar sus funciones por todo el cuerpo. El corazón, como sede material de dichas partes, irradia el pneuma en forma de sangre por todo el organismo; y éste, hasta que no se extingue esa operación vital, preserva su esencia, causa formal o razón de ser de su existir. De este modo, el hilemorfismo resulta sustentado por el cardiocentrismo. (shrink)

Is the virtue of the good citizen the same as the virtue of the good man? Aristotle addresses this in Politics 3.4. His answer is twofold. On the one hand, (the account for Difference) they are not the same both because what the citizen’s virtue is depends on the constitution, on what preserves it, and on the role the citizen plays in it, and because the good citizens in the best constitution cannot all be good men, whereas the good man’s (...) virtue is uniform. On the other hand, (the account for Identity) the two virtues are identical in the good men in the best constitution, in which all are good citizens, each possessing the ability for ruling and for being ruled. This nuanced answer can be seen as Aristotle’s synthesis of a Periclean view (contribution to state blots out personal wrongs) and a Socratic view (no good citizen is without justice). Its nuances reflect the extent to which Aristotle’s conceptions of good citizenship and the best constitution accommodate deviations of what is probable from the human ideal set out in his ethical writings. In the present chapter, I will first address three puzzles regarding the nuances of Aristotle’s answer. Second, I will consider one question about its implication: Does Aristotle’s account for Difference turn out to entail something ultra-Periclean: that no one can simultaneously be a good man and a good citizen in any constitution other than the best? I shall argue the negative. (shrink)

This is my first professional philosophical essay. I wrote "The twofold meaning of being" in 1996 when I was a student of Nunzio Incardona at University of Palermo (Italy) and before my degree thesis, "The difference in Aristotle’s Metaphysics". It still waits to be published.

En el pasaje 1147b6-9 de la Ética Nicomáquea, Aristóteles subraya que el akratḗs es capaz de arrepentimiento sin indicar cómo, pues ello debe ser escuchado de los fisiólogos. Este trabajo, no obstante, sostiene que Aristóteles no deja este problema sin respuesta: dado que la educación es el marco en el que el hombre se ejercita, a lo largo de su vida, en el buen vivir, la construcción de la acción trágica en la Poética puede verse como una herramienta pedagógica que (...) permite una profundización en el conflicto entre la razón y las pasiones del akratḗs, y cuyo genuino aporte estriba en su capacidad de explotar sus páthē para él y encauzarlas hacia una reflexión, a través de un ejercicio deductivo, sobre su propia condición. (shrink)

I will argue for the similarity between some aspects of Aristotle’s doctrine of causes and a particular kind of interventionist theory of causality. The interventionist account hypothesizes that there is a connection between causation and human intervention: the idea of a causal relation between two events is generated by the reflection of human beings on their own operating. This view is remindful of the Aristotelian concept of αἴτιον, which is linked to the figure of the αἴτιος, the person who is (...) responsible of an action. Aristotle conceives of the efficient cause as the active element which, in the φύσις, gives rise to movement and imposes the form, in analogy with the active element that in τέχνη operates the production: the craftsman. This analogy suggests that Aristotle conceives of the causation on the basis of the human ability to modify the environment with aims. Within the debate on the manipulative theory the classical accounts worked out by Collingwood, Gasking and von Wright have been recently criticized by Woodward. von Wright’s reductive account explains causation on the basis of human free action, while Woodward regards this reduction as a dangerous move which makes causal explanations too much anthropomorphic. I will show that Aristotle’s doctrine of causes is more similar to von Wright’s account and that the Aristotelian analysis of becoming supports von Wright’s reductive interventionism against Woodward’s criticism. Furthermore, I will draw a comparison between interventionism and dispositionalism, where the latter is another contemporary account of causation that claims Aristotelian roots. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Socrates’ hopeful and confident attitude in the Phaedo in order to show, on the one hand, that the ascetic interpretation of the Socratic doc-trine of the purification of affections must be under-stood in a restricted sense and, on the other, that a dra-matic reading of the dialogue – that is, one that recog-nizes the emotional effects the author seeks to awake in the reader – must primarily take into account Socrates’ intention to communicate to his (...) friends his own affec-tive disposition, and, only secondarily, the emotional reaction the audience in fact holds. To prove this, I will argue that Socrates’ success in calming down his friends’ discouragement does not depend exclusively on the compelling character of his arguments in favor of the immortality of the soul, but also on his friends’ being capable of experiencing by themselves an attrac-tion for wisdom. Socrates looks for this effect through the same experience of the conversation, by trying to awaken in the others the anticipatory pleasure of the hope in post-mortem life. Plato would thus aim to prompt in the reader affections that do not disrupt the intellectual activity and that, alongside his arguments, are capable of counteracting the affections that reduce the horizon of expectations to the corporeal world. (shrink)

Does Aristotle by his phrase “syllogisms of things to be done” mean syllogisms of a distinctive and inherently practical content, perhaps syllogisms subject to an unfamiliar logic? Or does he just mean syllogisms that are relevant in contexts concerning what to do next? I propose the second interpretation, taking the syllogisms in question to constitute the deductive kernel of stretches of practical thinking. They are pieces of deduction that take on a practical function in context.

Este trabajo se propone examinar algunas características de la máscara del coquus en el corpus plautino. En primer término, se estudia el modo en que este personaje, a partir de las referencias al castigo físico y a la pasividad sexual, es construido como un cuerpo subordinado al servicio de otros. Luego, se consideran sus apariciones como ladrón y como proveedor de placeres corporales. Proponemos que la forma en que los cocineros son representados en la palliata de Plauto pone en evidencia (...) el vínculo que la axiología republicana establece entre actores sociales subalternos, corporalidad y amenaza a los mores maiorum. This paper examines some characteristics of the coquus mask in the plautine corpus. First, we study how this character, from references to physical punishment and sexual passivity, is built as a subordinate body to the service of others. Then, we consider his appearances as a thief and a provider of bodily pleasures. We propose that the way cooks are represented in Plautus' palliata shows us the link established by Republican axiology between subaltern social actors, body and threat to mores maiorum. (shrink)

Resumen: El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar la relevancia de la máthesis para la concepción de la mimesis aristotélica. A partir de las observaciones de la Poética, delimitaré las características del aprendizaje tomando como eje su objeto, modalidad y consecuencias. Para ello analizaré, en primer lugar, el objeto sobre el que recae el aprendizaje mimético, esto es, los hombres que actúan. Luego examinaré la modalidad de presentación de sus acciones para que sea posible el aprendizaje, prestando especial atención al (...) papel que desempeña el error trágico o hamartía. Finalmente, resaltaré los aspectos por los que, a mi entender, la mímesis tiene consecuencias éticas y políticas relevantes en el marco del proyecto educativo de Aristóteles, y que permiten pasar de una consideración de la mímesis en el plano individual a una consideración sobre su función en el ámbito político.: The aim of this paper is to show the relevance of mathesis for the Aristotelian concept of mimesis. From the framework of Poetics, i try to demarcate the characteristics of learning, taking into account its object, modality, and consequences. In order to do this, I will analyze, first, the object of mimetic learning, that is, men who act. Then, I will examine the modality of presentation of their actions that make learning possible, paying special attention to the role played by tragic mistake or hamartía. Finally, I will highlight the aspects on account of which, in my opinion, mimesis has relevant ethical and political consequences in the framework of Aristotle's educational project, and which allow passing from a consideration of mimesis on an individual level to a political level. (shrink)

Moral virtue is, for Aristotle, a state to which an agent’s motivation is central. For anyone interested in Aristotle’s account of moral development this invites reflection on two questions: how is it that virtuous motivational dispositions are established? And what contribution do the moral learner’s existing motivational states make to the success of her habituation? I argue that views which demand that the learner act with virtuous motives if she is to acquire virtuous dispositions misconstrue the nature and structure of (...) the habituation process, but also obscure Aristotle’s crucial insight that the very practice of virtuous actions affords a certain discovery and can be transformative of an agent’s motivational states. Drawing attention, in Aristotle’s account, to an asymmetry between the agential perspective and the observation of others, I consider what the agential perspective affords the learner, and offer a novel interpretation of the role a learner’s existing motives play in her habituation. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo nos proponemos analizar el uso que Aristóteles hace en el Protréptico de la analogía entre phýsis y téchne centrándonos para ello en su concepción de la naturaleza como principio de movimiento presentada en la Física. La tesis que intentaremos defender es que el uso de la analogía obedece a la metodología aristotélica de ir de lo más conocido para nosotros a lo más conocido en sí y, por lo tanto, al intento de develar a través de (...) los procesos técnicos cómo llegan a ser los procesos de generación en el caso de los entes naturales. Para probar nuestra tesis, dividiremos el trabajo en dos secciones. En la primera, nos centraremos en el análisis del uso de la analogía y en los supuestos conceptuales que implica. En la segunda parte, nos detendremos en la limitación que esta analogía presenta y, por lo tanto, en la restricción explicativa que supone. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit Aristocles’ formulation of the objection of immorality addressed to the Pyrrhonists, as well as a possible skeptical answer transmitted by the same source. Concerning the objection, I will try to show that it is an ethical and not a practical charge, which should not therefore be confused with the objection of apraxia. Concerning the answer, I will argue that it is necessarily a de ationary solution, which leaves part of the accusation intact, simply because the (...) Pyrrhonist cannot and should not admit the terms in which it has been raised. (shrink)