The passage I will discuss in this paper, one of the best known in the Aristotelian corpus, occurs in Book I chapter 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics, and concerns the ergon, i.e. the function, of human beings. Aristotle argues that we have a function, that our happiness consists in fulfilling it, and that this function must be idion, i.e. it must be peculiar to us. On this basis, he asserts that our function cannot consist in being alive, nourishment, growth, or (...) perception, for these activities are common to other species. Aristotle then arrives at his familiar conclusion that our function consists in the excellent use of reason. (shrink)

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.

This article offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s ambiguous and much-discussed claim that pleasure perfects activity. This interpretation provides an alternative to the two main competing readings of this claim in the scholarship: the addition-view, which envisages the perfection conferred by pleasure as an extra perfection beyond the perfection of activity itself; and the identity-view, according to which pleasure just is the perfect activity itself. The proposed interpretation departs from both these views in rejecting their assumption that pleasure cannot perfect (...) the activity itself, and argues that pleasure makes activity perfect by optimising the exercise of one’s capacities for that activity. Those who build or play music with pleasure do so better than those who do not delight in these activities. The basis of this interpretation is Aristotle’s little-read remarks from the following chapter, i. e. NE x.5, about how pleasure “increases” the activity. (shrink)

This book investigates Aristotle’s views on abstraction and explores how he uses it. In this work, the author follows Aristotle in focusing on the scientific detail first and then approaches the metaphysical claims, and so creates a reconstructed theory that explains many puzzles of Aristotle’s thought. Understanding the details of his theory of relations and abstraction further illuminates his theory of universals. Some of the features of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction developed in this book include: abstraction is a relation; perception (...) and knowledge are types of abstraction; the objects generated by abstractions are relata which can serve as subjects in their own right, whereupon they can appear as items in other categories. The author goes on to look at how Aristotle distinguishes the concrete from the abstract paronym, how induction is a type of abstraction which typically moves from the perceived individuals to universals and how Aristotle’s metaphysical vocabulary is "relational.’ Beyond those features, this work also looks at how of universals, accidents, forms, causes and potentialities have being only as abstract aspects of individual substances. An individual substance is identical to its essence; the essence has universal features but is the singularity making the individual substance what it is. These theories are expounded within this book. One main attraction in working out the details of Aristotle’s views on abstraction lies in understanding his metaphysics of universals as abstract objects. This work reclaims past ground as the main philosophical tradition of abstraction has been ignored in recent times. It gives a modern version of the medieval doctrine of the threefold distinction of essence, made famous by the Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics II 4 Aristotle famously raises a puzzle concerning moral habituation, and he seems to dissolve it by recourse to the analogy between moral virtue and skills. A new interpretation of the chapter is offered on the basis of an important evaluative dissimilarity then noted by Aristotle, one almost universally disregarded by interpreters of the chapter. I elucidate the nature of the dissimilarity in question and argue for its paramount importance for understanding Aristotle’s conception of moral agency. I (...) also show that it is the particularly intricate and puzzling character of the chapter that has prevented scholars from noticing such a dissimilarity and from integrating it to the interpretation of the chapter. (shrink)

Aristotle’s soul is a first principle (an ‘efficient cause’) of every vital change in an animal, in the way that a craft is a cause of its product’s coming-to-be. We argue that the soul’s causal efficacy cannot therefore be reduced to the formal constitution of vital phenomena, or to discrete interventions into independently constituted processes, but involves the exercise of vital powers. This reading does better justice to Aristotle’s conception of craft as a rational productive disposition; and it captures the (...) soul’s continuous causal role as that which brings about all forms of vital change and underwrites their unity. (shrink)

In the ethical texts, Aristotle claims that all instances of choice (prohairesis) must be preceded by deliberation, but it is not clear why he believes this. This paper offers an explanation of that commitment, drawing heavily from the De Anima and showing that the account emerging from there complements that of the ethical texts. The view is that the deliberative faculty has the capacity to manipulate reasons combinatorially, while the perceptual/desiderative faculty does not, and choice requires the combinatorial manipulation of (...) reasons. (shrink)

. In Aristotle's account, corrective and distributive justice are not particular substantive ideals, but are rather the formal patterns that inhere in interactions and in the legal arrangements that regulate them. Corrective and distributive justice are the structures of ordering internal to transactions and distributions, respectively. The Aristotelian. forms of justice thus constitute the rationality immanent to the relation ships of mutually external beings. This article stresses Aristotle's formalism, contrasting it to modem instrumental conceptions of legal rationality, and defending it (...) against Kelsen's allegations of emptiness. The article concludes with the suggestion that corrective justice, as the conceptual pattern that makes private law what it is, can be considered the formal and final cause of private law. (shrink)

This article considers the development of the idea of universal moral principles in the work of Thomas Aquinas and his predecessors in the thirteenth century. Like other medieval authors who sought to place the principles of moral practice on a foundation more secure than on the choices of the good person, as described by Aristotle, Thomas chooses to introduce a measure of ethical certitude through the concept of the innate habit of synderesis. This idea, introduced by Jerome in his commentary (...) on Ezekiel, locates an inextinguishable spark of conscience in all humans. Thomas, influenced by Philip the Chancellor and Albert the Great, locates the principles of natural law in this innate habit of synderesis. By so doing he can claim that all human beings have the ability to recognize universally binding moral imperatives, regardless of their background and societal influences. Through this natural ability the human basis for moral action found in Aristotle's Ethics yields to one based upon the eternal immutable laws of a divine being. (shrink)

Les études sur les ramifications politiques de la conception aristotélicienne de l’amitié ont été consacrées à «l’amitié politique» et ont perdu de vue l’importance de sa description de la «concorde» (ὁμόνοια). Cela s’explique par un certain nombre de raisons, dont la plus importante est qu’Aristote offre un compte rendu précis de la concorde, mais qu’il n’a presque rien à dire sur l’amitié politique. Mon article examine les aspects éthiques et politiques de la concorde à la lumière d’un désaccord entre Richard (...) Bodéüs et René Gauthier sur l’autonomie de l’Éthique à Nicomaque d’Aristote en tant qu’œuvre de théorie éthique. (shrink)

I examine Aristotle's brief remarks in N.E. I.3 to the effect that fine and just things – ta kala and ta dikaia – have much diversity and variation and hence are thought to be...

This paper reconsiders Aristotle’s arguments inNicomachean Ethics9.9 concerning the claim that a virtuous friend is naturally desirable. The paper demonstrates that a virtuous friend, according to Aristotle, is naturally desirable not only because he is good, but also because he is one’s own. Although the two are different ways of being desirable, the paper shows that Aristotle takes being one’s own to consist in a distinctive kind of being good. This enables him to extend the grounds of virtue-friendship beyond the (...) good character narrowly conceived, and thus explain why a friend is preferable to other virtuous people. (shrink)

In this paper, we try to establish a connection between Heidegger’s conception of authenticity and the Aristotelian σπουδαῖος. Through an exploration of Heidegger’s reference to authenticity, Aristotle’s concept of σπουδαῖος, and a reinterpretation of Heidegger’s reappropriation of certain Aristotelian concepts, such as αἴσθησις, πίστις and προαίρεσις, we wish to show that the authentic Dasein has assumed full responsibility of its role in life, and it has developed ontologically, in the same way a σπουδαῖος man acknowledges one’s full potentiality in purposeful (...) action. The σπουδαῖος as the authentic Dasein grasps the moment, gives rise to the occasion by directing one’s judgement towards the praxis, and comes to provide its own stance in the facticity of life. In fact, the σπουδαῖος, like an authentic Dasein, in a way, comes to reflect the synthesis between θεωρία and πράξις as well as an implicit effort for Dasein to uncover itself to the world and to allow the world to uncover to it. (shrink)

Exeinai bedeutet, dass es jemandem offensteht, eine bestimmte Handlung zu tun. Damit verbinden sich die Vorstellungen des Handlungsspielraums, des Anders-Könnens und des Anders-gekonnt-Habens wie auch die Vorstellung, selbst über sein Tun und Lassen bestimmen zu können. Exousia ist eng verknüpft mit eleutheria, Freiheit, und seit Aristoteles ist exeinai auch mit dem Begriff ep’ autō(i): etwas liegt bei einem, verbunden. Der Aufsatz bietet die erste detaillierte Untersuchung der Verwendung, der begrifflichen Verbindungen und der Signifikanz von exeinai und exousia. Damit fällt neues (...) Licht auf eine frühe Phase in der Geschichte der Freiheitsidee. (shrink)

Aristotle tries to solve the riddle of future-directedness and luck-awareness by offering an account of what he calls ‘good hope’ or hoping-well. I concede that hope does not hold Aristotle’s attention for long. However, his allusions to hope (in the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, and the Rhetoric) allow us to articulate a quite detailed, illuminating, and rich phenomenology of hope that will prove to be decisive when inquiring into how hopefulness belongs to the core of practical life, thereby making (...) an important contribution to contemporary discussions of hope. (shrink)

E.N. 1. 6 may be divided into three approximately equal paragraphs. The first of these contains four arguments against Academic positions associated with the phrase ‘Idea of the Good’. All these arguments also occur, together with others, in the Eudemian Ethics. The second paragraph consists of the consideration and rejection of an objection to the whole or a part of A, and is new to E.N. The third , also new to E.N., consists of the putting forward and dismissal of (...) two alternative answers to the question ;—answers different, presumably, to that or those rejected in A. My concern is with B. This paragraph is linked with A by the words , ‘a controversy can just be seen in what has been said’. These words, referring back to arguments that appear also in E.E., suggest to me that the objection Aristotle is about to discuss is one that had actually been brought against those arguments, after they had been delivered in their Eudemian or some other earlier form, by an opponent who might have belonged to the Academy, but might equally well have belonged to the Lyceum itself. For ease of exposition, I shall in what follows assume this to be the case, and shall refer to the author of the objection as the Objector. This assumption is not, however, essential to the main argument of this article. (shrink)

E.N. 1. 6 may be divided into three approximately equal paragraphs. The first of these contains four arguments against Academic positions associated with the phrase ‘Idea of the Good’. All these arguments also occur, together with others, in the Eudemian Ethics. The second paragraph consists of the consideration and rejection of an objection to the whole or a part of A, and is new to E.N. The third, also new to E.N., consists of the putting forward and dismissal of two (...) alternative answers to the question ;—answers different, presumably, to that or those rejected in A. My concern is with B. This paragraph is linked with A by the words, ‘a controversy can just be seen in what has been said’. These words, referring back to arguments that appear also in E.E., suggest to me that the objection Aristotle is about to discuss is one that had actually been brought against those arguments, after they had been delivered in their Eudemian or some other earlier form, by an opponent who might have belonged to the Academy, but might equally well have belonged to the Lyceum itself. For ease of exposition, I shall in what follows assume this to be the case, and shall refer to the author of the objection as the Objector. This assumption is not, however, essential to the main argument of this article. (shrink)