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)

This is the first volume devoted to Aristotle's thoughts on evil or badness. The work calls attention to several relatively neglected areas of scholarship, and the contributions give any reader grounds for thinking that Aristotle has thoughts about to kakon that are sophisticated and worthy of deep philosophical engagement.The volume is divided into three parts: metaphysics and biology in the first, practical philosophy in the second, and the "presence of Aristotle in post-Aristotelian philosophy" in the third. The topics vary widely—deformed (...) animal kinds, the worst constitutions, the subhuman vice of brutishness, the misfortunes of the virtuous etc.—but the volume presents no clear philosophical... (shrink)

Platón señala en República ix que en todos los seres humanos hay un trasfondo de deseos bestiales que se manifiestan especialmente en los sueños y el sabio logra mantener alejados. El artículo trata de reconstruir la respuesta de Aristóteles a estas tesis a través del estudio de tres tópicos de su filosofía: el concepto de felicidad, la categoría de bestialidad y la etiología de los sueños desarrollada en los tratados sobre los sueños incluidos en Parva Naturalia. -/- Plato points out (...) in Republic IX that in all human beings there is a background of bestial desires that manifest especially in dreams and the wise man manages to keep away. The article tries to reconstruct Aristotle's response to these theses through the study of three topics of his philosophy: the concept of happiness, the category of bestiality and the etiology of dreams developed in the treatises on dreams included in Parva Naturalia. (shrink)

According to Aristotle there may be times when the virtuous person is justified in taking revenge. Many commentators claim that revenge, on Aristotle’s account, aims at restoring the honor and reputation of the avenger, but I will show that this cannot be why the virtuous person seeks revenge. I argue, instead, that the virtuous person seeks revenge when she is slighted in order to prove her worth. Aristotle claims that we slight those we think are neither good nor bad nor (...) capable of producing good or bad things. Although the virtuous person will ignore most slights, Aristotle thinks there may be times when even a virtuous person will have to take revenge in order to prove her worth, not because she is insecure or requires honors, but because she cannot function to the best of her abilities within her society if those she interacts with fail to recognize her worth. (shrink)