Este trabajo presenta lo que para la mayoría de los intérpretes de Aristóteles, que se ocupan del asunto del método en su obra, constituye el principal problema a resolver. Se trata del problema de determinar la relación existente entre la concepción aristotélica de ciencia demostrativa, consignada en los Analíticos Segundos, y la praxis investigativa de Aristóteles en sus diferentes tratados científicos, una praxis que los intérpretes dan frecuentemente en describir como dialéctica.

Drawing heavily on Aristotle, Tabensky attempts to establish ‘an ethic that flows from the very structure of our being’, but he also calls on Davidson’s arguments about the essentially social character of rationality to shore up Aristotle’s claim that we are essentially social beings. This much of his project, I argue is successful. However Tabensky takes this a step further and proposes a pluralist ethic on the grounds that a ‘fully’ or ‘properly’ instantiated account of the ‘ideal’ conditions for rationality (...) requires encountering innumerable other points of view. Firstly, while confronting alternatives is essential to truth-seeking it hardly follows that an unconstrained pluralism represents an ideal condition for this kind of inquiry, since such an approach risks falling into mere clash of perspectives on practical grounds. Secondly, it is unclear how confronting more and more perspectives is supposed to help in enabling us to lead our lives well. In conclusion, picking up on this theme and looking again at Aristotle, I give reasons for questioning that the kind of rational choice involved in leading the good life, for reasons in part highlighted by Tabensky, benefits from analogy with the modes of conceptual rational inquiry in other domains in any case. (shrink)

Robert McKee, in his widely-esteemed screenwriting manual, Story , speaks of storytelling in general, and the screenplay in particular, as 'the creative demonstration of truth.' But what could it mean to think of the screenplay as a 'demonstration,' that is, as an argument? In this article I explore this question, taking my cue from McKee's own description of screenplay narrative as 'dramatized dialectical debate.' McKee's reference to dialectic suggests a connection to the dialectical inquiries in Aristotle's major treatises, especially the (...) dialectical inquiry into the nature of human happiness found in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics . I argue for an analogy between this dialectical inquiry in Aristotle's ethics, and the dialectical trajectory of popular screenplays. Such an analogy helps us understand how films do work as kinds of argument, arguments that aim at the truth of what it means for human beings to achieve their good. (shrink)

A long-standing tenet of virtue theory is that moral virtue and knowledge are connected in some important way. Julia Driver attacks the traditional assumption that virtue requires knowledge. I argue that the examples of virtues of ignorance Driver offers are not compelling and that the idea that knowledge is required for virtue has been taken to be foundational for virtue theory for good reason. I propose that we understand modesty as involving three conditions: 1) having genuine accomplishments, 2) being aware (...) of the value of these accomplishments, and 3) having a disposition to refrain from putting forward one's accomplishments. When we understand modesty this way, we can properly identify genuine cases of modesty and see how modesty requires knowledge. Something similar can be said about other alleged virtues of ignorance. With the proposal in place, we have no serious reason to think that moral virtue requires ignorance. Additionally, we have good reasons for thinking that acting virtuously requires having good intentions and that a necessary condition of having a virtue is having knowledge. Although some might take these results to be trivial or obviously true, I think the Julia Driver's challenge should not be dismissed out of hand. Even though there are some reasons for thinking that some situations suggest that knowledge and virtue can be separated from one another, close analysis reveals this impression is only surface deep. (shrink)

A novel rereading of the relationship between ethics and ontology in Aristotle.