Something Aristotle calls ‘right logos’ plays a crucial role in his theory of virtue. But the meaning of ‘logos’ in this context is notoriously contested. I argue against the standard translation ‘reason’, and—drawing on parallels with Plato’s work, especially the Laws—in favor of its being used to denote what transforms an inferior epistemic state into a superior one: an explanatory account. Thus Aristotelian phronēsis, like his and Plato’s technē and epistēmē, is a matter of grasping explanatory accounts: in this case, (...) accounts that identify the right action and say why it is right. Arguably, Aristotelian rationality is a matter of being able to grasp accounts in general. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that Aristotle's ethical theory shares deep structural similarities with neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. I argue that this assumption is a mistake, and that Aristotle's ethical theory is both importantly distinct from the theories his work has inspired, and independently compelling. I take neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics to be characterized by two central commitments: (i) virtues of character are defined as traits that reliably promote an agent's own flourishing, and (ii) virtuous actions are defined as the sorts of actions (...) a virtuous agent reliably performs under the relevant circumstances. I argue that neither of these commitments are features of Aristotle's own view, and I sketch an alternative explanation for the relationship between virtue and happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics. Although, on the interpretation I defend, we do not find in Aristotle a distinctive normative theory alongside deontology and consequentialism, what we do find is a way of thinking about how prudential and moral reasons can come to be aligned through a certain conception of practical agency. (shrink)

One of the most striking and controversial features of Aristotle's moral exemplar, the megalopsychos, is his tendency to be contemptuous. Not surprisingly, modern scholarship has found this attribute of the megalopsychos particularly unappealing. This article probes the question about the targets of the contempt of the Aristotelian megalopsychos and explores the forms that this contempt might take. I argue that the primary targets of the megalopsychos are people who claim superiority on the wrong grounds (their external prosperity and social status). (...) The megalopsychos, who prioritizes virtue over external goods as a criterion of individual worth ( axia), rejects the self-image these people claim for themselves and refuses to grant them the appraisal respect they are accustomed to receiving, and think they deserve. (shrink)

It has been not atypical for commentators to argue that Aristotelian friendship features disinterested concern for others, that is, concern for others that is completely independent of one's own happiness. Often, the relevant commentators point to some normative features of Aristotelian friendship, wishing goods for the other's sake and loving the other for herself, where these are assumed to be disinterested. While the disinterested interpretations may be correct overall, I argue that wishing goods for the other's sake and loving the (...) other for herself constitute a dubious foundation for disinterested interpretations. For wishing goods for the other's sake does not involve a reason for action on the other's behalf, and the primary point of loving the other for herself is the role of the other in facilitating one's own happiness, specifically conceived of by Aristotle in terms of one's own virtuous activity. (shrink)

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)

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.

That character virtue is produced, according to Aristotle, through a process of moral habituation is a familiar feature of his ethics. And yet our feeling of familiarity with the notions of habit and habituation can engender a like feeling of familiarity with the process Aristotle describes, and encourage us to conceive of this process in an overly narrow way. In this chapter, I examine Aristotle’s notion of ethos and ethismos (habit, habituation) in the Nicomachean Ethics to better understand what Aristotle (...) means to convey when he claims that character virtue ‘arises from habit’. I argue that to characterise habituation as ‘non-rational’ is misleading, particularly when this characterisation forecloses questions about what kinds of activity may be involved in the process of habituation, and what kind of states can be produced as a result. Habituation, I argue, is not characterised as a non-rational process, but a process that involves action and activity. This allows that the process of habituation may be understood in a relatively broad way and as potentially involving a range of activities which engage and develop a variety of psychological capacities. It also raises interesting questions about what a learner’s activity affords and how this contributes to her successful habituation. (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.

Aristotle’s treatment of brutishness in the Nicomachean Ethics is very brief: a couple of paragraphs in the first chapter of Book VII, and most of Chapter 5 of the same book, together with some glancing references in Chapter 6. Commentators standardly give these passages short shrift indeed, if they do not ignore them altogether. In antiquity Aspasius commented on the Ethics, but, by great ill luck, his commentary on the first half of Book 7 is lost. A twelfth- or thirteenth-century (...) commentary known as “Anonymous” exists, but, in the words of Friedrich Schleiermacher, it “exceeds everything in poverty.” Aquinas comments helpfully on some items in the passage, but its doctrine does not find its way into his own moral theory, and indeed in his language the Latin word bestialitas, which standardly renders the Greek thêriotês, is taken over to denote sexual relations between members of different species. Dante makes a brief though striking reference to Aristotle’s discussion, but he gets it wrong. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the translators furnish occasional notes of interest; the line-by-line commentators go through the passage with small points of explanation but the overall theory does not seem to capture their attention; the more thematic commentators largely ignore it; and, to my knowledge, no article or monograph exists upon it. The beguiling issues of the Ethics, it appears, lie elsewhere: the function argument and the nature of happiness, the nature of virtue, the voluntary and involuntary, the distinction between vice and weakness, the place of contemplation in the happy life. On these subjects the literature is numbingly massive. (shrink)

English translation, with Chinese source text, of a seminal Chinese classic.

In Nicomachean Ethics 2.1, Aristotle draws a now familiar analogy between aretai ('virtues') and technai ('skills'). The apparent basis of this comparison is that both virtue and skill are developed through practice and repetition, specifically by the learner performing the same kinds of actions as the expert: in other words, we become virtuous by performing virtuous actions. Aristotle’s claim that “like states arise from like activities” has led some philosophers to challenge the virtue-skill analogy. In particular, Aristotle’s skill analogy is (...) sometimes dismissed because of the role that practical wisdom or phronesis purportedly plays in character virtue. In this paper, I argue that a proper understanding of character virtue, phantasia-based emotions, and Aristotle’s implicit distinction between habituated and strict or full virtue (aretè kuria) grounds his virtue-skill analogy. Character virtue stems from the non-rational orektikon and is developed through the habituation of passionate elements, primarily phantasia and pathé. Pathé are pleasurable or affective perceptions, not judgments or beliefs. Thus, pathé are subject to non-rational habituation. Practical wisdom, on the other hand, is an intellectual virtue stemming from the rational part of the soul. Though practical wisdom is necessary for full virtue (aretè kuria), it is not necessary for the habituated character virtue that Aristotle refers in Book II. Once we understand the phantastic basis of emotions and the distinction between habituated and full virtue, the virtue-skill analogy is apt. I conclude by briefly mentioning two contemporary forms of emotion regulation—cognitive reappraisal and cognitive behavioral therapy—that lend support from empirical psychology to Aristotle’s claim that emotions (pathé) can be habituated. Character virtue is indeed a skill; it is—at least in part—the skill of emotion regulation. (shrink)

This paper faces the problem of how to determinate the framework in which, according to Aristotle, the deliberation and his results can be assessed: the decision and the consequent action. The problem emerges mainly because of what Aristotle calls “indetermination of deliberation,” since, in situations whose options about what to deliberate are blurred, it is difficult to determinate which is the framework that can be used to determinate if the decision resulting from the deliberation is accurate or not. To face (...) this problem, in the first place, we distinguish between technical and moral deliberation. The distinction is framed in terms of the ends because in technical deliberation the end is extrinsic to the action itself, and for this reason it is possible to offer different assessments of the actions achieved. In moral deliberation, the ends are only intrinsic to the action, and they are determined only in behalf of their connection with good deliberation. So, it is only possible to establish an adequate normative framework to assess each deliberation based upon a “good deliberation model”, established by practical wisdom, and extended also for the community from which the subject takes part. (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)

I argue that Eudaimonism was not Ancient Greek common sense. After dividing Eudaimonism into Psychological and Normative varieties, I present evidence from Greek literature that the Ancient Greeks did not commonsensically accept Eudaimonism. I then review, and critique, evidence that has been offered for the opposite claim that Eudaimonism was Ancient Greek common sense. This claim is often called on to explain why Ancient Greek philosophers embraced Eudaimonism; the idea is that they did so because it was the ethical common (...) sense of their day. But, according to the case I make in this paper, this explanation cannot stand. Those looking to explain the Eudaimonistic character of Ancient Greek ethical thought must turn to other explanations. (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...

Our article deals with Aristotle’s account of the sphere of temperance in the Nicomachean Ethics. The goal is to provide a detailed analysis of NE III.10 in order to identify the difficulties this chapter presents us with and to introduce and discuss the interpretations set forth by the secondary literature. Of special interest to us are Aristotle’s intense dialogue with Plato; the difficulty in understanding touch as the most common of the senses and Aristotle’s severe judgment of the pleasures of (...) the sphere of temperance. In short, Aristotle seems to set out from platonic thesis and notions only to distance himself from them by introducing his own, associating temperance with the most common of the senses, namely, the sense of touch. This association is not based, as it could seem primafacie, on a merely empirical observation but on the assumption that touch is the most fundamental and necessary sense for humans and animals alike. Temperance, therefore, as the excellence in the relation with the most fundamental and necessary of the senses, seems to be a pre-condition for rational action. From this Aristotle derives the etymology of the term, as the one who preserves practical reason. This hypothesis would explain why Aristotle seems to engage in apotreptic language to characterize the lack of temperance, that is, the vice of intemperance – something we do not find the in the account of any other virtue and vice. (shrink)

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that friendship and justice are the same, apparently flouting the not uncommon contrast between friendship and justice. I start by assessing Aristotle’s principle of equality: friends of equal standing engage in exact reciprocity in goods and friends of unequal standing engage in proportional reciprocity. In a number of ways that have gone unnoticed, the equalization principle is a requirement for understanding the sameness of friendship and justice. Just relations and friendship share the same domain, (...) that is, the same relationship of a corresponding community. Moreover, asking how to be just to someone is the same as asking how to be a friend to that person, indicating that the virtue of justice and the virtue of friendship are also the same. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The polis Nature Distributive Justice “The polis of our prayers” Slavery Constitutions The Good Man and the Good Citizen Bibliography.

This paper discusses a classification of types of harm linked to actions concerning (in)justice. Although the starting point is Aristotelian practical philosophy, in this research this perspective is extended and criticised. Once a first approach to the object of the study (the harm that results for others from the agent's action or omission) has been defined, a classification of the types of harm will be established. In doing so, it will be shown where the Stagirite's proposition needs to be expanded, (...) qualified, and even corrected. In particular, a commonly overlooked element will be highlighted: that the most perverse effect of an injustice is to make the one who commits it unjust. (shrink)

I argue that given a plausible reading of John Williams’s Stoner (2012 [1965]) the novel throws light on the demands and costs of pursuing a strategy for self-realisation along Platonic lines which seeks unification through the adoption of a single exclusive end in a manner that emulates the Socratic maieutic teacher. The novel does not explicitly argue either for or against such a strategy but rather vividly depicts its difficulties, appeal, and limitations, thus leaving the ultimate evaluation up to the (...) reader. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é analisar a primeira parte do Livro V da Ética Nicomaqueia, dedicado a discutir a justiça, para mostrar que o método ali empregado não é dialético. Muitos estudiosos em anos recentes atribuíram a Ética Nicomaqueia como um todo o método descrito no Livro VII 1, cujo objetivo parece ser aquele de salvar as mais importantes opiniões sobre o assunto. Contrariamente a esta posição, pretendemos encontrar procedimentos característicos das investigações científicas tal como descritos nos Segundos Analíticos, II (...) 1-3 e 8-10, que, com respeito ao objeto da investigação, iniciam por responder à questão ei estin e prosseguem em busca da definição de sua essência através de passos sucessivos, um dos quais é a indicação de uma definição nominal. Neste modo de proceder, faz-se bastante uso dos endoxa, mas o argumento não é dialético. (shrink)

This difficult and evidently corrupt text of Aristotle has given rise to a variety of differing readings among the commentators. I shall propose a new and conservative emendation of the text, which, I believe, resolves all of the difficulties. But it is helpful first to take stock of those difficulties, in order to see what is required of a solution.

Este artículo estudia el tenso capítulo de la Ética nicomáquea sobre la justicia natural, y sostiene que la principal tradición comentarista ha tomado un camino equivocado al malinterpretar dos momentos bastante precisos del argumento. Una vez corregidos ambos errores, vemos surgir un Aristóteles que, lejosde ser un campeón de la teoría de la ley natural en la ética, sostiene que los principios morales con que los humanos estamos naturalmente dotados son variables,y en dos sentidos: no solo varían a través del (...) espacio y el tiempo, sino que también pueden ser modificados deliberadamente mediante el hábito. (shrink)

Le principal objectif de cet article est de démontrer la thèse suivante : l’essentiel de la théorie aristotélicienne de l’action humaine repose sur le fait que l’agent est, au sens propre, capable d’agir autrement. Dans cette perspective, une distinction est établie entre la théorie de l’action et la psychologie morale d’Aristote. La première est structurée par la notion d’un agent capable au moment de l’action de choisir entre des contraires, tandis que la seconde se concentre sur la notion de caractère (...) qui impose une fixité et une régularité aux actions de l’agent. La distinction proposée s’appuie sur une interprétation renouvelée de EN 1112a31-33, passage dans lequel Aristote affirme que l’intellect (pratique) est cause au même titre que la nature, le hasard et la nécessité. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to explore a recent hypothesis about what the main mss. are for establishing the text of Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomachea (henceforth EN). This hypothesis was recently advanced on the basis of evidence coming from EN I-II. In exploring this hypothesis, I confine myself to the text of EN X.6-9 [=Bywater X.6-8], and, as a result, I propose a new text for EN X.6-9 [=Bywater X.6-8] based on a fresh collation of nine mss—four of which were not (...) taken into account in previous editions of the EN—and based on readings that can be gathered from the Arabic translation of the EN that was preserved in the Fez ms. The text proposed in this paper is accompanied by textual notes that justify my decisions regarding some difficult passages. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study of the relation between Aristotle’s ethics and the crafts (or technai). My thesis is that Aristotle’s argument is at key points shaped by models proper to the crafts, this shaping being deeper than is generally acknowledged, and philosophically more problematic. Despite this, I conclude that the arguments I examine can, if revised, be upheld. The plan of the dissertation is as follows – Preface: The relation of my study to the extant secondary literature; Introduction: The (...) pre-Platonic concept of technē, as evidenced in Greek philosophical and literary sources, in particular the early Hippocratic corpus; Chapter one: The Platonic concept of technē, followed by an investigation of whether Plato affirms a virtue-technē in the Protagoras and Republic; Chapter two: Aristotle’s concept of technē, followed by scrutiny of his arguments in NE VI.5 against a virtue-technē, and of his analyses of slavery and deliberation; Chapter three: An exposition of Aristotle’s function argument, followed by a dominantist interpretation of it, and an explanation of dominantism as in part a technē-influenced doctrine; Chapter four: An examination of Aristotle’s ethical mean and its problems, with a diagnosis of these in terms of influence by the Philebus, and by paradigms derived from the crafts; Chapter five: Argument that Aristotle’s theory of habituation suffers from two significant opacities, these being a function of influence both by the Republic, and by models of craft-learning; Conclusion: Response to key objection; Aristotle’s ethics revised, defended. (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)

This is a review of Kazutaka Inamura's book "Justice and Reciprocity in Aristotle's Political Philosophy" (Cambridge University Press, 2017).