This paper reconstructs the function argument of Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics 2.1. The argument seeks to define happiness through the method of division; shows that the highest good is better than all four of the goods of the soul, not only two, as commentators have thought; and unlike the Nicomachean argument, makes the highest good definitionally independent of the human function.

Scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of action has recently veered toward an intellectualist position, according to which reason is in charge of setting the goals of action. This position has recently been criticized by an anti-intellectualism revival, according to which character, and not reason, sets the goals of action. I argue that neither view can sufficiently account for the complexities of Aristotle’s theory, and suggest a middle way that combines the strengths of both while avoiding their pitfalls. The key problem for (...) intellectualism is that Aristotle explicitly states reason cannot set the goals of action. The key problem for anti-intellectualism is that he also holds that the soul’s rational part must guide and prescribe over the non-rational part. I propose indirect intellectualism, a promising middle path. (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)

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)

This book presents a novel interpretation of Aristotle's account of how shame instils virtue, and defends its philosophical import. Shame is shown to provide motivational continuity between the actions of the learners and the virtuous dispositions that they will eventually acquire.

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.

A discussão nos livros dos Tópicos giram em torno dos debates dialéticos e seus elementos. Aristóteles discorre sobre os gêneros, as propriedades e os chamados acidentes e suas relações predicativas em categorias. Interessa-nos, sobretudo, compreender o papel desempenhado pela Definição e qual sua relação com os demais instrumentos para a dialética.

Ao introduzir o estudo da substância em Metafísica Z1, Aristóteles apresenta um argumento cujo ponto inicial corresponde a uma questão acerca do estatuto ontológico de certos itens não-substanciais. Normalmente, entende-se que o objetivo desse argumento é estabelecer a compreensão da substância como ser primeiro. Pretende-se, aqui, propor uma interpretação alternativa para tal argumento. A questão acerca do estatuto ontológico de certos itens não-substanciais não teria o papel de estabelecer a compreensão da substância como ser primeiro, mas dirigir a investigação para (...) a razão pela qual a substância é tomada como ser primeiro. (shrink)