The prelims comprise: To Kalon as Effective Teleological Order The Visibility of the Fine Pleasure and Praise The Value of the Fine Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes References Further reading.

One of three basic types of desire, claims Aristotle, is thumos (‘spirit,’ ‘passion,’ ‘heart,’ ‘anger,’ ‘impulse’). The other two are epithumia (‘appetite’) and boulêsis (‘wish,’ ‘rational desire’). Yet, he never gives us an account of thumos; it has also received relatively little scholarly attention. I argue that thumos has two key features. First, it is able to cognize what I call ‘social value,’ the agent’s own perceived standing relative to others in a certain domain. In human animals, shame and honor (...) are especially important manifestations of social value. Second, thumos provides non-rational motivation to pursue what affirms the agent’s social value and avoid what denies it. Interpretations that hold thumos just is anger, or that its object is the fine (kalon), I argue, are mistaken. My account also explains the role of thumos in moral education. In a virtuous agent thumos will be affectively attuned to the correct social rankings; it will take the practically wise, the lovers of the fine, or moral exemplars, as authorities. (shrink)

The transmission of form and soul -- Desire, perception, and understanding -- Theoretical wisdom -- Virtue of character -- Practical wisdom -- Immortalizing beings -- Happiness -- The happiest life.

Aristotle claims that the citizens of the best city should be both intelligent and spirited at Politics VII.7 1327b19-38. While he treats intelligence as an unqualified good, thumos is valuable but problematic. This paper has two aims: to consider the political value of spirit in Aristotle’s Politics and in particular to identify the ways in which it is both essential to political excellence and yet insufficient for securing it, and to use this analysis of the role of spirit in the (...) political realm to explain Aristotle’s exclusion of women from political authority, even in the context of the household. I analyze spirit as a physical phenomenon and as a type of desire, before considering its moral and affective aspects. I then return to the role of spirit in political life and examine its importance for the activity of ruling. In the last section I consider the implications of this analysis of spirit for the social and political roles Aristotle assigns to men and women. (shrink)

Aristotle’s philosophy of mind is often understood as anticipating present-day functionalist approaches to the mental. In Aristotle on the Sense-Organs Johansen argues at length that such interpretations of what Aristotle has to say about the senses are untenable. First, Aristotle does not allow that the matter of a sense-organ can be identified without reference to the form or function of the organ, so sense-organs are not compositionally plastic. Second, Aristotle’s conception of sense-perception is radically different from anything a philosopher today, (...) functionalist or not, would find credible: acts of sense-perception on Aristotle’s view do not require material changes in the sense-organs. Developed carefully throughout all six chapters, Johansen’s defense of this latter claim is the most significant part of the book, and it will be my focus here. (shrink)