A new translation and edition of Aristotle's Protrepticus (with critical comments on the fragments) -/- Welcome -/- The Protrepticus was an early work of Aristotle, written while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, but it soon became one of the most famous works in the whole history of philosophy. Unfortunately it was not directly copied in the middle ages and so did not survive in its own manuscript tradition. But substantial fragments of it have been preserved (...) in several works by Iamblichus of Chalcis, a third century A.D. neo-Pythagorean philosopher and educator. On the basis of a close study of Iamblichus' extensive use and excerption of Aristotle's Protrepticus, it is possible to reconstruct the backbone of the lost work, and then to flesh it out with the other surviving reports about the work from antiquity (for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and other ancient commentators on Aristotle). It is also possible to identify several papyrus fragments of the work, and many references and literary allusions in later authors, especially Cicero, whose own lost dialogue Hortensius was a defense of philosophy modeleld on Aristotle's. (shrink)

Aristotle grants perceptible qualities the power to generate sense perception in animals. But it is unclear whether, for him, these qualities can produce any effect other than perception. In this paper I address this issue through a novel approach. To show that they can produce non-perceptual effects, I explore contexts in his extant works where qualities appear to do causal work in nature without leading to perception in animals. This inquiry aims to demonstrate that Aristotle’s realism about qualities (...) survives a potential threat posed by views that dispute the qualities’ causal efficacy outside perception. (shrink)

Aristotle counts as the founder of formal logic. The logic he develops dominated until Frege and others introduced a new logic. This new logic is taken to be more powerful and better capable of capturing inference patterns. The new logic differs from Aristotelian logic in significant respects. It has been argued by Fred Sommers and Hanoch Ben-Yami that the new logic is not well equipped as a logic of natural language, and that a logic closer to Aristotle's is (...) better suited for this task. Each of them developed their own formalism - Sommers in form of term logic, Ben-Yami in form of his Quantified Argument Calculus (QUARC). I discuss Aristotle's logic - a term logic - and attempt a comparison between Aristotelian logic and (i) the new logic, (ii) Sommers' term logic, and (iii) Ben-Yami's QUARC. I consider differences between the systems, and show how they are related to and diverge from the new logic. (shrink)

This article focuses on the reception of Aristotle’s Categories by the first three representatives of Greek Neoplatonism: Plotinus (204/205–270 CE), Porphyry (ca. 234–ca. 305 CE), Iamblichus (ca. 242–ca. 325 CE). The first section argues that Plotinus’ acquaintance with Aristotle’s treatises marked a fresh start vis-à-vis the previous Platonist tradition. Aristotle’s views, arguments and vocabulary are ubiquitous in Plotinus writings (the Enneads) and they must be considered an essential part of his philosophical project. Plotinus, however, does not share (...) some of Aristotle’s key theories and is critical of them. The second section focuses on Plotinus’ discussion of Aristotle’s Categories in the tripartite treatise On the Genera of Being (6.1–3). There he rejects the Peripatetic division into ten categories as providing an incomplete account of the genera of being that unduly omits “those which are most authentically beings”, i.e. Plato’s separate Forms. While drawing on earlier Platonist objections to Aristotle, Plotinus’ approach is original insofar as he criticizes Aristotle and his followers not only for omitting intelligible beings in the division of categories, but also for being unable, for this very reason, to work out an adequate division of sensible beings themselves. The third section is devoted to Porphyry, a student of Plotinus’ and the editor of his works. Porphyry worked intensively on Aristotle’s Categories, which he regarded as an introduction not only to logic, but to philosophy as a whole. Unlike Plotinus, Porphyry aimed to integrate Aristotle into Platonism and his engagement with the Categories was a key part of his project after Plotinus’ in-depth criticism. Porphyry’s approach is connected to his view of the subject-matter of the Categories, which he sees as focusing on words insofar as they signify beings, and not on beings as such. The fourth section focuses on some parallels between Plotinus’ Genera of Beings and Porphyry’s works, which may reflect the debate within Plotinus’ school. The fifth section focuses on Iamblichus of Chalcis. Both in theology and in the interpretation of Aristotle’s Categories, Iamblichus aimed to both continue and supplant Porphyry’s work. While Plotinus criticizes Aristotle’s categories for omitting intelligible beings, and while Porphyry accepts Aristotle’s categories insofar as they focus on words signifying sensible things, Iamblichus incorporates his Neoplatonist and Pythagorizing metaphysics into the interpretation of the Categories. (shrink)

Aristotle’s theory of human happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics explicitly depends on the claim that contemplation (theôria) is peculiar to human beings, whether it is our function or only part of it. But there is a notorious problem: Aristotle says that divine beings also contemplate. Various solutions have been proposed, but each has difficulties. Drawing on an analysis of what divine contemplation involves according to Aristotle, I identify an assumption common to all of these proposals and argue (...) for rejecting it. This allows a straightforward solution to the problem and there is evidence that Aristotle would have adopted it. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the medical art aims at health, which is a virtue of the body, and does so in an unlimited way. Consequently, medicine does not determine the extent to which health should be pursued, and “mental health” falls under medicine only via pros hen predication. Because medicine is inherently oriented to its end, it produces health in accordance with its nature and disease contrary to its nature—even when disease is good for the patient. Aristotle’s politician understands (...) that this inherent orientation can be systematically distorted, and so would see the need for something like the Hippocratic Oath. (shrink)

Aristotle is said to have held that any kind of actual infinity is impossible. I argue that he was a finitist (or "potentialist") about _magnitude_, but not about _plurality_. He did not deny that there are, or can be, infinitely many things in actuality. If this is right, then it has implications for Aristotle's views about the metaphysics of parts and points.

Aristotle analyses a large range of objects as composites of matter and form. But how exactly should we understand the relation between the matter and form of a composite? Some commentators have argued that forms themselves are somehow material, that is, forms are impure. Others have denied that claim and argued for the purity of forms. In this paper, I develop a new purist interpretation of Metaphysics Z.10-11, a text central to the debate, which I call 'hierarchical purism'. I (...) argue that hierarchical purism can overcome the difficulties faced by previous versions of purism as well as by impurism. Roughly, on hierarchical purism, each composite can be considered and defined in two different ways: From the perspective of metaphysics, composites are considered only insofar as they have forms and defined purely formally. From the perspective of physics, composites are considered insofar as they have forms and matter and defined with reference to both. Moreover, while the metaphysical definition is a definition in the strict sense of 'definition', the physical definition is a definition in a loose sense. Analogous points hold for intelligible composites and geometry. Finally, neither sort of definitional practice implies that, for Aristotle, forms are impure. (shrink)

Nicomachean Ethics/NE, Book III, Chapters 1-5, provides Aristotle’s account of “Voluntary Movement.” It, thus, draws the Passion-Action distinction, only posited earlier in Categories, while also serving as the linchpin of NE’s discussion of Virtue, in explicitly connecting it to Right Reason. My explication of this text renders its terminology consistent with the Law of Excluded Middle and rebuts two criticisms of the Eudaimonistic Axiology on which it is based. These results are shown to be entailments of Aristotle’s doctrine (...) that Voluntary is (a) Relative. That categorization is then used to help treat a problematic case of Deliberation beyond his purview. (shrink)

Aristotle recognizes two modes of apprehending time, viz., perceiving time and grasping time intellectually. This chapter clarifies what is and is not involved in these two modes of apprehending time. It also clarifies the way in which they interact, and argues that, according to Aristotle, one’s intellectual grasp of time has an effect on one’s perception of time for those beings who have intellect.

Aristotle’s typical procedure is to identify something's four causes. Intentional action has typically been treated as an exception: most think that Aristotle has the standard causalist account, according to which an intentional action is a bodily movement efficiently caused by an attitude of the appropriate sort. I show that action is not an exception to Aristotle’s typical procedure: he has the resources to specify four causes of action, and thus to articulate a powerful theory of action unlike (...) any other on offer. (shrink)

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)

Aristotle is history’s most famous and influential proponent of the view that there are exactly five senses. But was he entitled to hold this view, given his other commitments? In particular, was he entitled to treat touch as a single sense, given the diversity of its correlated objects? In this paper I argue that Aristotle wished to individuate touch on the basis of its correlated objects, just as he had the other four senses. I also argue, contrary to (...) what is often supposed, that he was well-placed to do so, given his other commitments and views. (shrink)

Aristotle holds that individual substances are ontologically independent from nonsubstances and universal substances but that non-substances and universal substances are ontologically dependent on substances. There is then an asymmetry between individual substances and other kinds of beings with respect to ontological dependence. Under what could plausibly be called the standard interpretation, the ontological independence ascribed to individual substances and denied of non-substances and universal substances is a capacity for independent existence. There is, however, a tension between this interpretation and (...) the asymmetry between individual substances and the other kinds of entities with respect to ontological independence. I will propose an alternative interpretation: to weaken the relevant notion of ontological independence from a capacity for independent existence to the independent possession of a certain ontological status. (shrink)

For Aristotle, human cognition has a lot in common both with non-human animal cognition and with divine cognition. With non-human animals, humans share a non-rational part of the soul and non-rational cognitive faculties (DA 427b6–14, NE 1102b29 and EE 1219b24–6). With gods, humans share a rational part of the soul and rational cognitive faculties (NE 1177b17– 1178a8). The rational part and the non-rational part of the soul, however, coexist and cooperate only in human souls (NE 1102b26–9, EE 1219b28–31). In (...) this chapter, I show that a study of this cooperation helps to uncover some distinctive aspects of human cognition and desire. (shrink)

Aristotle contrasts episteme and doxa through the key notions of universal and necessary. These notions have played a central role in Aristotle’s characterization of scientific knowledge in the previous chapters of APo. They are not spelled out in APo I.33, but work as a sort of reminder that packs an adequate characterization of scientific knowledge and thereby gives a highly specified context for Aristotle’s contrast between episteme and doxa. I will try to show that this context introduces (...) a contrast in terms of explanatory claims: on the one hand, episteme covers those claims which capture explanatory connections that are universal and necessary and thereby deliver scientific understanding; on the other hand, doxa covers the explanatory attempts that fail at doing so. (shrink)

Aristotle’s account of natural slavery as presented in his Politics is often treated by historians of philosophy as an account that can be analyzed purely internally in terms of its argumentative structure without referring to social factors. Against this view, Aristotle’s account of natural slavery is seen to be ideological according to at least one variant of the Marxist concept of ideology, and cannot be understood without reference to Aristotle’s socioeconomic context. The ideological nature of Aristotle’s (...) account of natural slavery is especially evident in his “proto-racialization” of the category of the “natural slave.” The Marxist concept of ideology is demonstrably useful in the historical study of philosophy, as compared with internalist historians of philosophy who claim that referring to nonphilosophical factors such as class interests inevitably obscures the philosophical content of the texts that are the objects of analysis. (shrink)

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error (...) can help to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

Aristotle's cognitive ideal is a form of understanding that requires a sophisticated grasp of scientific first principles. At the end of the Analytics, Aristotle tells us that we learn these principles by induction. But on the whole, commentators have found this an implausible claim: induction seems far too basic a process to yield the sort of knowledge Aristotle's account requires. In this paper I argue that this criticism is misguided. I defend a broader reading of Aristotelian induction, (...) on which there's good sense to be made of the claim that we come to grasp first principles inductively, and show that this reading is a natural one given Aristotle's broader views on scientific learning. (shrink)

In Posterior Analytics 71b9 12, we find Aristotle’s definition of scientific knowledge. The definiens is taken to have only two informative parts: scientific knowledge must be knowledge of the cause and its object must be necessary. However, there is also a contrast between the definiendum and a sophistic way of knowing, which is marked by the expression “kata sumbebekos”. Not much attention has been paid to this contrast. In this paper, I discuss Aristotle’s definition paying due attention to (...) this contrast and to the way it interacts with the two conditions presented in the definiens. I claim that the “necessity” condition ammounts to explanatory appropriateness of the cause. (shrink)

I discuss the argument Aristotle ascribes to Parmenides at Physics 186a23-32. I discuss (i) the reasons why Aristotle considers it as eristic and inconclusive and (i) the solution (lusis) Aristotle proposes against it.

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 3, pp 229 - 256 I argue that, for Aristotle, akratic actions are against one’s general commitment to act in accordance with one’s correct conception of one’s ends overall. Only some akratic actions are also against one’s correct decision to perform a particular action. This thesis explains Aristotle’s views on impetuous _akrasia_, weak _akrasia_, stubborn opinionated action and inverse _akrasia_. In addition, it sheds light on Aristotle’s account of practical rationality. Rational actions (...) are coherent primarily with one’s commitments to one’s conception of the good and only secondarily with one’s decisions to perform a particular action. (shrink)

Many philosophers working on virtue theory have resisted the idea that the virtues are practical skills, apparently following Aristotle’s resistance to that idea. Bucking the trend, Matt Stichter defends a strong version of this idea in The Skillfulness of Virtue by marshaling a wide range of conceptual and empirical arguments to argue that the moral virtues are robust skills involving the cognitive-conative unification of Aristotelian phronêsis (‘practical intelligence’). Here I argue that Aristotle overlooks a more delimited kind of (...) practical intelligence, strongly analogous to his own account of phronêsis, that unifies complex forms of expertise such as medicine or even high-level sports. Insofar as the skill model of virtue is compelling, it must draw on a robust conception of practical expertise (technê) like the one developed here rather than the ordinary, anemic conception of practical skills. (shrink)

Aristotle’s philosophy is considered with respect to one central concept of his philosophy, viz. opposition. Far from being a mere side-effect of syllogistic, it is argued in the present paper that opposition helps to articulate ontology and logic through an account of what can be or cannot be in a systematic and structural way. The paper is divided into three main parts. In Section I, the notion of Being is scrutinized through Aristotle’s theory of categories. In Section II, (...) the notion of Non-Being is connected to Aristotle’s theory of oppositions. In Section III, the notion of essence is revisited in order to bring about a holist theory of meaning by individuating through opposite properties. In conclusion, the legacy of Aristotle is depicted as balanced between a powerful reflection around Being and a restrictive ontology of substance. (shrink)

This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that being is inescapably diverse in kind—is anchored in his argument for the existence of change. -/- Aristotle may be the only thinker to have given a noncircular (...) definition of change. When he gave this definition, arguing that change is real was a losing proposition. To show that it exists, he had to rework the way philosophers understood reality. His groundbreaking analysis of change has long been interpreted through a Platonist lens, however, in which being is conceived as unchanging. Offering a comprehensive reexamination of the relationship between change and being in Aristotle, Sentesy makes an important contribution to scholarship on Aristotle, ancient philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Some of Aristotle’s statements about the indemonstrability of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) in Metaphysics Γ 4 merit more attention. The consensus seems to be that Aristotle provides two arguments against the demonstrability of the PNC, with one located in Γ 3 and the other found in the first paragraph of Γ 4. In this article, I argue that Aristotle also relies upon a third argument for the same conclusion: the argument from truth. Although Aristotle does (...) not explicitly state this argument, it is the best argument that he could use to defend some of his statements in the second paragraph of Γ 4. Since the argument relies on only a few of Aristotle’s core views about truth, I propose that it is faithful to his considered position throughout his corpus, and it may be the strongest argument he could offer for the indemonstrability of the PNC. (shrink)

A puzzle about the presentation of objects located at a distance is seen to animate Aristotle's account of transparency in De Anima and De Sensu.

The relationship between the state and the people has been of the utmost concern to the ruling class ever since society appeared between the class and the state. This study focuses on Aristotle and Han Fei Zi‟s ideological analyses of the relationship between the state and the people. The author aims to emphasize that the state and the people are the two fundamental forces of political life. The relationship between them is a constant and intimate relationship that creates the (...) appearance and stability of a political regime. The study contributes to the literature by pointing out the similarities and differences between the thoughts of two law rulers typical of the West and the East. The study results show that, due to the differences between Western and Eastern cultures, historical and social conditions, and cognitive ability, the thoughts of Aristotle and Han Fei on this issue have similarities and differences. (shrink)

For Aristotle, demonstrative knowledge is the result of what he calls ‘intellectual learning’, a process in which the knowledge of a conclusion depends on previous knowledge of the premises. Since demonstrations are ultimately based on indemonstrable principles (the knowledge of which is called ‘νοῦς’), Aristotle is often described as advancing a foundationalist doctrine. Without disputing the nomenclature, I shall attempt to show that Aristotle’s ‘foundationalism’ should not be taken as a rationalist theory of epistemic justification, as if (...) the first principles of science could be known as such independently of their explanatory connections to demonstrable propositions. I shall argue that knowing first principles as such involves knowing them as explanatory of other scientific propositions. I shall then explain in which way noetic and demonstrative knowledge are in a sense interdependent cognitive states – even though νοῦς remains distinct from (and, in Aristotle’s words, more ‘accurate’ than) demonstrative knowledge. (shrink)

The Nicomachean Ethics is generally thought to be a “dialectical” work, aimed at resolving aporia in a set of endoxa, which it takes as its starting-point. I argue that Aristotle’s aim in the treatise is, rather, to produce definitions of key ethical terms, and that his starting-points are limited to evaluative and discriminative judgments of a certain sort, which are demanded by the nature of the discipline and are not endoxa. I discuss also how the definitions are reached (focusing (...) on the cases of the virtues of character) and the roles that aporiai do play in the process. (shrink)

I argue that a study of the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Parva Naturalia shows that Aristotle had a notion of attention. This notion captures the common aspects of apparently different phenomena like perceiving something vividly, being distracted by a loud sound or by a musical piece, focusing on a geometrical problem. For Aristotle, these phenomena involve a specific selectivity that is the outcome of the competition between different cognitive stimuli. This selectivity is attention. I argue that (...) class='Hi'>Aristotle studied the common aspects of the physiological processes at the basis of attention and its connection with pleasure. His notion can explain perceptual attention and intellectual attention as voluntary or involuntary phenomena. In addition, it sheds light on how attention and enjoyment can enhance our cognitive activities. (shrink)

This presentation of Aristotle's natural deduction system supplements earlier presentations and gives more historical evidence. Some fine-tunings resulted from conversations with Timothy Smiley, Charles Kahn, Josiah Gould, John Kearns,John Glanvillle, and William Parry.The criticism of Aristotle's theory of propositions found at the end of this 1974 presentation was retracted in Corcoran's 2009 HPL article "Aristotle's demonstrative logic".

In Metaphysics Z.6, Aristotle argues that each substance is the same as its essence. In this paper, I defend an identity reading of that claim. First, I provide a general argument for the identity reading, based on Aristotle’s account of sameness in number and identity. Second, I respond to the recent charge that the identity reading is incoherent, by arguing that the claim in Z.6 is restricted to primary substances and hence to forms.

This paper examines Aristotle's discussion of the priority of actuality to potentiality in geometry at Metaphysics Θ9, 1051a21–33. Many scholars have assumed what I call the "geometrical construction" interpretation, according to which his point here concerns the relation between an inquirer's thinking and a geometrical figure. In contrast, I defend what I call the "geometrical analysis" interpretation, according to which it concerns the asymmetrical relation between geometrical propositions in which one is proved by means of the other. His argument (...) as so construed is ultimately based on the asymmetrical relation between the corresponding geometrical facts. Then I explore this ontological priority in geometry by drawing attention to a parallel passage, Posterior Analytics II.11, 94a24–35, where Aristotle explains the relation between the same geometrical propositions in connection to material causation. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that Aristotle holds that the best moral education involves habituation in the proper pleasures of virtuous action. But it is rarely acknowledged that Aristotle repeatedly emphasizes the social and political sources of good habits, and strongly suggests that the correct law‐ordained education in proper pleasures is very rare or non‐existent. A careful look at the Nicomachean Ethics along with parallel discussions in the Eudemian Ethics and Politics suggests that Aristotle divided public moral education (...) or law‐ordained habituation into two types. One type is a defective form practiced by the Spartans, producing civic courage and similar defective virtue‐ like states motivated by external incentives. By contrast Aristotle endorses the law‐ordained musical education described in Politics 8. The chapter argues that Aristotle considers the well‐habituated state of proper pleasures in virtue to be best cultivated by this kind of musical education; and that this explains both his emphasis on good laws and on their scarcity. (shrink)

Aristotle’s discussions of natural slavery, ‘barbarian kingship’, and the natural characteristics of barbarians or non-Greeks are usually read as calling into question the intellectual, ethical, and political accomplishments of non-Greeks. Such accounts of non-Greek inferiority or inability to self-govern also appear to presuppose a climatic or environmental account that on the whole would imply severe limitations on the possibility of political flourishing for peoples living outside the Greek Mediterranean basin. In light of such accounts, it is somewhat astounding to (...) find Aristotle praising the social and political institutions of Carthage within his discussion of the best constitution in the second book of the Politics. In the 4th century BCE, Carthage (modern day Tunis) was a Phoenician commercial empire that culturally and linguistically was Semitic and clearly non-Greek. That Aristotle contrasts Carthage, a non-Greek polis, favorably with both Sparta and Crete undermines both the claim that Aristotle embraced a categorical opposition between Greeks and non-Greeks and the claim that he was dismissive of the achievements of non-Greeks. (shrink)

Although there is much scholarship on Aristotle’s account of friendship (φιλία), almost all of it has focused on inter-personal relationships between human animals. Nonetheless, in both Aristotle’s ethical and zoological writings, he documents the intra- and inter-species friendship between many kinds of animals, including between human and non-human animals. Such non-human animal friendships establish both an indirect basis for establishing moral ties between humans and non-human animals (insofar as we respect their capacity to love and befriend others) and (...) a direct basis for establishing such ties (insofar as Aristotle provides a framework for thinking about utility and pleasure friendships between human and non-human animals). My paper defends Aristotle’s limitation of inter-species friendships to only utility and pleasure friendships and responds to scholars who claim that Aristotle recognizes no moral ties between human and non-human animals. (shrink)

The sense of smell occupies a peculiar intermediate position within Aristotle's theory of sense perception: odours, like colours and sounds, are perceived at a distance through an external medium of air or water; yet in their nature they are intimately related to flavours, the proper objects of taste, which for Aristotle is a form of touch. In this paper, I examine Aristotle's claims about odour and smell, especially in De Anima II.9 and De Sensu 5, to see (...) what light they shed on his theory of sense perception more generally. In the first half, I argue that neither of the two most influential recent ways of understanding Aristotle's theory of perception can adequately account for what he says about the sense of smell. In the second half, I offer my own positive account, considering and resolving various puzzles raised by Aristotle's claims about the nature of odour and its relation to flavour. Finally, I conclude that Aristotle's discussions of odour and smell suggest a plausible and interesting way of understanding the relationship, on his view, between ordinary, material changes in the sense organs and the activation of the capacity to perceive, considered merely as such. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s analysis of unenacted capacities to show the role they play in his discovery of the concept of actuality. I first argue that Aristotle begins Metaphysics IX by focusing on active and passive capacities, after which I discuss Aristotle’s confrontation with the Megarians, the philosophers who maintain that a capacity is present only insofar as it is being enacted. Using Heidegger’s interpretation as a guide, I show that Aristotle’s rejection of the Megarian position (...) leads him to propose that presence cannot be confined to activity. I also argue that this provides the context for Aristotle to realize that the relation between capacity and activity can be generalized as the relation between two ways of being. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain, that is the differences and relations of the concepts of pain expressed by synonyms in the same semantic field. It investigates what is particularly Aristotelian in the selection of the pain-words in comparison with earlier authors and specifies the special semantic scope of each word-cluster. The result not only aims to pin down the exact way these terms converge with and diverge from each other, but also serves as a basis for further (...) understanding Aristotle’s philosophical conception of pain. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the widely held view that Aristotle's vicious agent is a principled follower of a wrong conception of the good whose soul, just like the soul of the virtuous agent, is marked by harmony between his reason and non-rational desires is an exegetical mistake. Rather, Aristotle holds – consistently and throughout the Nicomachean Ethics – that the vicious agent lacks any real principles of action and that his soul lacks unity and harmony even (...) more than the soul of the uncontrolled agent. (shrink)

This paper discusses the following question: why was the term “dunatos” (“possible”) employed by Aristotle as an alternative label for imperfect syllogisms in his discussion of assertoric syllogistic? My answer ascribes to Aristotle a bottom up perspective, in which he stresses what is necessary in the premise-pairs to attain target conclusions of a given form within a given figure. I argue that “dunatos” is employed by Aristotle to stress that an imperfect syllogism is always one of the (...) possible options to attain a conclusion of a given form within a given figure. I also argue that this picture sheds some light on Aristotle’s clarifications of the final clause in his definition of syllogism. (shrink)

A general article discussing philosophical issues arising in connection with Aristotle's "Generation of Animals" (Chapter from Blackwell's Companion to Aristotle).

Virtue theories of argumentation (VTA) emphasize the roles arguers play in the conduct and evaluation of arguments, and lay particular stress on arguers’ acquired dispositions of character, that is, virtues and vices. The inspiration for VTA lies in virtue epistemology and virtue ethics, the latter being a modern revival of Aristotle’s ethics. Aristotle is also, of course, the father of Western logic and argumentation. This paper asks to what degree Aristotle may thereby be claimed as a forefather (...) by VTA. (shrink)

I argue that, for Aristotle, virtue of character is a state of the non-rational part of the soul that makes one prone to making and acting on decisions in virtue of that part’s standing in the right relation to (correct) reason, namely, a relation that qualifies the agent as a true self-lover. In effect, this central feature of virtue of character is nothing else than love of practical wisdom. As I argue, it not only explains how reason can hold (...) direct authority over non-rational desires but also why Aristotle defines virtue of character as hexis prohairetikē. (shrink)

In what ways and how far does virtue shield someone against suffering evils? In other words, how do non-moral evils affect the lives of virtuous people and to what extent can someone endure evils while staying happy? The central purpose of this chapter is to answer these questions by exploring what Aristotle has to say about the effects of evils in human well-being in general and his treatment of extreme misfortunes.

In this paper I consider two related issues raised by Aristotle 's treatment of hearing and sounds. The first concerns the kinds of changes Aristotle takes to occur, in both perceptual medium and sense organs, when a perceiver hears a sounding object. The second issue concerns Aristotle 's views on the nature and location of the proper objects of auditory perception. I argue that Aristotle 's views on these topics are not what they have sometimes been (...) taken to be, and that when rightly understood they compare favourably in many respects with leading contemporary accounts. (shrink)

This paper explores the anatomical foundations of Aristotle's natural philosophy. Rather than simply looking at the body, he contrives specific procedures for revealing unmanifest phenomena. In some cases, these interventions seem extensive enough to qualify as experiments. At the work bench, one can observe the parts of animals in the manner Aristotle describes, even if his descriptions seem at odds with 20th century textbooks. Manipulating animals allows us to recover his teleological thought more fully. This consideration of (...) class='Hi'>Aristotle as a sophisticated biologist helps our reading of his writings in other areas of philosophy. (shrink)

Aristotle’s claim that poetry is ‘a more philosophic and better thing’ than history (Poet 9.1451b5-6) and his description of the ‘poetic universal’ have been the source of much scholarly discussion. Although many scholars have mined Poetics 9 as a source for Aristotle’s views towards history, in my contribution I caution against doing so. Critics of Aristotle’s remarks have often failed to appreciate the expository principle which governs Poetics 6-12, which begins with a definition of tragedy and then (...) elucidates the terms of that definition by means of a series of juxtapositions. The juxtaposition between poetry and history is one such instance which seeks to elucidate what sort of plot exemplifies a causal unity such that the events of a play unfold with likelihood or necessity. Within that context, Aristotle compares history and poetry in order to elucidate the object of poetic mimesis rather than criticize history as a discipline. Viewing Aristotle as antagonistic towards history fails to appreciate the expository structure of the Poetics and obscures the resource which history provides to the poet, a point which I explore by considering what Aristotle would have thought of an ‘historical’ tragedy like Aeschylus’ Persians. (shrink)

This is an Editorial Note for the special volume of the journal Manuscrito (42: 4) devoted to Aristotle's theory of demonstration and its logical and metaphysical entanglements, which has been organized by me and Breno Zuppolini (as Guest Editors), with papers authored by Benjamin Morison, Owen Goldin, David Bronstein, Michail Peramatzis, Andrea Falcon, Laura Castelli, Paolo Fait, Joseph Karbowski, Adam Crager, Klaus Corcilius, Robert J. Hankinson, Raphael Zillig and Pieter Sjoerd Hasper.