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)

In Nicomachean Ethics V.6 Aristotle contrasts political justice with household justice, paternal justice, and despotic justice. My paper expands upon Aristotle’s sometimes enigmatic remarks about political justice through an examination of his account of justice within the oikia or ‘household’. Understanding political justice requires explicating the concepts of freedom and equality, but for Aristotle, the children and wife within the household are free people even if not citizens, and there exists proportionate equality between a husband and wife. Additionally, Aristotle’s articulation (...) and defence of political justice arises out of his examination of despotic justice in the first book of the Politics. Not only are the polis and the oikia similar insofar as they are associations, but Nicomachean Ethics VIII.9–11 suggests they are even isomorphic with respect to justice and friendship. Thus, in this paper I explore the relationships between father and son, husband and wife, master and slave, and between siblings in order to see what they tell us about Aristotle’s understanding of freedom, equality, and justice. (shrink)

Classical Sparta is an enigma in many ways, but for ancient and contemporary political theorists it is especially intriguing insofar as its politeia (or its educational/political/social system or “constitution”) produced a city-state that was both the hegemon of all other Greek city-states, for instance during the 5th century Persians wars, but was also ignobly defeated by Thebes at the battle of Leuctra in 371, slightly more than a century later, after which its hegemony collapsed and its subject population of helots (...) won a war of emancipation. How did Sparta field citizen-soldiers in the 5th century who were without parallel in their bravery and military prowess? And why did Sparta, perhaps under the same politeia, collapse just over a century later? Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch searched for answers to such questions in the Spartan public educational program, its mixed constitutions, and its apparently militaristic goal and orientation. Such 4th century intellectuals (and Plutarch, writing in the 1st century CE) debated whether Sparta’s collapse was the result of deep-rooted problems within its Lycurgan constitution or in Sparta’s subsequent departure from that constitution; there also is significant debate concerning the education and roles of women within Spartan society. (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 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)

At first glance, it looks like Aristotle can’t make up his mind about the ethical or moral status of non-human animals in his ethical treatises. Somewhat infamously, the Nicomachean Ethics claims that “there is neither friendship nor justice towards soulless things, nor is there towards an ox or a horse” (EN 8.11.1161b1–2). Since Aristotle thinks that friendship and justice are co-extensive (EN 8.9.1159b25–32), scholars have often read this passage to entail that humans have no ethical obligations to non-human animals. By (...) contrast, although the Eudemian Ethics denies that non-human animals can participate in “primary” friendships, EE 7.2 claims that “the other kinds of friendship are also found among animals; and it is evident that utility is present to some extent among them both in relation to humankind, in the case of tame animals, and in relation to each other” (EE 7.2.1236b3–11). Does the Nicomachean account of non-human animals contradict that of the Eudemian Ethics? Ultimately, I believe the Nicomachean account is consistent with the Eudemian account. Nonetheless, I argue that Aristotle’s treatment of non-human animals differs significantly in the two texts. My chapter explores this difference in greater detail and considers the ramifications of such a difference for our understanding of Aristotle’s place in the philosophical tradition concerning the ethical status of non-human animals. (shrink)

In numerous places in his Ethics and Politics, Aristotle associates political justice (or ruling in turns) and the regime of polity. I argue that there is a necessary connection between political justice and polity due to their origins in political mixing. Aristotle is the first to discover political justice and polity because his predecessors had thought that the elements which they combine -- excellence and equality in the case of political justice, and oligarchy and democracy in the case of polity (...) -- were antithetical. The novelty of Aristotle's 'discoveries' points to their connection, namely that both originate in the political mixing of elements. This article examines such political mixing in detail and shows how an institutional arrangement such as ruling in turns can be adapted to different regime-types. (shrink)

In the center of the fifth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle elliptically characterizes political justice as a form of reciprocal rule that exists between free and equal persons pursuing a common life directed toward self-sufficiency under the rule of law. My dissertation analyzes Aristotle's thematic treatments of political justice in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics in order to elucidate its meaning, clarify its relationship to the other forms of justice that he also discusses, and compare it to contemporary neo-Aristotelian (...) accounts of justice. ;The first chapter examines the unclear and disputed passages of Ethics V.6--7 and explains why Aristotle discusses political justice in his ethical treatise. The second chapter makes use of Aristotle's juxtaposition of political justice to household justice on the one hand and despotic justice on the other hand in order to explicate the necessary conditions of political justice, namely, freedom, equality, commonality, self-sufficiency, and the rule of law. To make sense of these concepts, the chapter explores such topics as Aristotle's understanding of the household, his notion of the self and his political criticisms of Socrates. The third chapter examines political justice or reciprocal rule in the Politics in order to understand how political justice can be both a human virtue and an institutional arrangement of offices. The fourth chapter offers a critique of Fred Miller's reconstruction of Aristotelian natural rights. Although Miller is correct to say that Aristotle recognized and understood "rights claims," he is mistaken in claiming that they are an integral part of Aristotle's practical philosophy. Aristotle understood the problems for political compromise posed by rights conceived as "trumps," and he rejects rights as philosophically fundamental on the grounds that they are an inadequate solution to both the political problem of justice and the stability of flourishing political institutions. (shrink)

Scholars have disagreed on whether Cicero’s De Amicitia is a philosophically serious or even coherent work. Such criticisms, I believe, can be met by an examination of the successive accounts of friendship that the character of Gaius Laelius provides in the dialogue. I argue that the dialogue offers three such accounts of friendship which taken together provide a comprehensive and coherent account of friendship. Further, I defend Cicero’s account against criticisms that Aulus Gellius had raised in the 2nd century CE (...) (criticisms that have been repeated to the modern day). The problem of defining friendship is a thread that brings unity to the entire dialogue and shows Cicero philosophizing about both the origins of friendship and its dissolution, especially when the bonds of friendship are in tension with obligations to the political community. (shrink)

Numerous ancient sources attest that Artemisia of Halicarnassus, a fifth-century BCE tyrant whose polis came under Persian rule in 524 BCE, figures prominently in Xerxes’ naval campaign against Greece. At least since Pompeius Trogus’ first-century BCE Philippic History, interpretations of Artemisia have juxtaposed her “virile courage” (uirilem audaciam) with Xerxes’ “womanish fear” (muliebrem timorem) primarily as a means of belittling the effeminate non-Greeks. My paper argues that although Herodotus is aware of such interpretations of Artemisia, he depicts her primarily as (...) an excellent counsel, a woman who is not only brave in battle, but who is a wonder primarily because of her intellectual excellences in deliberative rhetoric and “geo-political” strategy in the Greco-Persian world. (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)

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness (hereafter ACH) is a magisterial expo­sition of both central and obscure texts from throughout Aristotle's writings that aims to elucidate the terms in its title by showing their foundations in Aristotle's natural and metaphysical writings. Reeve assembles supportive texts from throughout the corpus in support of an interpretive holism, viz., one in which the various interpretations of a text are narrowed by drawing upon other texts in the corpus that shed light on the passage. Although holism (...) is not necessarily incon­sistent with developmental readings of Aristotle, Reeve at least initially claims that the texts he is concerned with provide little evidence of development. Reeve's current volume draws upon his previous books, Substantial Knowledge (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), a holistic study of the problem of primary sub­stance in the Metaphysics, and his Practices of Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Uni­versity Press, 1992), a study of the epistemological bases of happiness 'in the Nicomachean Ethics. (shrink)

Although determination, perseverance, and high expectations appear to be laudable characteristics within our society, ambition seems to carry a hint of selfishness or self-promotion (perhaps especially at the cost of others). One can speak of the goals or aims of a team or group, but it seems more characteristic to ascribe ambition to a single individual. Etymologi-cally, ambition derives from the Latin word ambire, which can mean to strive or go around (ambo + ire), but the term also characterizes one (...) who canvasses for votes. It may also be telling that the Latin noun for canvassing (ambitio) is only two letters removed for the Latin term for election fraud (ambitus). It is thus welcome that in his Socrates and Alcibiades Ariel Helfer seeks to examine the notion of political ambition through a study of Plato’s dialogues concerning that most am-bitious of Athenians, Alcibiades, an Athenian general who seems to have epitomized both the German word Wunderkind and the French phrase enfant terrible in his short life. It was one that included leading, betraying, and then leading again the Athenian army and navy during the Peloponnesian Wars. Helfer examines the three dialogues of Plato that include Alcibiades as an interlocutor: First Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, and the Symposium. He does so (in his words) “to gain a fuller understanding of the constellation of desires that gives political ambition its force, including the desire to be devoted to a noble cause, and to determine whether, in Plato’s understanding, these desires necessarily find their fullest expression in political life” (p. 7). (shrink)

Community (κοινωνία) is one of the most fundamental and distinctive concepts in Aristotle’s writings on human action; the political species of community (alongside spousal community, household community, and the community of friendship) is probably the most complicated iteration of the concept. Thus, scholars of Aristotle’s Politics (the primary audience of the volume under review) are much indebted to the publication of Riesbeck’s revised doctoral dissertation (University of Texas, Austin, 2012) that successfully and persuasively elucidates political community by showing both its (...) likenesses and differences from the other forms of community Aristotle analyzes. The question that Riesbeck uses to explore these concepts in Aristotle’s writings: Is Aristotle’s praise for the constitution (πολιτεία) of kingship (which in places the Politics identifies as the ‘best constitution’ [(Pol. 3.17.1288a15-19, 28-29]) philosophically compatible with his theory of community and commonality? (shrink)

About Plato's Laws, Aristotle rather uninspiringly wrote, "Most of the Laws consists, in fact, of laws, and [Plato] has said little about the constitution. He wishes to make it more generally attainable [κοινοτέραν] by actual city-states, yet he gradually turns it back towards the Republic". Julia Annas's new volume seeks to counter such dismissive interpretations of Plato's Laws. Rather than view the work as Plato's final written dialogue, written by a crabby, old, pessimistic author, she argues that "the Laws presents (...) us with a remarkably fresh and original approach to social and political issues", one grounded in views about law-abidingness and cosmic law which is novel in the... (shrink)

Flannery’s volume looks in two directions. On the one hand, as Flannery announces in the book’s introduction, the chapters in the volume were intended to shed light on three specific ‘background’ issues in contemporary ethics and the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, namely, Aquinas’ notion of ethical theory (as articulated especially in Summa Theologica 1-2.6-21), the ramifications of physical actions on moral evaluation in contemporary ethics (for instance, whether the fact that an abortion consists specifically in the crushing of a fetus’ (...) skull rather than some other form of terminating the fetus has moral relevance), and the understanding of Aquinas’ ‘principle of double effect’ (Summa Theologica 2-2.64.7). On the other hand, the eight chapters (and two appendices) are all devoted to the exegesis of passages in Aristotle’s corpus (primarily the ethical treatises, but with substantial discussions of passages from the Prior Analytics, the Physics, and the Metaphysics insofar as they shed light on passages in the eth-ical corpus). Although the exegetical chapters are motivated by contemporary and Thomistic background issues, the exegesis appears entirely grounded in Aristotle’s (rather than Aristotelian) texts. (shrink)

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the discovery of “representative democracy has rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of government; and in great measure, relieves our regret, if the political writing of Aristotle, or of any other ancient, have been lost, or are unfaithfully rendered or explained to us” (quoted in Saxonhouse, p. 13). No doubt there are historical reasons to study classical Greece, but between us and them lies not only the discovery of representative democracy, but (...) also the discoveries of Christianity, economics, national and trans-national political institutions, universal human rights, and modern science. What can modern political theory learn from the lessons of old books? Three recent volumes wrestle with this question. Confronting Tyranny asks what we can learn about modern oppressive institutions from their ancient ancestors. In Plato’s Fable, Joshua Mitchell claims that Plato’s Republic offers an account of ethical “imitation” superior to those offered by modern liberalism. In Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens, Arlene Saxonhouse argues that free speech in antiquity differs from our rights-based understanding of the practice, and yet it shed light on the presuppositions of modern freedoms. (shrink)

The revised and polished version of Inwood’s 2011 Carl Newell Jackson at Harvard University, Ethics after Aristotle surveys the ethical teachings of the original “neo-Aristotelians,” namely those self-identified (although not always named) members of the Peripatetic school from the time of Theophrastus (fl. 300 BCE) until that of Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 CE). An initial chapter surveys the sorts of problems in Aristotle’s ethical corpus which would generate subsequent debate amongst members of the Peripatetic school. Chapter Two examines the (...) views of “Magnus,” the name which Inwood gives to the anonymous 3rd century author of the Magna Moralia (which Inwood takes to be pseudo-Aristotle), and those of Strato of Lampsacus, Lycon, and Hieronymus, 3rd century heads of the Peripatetic school, all of whom show the influences of Epicureanism in their re-articulations of Aristotelian positions. Chapter Three, entitled “The Turning Point,” finds in the work of Critolaus—head of the Peripatetic school in the middle of the 2nd century BCE—a move away from the centrality of activity within Aristotelian ethical thought, which Critolaus instead replaces with the notion of possessing specific goods, namely those of the body, the soul, and what is external. The same chapter argues that at approximately the same historical point Cicero, in the character of Piso in De finibus, articulated an account of Peripatetic ethics that was far more faithful to 4th century Aristotelianism. The final two chapters focus on neo-Aristotelian ethical philosophizing within a new and explicitly Roman cultural setting. (shrink)

In his Metaphysics of Morals, Kant famously wrote “The distinction between virtue and vice can never be sought in the degree to which one follows certain maxims…In other words, the well-known principle (Aristotle’s) that locates virtue in the mean between two vices is false.” Kant is not the first (or the last) thinker to take to task Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, but he is representative of a line of criticism of Aristotle’s doctrine which argues that ethics is the realm (...) of determinate necessary principles and Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean only supplies an indeterminate difference between virtue and vice. In response to such critics (among others), Gottlieb’s Virtue of Aristotle’s Ethics provides a defense of Aristotle’s ethical philosophy which is grounded in a reexamination of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean and what Gottlieb claims are it concomitant doctrines, viz. that for Aristotle virtues are non-remedial and their unity results in an integration of the parts of the soul. She divides her book into two parts—one on ethical virtue and one on ethical reasoning (a subsection of intellectual virtue)—and touches upon additional topics such as the status of Aristotle’s nameless virtues, the notion of the fine (kalon), the nature of the practical syllogism, and the relationship between virtue and the political community. (shrink)

Current events force upon Americans not only the duties of a citizen of a nation at war but also the conceptual challenge of understanding the nature of citizenship. In Aristotle and the Rediscovery of Citizenship Susan Collins argues that contemporary liberal political theory, based on presuppositions about the priority of the individual to the state, is incapable of responding to such an intellectual challenge. At least since the publication of John Rawls’ Political Liberalism (1993), contemporary liberal political theory has struggled (...) to articulate an account of liberal citizenship which captures the obligations inherent in citizenship consistent with the individual freedom inherent in liberalism. But Collins argues that it is only through a return to Aristotle, who does not share liberal presuppositions, that we can understand the limitations of the liberal notion of citizenship adequately. To understand two crucial issues—the relationship of the right to the good and the nature of civic education—Collins claims we “must begin from Aristotle’s treatment of law and the education to moral virtue in his Nicomachean Ethics. This treatment opens the way to his direct investigation of the meaning and limits of citizenship in the Politics” (3). (shrink)

Any modern reader of Aristotle’s Politics confronts the question of what a treatise on 4th century BCE political institutions can say to a contemporary audience. Some authors, confronted with such a question, choose to examine Aristotle’s Politics as a work in the history of political philosophy or classics worthy of careful study because of its place in the Aristotelian corpus, because of the light it sheds on ancient Greek history and political institutions, or because of its relation to other works (...) in the history of political thought. Alternatively, other authors examine the Politics as a work which can shed light on contemporary political problems precisely because Aristotle’s pre-modern perspective provides a useful contrast to modern assumptions about concepts like law, rights, or the relationship between a citizen and a political communities. Both approaches to the Politics—the first, which emphasizes philological and exegetical understanding of the arguments and context of the work, and the second, which seeks to philosophize with Aristotle’s aid—are legitimate and respected approaches to the text. But insofar as the two different approaches have different goals—the former seeks to understand Aristotle’s text in all its historical and exegetical details, the later seeks to derive Aristotelian philosophical insights relevant to contemporary debates—evaluating the success of a study of the Politics requires measuring it against the appropriate aim. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Politics is a study of the political institutions of the 4th C. Mediterranean world, including both Greek communities (like Athens and Sparta) and non-Greek communities (like Persia and Carthage). The work is foundational for a number of modern scholarly disciplines such as political science, political theory, ancient history, and ancient philosophy; thus, the work annually is the subject of a robust number of scholarly studies (on average, about four monographs and 25 journal articles and book chapters per year). This (...) chapter reviews scholarship on the Politics, focusing on work produced since 2010. The chapter first reviews general introductions, editions, and interpretative strategies for understanding the Politics. It then reviews major subsections or conceptual issues within the Politics. The chapter concludes with a review of major trends in scholarship and suggestions for future scholarly directions in understanding Aristotle’s Politics. (shrink)

My chapter explores Aristotle’s account of Greek democracy in three parts. The first part examines the notion of democracy taxonomically, namely as a kind of political organization that Aristotle classifies as a deviant politeia that admits of a number of species that are differentiated by the socio-economic classifications of its people (or δῆμος). The second part provides an overview of Aristotle’s historical remarks on prominent subjects of Athenian democracy in the Politics (Pol.) and the Athenian Constitution (Ath. Pol.) and then (...) focuses on his analysis of the political reforms that Solon introduced to Athens in the early 6th century, a form of political organization that Aristotle characterizes as the “ancestral democracy” (δημοκρατίαν τὴν πάτριον [Pol. 2.12.1273b38]). I argue that Aristotle judges Solon’s reforms—specifically, assigning to the people the roles of electing and auditing magistrates, but limiting their access to the very offices of a magistrate—as a pre-eminent solution to the problem of democratic participation. Finally, in the third part of my chapter I examine Aristotle’s evaluation of democracy both in terms of its notion of democratic justice but also in terms of its relative stability. I argue that the features of moderate democracy and polity are very similar to those of the Solonian politeia, which further supports my claim that Aristotle views Solon as a pre-eminent democratic theorist of ancient Greece. (shrink)

Pascal famously wrote that Plato and Aristotle “ont écrit de politique c'était comme pour régler un hôpital de fous.” I argue that the best way of understanding Aristotle’s political thought is to see that although Pascal may be right about Plato, he is completely wrong about Aristotle—and that that difference in their political philosophies may provide resources for challenges we face today. The first five chapters of the book argue that Aristotle envisions the paradigmatic case in which the ethical virtue (...) of justice operates as that between citizens within one and the same political community. Just like the virtue of courage is one that paradigmatically applies to a citizen-solider defending his polis, the virtue of justice applies to the citizen-jurist and the citizen-assemblyman, exercising the virtue within the domains of the assembly and the law-courts. The last three chapters argue that Aristotle conceives of justice as an institutional characteristic paradigmatically in the case of politeiai, both in how they are governed and which citizens they incorporate into the governing of the political community. The final chapter maps out how Aristotle understands justice in three domains that are significantly different than paradigmatic citizen roles. I look at what place, if any, Aristotle has for justice between human and non-human animals, within the household (specifically, towards slaves, children, and female spouses), and between poleis (or “inter-nationally”). (shrink)

Many arguments have been advanced for the view that "Why be moral?" is a pseudo-question. In this paper I address one of the most widely known and influential of them, one that comes from John Hospers and J. C. Thornton. I do so partly because, strangely, an important phase of that argument has escaped close attention. It warrants such attention because, firstly, not only is it important to the argument in which it appears, it is important in wider respects. (...) For instance, if it is sound it has weighty consequences even if the argument in which it figures fails. Secondly, it is not sound; it succumbs to a simple objection. (shrink)

In the Symposium, Plato has Socrates claim that the priestess Diotima once claimed that Eros is a lover of wisdom or someone who is “in between wisdom and ignorance. In fact, you see, none of the gods loves wisdom or wants to become wise—for they are wise—and no one else who is wise loves wisdom.” Perhaps the best starting point for understanding the philosophy of Aristotle is that in principle, he rejects Diotima’s etymological wordplay that claims that philosophy implies an (...) absence of wisdom. At the heart of Aristotle’s philosophy is the claim not only that all humans desire to know, but also that human animals (and indeed some non-human animals) are capable of understanding the world and its contents in a broad array of epistemic capacities, including veridical perception, artisanal expertise, theoretical science, practical wisdom, and, indeed, even σοφία itself of the highest objects of cognition, namely the nature of the gods (Metaph. 1.1.980a22–981b7). My chapter explores the philosophy of Aristotle in five different parts. Part I examines the “organon” or linguistic and logical tool-kit that analyzes human reasoning from the most basic components of a proposition up through syllogistic presentation of the causes that explain what research has uncovered. Parts II and III of the chapter explore the main contours of Aristotle’s “theoretical sciences”—what today we call natural science, metaphysics, and theology. Part IV of the chapter examines what the Nicomachean Ethics calls “the philosophy of human things,” namely the study of ethics and politics. Finally, Part V looks at how Aristotle and his school systemized two different fields of human study, namely that of artistic mimesis or the art of poetry, and deliberative, judicial, and epidictic oratory or the art of rhetoric. (shrink)

The purpose of Aristotle's discussion of political justice (τό πολιὸν[unrepresentable symbol]δν δί[unrepresentable symbol]αιον) in "EN" V.6-7 has been a matter of dispute. Although the notion of political justice which Aristotle seeks to elucidate is relatively clear, namely the notion of justice which obtains between free and equal citizens living within a community aiming at self-sufficiency under the rule of law, confusion arises when one asks how political justice relates to the other kinds of justice examined in "EN" V. Is political (...) justice a highly determinate subdivision of justice which Aristotle examines alongside the other varieties of particular justice analyzed in "EN" V.2-5? Or is political justice related to the analysis of ethical agency which follows in "EN" V.8-11? The question is complicated by the fact that the passage in question -- "EN" V 1134a17-1135a15 -- has occasioned much speculation about textual dislocations and has been incorporated into chapter divisions differently according to the two prevalent modern editorial divisions of the Ethics. To resolve these problems, I argue that Aristotle's account of political justice is situated within an extended aporetic analysis which begins in "EN" V.6 and extends through "EN" V.8. Aristotle introduces the notion of political justice within the extended analysis concerning the ascription of character states because calling someone just or unjust presupposes that the person is a fully mature ethical agent, but anyone capable of political justice possesses such agency. Once the extended argument in the second half of "EN" V is properly understood, it appears that the received text is not in need of emendation. To further support my claim that Aristotle's account of political justice introduces a new inquiry which is not analogous to the analyses of particular justice in the first half of "EN" V, I compare political justice to the other species of justice. (shrink)

Il est communément admis, aussi bien par les spécialistes que les non-spécialistes de la Grèce antique, qu'Aristote considère le barbaros ou l'autre Non-Grec comme radicalement distinct des Grecs (peut-être même racialement) et intrinsèquement inférieur à eux. Cette idée puise sa source dans ses remarques sur l'esclavage, sur les institutions politiques non grecques, sur les caractères naturels ou ethniques. Mais l’idée la plus répandue manque de nuance, et est souvent affirmée à tort en faisant l’économie d’un examen attentif des bases textuelles. (...) Cet article, qui est une sous-section d'un essai plus vaste sur les institutions politiques non-grecques (comme le traitement par Aristote de la politeia de Carthage dans Politique 2.11), soutient qu'Aristote ne distingue pas catégoriquement (et encore moins racialement) les Grecs et les Non-Grecs, ni n’approuve l’assertion selon laquelle les Grecs sont supérieurs aux non-Grecs. En effet, Aristote s'appuie régulièrement sur des institutions politiques non-grecques dans sa propre formulation de la meilleure constitution. (shrink)

The second book of Aristotle’s Politics is generally taken to examine politeiai or constitutions that either exist in cities that are said to be well governed or were proposed by theoreticians and are thought to be well organized (II.1, 1260b30–32; II.12, 1274b26–28). Prominent are Aristotle’s examinations of Plato’s Republic and the constitution of Sparta; but Aristotle also devotes chapters to the examination of Plato’s Laws, the proposed constitutions of Phaleas of Chalcedon and Hippodamos of Miletus, and the existing constitutions of (...) Crete, Carthage, and Solon’s Athens. Prominent, also, is scholarly analysis of Aristotle’s remarks about the Republic and Sparta – whether his criticisms of Plato are insightful and fair or whether his remarks about Sparta are historically accurate and hit upon the causes of Sparta’s fourth century decline. Far less prominent, though, is scholarly discussion of Aristotle’s remarks about the other constitutions analyzed in Politics II, how Politics II as a whole is organized, or what light – if any – the book sheds on the Politics as a whole. Such scholarly neglect is unfortunate for at least two major reasons. First, Politics II claims that since the Politics proposes to study which political community is best of all for people who are most able to live in accord with one’s prayers (kat’ euchên), it is necessary to investigate other constitutions reputed to be best (II.1, 1260b27–29). Such a claim suggests a close link between Politics II and Politics VII/VIII but such a link needs elaboration. In what way does Politics II prepare the way for Politics VII/VIII? Secondly, Politics II contains not only criticism of other constitutions, but also substantive political theorizing – most noticeably about the organization of property in the best regime, the problem of political innovation, and the relationship between political theorizing and chance. Aristotle’s critiques of Plato’s Republic, the constitution of Hippodamos, and the constitution of Carthage generate a series of substantive theoretical reflections about the problematic nature of political innovation and political theorizing that rise above mere examinations of the views of his predecessors. Viewing Politics II solely as a repository of criticism loses sight of the theoretical insights Aristotle offers therein, self-conscious insights about the very nature of political theorizing. (shrink)

Driven by technological innovations, newborn screening (NBS) panels have been expanded and the development of genomic NBS pilot programs is rapidly progressing. Decisions on disease selection for NBS are still based on the Wilson and Jungner (WJ) criteria published in 1968. Despite this uniform reference, interpretation of the WJ criteria and actual disease selection for NBS programs are highly variable. A systematic literature search [PubMED search “Wilson” AND “Jungner”; last search 16.07.22] was performed to evaluate the applicability of the WJ (...) criteria for current and future NBS programs and the need for adaptation. By at least two reviewers, 105 publications (systematic literature search, N = 77; manual search, N = 28) were screened for relevant content and, finally, 38 publications were evaluated. Limited by the study design of qualitative text analysis, no statistical evaluation was performed, but a structured collection of reported aspects of criticism and proposed improvements was instead collated. This revealed a set of general limitations of the WJ criteria, such as imprecise terminology, lack of measurability and objectivity, missing pediatric focus, and absent guidance on program management. Furthermore, it unraveled specific aspects of criticism on clinical, diagnostic, therapeutic, and economical aspects. A major obstacle was found to be the incompletely understood natural history and phenotypic diversity of rare diseases prior to NBS implementation, resulting in uncertainty about case definition, risk stratification, and indications for treatment. This gap could be closed through the systematic collection and evaluation of real-world evidence on the quality, safety, and (cost-)effectiveness of NBS, as well as the long-term benefits experienced by screened individuals. An integrated NBS public health program that is designed to continuously learn would fulfil these requirements, and a multi-dimensional framework for future NBS programs integrating medical, ethical, legal, and societal perspectives is overdue. (shrink)

The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

Many of the philosophical treatises which Cicero wrote in the last years of his life quote, discuss, and debate the various doctrines and philosophical systems of the Hellenistic schools of philosophy. Although Cicero sometimes represents himself as only translating or reproducing Greek ideas for a Latin or Roman audience, his actual philosophical practice is much more subtle and varies from treatise to treatise. In some treatises, such as On the Nature of the Gods or Tusculan Disputations, Cicero incorporates the views (...) of the Hellenistic schools into a philosophical presentation oriented by the methodology of the New Academy, which sought to call into question the dogmas of those schools. In other treatises, such as On Duty, Cicero philosophizes in light of Hellenistic views, but he does so critically and discriminately, arriving at a novel philosophical position which is responsive to the intellectual predicaments occasioned by the collapse of the Roman Republic. (shrink)

I propose a novel metaphysical explanation of identity and distinctness facts called the Modal Proposal. According to the Modal Proposal, for each identity fact – that is, each fact of the form a=b – that fact is metaphysically explained by the fact that it is necessary that the entities involved are indiscernible, and for each distinctness fact –that is, each fact of the form a≠b – that fact is metaphysically explained by the fact that it is possible for the entities (...) involved to be discernible. I argue that the Modal Proposal has greater payoffs at less cost than any of its competitors. It gives simple, uniform, and intuitive explanations of identity and distinctness that conserve longstanding philosophical insights about identity that go back to Leibniz. It does this while making our fundamental base more parsimonious, determining whether controversial cases of identity or distinctness are possible, and expanding our understanding of these central philosophical relations. It does all this while avoiding controversial ontological commitments. (shrink)

In this paper we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works (Denton, 1964; Oliver, 1965; Götz, 1987; Curzon-Hobson, 2003; Marshall, 2007, 2008; Weddington, 2007; Roberts, 2008, 2013; Gibbons, 2013; Heraud, 2013; Roberts, Gibbons & Heraud, 2013) these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines to develop an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman did (...) from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. To this end we offer comparisons and contrasts between Camus and the pragmatist educational discourse centred on communities of philosophical inquiry (or, more broadly, collaborative philosophical inquiry). In particular we focus on the phenomenology of inquiry, namely, that “inquiry must begin with a problem, question, or doubt and must aim at a solution or resolution, both of which are genuinely felt—something in which the inquirer actually has a stake” (Gregory & Granger, 2012: 13). We conclude that what Camus calls lucidity has implications for the notion of reconstruction, prominent in Dewey’s thoughts on education, and central to Lipman’s focus on philosophy functioning educationally. (shrink)

Jaspers’s binary distinction between understanding and explanation has given way first to a proliferation of explanatory levels and now, in John Campbell’s recent work, to a conception of explanation with no distinct levels of explanation and no inbuilt rationality requirement. I argue that there is still a role for understanding in psychiatry and that is to demystify the assumption that the states it concerns are mental. This role can be fulfilled by placing rationality at the heart of understanding without a (...) commitment to the attempt to use rationality to shed light on interpretation and mindedness as though from outside those notions. Delusions still present a significant challenge to philosophical attempts at understanding, but this merely reflects the genuine clinical difficulties such states present. (shrink)

Because factory-farmed meat production inflicts gratuitous suffering upon animals and wreaks havoc on the environment, there are morally compelling reasons to become vegetarian. Yet industrial plant agriculture causes the death of many field animals, and this leads some to question whether consumers ought to get some of their protein from certain kinds of non factory-farmed meat. Donald Bruckner, for instance, boldly argues that the harm principle implies an obligation to collect and consume roadkill and that strict vegetarianism is thus immoral. (...) But this argument works only if the following claims are true: all humans have access to roadkill, roadkill would go to waste if those who happen upon it don’t themselves consume it, it’s impossible to harvest vegetables without killing animals, the animals who are killed in plant production are all-things-considered harmed by crop farming, and the best arguments for vegetarianism all endorse the harm principle. As I will argue in this paper, each claim is deeply problematic. Consequently, in most cases, humans ought to strictly eat plants and save the roadkill for cats. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have been debating how the folk concept of intentional action works. We suggest a simple account: people consider that an agent did X intentionally to the extent that X was causally dependent on how much the agent wanted X to happen (or not to happen). Combined with recent models of human causal cognition, this definition provides a good account of the way people use the concept of intentional action, and offers natural explanations for puzzling phenomena such as the (...) side-effect effect. We provide empirical support for our theory, in studies where we show that people’s causation and intentionality judgments track each other closely, in everyday situations as well as in scenarios with unusual causal structures. Study 5 additionally shows that the effect of norm violations on intentionality judgments depends on the causal structure of the situation, in a way uniquely predicted by our theory. Taken together, these results suggest that the folk concept of intentional action has been difficult to define because it is made of cognitive building blocks, such as our intuitive concept of causation, whose logic cognitive scientists are just starting to understand. (shrink)

Concordance of the poetic works of Giorgos Seferis which presents all the principal “words” of the texts in an alphabetical list, stating how often each word occurs, giving a precise location and a relevant piece of text for each occurrence. We found ca. 9500 different Greek words in 39000 different occurrences, so our concordance has 50.000 lines of text. The technical procedure required four main steps: text entry and tagging, production of the concordance, correction of the contexts, formatting for print.

We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. The representational contents of the states induced by these mechanisms that are available to a (...) type of awareness called phenomenal awareness constitute the phenomenal content of experience. The phenomenal content of perception contains the existence of objects as separate things that persist in time and time, spatiotemporal information, and information regarding relative spatial relations, motion, surface properties, shape, size, orientation, color, and their functional properties. (shrink)

The concept of niche (setting, context, habitat, environment) has been little studied by ontologists, in spite of its wide application in a variety of disciplines from evolutionary biology to economics. What follows is a first formal theory of this concept, a theory of the relations between objects and their niches. The theory builds upon existing work on mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location as tools of formal ontology. It will be illustrated above all by means of simple biological (...) examples, but the concept of niche should be understood as being, like concepts such as part, boundary, and location, a structural concept that is applicable in principle to a wide range of different domains. (shrink)

This study explores the impact of regional comprehensive factors on talent acquisition using the ASA (Attraction-Selection-Attrition) theory within the context of the automotive industry, employing a structural equation modeling approach. Analyzing data from 308 respondents, the study identifies significant relationships between regional development pole, industry agglomeration, and regional incentives with various dimensions of talent acquisition, including attraction, selection, and retention. The findings reveal that regional development pole and incentives positively influence talent management processes, whereas industry agglomeration has a detrimental effect. (...) These insights are essential for formulating strategies to enhance talent acquisition and retention in the automotive industry by leveraging regional development and incentive mechanisms while addressing the challenges posed by industrial agglomeration. (shrink)

One of the attractions of the Humean instrumentalist theory of practical rationality is that it appears to offer a special connection between an agent's reasons and her motivation. The assumption that Humeanism is able to assert a strong connection between reason and motivation has been challenged, most notably by Christine Korsgaard. She argues that Humeanism is not special in the connection it allows to motivation. On the contrary, Humean theories of practical rationality do connect reasons and motivation in a unique (...) and attractive way, though the nature of this connection has sometimes been misunderstood by both defenders and detractors of the theory. (shrink)

Recent research has begun treating the perennial philosophical question, “what makes a person the same over time?” as an empirical question. A long tradition in philosophy holds that psychological continuity and connectedness of memories are at the heart of personal identity. More recent experimental work, following Strohminger & Nichols (2014), has suggested that persistence of moral character, more than memories, is perceived as essential for personal identity. While there is a growing body of evidence supporting these findings, a critique by (...) Starmans & Bloom (2018) suggests that this research program conflates personal identity with mere similarity. To address this criticism, we explore how loss of someone’s morality or memories influence perceptions of identity change, and perceptions of moral duties towards the target of the change. We present participants with a classic ‘body switch’ thought experiment and after assessing perceptions of identity persistence, we present a moral dilemma, asking participants to imagine that one of the patients must die (Study 1) or be left alone in a care home for the rest of their life (Study 2). Our results highlight the importance of the continuity of moral character, suggesting lay intuitions are tracking (something like) personal identity, not just mere similarity. (shrink)

In this introduction, before summarizing the contents of the volume, the authors characterize materialism as it is understood within the philosophy of mind, and they identify three respects in which materialism is on the wane.

Aristotle's account of natural slavery appears to be internally inconsistent concerning whether slavery is advantageous to the natural slave. Whereas the Politics asserts that slavery is beneficial to the slave, the ethical treatises deny such a claim. Examination of Aristotle's arguments suggests a distinction which resolves the apparent contradiction. Aristotle distinguishes between the common benefit between two people who join together in an association And the same benefit which exists between a whole and its parts. Master and slave share no (...) common benefit, but instead the slave receives the same benefit a master does, albeit only through participation in the master as a part within a whole. Although Aristotle's distinction hardly justifies his doctrine of slavery, it saves Aristotle from one alleged internal inconsistency and sheds light on what Aristotle means by association and the common good. (shrink)

Current challenges in medical practice, research, and administration demand physicians who are familiar with bioethics, health law, and health economics. Curriculum directors at American Association of Medical Colleges-affiliated medical schools were sent confidential surveys requesting the number of required hours of the above subjects and the years in which they were taught, as well as instructor names. The number of relevant publications since 1990 for each named instructor was assessed by a PubMed search.In sum, teaching in all three subjects combined (...) comprises less than two percent of the total hours in the American medical curriculum, and most instructors have not recently published articles in the fields they teach. This suggests that medical schools should reevaluate their curricula and instructors in bioethics, health law, and health economics. (shrink)

We rely on language to know the minds of others, but does language have a role to play in knowing our own minds? To suppose it does is to look for a connection between mastery of a language and the epistemic relation we bear to our inner lives. What could such a connection consist in? To explore this, I shall examine strategies for explaining self-knowledge in terms of the use we make of language to express and report our mental states. (...) Success in these strategies will depend on the view we take of speakers' understanding of the words they use to speak their minds. The key is to avoid circularity in the account of how they know what they mean; for if knowing what one is saying in speaking a language provides a means of knowing one's own mind, it cannot simply be a part of it. I shall look at ways in which we might proceed here, and examine whether the strategy can make room for a genuinely first-person point of view. But first let me try to motivate the problem of self-knowledge. (shrink)