This chapter contains sections titled: Eudaimonia, Ergon, and Espresso The Golden Mean The Bean.

This thesis is an investigation of Aristotle's theory of friendship, as found in books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics. It has two major concerns: first, Aristotle's theory of goodness; second, Aristotle's view of the relationship between self-love and love of another. Aristotle's theory of goodness is important, because friendship consists of love, and love is always on account of some good. Thus, Aristotle's distinctions among various goods underlie his (...) class='Hi'>theory of the various sorts of friendships and their nature. Aristotle's views on the relationship between self-love and friendship are examined to discover a theory different from contemporary theories of morality, which are vexed by the problem of the relationship between egoism and altruism. The first chapter examines the Platonic background of Aristotle's theory of friendship. The Lysis is given special attention, and then Aristotle's criticism of the Platonic theory of the good in EN I.6 is examined as giving us Aristotle's positive theory of goodness. This positive theory is used in the second chapter to understand Aristotle's division of friendship into three forms. It is argued that, according to Aristotle, just as being varies categorically, so goodness varies categorically; thus love and friendship also vary categorically. The third chapter examines Aristotle's thesis that friendship 'comes from' self-love. It is claimed that this is intended to show that self-love is social, not that sociability is selfish. Aristotle's saying that a 'friend is another self' is interpreted as a qualified metaphor based on an unanalyzeable analogy. It is claimed that Aristotle's understanding of analogy enables him to take a position on the relationship between self-love and love of another unavailable to moderns. The final chapter attempts an interpretation of the difficult argument in EN IX.9, 1170b13ff. It is argued that Aristotle is trying to explain how a person's own life is good for him and pleasant to him, and that Aristotle is claiming that this is how a friend is good for and pleasant to a good person. (shrink)

This paper argues that what Aristotle has in mind as the criterion for estimating the value of products in Nicomachean Ethics V.5 is neither the Marxian concept of 'human labour' nor Polanyi's concept of 'status', but the benefit of a recipient, and maintains that Aristotle here does not analyse the mechanism of a market economy, but addresses the problem of how to build reciprocal relationships among citizens through the exchange of goods. Furthermore, unlike Nussbaum's capability approach, which draws attention to (...) the concept of well-being, the paper argues that the concept of reciprocity plays the key role in Aristotle's distributive theory of property in the Politics and lays the foundation for his understanding of political governance as the exchange of governing and being governed in turn. (shrink)

“Aristotle is the father of virtue ethics, and virtue ethics is hot”, Howard Curzer states in the introduction of his Aristotle and the virtues . Aristotelian virtue ethics has attracted so much attention that it has become one of the three major approaches in normative ethics since its revival in post-war Anglo-Saxon philosophy. In his new book, Paul Bloomfield is, like these virtue ethicists, not so much interested in the modern ethical question of how to treat others, but in the (...) ancient Greek question how we should lead a good life. He also adopts from the Greeks the idea that moral virtues are conducive to a happy or well-lived life. The book, however, states that the assumption that the moral life is better than its alternatives should not be taken for granted. For example, as we all know of bad people who seem to be happy and successful, we are in need of an argument that shows why virtue is even necessary for people who only care about their self-interest.Despite his inter .. (shrink)

In May 2021, when the Delta variant of SARS-CoV2 was wreaking havoc in India, the Australian Federal Government banned its citizens and residents who were there from coming back to Australia for 14 days on penalty of fines or imprisonment. These measures were justified on the grounds of protecting the broader Australian public from potentially importing the Delta strain, which officials feared would then seed a local outbreak. Those Australians stranded in India, and their families and communities back home, claimed (...) that they were abandoned by Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government. This case—along with other barriers used as part of border control measures in the name of public health—raises the following question: is it ever morally permissible for a state to ban its citizens and residents from entering their own country during a pandemic? I conclude that it’s impermissible. I argue that persons have a right of entry that should be understood as a security right. This security right should be non-derogable because it’s a foundational good that is necessary for life-planning purposes. Moreover, it is a right that people should be able to rely upon absolutely, even during pandemics. At the very least, should someone believe that there are rare exceptions to the right of entry on public health grounds, governments have a duty—grounded in the principle of reciprocity—to support those who are temporarily denied entry. In the case of Australians stranded in India, I will argue that the Australian Federal Government failed on all accounts. (shrink)

Aristotle conceives of ethical theory as a field distinct from the theoretical sciences. Its methodology must match its subject matter—good action—and must respect the fact that in this field many generalizations hold only for the most part. We study ethics in order to improve our lives, and therefore its principal concern is the nature of human well-being. Aristotle follows Socrates and Plato in taking the virtues to be central to a well-lived life. Like Plato, he regards the (...) ethical virtues (justice, courage, temperance and so on) as complex rational, emotional and social skills. But he rejects Plato's idea that a training in the sciences and metaphysics is a necessary prerequisite for a full understanding of our good. What we need, in order to live well, is a proper appreciation of the way in which such goods as friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor and wealth fit together as a whole. In order to apply that general understanding to particular cases, we must acquire, through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to see, on each occasion, which course of action is best supported by reasons. Therefore practical wisdom, as he conceives it, cannot be acquired solely by learning general rules. We must also acquire, through practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable us to put our general understanding of well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each occasion. (shrink)

This book argues that Protestant theological ethics not only reveals basic virtue ethical characteristics, but also contributes significantly to a viable contemporary virtue ethics. Pieter Vos demonstrates that post-Reformation theological ethics still understands the good in terms of the good life, takes virtues as necessary for living the good life and considers human nature as a source of moral knowledge. Vos approaches Protestant theology as an important bridge between pre-modern virtue ethics, shaped by Aristotle (...) and transformed by Augustine of Hippo, and late modern understandings of morality. The volume covers a range of topics, going from eudaimonism and Calvinist ethics to Reformed scholastic virtue ethics and character formation in the work of Søren Kierkegaard. The author shows how Protestantism has articulated other-centered virtues from a theology of grace, affirmed ordinary life and emphasized the need of transformation of this life and its orders. Engaging with philosophy of the art of living, Neo-Aristotelianism and exemplarist ethics, he develops constructive contributions to a contemporary virtue ethics. (shrink)

Aristotle’s philosophical insights into ethics, wisdom and practice have drawn the attention of scholars. In the current professional context where ethics are often compromised, this debate assumes a necessary urgency. This subject is highly relevant to business schools, given the general neglect of this quality in executive management development. Our research involved an analysis of contemporary literature on phronesis in the management scholarship, practice and teaching domains. Our definition of phronesis identifies themes and paradoxes distilled from this literature. Stories (...) are by nature multi-layered and paradoxical, embracing ambiguity and contradiction, so we incorporate narrative as essential to our enquiry. While it appears to be easily grasped, phronesis is complex, nuanced and paradoxical, seen as an unorganised set of characteristics in the management scholarship domain. We argue that the neglect of phronesis in modernity flows from the challenging nature of developing it, itself the consequence of its indistinctness. It calls for Einstein’s words “I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity”. This article argues that developing this virtue as a form of practical wisdom, should be an integral part of executive management development if we are to cultivate morally responsible leadership. A typology of managerial phronesis will encourage contextually appropriate leadership excellence based on the virtue-attributes of managers-as-scholars. The typology we propose is based on a Grounded Theory synthesis of relevant literature. We adopt a phenomenological stance. Through incorporating Grounded Theory second order themes, we offer a grainier understanding of the qualities of managerial phronesis. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour proper) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and the beasts. Amour proper is the passion that drives human individuals to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love--the recognition--of their fellow beings. Neuhouser reconstructs Rousseau's understanding of what the drive for recognition is, why it is so problematic, and how its presence opens up far-reaching developmental possibilities for (...) creatures that possess it. One of Rousseau's central theses is that amour proper in its corrupted, manifestations--pride or vanity--is the principal source of an array of evils so widespread that they can easily appear to be necessary features of the human condition: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. Yet Rousseau also argues that solving these problems depends not on suppressing or overcoming the drive for recognition but on cultivating it so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood. Indeed, Rousseau goes so far as to claim that, despite its many dangers, the need for recognition is a condition of nearly everything that makes human life valuable and that elevates it above mere animal existence: rationality, morality, freedom--subjectivity itself--would be impossible for humans if it were not for amour proper and the relations to others it impels us to establish. (shrink)

Fred Feldman's fascinating new book sets out to defend hedonism as a theory about the Good Life. He tries to show that, when carefully and charitably interpreted, certain forms of hedonism yield plausible evaluations of human lives. Feldman begins by explaining the question about the Good Life. As he understands it, the question is not about the morally good life or about the beneficial life. Rather, the question concerns the general features of (...) the life that is good in itself for the one who lives it. Hedonism says (roughly) that the Good Life is the pleasant life. After showing that received formulations of hedonism are often confused or incoherent, Feldman presents a simple, clear, coherent form of sensory hedonism that provides a starting point for discussion. He then presents a catalogue of classic objections to hedonism, coming from sources as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Brentano, Ross, Moore, Rawls, Kagan, Nozick, Brandt, and others. One of Feldman's central themes is that there is an important distinction between the forms of hedonism that emphasize sensory pleasure and those that emphasize attitudinal pleasure. Feldman formulates several kinds of hedonism based on the idea that attitudinal pleasure is the Good. He claims that attitudinal forms of hedonism - which have often been ignored in the literature -- are worthy of more careful attention. Another main theme of the book is the plasticity of hedonism. Hedonism comes in many forms. Attitudinal hedonism is especially receptive to variations and modifications. Feldman illustrates this plasticity by formulating several variants of attitudinal hedonism and showing how they evade some of the objections. He also shows how it is possible to develop forms of hedonism that are equivalent to the allegedly anti-hedonistic theory of G. E. Moore and the Aristotelian theory according to which the Good Life is the life of virtue, or flourishing. He also formulates hedonisms relevantly like the ones defended by Aristippus and Mill. Feldman argues that a carefully developed form of attitudinal hedonism is not refuted by objections concerning 'the shape of a life'. He also defends the claim that all of the alleged forms of hedonism discussed in the book genuinely deserve to be called 'hedonism'. Finally, after dealing with the last of the objections, he gives a sketch of his hedonistic vision of the Good Life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant's Theory of Virtue: The Value of AutocracyRobert B. LoudenAnne Margaret Baxley. Kant's Theory of Virtue: The Value of Autocracy. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi + 189. Cloth, $85.00.Back in the early 1980s, Anglophone philosophers began to seriously explore the nature and role of virtue in Kant's ethics. This development itself was the result of a confluence of three other phenomena: (1) the (...) growing influence of virtue ethics within contemporary ethical theory; (2) the simultaneous publication of the first two complete English translations of Kant's important late work, The Doctrine of Virtue (Tugendlehre); and (3) repeated claims made by virtue ethicists that Kant had denied the importance of virtue for ethical theory.Anne Margaret Baxley's book, Kant's Theory of Virtue, is the most informative and comprehensive discussion of the nature and role of virtue in Kant's ethics currently available. Making careful use of the relevant Kantian texts (including not only Kant's published works but also lecture transcriptions from his ethics courses and some of his unpublished notes and reflections on ethics and religion), an important text by Friedrich Schiller (Über Anmut und Würde), one of Kant's early Romantic critics, as well as a wide swath of contemporary [End Page 142] secondary literature written by virtue ethicists as well as Kant scholars, Baxley demonstrates incisively that virtue, far from being neglected by Kant, is vitally significant to his ethical theory.Baxley's distinctive approach to Kant's conception of virtue is signaled in her subtitle: The Value of Autocracy. Autocracy—understood here as rational self-rule over sensibility—is, Baxley holds, "the overriding metaphor throughout Kant's treatment of virtue as a character trait, and it provides the key for understanding his particular conception of virtue" (52). This accent on autocracy results in a somewhat sterner Kantian virtue ethics than others have argued for. As Baxley herself notes, "[A]t first glance, autocracy looks as if it amounts to a rigid, repressive form of self-rule, one requiring the suppression or wholesale extirpation of sensible feelings and inclinations" (49). In an effort to show that first appearances are in this case deceiving, Baxley stretches the metaphor of autocracy (or, as she puts it, "reconstructs" Kant's claims about virtue) into the following three-pronged theory:[A]utocracy involves containing feelings and desires at odds with duty (the containment model), but it also involves maintaining feelings and inclinations to accord with moral concerns (the maintenance model), as well as cultivating feelings and inclinations that promote morally good ends (the cultivation model).(173; see also 126–36)Strictly speaking, however, when Kant himself uses the term ‘autocracy' (‘Autokratie') in discussing virtue (and he actually only does so once in his published writings—other terms such as ‘moral strength' [‘moralische Stärke'] and ‘courage' [‘Tapferkeit'] are used much more often), it refers exclusively to what Baxley calls the containment model, not the maintenance model or the cultivation model. Autocracy, Kant states in the Tugendlehre, "comprises a consciousness of the capacity to become master of one's inclinations that oppose the law" (6.383). Nevertheless, even if Baxley is asking the metaphor of autocracy to carry a bit more weight than Kant intended, her own reconstruction of Kant's theory of virtue is very well articulated and defended. And she is certainly correct in holding that Kantian virtue, correctly considered, entails not merely containing those feelings and desires that are opposed to duty, but also maintaining and cultivating those that are conducive to the moral life.Three important, interrelated aspects of her account that deserve highlighting are the following:Virtue and radical evil. Kant's account of radical evil, as presented in part 1 of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, forms an integral but underexplored component of his theory of virtue, and his belief in the existence of a universal human propensity to evil is the clearest example of how his understanding of virtue differs from the more familiar Aristotle-inspired accounts favored by contemporary virtue ethicists. As Baxley correctly emphasizes, on Kant's view virtue is "a corrective... to our propensity to evil... (shrink)

Aristotle takes his ethics to be an inquiry into the ultimate good of human life. In the course of his criticism of Plato and Eudoxus, Aristotle formulates two general conditions on the concept of the ultimate good. Firstly, the ultimate good has to be something prakton. The primary sense of prakton is not, as it is often taken to be, of something that is "realizable" in human action, but of something that is, or can be, aimed (...) at in human action. Secondly, in addition to being based on an appropriate moral psychology and theory of action, an adequate ethical theory has to be non-reductivist--it has to give its due weight to the plurality and variety of the goodness of particular intrinsic goods. I examine why Aristotle's criticism of Eudoxus' hedonism as a reductive ethical theory is ineffective, and point out some deficiencies in Aristotle's own account of pleasure. ;Aristotle takes the view that every desire--whether rational or non-rational--is for something that appears good to the agent. This view is compared with what seems to be the currently accepted view, that some of our desires do not involve a valuation of any sort. Although I do not claim that the current view is wrong, I do argue that Aristotle's position may provide an alternative, and plausible, way of thinking about the nature of human motivation. I discuss next Aristotle's concept of telos. A telos has a dual character: it is something an action is aimed at, and also something attained in human action. Although Aristotle's ethics is not teleological, outcomes are important for the ethical evaluation of actions. In order to explicate how outcomes matter, I introduce the concepts of an Aristotelian outcome and of a good Aristotelian outcome. The notion of a third actualization is introduced to throw some light on the sort of success in the conduct of life which Aristotle takes eudaimonia to be. ;Finally, I provide an account of Aristotle's theory of practical reason. I argue that his ethical theory demands a very wide interpretation of the concept of deliberation. An analysis of Aristotle's concept of choice is given, and an attempt made to specify the conditions under which an action counts as chosen. Deliberation is ethical if it is guided by the deliberator's conception of eudaimonia. I explicate briefly what it is for a person to have such a conception, what such a conception is like, and in what way a person can be thought to be guided by it. Finally, the concept of practical reason is linked with the concept of the ultimate good. I propose an interpretation of the three conditions Aristotle imposes on the ultimate good in EN I.7--finality, self-sufficiency and choiceworthiness which requires that we initially construe the concepts of finality and of self-sufficiency in a narrow sense, and take the concept of finality as a comparative notion. The three conditions can then be regarded as specifying how deliberation ought to be conducted if it is to lead to eudaimonia. (shrink)

This dissertation evaluates the contemporary viability of Aristotelian ethics. It argues that neo-Aristotelians are right in thinking that some version of Aristotle's ethics is viable today. However, standard interpretations are wrong in several respects: Aristotle's ethics does not and cannot ground ethics in eudaimonia as Nussbaum suggests it does. Nor does it treat virtue as a means to eudaimonia as Kant thought. Furthermore, Aristotle denies that ethics can be grounded at all. Instead, he suggests that arguments persuade only (...) those who have been properly habituated. ;The dissertation defends the relevance of Aristotle's ethics by arguing against some of the central challenges raised against it. First, Aristotle's argument in the Ethics need not presuppose an outdated metaphysical biology. Rather, he starts by analyzing the teleological structure of human action. Second, although Aristotle does not remove the tension between the contemplative and the ethical life, he argues convincingly that they can and must coexist in every complete human life. Third, even though Aristotle allows for more paternalism than do most contemporary thinkers, he still makes autonomy a necessary part of eudaimonia. Fourth, once we understand that Aristotle is not grounding ethics in eudaimonia, we see that many of Kant's criticisms of eudaimonistic ethics do not apply to him. Nevertheless, important disagreements remain, and the dissertation suggests that one important difference concerns the nature of inclinations and thus is psychological rather than ethical. Finally, the dissertation examines Nussbaum's attempt to create an Aristotelian ethics. It objects to her interpretation of Aristotle, and it also questions her project of grounding ethics in eudaimonia. ;The dissertation concludes that according to Aristotle, ethics cannot be grounded in anything other than the idea of what is intrinsically valuable, an idea which we acquire through habituation. It also suggests that Aristotle's ethics can withstand the objections that have been discussed. Indeed, it argues that Aristotle's ethics, which derives the virtues from an analysis of rational action and which gives inclinations a crucial role in moral action, is both viable and attractive. (shrink)

In this companion volume to their 1981 work, A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice, Pellegrino and Thomasma examine the principle of beneficence and its role in the practice of medicine. Their analysis, which is grounded in a thorough-going philosophy of medicine, addresses a wide array of practical and ethical concerns that are a part of health care decision-making today. Among these issues are the withdrawing and withholding of nutrition and hydration, competency assessment, the requirements for valid surrogate decision-making, quality-of-life (...) determinations, the allocation of scarce health care resources, medical gatekeeping, and for-profit medicine. The authors argue for the restoration of beneficence to its place as the fundamental principle of medical ethics. They maintain that to be guided by beneficence a physician must perform a right and good healing action which is consonant with the individual patient 's values. In order to act in the patient 's best interests, or the patient 's good, the physician and patient must discern what that good is. This knowledge is gained only through a process of dialogue between patient and/or family and physician which respects and honors the patient 's autonomous self-understanding and choice in the matter of treatment options. This emphasis on a dialogical discernment of the patient 's good rejects the assumption long held in medicine that what is considered to be the medical good is necessarily the good for this patient. In viewing autonomy as a necessary condition of beneficence, the authors move beyond a trend in the medical ethics literature which identifies beneficence with paternalism. In their analysis of beneficence, the authors reject the current emphasis on rights- and duty-based ethical systems in favor of a virtue-based theory which is grounded in the physician- patient relationship. This book's provocative contributions to medical ethics will be of great interest not only to physicians and other health professionals, but also to ethicists, students, patients, families, and all others concerned with the relationship of professional to patient and patient to professional in health care today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 411-412 [Access article in PDF] Deborah Achtenberg. Cognition of Value in Aristotle's Ethics: Promise of Enrichment, Threat of Destruction. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 218. Paper, $20.95.Deborah Achtenberg argues that, for Aristotle, virtue is a disposition to respond to situations with the appropriate emotions, where emotions are understood as perceptions of the value (...) of particulars. To perceive the value of a particular is to perceive that particular as a limit; some limits enable what they limit to be more fully what it is, while other limits do the opposite. My activity in writing this review, for example, is "limited" both by the rules of grammar and by my computer's tendency to crash frequently; one kind of limit enriches my activity, while the other hinders and threatens it (hence Achtenberg's subtitle). An enabling limit is a telos or end; something is a telos of yours if it connects you to a larger context that in some way fulfills or completes you.Achtenberg's interpretation enables her to steer Aristotle clear of a number of persistent false dichotomies. For example: is the doctrine of the mean an uninspiring counsel to do the middling thing, or a vacuous counsel to do whatever one ought to do? Neither, says Achtenberg; rather, it is Aristotle's way of insisting on the flexibility of the virtuous person's [End Page 411] responses. Is Aristotle siding, then, with Odysseus, who suppressed his emotions in order to suit his actions to the demands of the occasion, as against Achilles, who stubbornly followed his emotions regardless of circumstance? No, that dichotomy falls as well: the virtuous person has flexible emotional (not just behavioral) responses, and so can be as adaptable as Odysseus yet as sincere as Achilles.Does Aristotle's ethics have a metaphysical foundation, or is it autonomous? Achtenberg dissolves that dichotomy by distinguishing two different ways in which Aristotle takes ethics to be an "imprecise" science. First, ethics and metaphysics are both imprecise, because they share a common subject-matter (final causation) that is an analogical equivocal and so indefinable. Second, ethics is less precise than metaphysics because ethics can establish that, but not explain why, its claims are true. Metaphysics can explain the why of ethics, but for practical purposes the why is not necessary; so metaphysics is explanatorily but not epistemically prior to ethics.How can Aristotle's particularist-sounding denial that the virtuous person needs rules be reconciled with his insistence that the virtuous person follows a logos? Must we play down the logos passage, or instead conclude that Aristotle is a rule-theorist after all? Once again, neither: in this context, Achtenberg suggests, logos means "analogy," not "rule." Since goodness is an analogical equivocal, perceiving goodness means perceiving analogies. Being transcategorial, these analogies are not definable or codifiable, so the rule-theorists are wrong; but we are grasping something common to all good things, so the particularists are wrong too.Let me close with a couple of criticisms. Once the notion of an enabling limit has been established, Achtenberg seems to accept as unproblematic the inference to the legitimacy of paternalistic legislation: citizens are more free, not less, for being subjected to such coercion. Now on a view that regarded persons primarily as moral patients or recipients, it might be reasonable enough to elide in this way the difference between imposing limits on oneself and having them imposed by external compulsion; but it is harder to see how forcibly imposed limits could be constitutive of a life's being happier when happiness is defined, with Aristotle, as a self-generated activity.I think Achtenberg also fails to catch one false dichotomy. She contrasts Aristotle's theory, which seeks to increase and enhance emotional awareness, with the Stoic theory (as represented by Marcus Aurelius), which seeks to decrease or suppress such awareness. The contrast seems to me misleading. Both Aristotle and the Stoics agree that moral maturation involves... (shrink)

The problems involved in understanding the Aristotelian notion of an ἀρχή arise from the widely accepted view that Aristotle’s theory of knowledge is torn between irreconcilable empiricist and rationalist tendencies. I argue that several puzzling features of the Aristotelian ἀρχή are clarified when it is understood as akin to the Urphänomen, which plays a central role in the scientific thought of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. More broadly, I argue that the apparent conflict in Aristotle’s theory of knowledge (...) is resolved by seeing that Aristotle is neither an empiricist, nor a rationalist, but a “rational empiricist” akin to Goethe. (shrink)

Augustine’s insights into the will and its free decision have long been a focus of controversy since his lifetime. Nonetheless, in modern scholarship, little effort has been made to clarify the actual function of the will as a psychological force in the life of mind. It has often been taken for granted that the will is an independent faculty which underlies our moral responsibility by its free choice. Accordingly, much ink has been spilled over issues such as necessity and (...) freedom, grace and free will, sin and evil will etc. This philosophical inquiry distinguishes itself from its antecedents by adopting a psychological focus on the function of the will. It attempts to explicate why uoluntas, and not other psychological activities, is the locus of moral responsibility in Augustine’s philosophical psychology. The work is thus split into two parts, each consisting of four chapters: the first part devoted to the will’s operation as a psychological dynamism, and the second to the traditional consideration of the will as a moral faculty. In the first part, the dissertation systematically investigates the psychological phenomenon of the will in its relationship to other psychological activities, from irrational affection to intellectual cognition. This phenomenological approach starts with Augustine’s unusual conception of concupiscentia carnis in his debates with Julian of Eclanum. According to Augustine’s philosophical interpretation of this biblical term, concupiscentia carnis as an uncontrollable tendency defines the essential infirmity of the will and forms the starting-point of further affective expressions of the soul. Then, the analysis advances to the role of the will in the formation of affection. It reveals the implicit approval that is entailed in the unvoluntary pre-volitional movements of the soul. This explains the superficial discrepancy between Augustine’s accounts of affection as can be found in Books IX and XIV of De ciuitate Dei. This general account of Augustine’s theory of emotion is followed by an in-depth examination of the feeling of shame so as to display the will’s actual contribution in a reflective affection. Augustine convincingly proves that shame reflects the powerlessness of the will in confrontation with concupiscentia carnis as well as the will’s effort to regain its dignity. To complete the foray into Augustine’s philosophy of the soul, his reflections on intellect and will in the process of moral decision are called into question. By reconsidering Augustine’s account of his own conversion and his reflections on our journey to the happy life, my analyses show that neither intellectualitic nor voluntaristic interpretations do justice to his understanding of moral decision. The voluntaristic interpretation overlooks the intellectual perspective of happy life and Augustine’s emphasis on the necessity of a knowledge of the good for our moral behaviour. On the other hand, the intellectualistic account unjustly ignores Augustine’s insights into the severe destructiveness of the failure of the will and the dilemma of two wills at war. To summarize, the phenomenological approach in Part I reveals the omnipresent feature of the will in mental life. The implications of this psychological feature of the will are twofold. It indicates the independence of the will as well as the limitations of the will by its actual conditions. The second part of this work investigates the moral significance of Augustine’s psychological insights into the function of the will. What bridges the gap between uoluntas as a psychological power and uoluntas as a moral faculty is Augustine’s most controversial conception of freedom. The dissertation first scrutinizes Augustine’s arguments for the independence of the will as reconstructed and assumed in the first part. By metaphysical arguments, Augustine reveals that nothing external, neither inferior nor superior being, can force the will to attain a particular disposition. For this cannot happen in a world governed by the divine order. In his analyses of the phenomenon of two contradictory wills, Augustine shows that the will is conditioned but not compelled by other internal forces. However, this merely represents the negative aspect of the will’s freedom, or libertas a coactione. At the same time, the positive aspect of Augustinian uoluntas has frequently been misinterpreted as a faculty of choice, or libertas indifferentiae. A careful reading shows that the free decision of the will is essentially a capacity to pursue one’s own happiness. In accord with this eudemonistic emphasis, the genuine freedom is the freedom to will and to accomplish the good, which alone guarantees the happy life. This original interpretation of freedom offers powerful support to Augustine’s account of moral agency. One is not only held responsible for his voluntary evildoings which he could have avoided, but also for the necessary conditions of life, i.e., ignorantia and difficultas as effects of original sin. For as argued earlier, even the presence of concupiscentia carnis as the inherent infirmity of the will contains the least assent of the will. This assent establishes the moral agency in evil willing. To account for our agency in the good will, the dissertation addresses the problem of compatibility between divine grace and freedom of will. My analysis shows that Augustine’s rigid position in the last years of his life is also philosophically defensible. An internal function of the grace upon the faculty of the will will not destroy its freedom to attain its own disposition. This philosophical analysis concludes by highlightling the close affiliation between the will and the self in Augustinian uoluntas. “I know nothing I could call my own if the will by which I’m willing or unwilling is not my own.”. By consent or dissent of the will, we identify ourselves with mental images, affective movements, practical reasoning and other psychological activities, either implicitly or explicitly. Augustine’s realistic conceptions of the will and its conditioned freedom provide a subtle and rich picture of human nature, which is still relevant to our own theoretical reflections on the self. 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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 127-128 [Access article in PDF] Dennis Des Chene. Life's Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 220. Cloth, $45.00. The history of philosophy aims at the recovery and interpretation of past thought, and its reconstructions seek to avoid anachronism. Dennis Des Chene's book is exemplary in this respect. It offers a (...) sophisticated and accurate report on Late Scholastic views and arguments about life and its form and principle, the soul. It is full of subtle and informed discussions of texts from, principally, Francisco Toledo, Pedro Fonseca, the commentators from Coimbra, Francisco Suárez, and Rodrigo de Arriaga.But the aim of the history of philosophy is philosophical and not exclusively historical. Recovery of the past is, for the historian of philosophy, at the service of contemporary understanding. The Late Scholastic authors studied by Des Chene understood this to be so. Suárez, for instance, distinguished between those doctrines and inquiries which are "antiquated (antiquatae) and wholly relegated from philosophy" and those which are not (Metaphysical Disputations, "Copious Index to Aristotle's Metaphysics," Book I, ch. 7). Unfortunately, when judged from this perspective, Des Chene's book is not as successful.In spite of its many comparisons between current debates, Descartes's views, and Late Scholastic doctrines, the book does not succeed in extracting much by way of genuine philosophical insight. Though well-informed and intelligent, for the most part these glosses are mere statements of Late Scholastic views in contemporary terms. But correctly describing alchemical theories from the point of view of modern chemistry does not make them any less archaic.This book is indeed more a contribution to the history of ideas or of science than to the history of philosophy. To be fair, it is true that, first, as such it is a most valuable contribution; second, much of what Late Scholastics had to say about life and the soul is indeed antiquated; third, even if philosophically antiquated, an adequate grasp of Late Aristotelian thought on these matters is necessary to understand Descartes and subsequent developments; and finally, the kind of informed historical recovery that Des Chene has provided here is a necessary condition for whatever philosophical lessons could be gained from these texts.Life's Form is divided into four parts. The first, "Data for the Study of Souls," looks at the phenomena which the Late Aristotelians sought to understand and explain, recovering both their grasp of the place of the living among other substances, and the constraints, [End Page 127] originating both from accumulated experience and from Christian faith, to which they were subject.The second part, "Defining the Soul," first examines the question of how to define life. It then looks at the definition of the soul as "first act of an organic or potentially living physical body"—whether the soul is an accident of the body, an entirely separate substance, or the substantial form of the body. Here one finds addressed the question whether there is a form of the body separate from the soul, or whether strictly the body has only one form, the soul. The issue of cadaveric forms, peculiar forms of corpses arising after death and the departure of the soul, comes up here. In the last section of this part Des Chene examines the definition of the soul as a principle of life and the relation, both epistemological and ontological, between this definition in terms of the operations of the soul, and the earlier one of the soul as form, that is, in terms of its being.Part 3, "Powers and Parts," looks at the vegetative (nutritive, reproductive, and augmentative), animal (sensitive), and spiritual (intellective) powers of the soul. Des Chene examines the criteria for distinguishing between powers, the relation between the one soul and its many powers, and the unity of the soul. "Unity," the fourth part of the book, takes up this last topic. It looks at the vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual powers as "parts" of the... (shrink)

To the extensive literature on Aristotle's Ethics by scholars in the Anglo-American tradition, Engberg-Pedersen adds this major new interpretation of some of its most basic issues: the function of phronësis, the relation of phronësis to both moral virtue and theöria, the roles played by the different faculties of the soul in being an excellent human being, etc. Along the way he addresses problems at the root of all moral philosophy such as: the basic principle of morality, the best (...) class='Hi'>life for a human being, and responsibility for action and moral character. It is a contemporary interpretation of Aristotle's Ethics which recalls the benefits of a careful study of him for understanding perennial ethical issues. (shrink)

_The purpose _of the article is to introduce into scientific circulation works by Ukrainian scholar Taras Zakydalsky on the philosophy of Hryhorii Skovoroda. Taras Zakydalsky is a representative of the Ukrainian diaspora, philosopher, and member of Canadian NTSh (Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada). _Theoretical basis._ We consider the uniqueness of H. Skovoroda’s philosophy, which stimulates not only intellectually but also spiritually enlightens the reader. The reasons for the complex perception and interpretation of Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophy are highlighted. We have verified (...) the main methods of its interpretation given in the works by Dmytro Chyzhevskyi. The influence of philosophical thought of thinkers of Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Aristotle, Epicurus, the Church Fathers, and Tertullian has been studied. We have comprehended H. Skovoroda’s interpretation of the Bible as a two-layer existence, the symbolic world that makes the foundation of his philosophy. The peculiarity of the thinker’s division of the heart into "internal" and "external" is analyzed. Hryhorii Skovoroda’s position on the Good and the evil is stated. The Good is identified with God, and the evil – with the real world, the man can choose between the two. Much attention is paid to the understanding of man as a microcosm – rational thinking, and thought is the fundamental cause of human activity, which generates all existence. Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophy of metaphysics as the existence of three worlds is highlighted: the first is the macrocosm (the whole surrounding world), the second is the microcosm (the man), and the third is the symbolic world (the Bible). "Monodualism" as a characteristic feature of H. Skovoroda’s work is analyzed. We have highlighted H. Skovoroda’s attitude to the transcendence of God, which is not separated from the world but is present in it directly. The understanding of faith as a forced act of self-love is analyzed because by loving ourselves we love God. The criteria for true and false faith have been clarified. The significance of H. Skovoroda’s aphorism that _what is necessary is useful, and not useful is unnecessary_ is considered. Examples of ethical principles in H. Skovoroda’s philosophy are considered. Peculiarities of the concept HAPPINESS are revealed. This concept is a universal means of existence of the Good, its source is gratitude to God. _Originality_ of the article is in the systematic presentation of the philosophy of the heart by Hryhorii Skovoroda and the analysis of the integrity of the "inner man", the true meaning of life as interpreted by Taras Zakydalsky. _Conclusions_ summarize the "anthropological pragmatism" of the philosopher, whose main idea is to apply practical skills for the benefit of society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Living the Truth: A Theory of ActionBenjamin J. BrownLiving the Truth: A Theory of Action Klaus Demmer Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2010. 179 pp. $34.95.Klaus Demmer is one of the most influential Catholic moral theologians in Europe since Vatican II. Unfortunately, he is relatively unknown in America. Living the Truth is only the second of his works to be translated into English, although other translations (...) are anticipated. In Living the Truth, Demmer provides an incredibly balanced and nuanced work of fundamental moral theology and brims with insights. Not content with easy answers or oversimplifications, Demmer seeks in this book not only to chart a way between apparent opposites but also to synthesize the best of both into a new unity.For example, Demmer returns regularly to the question of the foundation and role of moral norms. Norms are indispensable in the life of the “ethical personality,” the person who is fully alive as a human being. They serve to open a person to the truth and to freedom and help to make a space for genuinely good, free, and vibrant action. However, norms are not at the heart of Demmer’s ethics, either as a discipline or in actual life. He also speaks of the ways in which a person establishes norms for herself even as he is careful to avoid relativism or subjectivism. Acknowledging that norms derived from a natural law ethics are true and important and that Christian morality may not be able to add any propositional content to natural law, he also argues at length that Christianity does in fact significantly shape a natural law ethics into something that is both deeper and more expansive. For Demmer, the Christian context changes the basis and meaning of morality. Although frustratingly spare with examples, he brings to the fore the difference between grounding human dignity in human nature as reason can grasp it and grounding it more specifically in the image and likeness of God and the love shown in the incarnation and redemption.Demmer’s moral theology is profoundly human and existential; it is immersed in the context and texture of real human experience. In many ways, it is very pastoral. It certainly manifests a depth of psychological insight into the nature and workings of the human mind, for example, in analyzing the ways in which people fall into pride and self-deception (33–37).Living the Truth’s concern with truth and truthfulness is an important and timely theme. Once again, Demmer synthesizes distinct elements. Truthfulness is a multifaceted reality, referring both to internal and external forces. Systematically [End Page 227] grounding his ethics in a robust classical metaphysic, Demmer understands the “true,” the “good,” and “being” to be related as transcendentals (42). The “truth” opens one up to “goodness,” which in turn allows for the flourishing of the human person. Far from being restrictive, the truth opens up possibilities for true freedom. But this only occurs when it is internalized as “truthfulness,” a virtue of many dimensions that Demmer unfolds throughout the book, particularly in the last of the three main parts.Living the Truth is very dense. It definitely is not an undergraduate text. Both the meaning of individual sentences and the flow of Demmer’s thought are elusive at times. Many subsections discuss a range of ideas and seem at times to wander. Even readers with a strong background in moral theology will find it necessary to reread and think carefully in order to catch the precise meaning of specific phrases and follow the argument. Nonetheless, the rewards are well worth the effort. Every moral theologian owes it to herself to read this book. [End Page 228]Benjamin J. BrownLourdes UniversityCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Politics I has been the subject of a number of textual questions about the relation of the Ethics to the Politics. These textual questions involve us in theoretical questions about the differences between contemporary and ancient conceptions of political rule. Resolving the exegetical challenges can help us clarify the theoretical differences. A fresh approach to the textual challenges reveals that Politics I has a contrapuntal character with two reinforcing movements. One explores why and how despotic conceptions of politics fail using (...) case studies of despotic power: slavery and money-making. Aristotle shows dialectically how this despotic approach to rule undermines the requirements for political life. The other movement explores the character of natural human associations, culminating in the polis. The two movements converge in Aristotle’s claim about the centrality of the human good for political rule. This claim challenges modern social contract theory’s understanding of the differences between despotic and political rule. (shrink)

There is no good human life outside of a state, and the good state enables us to live well together – so says Constitutivism, the theory developed in this book. Reinvigorating Aristotelian ideas, the author asks in what sense citizens of modern, populous and pluralistic societies share a common good. -/- While we can easily find examples of cooperation that benefit each member, such as insurances, the idea that persons could share a common good (...) became puzzling with modernity – a puzzlement epitomised in Margaret Thatcher’s ‘What is society? There is no such thing!’ Aristotle describes the state as the end of human development, both chronologically and normatively, but modern philosophers, from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt, conceive the relation between state and citizen as instrumental. Either the state is a means of advancing each member’s individual good or the individual is a means of advancing some collective good. From both perspectives, the Aristotelian idea that human individuals somehow realise their own good in realising some communal good appears metaphysically puzzling, even nonsensical. -/- This puzzlement, the author argues, results from our profoundly modern understanding of rational actions, which we generally see as means toward outcomes. If we allow that not only outcomes but also histories and identities can be good reasons for actions, then it makes sense to see a person’s good and the common good of their political community as constitutive of one another, as Aristotle thought. Building on this idea, the author argues that individual actions and lives exist only in conjunction with a political community. In designing our institutions, we hence also give ourselves an identity and, in that sense, constitute ourselves as persons. Her arguments shed new light on a range of traditional topics of political theory, such as the justification of state authority or the question of how to justify or challenge the design of social institutions. (shrink)

The moral justification of Will Kymlicka's theory of minority rights is unconvincing. According to Kymlicka, cultural embeddedness is a necessary condition for personal autonomy (which is, in turn, the precondition for the good life) and for that reason liberals should be concerned about culture. I will criticize this instrumentalism of social attachments and the moral monism behind it. On the basis of a modification of Axel Honneth's theory of recognition, I will reject the false opposition (...) between the instrumental value and the intrinsic value of culture. Honneth makes a distinction between three types of recognition: (1) love; (2) respect; and (3) social esteem. Recognition of cultural difference is situated in the third sphere. But the logic of a recognition of cultural difference also demands a non-evaluative recognition, a respect for difference. Difference-respect cannot be reduced to the recognition of personal autonomy or to the recognition of a culture ‘as such’. Difference-respect is concerned with a formal recognition of difference, namely the recognition of a culture's intrinsic value for the other. By recognizing the moral importance both of personal autonomy and of social attachments, we do not have to surrender to the reductive bent in modern moral philosophy. 1 Key Words: Axel Honneth • identity • instrumentalism • intrinsic value of culture • moral justification • multiculturalism • recognition • value pluralism • Will Kymlicka. (shrink)

Easy to understand philosophy papers in all areas. Table of contents: Three Short Philosophy Papers on Human Freedom The Paradox of Religions Institutions Different Perspectives on Religious Belief: O’Reilly v. Dawkins. v. James v. Clifford Schopenhauer on Suicide Schopenhauer’s Fractal Conception of Reality Theodore Roszak’s Views on Bicameral Consciousness Philosophy Exam Questions and Answers Locke, Aristotle and Kant on Virtue Logic Lecture for Erika Kant’s Ethics Van Cleve on Epistemic Circularity Plato’s Theory of Forms Can we trust our senses? (...) Yes we can Descartes on What He Believes Himself to Be The Role of Values in Science Modern Science Kant’s Moral Philosophy Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy Schopenhauer on Human Suffering Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy The Philosophical Value of Uncertainty Logic Homework: Theorems and Models Searle vs. Turing on the Imitation Game Hume, Frankfurt, and Holbach on Personal Freedom Manifesto of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Secular Society Michael’s Analysis of the Limits of Civil Protections Bentham and Mill on Different Types of Pleasure Set Theory Homework Aristotle on Virtue Nagel On the Hard Problem Wittgenstein on Language and Thought Camus and Schopenhauer on the Meaning of Life Camus’ Hero as Rebel without a Cause My Little Finger: Camus’ Absurdism Illustrated Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? Does Mathematics Assume the Truth of Platonism? The Self-defeating Nature of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism Generally What is The Good Life? Bentham and Mill regarding types of pleasures Kant’s Moral Philosophy Five Short Papers on Mind-body Dualism Tracy Latimer’s Father had the Right to Kill Her: Towards a doctrine of generalized self-defense Arguments Concerning God and Morality Goldman, Rousseau and von Hayek on the Ideal State J.S Mill on Liberty and Personal Freedom A Kantian Analysis of a Borderline Date-rape Situation Living Well as Flourishing: Aristotle’s Conception of the Good Life Three Essays on Medical Ethics: Answers to Exam Questions on Elective Amputation, Vaccination, and Informed Consent Hobbes, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche: Their Central Themes De Tocqueville on Egoism Mill vs. Hobbes on Liberty Exam-Essays on the Moral Systems of Mill, Bentham, and Kant Kant’s Moral System Aristotle on Virtue Plato’s Cave Allegory An Ethical Quandary Superorganisms The Tuskegee Experiment A Rawlsian Analysis Why Moore’s Proof of an External World Fails A Defense of Nagel’s Argument Against Materialism A Utilitarian Analysis of a Case of Theft The Paradox of the Self-aware Wretch: An Analysis of Pascal’s Moral Philosophy Jean-Paul Sartre: Decline and Fall of a Marxist Sell-out A One Page Proof of Plato’s Theory of Forms Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy The problem of the one and the many Four Short Essays on Truth and Knowledge What is ‘the Good Life?’ The Ontological Argument Different Political Philosophies: Plato, Locke, Madison, Rousseau, Hayek, and Mill on the State What do I know with certainty? Skepticism about skepticism Neuroscience and Freewill Operant Conditioning What makes us special? Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? No Two Papers on Epistemology: Gettier and Bostrom Examination Nietzsche on Punishment God’s Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility . (shrink)

While the concept of Bildung has acquired international currency in educational and philosophical studies, its moral implications have been obscured by existing educational accounts. I present the moral implications inherent in the term through specific reference to the early works of Wilhelm von Humboldt. In contrast to previous scholarships, where Humboldt’s theory of Bildung has been deployed for drawing on the account of the true end of the human being and the inner process of interaction between the self and (...) the world, I draw on Bildung as a moral conception of promoting a good life for others. To illustrate this conception, I (a) demonstrate the basic structure of Humboldt’s theory of Bildung by examining its four core components, (b) reconstruct Humboldt’s notion of virtue balanced state of various faculties as a moral ideal (c) consider Humboldt’s philosophical historiography to illustrate how Bildung can be mediated at individual and collective levels, and (d) present the concrete forms of the obligation to promote the good lives of others in his anthropological writings. (shrink)

Aristotle offers a conception of the private and its relationship to the public that suggests a remedy to the limitations of liberalism today, according to Judith A. Swanson. In this fresh and lucid interpretation of Aristotle's political philosophy, Swanson challenges the dominant view that he regards the private as a mere precondition to the public. She argues, rather, that for Aristotle private activity develops virtue and is thus essential both to individual freedom and happiness and to the well-being of (...) the political order. Swanson presents an innovative reading of the Politics which revises our understanding of Aristotle's political economy and his views on women and the family, slavery, and the relation between friendship and civic solidarity. She examines the private activities Aristotle considers necessary to a complete human life--maintaining a household, transacting business, sustaining friendships, and philosophizing. Focusing on ways Aristotle's public invests in the private through law, rule, and education, she shows how the public can foster a morally and intellectually virtuous citizenry. In contrast to classical liberal theory, which presents privacy as a shield of rights protecting individuals from one another and from the state, Aristotle, Swanson argues, presents privacy as opportunity or duty to pursue excellence. She concludes that for Aristotle a regime can attain self-sufficiency only by bringing about a dynamic equilibrium between the public and the private. The Public and the Private in Aristotle's Political Philosophy engages both long-standing and contemporary debates surrounding the interpretation of Aristotle. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of political philosophy, political theory, classics, intellectual history, and the history of women. (shrink)

Drawing on Aristotle’s conception of the vices and virtues related to bodily pleasures, I argue that temperance and carnal wisdom, understood as practical wisdom about the conditions of bodily flourishing, are necessary for “mutual visibility” (full mutual perceptiveness and responsiveness in sex), as well as for treating ourselves and others as ends. Intemperance, “insensibility”, and carnal foolishness block mutual visibility by devaluing sensuous pleasures. Intemperance does this through objectification, insensibility through “disembodiment.” Since Aristotle has little to say about sex (...) as such, I extrapolate from his discussion of the virtues and vices in eating and drinking to sex, focusing on a feature of intemperance that is neglected in contemporary discussions but that is central to Aristotle’s own account of intemperance, viz., taking the wrong sort of pleasure in sex. (shrink)

Arthur Kaufmann is one of the most prominent figures among the contemporary philosophers of law in German speaking countries. For many years he was a director of the Institute of Philosophy of Law and Computer Sciences for Law at the University in Munich. Presently, he is a retired professor of this university. Rare in the contemporary legal thought, Arthur Kaufmann's philosophy of law is one with the highest ambitions — it aspires to pinpoint the ultimate foundations of law by explicitly (...) proposing an ontology, a general theory of knowledge and concept of a person. Kaufmann's work derives, first of all, from the thinking of Gustav Radburch, his teacher, and then from ideas of Karl Engish and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The philosophy undertakes to pursue the ultimate foundation of law, law which is understood by Kaufmann, first of all, as a "concrete judgement" that is, what is right in a concrete situation. Justice belongs to the essence of law and "unjust law" is contradictio in adiectio. Kaufmann opposes all those theories, which as the only foundation for establishing just law (Recht) adopt legal norms (Gesetz). In Kaufmann's opinion , such theories are powerless in the face of all types of distortions of law rendered by political forces. He suggests that the basic phenomenon which needs to be explained and which cannot be disregarded by a philosopher of law is so-called "legal lawlessness" ("Gestzliches Unrecht"). "Legal lawlessness" which forms a part of life experience for the people of twentieth century totalitarian states. It proved "with the accuracy of scientific experiment" that the reality of law consists of something more than bare conformity with legal norms. The existence of lex corrupta indicates that law contains something "non-dispositive" which requires acknowledgment of both law-maker and judge. Kaufmann, accepting the convergent concept of truth and cognition, assumes that "non-dispositive" content, emerging as the conformity of a number of cognitive acts of different subjects (inter-subjective communicativeness and verifiability), indicates the presence of being in this cognition. The questions "What is law?" and "What are the principles of a just solution?" lead straight to the ontology of law, to the question about the ontological foundations of law. Kaufmann discerns the ontological foundations of law in the specifically understood "nature of things" and, ultimately, in a "person". He proposes a procedural theory of justice, founded on a "person". In my work, I undertake to reconstruct the train of thought which led Kaufmann to the recognition of a "person" as the ontological foundation of law. In the first part, the conception of philosophy adopted by Kaufmann, initial characteristics of law — of reality which is the subject of analysis, as well as, the requirements for proper philosophical explanation of law posed by Kaufmann are introduced. In the second, Kaufmann's reconstruction of the process of the realisation of law is presented. Next, the conception of analogy which Kaufmann uses when explaining law is analyzed. In the fourth part, Kaufmann's conception of ontological foundations of law is discussed. A critical analysis is carried out in which I demonstrate that the theory of the ontological foundation of law proposed by Kaufmann and the concept of a person included in it do not allow a satisfac¬tory explanation of the phenomenon of "legal lawlessness" and lead to a number of difficulties in the philosophical explanation of law. Finally, the perspectives of a proper formulation of the issue of the ontological foundations of law are drafted in the context of the analyzed theory. My interest is centered on the conception of philosophy adopted by Kaufmann, according to which the existence of the reality is inferred on the basis of a certain configuration of the content of consciousness, whereas at the point of departure of philosophy of law, the data to be explained is a certain process, which is, basically, a process of cognition, while the reality appears only as a condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process. I wish to argue that the difficulties which appear in the explanation of law are a consequence of the assumed fundamental philosophical solu¬tions, which seem to be characteristic, though usually not assumed explicitly, in philoso¬phy and theory of law dominant at present in continental Europe. Thereby, I wish to show the significance of ontological and epistemological solutions to the possibility of a proper formulation of the problems posed by philosophy and theory of law. Kaufmann proclaims himself in favour of a philosophy which poses questions about the ultimate foundations of understanding of the reality. In epistemology, he assumes that answers to the questions "What is reality like?" and ultimately "What is real?" are inferred on the basis of uniformity of a cognitive acts of different subjects. Cognition of the reality is accomplished exclusively through the content of conceptual material. The two fundamental questions posed by philosophy of law are "What is just law?" and "How is the just law enacted?" The latter is a question about the process of achieving a solution to a concrete case. Since, in Kaufmann's opinion, law does not exist apart from the process of its realisation, an answer to the question about the manner of realisation of law is of fundamental significance to answering the question: "What is law?" and to the explanation of the question about the ontological grounding of law, which is, as well, the foundation of justice. The proper solution has to take into account the moment of "non-dispositive" content of law; its positiveness understood as the reality and, at the same time, it has to point to the principles of the historical transformation of the content. Law, in the primary meaning of the word, always pertains, in Kaufmann's opinion, to a concrete case. A legal norm is solely the "possibility" of law and the entirely real law is ipsa res iusta, that which is just in a given situation. Determination of what is just takes place in a certain type of process performed by a judge (or by man confronted with a choice). Kaufmann aims to reconstruct this process. A question about the ontological foundation of law is a question about the ontological foundations of this process. In the analyzed theory it is formulated as a question about the transcendental conditions, necessary for the possibility of the occurrence of the process: how the reality should be thought to make possible the reconstructed process of the realisation of law. Kaufmann rejects the model for finding a concrete solution based on simple subsump¬tion and proposes a model in which concrete law ensues, based on inference by analogy, through the process of "bringing to conformity" that which is normative with that which is factual. Kaufmann distinguishes three levels in the process of the realisation of law. On the highest level, there are the fundamental legal principles, on the second legal norms, on the third — concrete solutions. The fundamental principles of law are general inasmuch as they cannot be "applied" directly to concrete conditions of life, however, they play an important part in establishing norms. A judge encounters a concrete situation and a system of legal norms. A life situation and norms are situated on inherently different levels of factuality and normativeness. In order to acquire a definite law both a norm (system of norms) and a life situation (Lebenssachverhalt) should undergo a kind of "treatment" which would allow a mutual conformity to be brought to them. Legal norms and definite conditions of life come together in the process of analogical inference in which the "factual state" ("Tatbestand") — which represents a norm, and in the "state of things" ("Sachverhalt") — which represents a specific situation are constructed. A "factual state" is a sense interpreted from a norm with respect to specific conditions of life. The "state of things" is a sense constructed on the basis of concrete conditions of life with respect to norms (system of norms). Legal norms and concrete conditions of life meet in one common sense established during the process of realisation of law. Mutatis mutandis the same refers to the process of composition of legal norms: as the acquisition of concrete law consists in a mutual "synchronization" of norms and concrete conditions of life, so acquisition of legal norms consists of bringing to conformity fundamental principles and possible conditions of life. According to Kaufmann, both of these processes are based on inference through analogy. As this inference is the heart of these processes it is simultaneously a foundation finding just law and justice. How does Kaufmann understand such an inference? As the basis for all justice he assumes a specifically interpreted distributive justice grounded on proportionality. Equality of relations is required between life conditions and their normative qualification. Concrete conditions of life are ascribed normative qualification not through simple application of a general norm. More likely, when we look for a solution we go from one concrete normative qualified case to another, through already known "applications" of norms to a new "application". The relation between life conditions and their normative qualifica¬tion has to be proportional to other, earlier or possible (thought of) assignments of that which is factual to that which is normative. Law as a whole does not consist of a set of norms, but only of a unity of relations. Since law is a, based on proportion, relative unity of a norm and conditions of life, in order to explain law in philosophical manner, the question about ontological base of this unity has to be asked. What is it that makes the relation between a norm and conditions of life "non-dispositive"? What is the basis for such an interpretation of a norm and case which makes it possible to bring a norm and conditions of life into mutual "conformity"? This is a question about a third thing (next to norms and conditions of life), with respect to which the relative identity between a norm and conditions of life occurs, about the intermediary between that which is normative and that which is factual and which provides for the process of establishing of norms, as well as, finding solutions. It is the "sense" in which the idea of law or legal norm and conditions of life have to be identical to be brought to mutual "conformity". In Kaufmann's opinion such a sense is nothing else but the "nature of things" which determines the normative qualification of the reality. Since establishment of this "sense" appears to be "non-dispositive" and controlled inter-subjectively (namely, other subjects will reach a similar result) so, in conformity with the convergent concept of truth, the "nature of things" must be assigned a certain ontological status. According to Kaufmann this is a real relation which occurs between being and obligation, between the conditions of life and normative quality. However, it should be underlined that from the point of view of the analyzed system the "nature of things" is a correlate of constructed sense, a result of a construction which is based on the principle of consistent understanding of senses ("non-normative" and "normative") and is not a reality which is transcendent against the arrangement of senses. In Kaufmann's theory, inference from analogy appears to be a process of reshaping the concepts (senses) governed by tendency to understand the contents appearing in relations between that which is factual and that which is normative in a consistent way. The analogical structure of language (concepts) and recognition of being as composed of an essence and existence is an indispensable requirement for the possibility of the realisation of law, based on specifically understood inference from analogy. It is necessary to assume a moment of existence without content which ensures unity of cognition. Existence emerges thus as a condition of the possibility of cognition. According to Kaufmann, the "nature of things" is the heart of inference through analogy and the basis for establishment of finding of law. Inference from the "state of things" to a norm or from a norm to the "state of things" always means inference through the "nature of things". The "nature of things" is the proper medium of objective legal sense sought in every cognition of law. In Kaufmann's view, the question whether the "nature of things" is ultima ratio of interpretation of law or is only a means of supplement gaps in law or whether it is one of the sources of law, is posed wrongly. The "nature of things" serves neither to supplement the gaps nor is it a source of law as, for example, a legal norm may be. It is a certain kind of "catalyst" necessary in every act of making law and solving a concrete case. Owing to "nature of things" it is possible to bring to a mutual conformity the idea of law and possible conditions of life or legal norms and concrete conditions of life. In Kaufmann's conception the "nature of things" is not yet the ultimate basis for understanding the "non-dispositiveness" of law. The relation between obligation and being is determined in the process of the realisation of law. Both the process itself and that which is transformed in this process are given. A question about the ontological bases of "material" contents undergoing "treatment" in the process of the realisation of law and about being which is the basis of regularity of the occurrence of the process arises. Only this will allow an explanation that the result of the process is not optional. Thus, a question about reality to which law refers and about the subject realising the law has to be formed. To this, Kaufmann gives the following answer: that which is missing is man but not "empirical man" but man as a "person". A "person" understood as a set of relations between man and other people and things. A "person" is the intermediary between those things which are different — norm and case are brought to conformity. A "person" is that which is given and permanent in the process of the realisation of law. It determines the content of law, is "subject" of law; this aspect is described by Kaufmann as the "what" of the process of realisation of law. A "person" consists of precisely just these relations which undergo "treatment" in the process. On the other hand, a "person" is "a place" in which the processes of realisation of law occur, it is the "how" of normative discourse, a "person" is that which determines the procedure of the process, being "outside" of it. This aspect of a "person" is connected with the formal moment of law. A "person" being, at the same time, the "how" and the "what" of the process of the realisation of law, is also, to put it differently, a structural unity of relation and that which constitutes this relation (unity of relatio and relata). According to this approach a "person" is neither an object nor a subject. It exists only "in between". It is not substance. Law is the relation between being and obligation. That which is obligatory is connected with that which is general. That which is general does not exist on its own, it is not completely real. Accordingly, a "person" as such is also not real. It is relational, dynamic and historical. A "person" is not a state but an event. In Kaufmann's opinion, such a concept of a "person" helps to avoid the difficulties connected with the fungibility of law in classical legal positivism. A "person" is that which is given, which is not at free disposal and secures the moment of "non-dispositiveness" of law. Kaufmann concludes: "The idea (»nature«) of law is either the idea of a personal man or is nothing". Theory points at the structure of realising law and explains the process of adoption of general legal norms for a concrete situation. The analysis has shown however, that in this theory a satisfactory answer to the question about the ultimate foundations of law is not given. It seems that in the analyzed theory the understanding of human being takes place through understanding of law. What is good for man as a "person", what is just, what a "person" deserves may be determined only against the existing system of law. A "per¬son" adopted as a basis of law is the reality postulated in the analysis of the process of the realisation of law. It is a condition of possibility of this process ( explaining, on one hand, its unity and, on the other hand, the non-dispositive moments stated in this process). A "person" in the discussed theory is entirely defined by the structure of law, it can be nothing more than that which is given in law, what law refers to, what law is about. Being, which is a "person", is constituted by relations between people and objects, the relations which are based on fundamental links between norms and conditions of life established in a process of bringing them to conformity. It has to be assumed that man as a "person" is a subject of law only as far as realising law "treats" given senses according to their current configuration. The system of law is a starting point and it describes in content what man is as a "person". Moreover, being a "person" is the condition for entering legal relations. Consistently, Kaufmann writes that "empirical man" is not the subject of law, man is not "out of nature" a "person". People become "persons" due to the fact that they acknowledge each other as "persons" — acknowledging, at the same time, law. This acknowledgement is a con¬dition of existence, of the possibility of the occurrence of process of realisation of law and of constituting legal relations which ultimately constitute a "person". Kaufmann assumes, that law tends towards a moral aim: it may and must create an external freedom, without which the internal freedom to fulfil moral obligations cannot develop. However, this postulate is not based on the necessary structure of human being. From the point of view of his system, it is nothing more than only a condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process of the realisation of law — lack of freedom would destroy the "how" of this process. Thus, the postulate to protect the freedom of personal acts has to be interpreted, in accordance with the analyzed theory, as a postulate, the fulfilment of which aims ultimately at the accomplishment of the very same process of realisation of law itself and not the realisation of a given man. Kaufmann considers a "person" to be an element which unites the system of law as a whole. Law is a structure of relations, which are interdependent and inter-contingent. Consequently, a "person" which is to form the ontological basis of law has to be entity consisting of all relations. Being also the "how" of the process of realisation of law, if a "person" is to warrant its unity, it has to be a common source for all procedures. Hence, a single "person" would constitute a subject of law. Man appears to be only a moment of a certain entirety, realisation of which should be an aim of his actions. Law, creating a "person" as an object and subject of law becomes a primary entity. In the analyzed theory, the basis for determination of aims which law sets to man is not the allocation of man-subject to something which improves him but rather, such relation is only just constituted by law. A question appears, why should aims set in law also be the aims of "empirical man"? Why is this "empirical man" to be punished in the name of a "person" understood in such a way? If, however, it is assumed that what is man is determined by a system which is superior to him, then man has to be understood only as a part of a whole and there are no grounds to prohibit istrumental treatment of man and so the road to all aspects of totalitarianism might be opened. A problem of the application of created theory to the reality arises, the reality which the theory pretends to explain. Ultimately in his theory Kaufmann does not give any systemic grounds for a radical questioning of the validity of any legal norms. Every new norm becomes an equal part of system of norms. It is only its interpretation and application to given conditions of life that may be disputable, however, this refers to all norms without exception. Cohesive inter-pretation of norms and applications is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of just law. New norms have to be interpreted in the light of others, correspondingly, the other norms require reinterpretation in the light of the new ones. Contradiction in interpretation of a norm does not form a basis for questioning norms but may serve only to question the manner of their interpretation (understanding). Therefore, no grounds exist to assume any legal norm as criminal or unjust, and in consequence, to question any consistently realised system based on formally, properly established norms, as "legal lawlessness". As law and a "person" do not exist without the process of realisation of law, the role of legal safety becomes crucial as the condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process of realisation of law. Denying legal safety would be tantamount to negation of law in general (also of moral law) as negation of safety takes away, at the same time, the basis for occurrence of the process of realisation of law. Moreover, any lack of legal safety would also mean lack of a basis for the existence of man as a "person". Kaufmann's thesis, that civil disobedience is legalized only when it has a chance to lead to success, consistent with his concept of the foundations of law, seems to point directly to conclusions which deny the facts taken under consideration and doubtlessly Kaufmann's own intentions, since it would have to be assumed that accordingly there are no grounds to question a legal system in force based on violence which secures its operation. Force finally seems to determine which one of the mutually irreconcilable normative systems constitute law and which does not. A legitimate position is one which leads to success, it is the weaker system which is negated. If so, then basically violent imposition of law is not an act directed against the law in force but, to the contrary, realisation of law. In the context of the new system the former system of law may be talked about as unjust solely in the sense of being incapable of being consistently united with the new. However, at the base, ultimately, lies force which reaffirms differences and excludes from the process of realisation of law certain norms and their interpretations. Kaufmann was aiming at grounding of that which is "non-dispositive" in a certain given framework of interpretation. Nevertheless, he does not provide foundations for the understanding of phenomena, which he undertakes to explain at a point of departure. Instead of explaining them the theory negates the possibility of their existence. The reality postulated in regard to "non-dispositive" moments of the reconstructed process of acquiring law consist of a specifically understood "person", which appears in Kaufmann's conceptions as a condition of the possibility of the realisation of law. According to this approach understanding of a "person" may be only a function of law. To understand "legal lawlessness" and foundations of justice it is necessary to look for such theory of law in which understanding of man as a "person" and being is not a function of understanding of law (in which a "person" is not only a condition for possibility of reconstructed process of realisation of law; for possibility of cognition processes). It seems necessary to start from theory of being and a "person" based on broader experience than the one assumed by Kaufmann and reconstruct the ontological foundations of the process of realisation of law only in such perspective. Kaufmann points out that that to which law refers is ipsa res iusta a concrete relation of man to other people and things. This relation, in his theory, appears to be basically only just constituted by law (normative senses "applied" to conditions of life). Therefore, understanding the relation between a given man and other people and things which constitute the aim of his actions, that is understanding of good, is enacted against the background of constitution of senses; constitution which is a result of a process aiming towards consistent understanding of particular contents (of nor¬mative and non-normative senses). "Being" is secondary towards constructed senses it is only their correlate. The primary relation consists of relation of a man to law (system of norms), while the secondary relation is one of man to something which is the aim of his action (relation between man and good). Considering such approach it is difficult to envision a satisfying answer to the fundamental question: why does law put concrete man under any obligation to obey it? The source of this problem can be seen in reduction of the base for understanding good to content of obligation formulated in auto-reflection. Such reduction seems to be a consequence of Kaufmann's adoption of "convergent concept of truth" and in con¬sequence his recognition of indirect, essentialistic grasp of reality formulated in concepts as the basic and only foundation of theory of being and of law. In view of such an approach, analogy of law, concepts and being is the condition for the possibility of the process of transformation of senses which aims at consistent interpretation of all law. Existence is postulated with respect to the possibility of unity of experience and cognition. However, also a different approach to understanding of the problem of being and good is possible. In spontaneous cognition being is affirmed, first of all, not as a certain, non-contradictory, determined content, but as something existing. Together with a cer¬tain content (passed indirectly through notions) existence of being is co-given. The basis for unity of being is not formed by the consistence of content, as it is in the case of the theories departing from the analysis of cognition processes, but by an act of existence realising content (essence). Such an approach makes it also possible to go beyond the convergent concept of truth. It is worth mentioning that allocation of an agent to good is realised not only by the content of duty. A statement that something is good is primary with respect to determination of this good in content. The recognised good always bears some content, however, there are no reasons to base the concept of good exclusively on indirect, formulated in concepts cognition. As primary, can be adopted the relation of man to good and not of man to law. Determination in content appears to be only an articulation of aspectual cognition of being, as an object of action. In such a case the basis for relative unity of norm and conditions of life is not the "nature of things" understood as correlate of sense but it is relation to good based on internal constitution of man as potential, not self-sufficient being. It does not mean, that the moments of the process of realisation of law singled out by Kaufmann are not important to determination of what is just. He, quite rightly, points to significant role played by norms in the evaluation of concrete situations, in man's search for closer specification in content of good innate to him. The structure of process of determining law for a concrete situation, to a great degree corresponds to the processes of determining law which take place not only in the legal sciences. Kaufmann's analyses of the process of realisation of law show the complexity of the structure of these processes and point towards important moments allowing a better understanding of law and man. Nevertheless, these analyses cannot be a basis for construction of philosophical theory of law, theory which hopes to point out the ultimate, ontological foundations for understanding law. Kaufmann's results may become fully valid only in a more general perspective including broader experience at the point of departure. (shrink)

Malcolm Wilson begins his account of Aristotle’s philosophy of science by identifying a difficulty inherent in Aristotle’s general approach to understanding the nature of scientific thought: if we assume, with Aristotle, that the premises of a scientific demonstration must contain only terms predicable of a subject essentially (or per se) and ‘as such’ (or qua a particular kind of being), we risk being committed to a view of the sciences as a set of narrowly focused and unrelated areas of (...) inquiry—as a ‘chaotic heap of disciplines’. Wilson contends that Aristotle succeeded in avoiding this difficulty by identifying four ways in which one science could be linked with another: either by subordination, analogy, ‘focality’, or ‘cumulation’. It seems clear that these principles figured in various aspects of Aristotle’s thought, and that each has the unifying capacity Wilson credits to it. What is less clear is how far Aristotle’s support for each principle rested on its capacity to solve the particular problem Wilson identifies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Avicenna's Theory of Science: Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology by Riccardo StrobinoThérèse-Anne DruartRiccardo Strobino. Avicenna's Theory of Science: Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. Pp. xvi + 428. Hardback, $95.00.Strobino's remarkable book does not simply present Avicenna's theory of science; it also highlights the importance of demonstration not only for logic but also for metaphysics and epistemology. Hence, Strobino's work is essential to appreciate (...) and better understand Avicenna's philosophy as a whole.Strobino grounds his research on Avicenna's theory of science in his Book of Demonstration in the Shifā', which focuses on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Taking into account the lack of any translation into English or any other main modern language as well as the lack of a full medieval Latin translation (only chapter 7 of book 3 exists in a medieval Latin version) of Avicenna's text, Strobino kindly provides in appendix C (357–71) a detailed "map" of this text, useful not only to readers who cannot handle Arabic but even to those who can, as the [End Page 326] text is so rich and complex. A simple but careful look at this map confirms what Strobino makes clear and insists upon: Avicenna greatly develops, enriches, completes, and even outgrows some of Aristotle's views. The Book of Demonstration is far more than a commentary on the Posterior Analytics; it is a complete reworking of it.Strobino shows that Avicenna grounds his theory of demonstration and science on two basic notions—conception (tasawwur) and assertion (tasdīq, which some other scholars translate as "assent")—and so gives a unified approach to his theory. Scientific conceptions require better understanding of definition and description. Avicenna builds definitions and descriptions on essentialism and, therefore, grounds them in metaphysics. As for scientific assertions, in contradistinction to nonscientific ones, they must be necessary and give the cause. Therefore, Avicenna places great importance on modality and develops modal syllogisms, whereas Aristotle focused on categorical syllogisms and neglected hypothetical and disjunctive syllogisms. Avicenna also elaborates a sophisticated account of modality and its metaphysical implications. Furthermore, he broadens and enriches the appreciation of causality and explanation. These developments, according to Strobino, lead Avicenna to set forth an intricate division and hierarchy of the sciences under metaphysics, which provides their ultimate principles and allows for a unified understanding of the sciences while respecting their particularities.According to Strobino, Avicenna is keen to develop a theory of science that gives a good account of science as it is practiced. Strobino carefully shows how Avicenna's theory better reflects this practice than does Aristotle's.Strobino does not simply highlight how much Avicenna distances himself from Aristotle and goes far beyond what the Posterior Analytics yields, but also shows how much Avicenna relies on points adumbrated by his predecessor al-Fārābī in his own Book of Demonstration.The way Strobino through his analysis of demonstration links Avicenna's understanding of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics underscores the coherence and unity of Avicenna's philosophy. Scholars were aware of the importance of demonstration for Avicenna in various philosophical fields, but until the release of this book, they seemed not to have fully grasped the centrality and essential role played by the Avicennian understanding and focus on demonstration.Of course, Strobino does not limit himself to an analysis of passages in the Book of Demonstration. He has an encompassing knowledge of Avicenna's texts and uses them well to flesh out and enrich what remains terse in the Book of Demonstration. He even takes into account the way one of his successors, al-Tūsī, reads him. He also shows an extensive and wide-ranging knowledge of Aristotle's texts and of Aristotelian scholarship, as well as an interest in the Greek commentators and Galen and their relevance for interpreting Avicenna.Avicenna's Theory of Science is not an easy book to read, as it is often very technical, particularly when dealing with purely logical points or issues, but reading it is rewarding if one does so slowly and meditatively. The author, in fact, illuminates difficult matters but does not waste words. From... (shrink)

The traditional understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has largely been focused on its downstream performance implications, particularly its associations with firms’ customer market metrics such as customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and customer co-creation as well as financial ones such as firm value, return on assets etc. However, given the close relationship between CSR and marketing that literature has identified, it is surprising that the relationship between a focal upstream construct, i.e. the marketing function’s power within a firm and (...) the firm’s propensity toward CSR has not been addressed in the literature. Examining the link between marketing’s power (MP) in a firm’s top management team (TMT) and firm CSR levels, we investigate how this fundamental TMT configuration, i.e. the distribution of marketing power in the TMT, motivates the firm’s social endeavors. Further, we formulate this relationship in a contingency-based model that incorporates the moderating effects of firm size, firm age, service intensity, and resource slack across 1569 firms operating in 63 industries. In addition to their effect on CSR, this study shows how MP in TMT may influence corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) as well as CSR capability after controlling for industry type. The inclusion on these additional dimensions of CSR (CSI and CSR capability) complements our analyses of the effect that MP has on CSR. The research contributes to a deeper understanding of CSR’s fundamental corporate determinants as well as identifies the essential role of the marketing function in firms’ CSR strategy. In this process, it yields useful implications for multiple streams of theory as well as for business practices. (shrink)

In the De Generatione et Corruptione II 9, Aristotle aims to achieve the confirmation of his theory of the necessity of the efficient cause. In this chapter he sets out his criticism on the one hand of those who wrongly attributed the efficient cause to other kinds of causality and on the other, of those who ignored the efficient cause. More specifically Aristotle divides all preceding theories which attempted to explain generation and corruption into two groups: i) those which (...) offered an explanation by using the formal cause ii) those which provided an explanation by using the material or the instrumental causes. According to Philopo­nus, when Aristotle reproaches the other philosophers for adducing no proper notion of the efficient cause he alludes to both Anaxagoras and Plato. Regarding Anaxagoras, in our view this cannot be confirmed by internal textual evidence. In terms of Plato, in this chapter we trace an explicit and an implicit criticism of the Platonic Forms as causes. Aris­totle’s implicit criticism is that the Forms are not at all active causes. We can understand better the grounds for this criticism if we also consider his relevant arguments in Book Lambda of his Metaphysics. His explicit criticism, articulated in two arguments, is formulated in GC 335b18–24. We examine the different lines of its interpretation in the second­ary literature, but primarily we focus on Philoponus’ exegesis, which contributes significantly, not only to the clarification of Aristotle’s thinking, but also to the manifestation of the arguments articulated in defence of the Platonic theory of the Forms. In this paper, through the analysis of Philoponus’ exegesis we set out to prove that Aristotle’s criticism of the Platonic causes can be construed from the perspective of either Aristo­telian theory or the Platonic and Neoplatonic influence. Finally, based on Philoponus’ exegesis, we examine Aristotle’s criticism of those who posited matter or instrumental causes as efficient causes. (shrink)

I argue for a perfectionist reading of Mill’s account of the good life, by using the failures of development recorded in his Autobiography as a way to understand his official account of happiness in Utilitarianism. This work offers both a new perspective on Mill’s thought, and a distinctive account of the role of aesthetic and emotional capacities in the most choiceworthy human life. I consider the philosophical purposes of autobiography, Mill’s disagreements with Bentham, and the nature of (...) competent judges and the pleasure they take in higher culture. I conclude that Millian perfectionism is an attractive and underappreciated option for contemporary value theory. (shrink)

This book forms part of a larger argument begun by Kenny in his The Aristotelian Ethics, and its importance can only be properly appreciated in the light of the view developed there of the relationship of the various Aristotelian ethical treatises. In the earlier book Kenny argues, contrary to the present consensus of scholarly opinion, that the Eudemian Ethics has at least as good a claim as the Nicomachean Ethics to being considered the canonical ethical work of Aristotle. He (...) attempts to show that the so-called common books of the two treatises belong with the EE rather than the NE, that the EE is fully as sophisticated philosophically as the NE and in some respects more so, that there are no external reasons for dating the EE prior to Aristotle’s Lyceum period or indeed to the NE itself, and that the EE and not the NE was regarded as the Aristotelian ethical treatise until as late as the second century A.D. These are far-reaching claims, but Kenny makes a strong case for them—particularly the attribution of the common books to the EE, which amounts nearly to a demonstration. The least one can say is that the extent of Kenny’s success at rehabilitating the EE exposes the fragility of many of the regnant assumptions of contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle’s Phantasia in the Rhetoric:Lexis, Appearance, and the Epideictic Function of DiscourseNed O’GormanIntroductionThe well-known opening line of Aristotle's Rhetoric, where he defines rhetoric as a "counterpart" (antistrophos) to dialectic, has spurred many conversations on Aristotelian rhetoric and motivated the widespread interpretation of Aristotle's theory of civic discourse as heavily rationalistic. This study starts from a statement in the Rhetoric less discussed, yet still important, that suggests (...) that a visual aspect inheres in Aristotle's theory of rhetoric. Near the beginning of book 3, which deals with lexis (style, sometimes subsuming delivery1 ), Aristotle conjoins lexis and phantasia with the copula "is" (eimi): "The subject of expression [lexeôs], however, has some small necessary place in all teaching; for to speak in one way rather than another does make some difference in regard to clarity, though not a great difference; but all these things are forms of outward show [phantasia] and intended to affect the audience" (1404a).2 Whereas scholars exploring the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic have compared and contrasted the Rhetoric and the Topics, I explore rhetoric's relationship with phantasia by reading the Rhetoric alongside De Anima. De Anima is Aristotle's seminal account of the senses and their relationship to psychê (often translated "soul"). It addresses topics intimately connected to rhetoric: perception, cognition, deliberation, visualization, imagination, and the image. Phantasia is integral to each of these psychic processes and to Aristotle's understanding of the function of appearance in human experience. Hence, itis a lens suitable for exploring the relationship between Aristotle's conception of civic discourse and his notions of sight and appearances as they relate to perception, interpretation, deliberation, and judgment. I find in Aristotle's phantasia a tie between his art of rhetoric and his psychology and phenomenology (anachronistic though these terms are). Aristotle's psychological works, as Richard McKeon points out, are foundational to Aristotle's philosophy, and thus to his Rhetoric. [End Page 16] "Psychological inquiries occupy an extremely important position in the philosophy of Aristotle, for the conception of the psychê lays the foundation for the continuity of functions in nature" (1947, 142). De Anima, especially, articulates the psychological and phenomenological conceptions often tacitly at work in the Rhetoric.The importance of phantasia for the trajectory of ancient rhetorical and aesthetic theory is seen in the parallels between the visual arts, rhetoric, and poetics in Greek and Roman thought.3 As David Freedberg states (perhaps, slightly overstates), parallels between painting and poetry are "to be found everywhere in classical literature" (1989, 50). With respect to such visual-verbal parallels in Aristotle, D. Thomas Benediktson's reading of Aristotle's psychological, poetic, and rhetorical works concludes that phantasia ties together the visual and the literary. "[Aristotle's passages on phantasia] do help to see why Aristotle took for granted the similarity, almost the identity, of literature and the visual arts. Both types of art are imagistic; they present to the viewer either an image, as in visual art, or as in literature, a set of moving images that the soul then uses as raw data (phantasia) to enable thought to occur" (2000, 170). Phantasia developed a legacy in Hellenistic aesthetics, where it came to designate suprarealism in painting, moving art "beyond imitation" (Fowler 1989, 180–81). In later Greco-Roman works, phantasia was used to designate vivid imagery in written and oral discourse, imagery that could create sights and scenes in the minds of audience members. As Quintilian noted in his discussion of forensic rhetoric, in Latin phantasiai were termed visiones. Here, phantasiabecame a mode of displacing narrative in rhetorical discourse:There are certain experiences which the Greeks call phantasiai, and the Romans visions [visiones], whereby things absent are presented to our imagination with such extreme vividness that they seem actually to be before our very eyes.... From such impressions arises that enargeia which Cicero calls illumination [illustration] and actuality [evidential], which makes us seem not so much to narrate [dicere] as to exhibit [ostendere] the actual scene.(Institutio Oratoria 4.2.29, 32)Quintilian's invocations of phantasia and enargeia can be traced to Aristotle's discussion of rhetorical style in book... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle's On the Soul: A Critical Guide ed. by Caleb M. CohoeAttila HangaiCaleb M. Cohoe, editor. Aristotle's On the Soul: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Hardback, $99.99.Guiding readers through Aristotle's science of the soul, this volume covers many major topics of De Anima (DA) and addresses specific questions, including perennial interpretive problems. The self-contained chapters approach the text either by illuminating its (...) context or by elucidating key psychological concepts. While some contributions refer to relevant [End Page 318] positions by Aristotle's predecessors or contemporary philosophers, connections drawn to other Aristotelian texts predominate. Throughout, the emphasis is on philosophical questions. The result is a first-rate philosophical guide through this densely written treatise, which allows experienced readers of DA to deepen their understanding of Aristotelian psychology. Since most chapters approach interpretive issues from new angles and presuppose familiarity with the existing scholarship, beginners may want to start elsewhere.In Reeve's reading (chapter 1), Aristotle pursues dialectic in DA to define the soul as the first principle for the science of life. He construes dialectic as "going through puzzles and solving them by appeal to endoxa" (21), and equates it with induction from perceptual experience to knowledge of principles and causes. Contesting this view, Carter (chapter 2) argues that the physicist's method is not dialectical because the predecessors' views, conflicting as they are, do not constitute endoxa. Through close readings of DA II.2–5, he shows that Aristotle investigates earlier theories to assess how well they explain the main functions of the soul. One pertinent theory takes the soul to be attunement (harmonia). Shields (chapter 4) elucidates Aristotle's case for hylomorphism as an advance over the harmonia theory. Although harmonia (as the proper arrangement of parts) implies normativity, it falls short of rendering the soul as a final cause with its own good, so it cannot explain the unity of the body. Frey's chapter 5 on the soul's unity deals with this latter function. The problem of unity stems from the fact that each level in the hierarchy of souls—nutritive, perceptual, rational—can be defined independently, yet a posterior soul presupposes the existence of all prior ones. The key Frey uses to understand unity is potential presence. Just as a triangle is present potentially in a quadrangle—for division of the latter yields triangles—so too is the nutritive soul present potentially in the perceptual soul, although not due to a separating act. This, however, has counterintuitive implications: animal nutrition would be the function of a perceptual soul; furthermore, the nutritive soul of the embryo (in Frey's biological example) would first be present potentially (as undeveloped) and, once actualized (when developed), would revert to potentiality (at the development of the perceptual soul). Frey's other proposal is more promising. It turns on the notion of natural continuity: having an internal cause for a characteristic change with a unitary goal. Thus, the soul's unity for Frey (despite his reservations) seems to boil down to teleology: the soul sets a goal achieved through the manifestation of species-specific life functions. Invoking the biology of animal reproduction, Gelber (chapter 6) complements the teleological unity regarding the nutritive soul-part with the unity constituted by the continuity of the processes of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, namely, unity by material and efficient causes.Among the three contributions on reason (nous), Scheiter (chapter 3), examining its separability, breaks with the traditional interpretation and takes Aristotle to show (in DA III.4 and I.3) that reason is independent not only of bodily organs but of any magnitude (megethos). This envisages DA III.4–8 as an investigation into how reason functions as a different kind of capacity. It turns out, according to Kelsey's insightful chapter 11, that reason's actuality—insight (noēsis)—is the same as its intelligible object (noēton), and so intelligibility depends on separation from matter by the actuality of reason, making all and only the immaterial things intelligible and intelligent. Cohoe (chapter 12) draws the conclusion: human reason for Aristotle—being the defining part of the human soul, most... (shrink)

The paper addresses claims that Aristotle's notion of happiness is inconsistent given his expositions of happiness in Book I and Book X of NE. It argues that such claims are rooted in the erroneous conclusion that Aristotle defines happiness in Book I as living a "good life", and an unwarranted assumption that when Aristotle identifies happiness with contemplation, he has a professional philosopher in mind and contemplation as an activity one engages in leisurely and as a means (...) of intellectual conditioning. It further argues that happiness as Aristotle understands it is a reward for cultivating virtuous character and though everyone has the capacity for it, only few will attain happiness since it requires exertion and effort and many are unwilling to prioritize such acquisition. (shrink)

Robert Nozick argues that the problem of the meaning of life is caused by limitations, especially death. Consequently, attaining meaning in one’s life requires connecting to something larger than oneself. Since anything can be conceived of as meaningless from a wide enough perspective, meaning will ultimately depend on connecting to “the unlimited.” Although initially plausible, this theory of meaning is vulnerable to a number of objections. One is that “the unlimited” is an incoherent notion due to the (...) necessity that it include ideas that are contradictory to each other, and another is that the meaning of life ought to include internal goods, which Nozick ignores. I will defend Nozick’s theory against these two objections by bringing in elements of the thought of Aristotle and St. Thomas. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that purely quantitative understandings of Aristotle's concept of "the mean" are oversimplified, and I make this argument by analyzing the particular emotion of anger. Anger, I contend, helps to complicate the purely quantitative understanding of the mean, insofar as, I argue, the amount of anger experienced is not the morally salient feature in determining whether or not the anger is virtuous. Rather, anger is one example of an emotion or trait for which other, (...) non-quantitative parameters of the mean are more salient, giving us a more nuanced understanding of what the mean is. Anger is virtuous not when it is in the right measurable degree, but rather when it is directed at the proper target. In this way, the virtue-making property of anger is distinctly qualitative. Examining anger provides insight into the concept of the mean and its role in Aristotle's ethics, and also helps to shed light on contemporary debates about political anger. (shrink)

This paper explores the tension between Aristotle’s definition of the citizen and his conception of good and bad political regimes. Aristotle’s definition of the citizen as one with a share in the offices of the city produces the paradoxical result that in a monarchy, only one person, the monarch, is a citizen. The paper argues that this reveals a serious problem for Aristotle’s theory. Seven solutions are offered to repair this problem, though revisions that involve broadening Aristotle’s notion (...) of the citizen fail on multiple grounds. What Aristotle should have put forward is a theory of degrees of citizenship on which one can satisfy the conditions of citizenship to varying degrees depending on one’s participation in the life of one's city. (shrink)

Seldom have I read a book so scholarly and yet so delightful. It takes us to view major concepts of both God and the good life of philosophical and religious writers of the world from the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle to philosophers of India and China. Besides the usual figures, there are studies of Augustine, Maimonides, al-Farabi, and al-Ghazali. As a bonus, Lobel also touches on recent figures such as Iris Murdoch, Alfred North Whitehead, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles (...) Taylor. While I am not competent to judge the accuracy of the author’s treatment of Maimonides, the Muslims, and Murdoch, I found the rest of her analyses to be accurate. She has previously... (shrink)

According to Marx, "at any given epoch of a given society, [there is] a quantity of necessaries [recognized as] the necessaries of life habitually required by the average worker." The variations in the type and amount of goods recognized as necessary for life between different epochs and different societies is due to the different 'physical conditions' and to the different 'degrees of civilization' and 'comfort' prevalent. In advanced capitalist societies, the necessities of life include a heated (...) dwelling, food, clothing, and access to some means of transportation, be it public or private. However, the average laborer in advanced capitalist societies has access not only to the necessaries of life but to a variety of luxury items as well. For example, the average worker has access to fine food and drink, an automobile, a television, and a stereo system. In my paper, I explain Marx's theory of the nature of capitalist exploitation. I then indicate how the phenomenon described above may be interpreted as evidence against Marx's theory, and then sketch an interpretation of this phenomenon that reconciles it with Marx's theory. My interpretation will suggest that the average worker's access to luxury items can be explained by the necessity in capitalism of reproducing the working class. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we (...) made. It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Father’s Will: Christ’s Crucifixion and the Goodness of God by Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P.Roger W. NuttThe Father’s Will: Christ’s Crucifixion and the Goodness of God. By Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 270. $99.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-968858-6.The centrality that Christ’s death by crucifixion has in Christian life, doctrine, and culture is scarcely in need of elaboration. Nevertheless, the relation between (...) the will of the Father and the violent and humiliating manner of Christ’s death raises substantive questions concerning the internal coherence of Christian claims about the love, goodness, and justice of God. In The Father’s Will: Christ’s Crucifixion and the Goodness of God, Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P., confronts these questions, openly acknowledging their difficulty and seriousness, and provides a philosophically precise and theologically fresh response to the challenges they pose to the credibility of the Christian message.The ten chapters of The Father’s Will are divided into tripartite units that progress in logical sequence from “philosophical prolegomena” (part 1) to “New Testament evidence” (part 2), culminating with a “theological [End Page 317] evaluation” (part 3). The question at the heart of the book is how to reconcile the Christian doctrine that God and evil are incompatible with the theology of the Cross, which seems to require that God’s will is implicated in the evil actions that bring about Christ’s death.The first five chapters (part 1) provide a philosophical analysis of intention (chap. 1), value and obligation (chap. 2), double-effect reasoning (chap. 3), the ethical problems associated with self-sacrifice (chap. 4), and God’s will in relation to the crucifixion (chap. 5). Drawing on his analysis of intention and employing the principle of double effect, Lombardo establishes that it is not necessary to conclude that God wills the evils that are attendant on Christ’s death. “Actions performed by rational intentions,” Lombardo explains, “are not only intended; they are also willed. Rational intending implies rational choice, and rational choice is an act of the will” (32). This understanding of intention and willing, as distinguishable from intentional action, provides a foundation upon which the moral goodness of actions can be determined. “For an action to be good,” Lombardo argues, “it must do more than simply advance our natural inclinations: it must also avoid frustrating them. Only actions that both advance our natural inclinations and avoid frustrating them are morally good” (49). When moral actions have good effects and nonintended bad effects that do not outweigh the good effects—as in cases of self-defense or the use of medicine and medical procedures—these complex actions retain their moral goodness, notwithstanding the bad effects. The reason for this is that the bad effects are not included in the agent’s intention. Lombardo presents the crucifixion of Christ as one of these complex cases in which the bad effects can be separated from the agent’s intention. Chapter 3 explores the reasoning associated with the principle of double effect to clarify how actions implicated in bad or evil effects can be judged to be morally good. Lombardo is hesitant to identify double effect as an isolated principle that is applicable within unique circumstantial cases. Rather, he presents double effect as “merely an algorithm for applying basic concepts to morally ambiguous actions” (72). For example, in addition to affirming that the intended effects of the action are consistent with our natural inclinations, in cases of double-effect reasoning “the action’s positive, intended effects [must] outweigh the action’s negative, nonintended effects” (73). This material, in turn, connects logically with the conclusion of chapter 4 on the ethics of self-sacrifice: “double effect reasoning shows that it can be acceptable, and even heroic, to cause our own death non-intentionally for the sake of some greater good” (79). The last chapter in part 1 applies these distinctions to the problem of God’s will and the moral evil involved in Christ’s crucifixion. Here, the basic dilemma that the book addresses is succinctly restated: “Being all good, God never wants... (shrink)

This article defines a public good, arguing that higher education should be considered a public good. This requires moving away from an orthodox economistic understanding of public goods. It also requires understanding the relationship between higher education as both a private good and a public good to the extent that it promotes individual flourishing necessary to the public good.

In this paper I examine the method Aristotle uses in the inquiry into the nature of happiness in the "Nicomachean Ethics". Through analysis of some of the method's features, I explain why labelling it "the onion approach to developing and fleshing out a hypothesis" is appropriate. I show how Aristotle derives a set of necessary conditions and a set of other criteria, or reliable indicators, which any adequate account of the nature of happiness must meet. There are definite benefits (...) to understanding the strategy in these terms. Having derived a set of criteria that an adequate account must meet, we are in a position to examine which of the two rival hypotheses about the nature of happiness best satisfies the criteria. The life of theoretical study emerges as the clear winner at meeting the criteria Aristotle himself imposes on an adequate account. (shrink)

This book aims to provide an introduction to Aristotle's Politics, highlighting the major themes and arguments offered in the scholar's work. It begins with a discussion on what Aristotle perceives as human good, which he had described as the ethical purpose of political science, and how he views the political community, or the polis, as a community of persons formed with a view to some good purpose and a supreme entity in the sense that it is not (...) just one aspect of city-state society but is the whole of that society. The book also discusses Aristotle's arguments against the abolition of the household for the ruling class and the communism of families and property, which Plato advocates, and highlights certain inconsistencies and vulnerabilities in his arguments supporting natural slavery and on how the husband should rule over his wife and children. The book presents Aristotle's account of the relative merits of six different types of constitution and his views on the best possible constitution that will help in the realization of the polis' true purpose of achieving the good life. It ends with a discussion on Aristotle's view of political science in relation to the protection of particular constitutions against constitutional change and political disorder. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE LOVE WHICH LOVE'S KNOWLEDGE KNOWS NOT: NUSSBAUM'S EVASION OF CHRISTIANITY L. GREGORY JONES Loyola College Baltimore, Maryland WITH THE PUBLICATION in 1986 of The Fragilty of Goodness, Martha Nussbaum established herelf as a central figure on the intellectual stage.1 The book is elegantly written and eloquently argued, one of those rare books whose depth of insight is coupled with an ease of expression. Equally at home in the (...) scholarship of both classical antiquity and contemporary philosophy, The Fragility of Goodness stimulated conversations and arguments among a wide range of scholars. At the same time, however, there were hints that Nussbaum's philosophical insights and classical acumen did not extend to a knowledge of Christian texts, much less a willingness to engage with them. For example, in a note to the Introduction of the book, Nussbaum observes : When we do not try to see [the Greeks] through the lens of Christian beliefs we can not only see them more truly; we can also see how true they are to us-that is, to a continuous historical tradition of human ethical experience that has not been either displaced or altered by the supremacy of Christian (and Kantian) teaching. (FG, p. 15) As such a quotation indicates, Nussbaum vastly oversimplifies 1 Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 554 pp., $19.95pb. Further citations to this work will be made parenthetically in the text with the abbreviation FG. 323 324 L. GREGORY JONES Christian theology and/or Christian teaching, not only in relation to " the Greeks " but also about such questions as vulnerability, tragedy, and friendship. That this is the case becomes more explicit in her recent book Love's Knowledge, a collection of essays about the relationship between philosophy and literature.2 Here it becomes clear that Nussbaum's project attempts to retrieve an Aristotelian ethics that would displace not only Kantian or Utilitarian ethics but also Christian ethics. But whereas Nussbaum explicitly criticizes Kantian and Utilitarian positions on both methodological and substantive grounds, she evades engagement with Christian thought. In order to understand how and why this is the case, it is necessary first to explicate in greater detail her Aristotelian position as it develops in The Fragility of Goodness and then Love's Knowledge. In The Fragility of Goodness Nussbaum addresses three central issues : ( 1) the role in " the human good life " of activities and relationships that are, in their nature, especially vulnerable to reversal; (2) the relationship among such components as friendship, love, and political activity in a good life; and (3) the relationship between self-sufficiency and the more ungovernable parts of the human being's internal makeup (see FG, pp. 6-7). Nussbaum proceeds to explore these issues through analyses of diverse Greek tragedies as well as some of the central texts of both Plato and Aristotle. Her approach, she indicates in that book, is Aristotelian; she thinks that Aristotle's central question, "How should a human being live?", should be the central question that frames any ethical inquiry-as opposed, say, to the questions put by Kant or Mill that focus on what one should do. Moreover, she contends that an Aristotelian approach engages the intuitions and beliefs of an interlocutor or reader in a " reflective dialogue " with a 2 Martha C. Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 432 pp., $42.50. Further citations to this work will be made parenthetically in the text with the abbreviation LK. NUSSBAUM'S EVASION OF CHRISTIANITY 325 series of complex ethical conceptions presented for exploration (FG, p. 10). But it is not only her approach that is Aristotelian; so also is the substance of her ethical position. Nussbaum prefers a commitment to the complexities of particularity (which she considers characteristic of the tragedians and Aristotle) to the quest for self-sufficiency (a nuanced version of which she finds in Plato). Likewise, she describes Aristotle and the tragedians as appreciative of the ethical, and indeed rational, significance of the emotions and prefers this to Plato's ostensible rationalism. Thus Nussbaum's perspective in The... (shrink)

The paper contends that the heart of Aristotle's theory of justice is the desert-based principle of proportional equality schematically described in the _Nicomachean Ethics and applied to the organization of the state in the _Politics. It argues against the view that for Aristotle distributive justice is only a means to promoting the common good (Thomas Hurka's maximizing perfectionism interpretation of the _Politics) and against the view of Martha Nussbaum that Aristotle understands the common good in a (...) special way that leads to egalitarian conclusions. (shrink)