Aristotelian Perspective Research Articles

Conflicting obligations, moral dilemmas and the development of judgement through business ethics education

Learning to address moral dilemmas is important for participants on courses in business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). While modern, rule‐based ethical theory often provides the normative input here, this has faced criticism in its application. In response, post‐modern and Aristotelian perspectives have found favour. This paper follows a similar line, presenting an approach based initially on a critical interpretation of Ross's theory of prima facie duties, which emphasises moral judgement in actual situations. However, the retention of a modern element is suggested, with an invitation to hypothetically universalise detailed proposals for action, following Hare. This further step may reassure students/managers who seek additional closure in their decision‐making. Some pedagogical implications are also briefly raised regarding the use of case material and the need to recognise questions of social interaction and personal character as features of dilemma resolution in actual organisational contexts.

Praxis and poiesis in piano repertoire preparation

The piano repertoire preparation of three undergraduate students at three different academic levels – the first, fifth and eighth semesters – was followed during an academic semester. A phenomenological approach was used to collect data in three stages: an introductory interview, observations of the repertoire under preparation and a final observation of the student's recall about his/her study process. In these steps, four complementary research techniques were employed: a semi-structured interview, observation of video recordings of repertoire performances, an unstructured interview about the repertoire under preparation and a recall-stimulated interview in which the student reflected on audio and video recordings of his/her performance. Data were analysed from an Aristotelian perspective with the concepts of theoretical knowledge (theoria), productive knowledge (poiesis and/or techné) and practical knowledge (praxis). During the piano repertoire preparation, the students were found to use strategies that differed in purpose and nature. In terms of purpose, strategies aimed to survey and self-regulate the quality of their piano practice. In terms of nature, strategies could be classified as creative (poiesis) or learned actions (praxis) within Aristotelian philosophy. The study of these three cases showed that students’ actions were related to previous experiences including academic history. On the other hand, some activities emerged independently of academic background and seemed to reflect individual predispositions for solving the problems faced during repertoire preparation.

Virtuous Choice and Parity

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion on the nature of choice in virtue theory. If several different actions are available to the virtuous agent, they are also likely to vary in their degree of virtue, at least in some situations. Yet, it is widely agreed that once an action is recognised as virtuous there is no higher level of virtue. In this paper we discuss how the virtue theorist could accommodate both these seemingly conflicting ideas. We discuss this issue from a modern Aristotelian perspective, as opposed to a purely exegetic one. We propose a way of resolving what seems to be a major clash between two central features of virtue ethics. Our proposal is based on the notion of parity, a concept which recently has received considerable attention in the literature on axiology. Briefly put, two alternatives are on a par (or are ‘roughly equal’) if they are comparable, although it is not the case that one is better than the other, nor that they are equally good. The advantages of applying the concept of parity to our problem are twofold. Firstly, it sheds new light on the account of choice in virtue theory. Secondly, some of the criticisms that have been mounted against the possibility of parity can be countered by considering the notion of choice from a virtue theory perspective.

Educating Moral Emotions or Moral Selves: A false dichotomy?

In the post‐Kohlbergian era of moral education, a ‘moral gap’ has been identified between moral cognition and moral action. Contemporary moral psychologists lock horns over how this gap might be bridged. The two main contenders for such bridge‐building are moral emotions and moral selves. I explore these two options from an Aristotelian perspective. The moral‐self solution relies upon an anti‐realist conception of the self as ‘identity’, and I dissect its limitations. In its stead, I propose a Humean conception of the moral self which preserves Aristotelian insights into the difference between self and identity, yet remains closer to modern sensitivities. According to such a conception, the moral‐self versus moral‐emotions dichotomy turns out to be illusory. Finally, I show some of the practical implications of this conception for moral education.

Straussian constitutional history and the Straussian political project

Few recent intellectual figures have attracted as much attention as Leo Strauss (1899–1973). Although he did not write much about the United States or its history, his students have. This article first gives an overview of Strauss's understanding of the history of political thought and then relates it to his students' distinctive understanding of American constitutional history. Strauss's thought led his students to reject historicism and positivism in favor of an Aristotelian perspective on America that produced a qualified defense of its liberal constitutionalism.

The Deformation of Professional Formation: Managerial Targets and the Undermining of Professional Judgement

Is it helpful to model the idea of professional formation on ethical formation? ing from the specifically ethical interest of Aristotle's own doctrine, in the ‘narrow’, ‘moral’ sense of ethical, and aiming at the same time for an inclusive, ‘broad’ formulation which extends to various types of métiers (occupations/professions), this paper argues that an Aristotelian perspective offers a more robust concept of personal, professional and civic responsibility—‘responsibleness’—than any that our present ‘managerial’ rationality can promote. Drawing on some Aristotelian texts, I show that the practical knowledge of one with ‘formation’ (appropriate to the métier in question) enables an agent to find the relevant end and the appropriate act in the name of that end—as if simultaneously. The end and the means to the end are perfectly suited to one another. Crucially, the structure of the agent's practical reasoning is grounded on the telos which guides the agent and this is summoned implicitly from formation. This Aristotelian model of practical rationality stands as a rival to the public rationality that now predominates, a rationality which sees the meeting of explicit, pre-specified outcomes, objectives or targets as the chief way in which the accountability of agents may be secured.

On idiocy or the plea for an Aristotelian health policy

Despite innumerable campaigns, highly-explicit warnings on packages, references to death and cancer, many people still continue to persist obstinately in their smoking behaviour. Therefore, the following general conclusion would seem to be justified: smokers are idiots! However, it is possible to ask what is actually meant in such circumstances by ‘idiocy’. Rather than attempting to engage in the endless debates on smoking, a closer examination of the term ‘idiocy’ might prove to be a more interesting approach. For example, Aristotle’s reflections on the problem of akrasia, i.e. the fact that someone knows something, but still fails to act in accordance with such knowledge, may prove insightful here. In adapting and using the notion of akrasia in order to refine the slogan ‘smokers are idiots’, the term ‘idiot’ could perhaps be used in a more deliberate manner, rather than mere mindless abuse or uncritical moralising condemnation. If we really want to understand ourselves and our behaviour in this regard, developing the following hypothesis might be useful: public health would be much improved, if based on an Aristotelian perspective rather than not.

Philo on God as ‘archê geneseôs’

Philo talks about ‘creation’ from an Aristotelian perspective, but his language remains Platonic. Our image of Philo has been blurred by a tendency to read Aristotle’s philosophy through the glasses of the ancient commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias, and later through those of the German scholar W. Jaeger. In this paper the position is defended that Philo replaced Plato’s ‘Maker’ metaphor by the Aristotelian concept of God as archê geneseôs or ‘Begetter’ of all living nature.

Of substance: The nature of language effects on entity construal

Shown an entity (e.g., a plastic whisk) labeled by a novel noun in neutral syntax, speakers of Japanese, a classifier language, are more likely to assume the noun refers to the substance (plastic) than are speakers of English, a count/mass language, who are instead more likely to assume it refers to the object kind [whisk; Imai, M., & Gentner, D. (1997). A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning: Universal ontology and linguistic influence. Cognition, 62, 169–200]. Five experiments replicated this language type effect on entity construal, extended it to quite different stimuli from those studied before, and extended it to a comparison between Mandarin speakers and English speakers. A sixth experiment, which did not involve interpreting the meaning of a noun or a pronoun that stands for a noun, failed to find any effect of language type on entity construal. Thus, the overall pattern of findings supports a non-Whorfian, language on language account, according to which sensitivity to lexical statistics in a count/mass language leads adults to assign a novel noun in neutral syntax the status of a count noun, influencing construal of ambiguous entities. The experiments also document and explore cross-linguistically universal factors that influence entity construal, and favor Prasada’s [Prasada, S. (1999). Names for things and stuff: An Aristotelian perspective. In R. Jackendoff, P. Bloom, & K. Wynn (Eds.), Language, logic, and concepts (pp. 119–146). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] hypothesis that features indicating non-accidentalness of an entity’s form lead participants to a construal of object kind rather than substance kind. Finally, the experiments document the age at which the language type effect emerges in lexical projection. The details of the developmental pattern are consistent with the lexical statistics hypothesis, along with a universal increase in sensitivity to material kind.

The Study of Business as a Liberal Art? Toward an Aristotelian Reconstruction

The prevailing model of teaching business administration at Catholic universities is an extension of standard curricula complemented by business ethics or Catholic social thought. This model does not sufficiently differentiate Catholic institutions; it does not live up to the expectations of the Church; and it underplays the potential of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition to elucidate the sphere of business. Attempting to integrate business administration into the “liberal arts” is a misguided approach, for barring an implementation of the historical liberal arts curriculum, there is no non-arbitrary way of defining what the term denotes. From an Aristotelian perspective as carried on in the Thomistic tradition, reality is continuous, and all social and behavioral sciences are unified in their material object while studying persons under different formal aspects. Business is a region of human behavior, and its study naturally coheres with other disciplines. The practice of business is ontologically integrated into a reality that unifies man, his actions, and their results, and the study of business is integrated into the academic edifice through the use of the Catholic style of thought.

The Study Of Business As A Liberal Art? Toward An Aristotelian Reconstruction

The prevailing model of teaching business administration at Catholic universities does not sufficiently differentiate Catholic institutions; it does not live up to the expectations of the Church; and it underplays the potential of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition to elucidate the sphere of business. Attempting to integrate business administration into the “liberal arts” is a misguided approach, for barring an implementation of the historical liberal arts curriculum there is no non-arbitrary way of defining what the term denotes. From an Aristotelian perspective as carried on in the Thomistic tradition, reality is continuous, and all social and behavioral sciences are unified in their material object while they study persons under different aspects. Business is a region of human behavior, and its study naturally coheres with other disciplines. The practice of business is ontologically integrated into a reality that unifies man, his actions, and their results, and its study is integrated into the academic edifice through the use of the Catholic style of thought. This model facilitates a new understanding of teaching and research in business administration, in what is hoped to be a more Catholic spirit.

More Aristotle, Less DSM: The Ontology of Mental Disorders in Constructivist Perspective

This work begins by proposing the need for exploring the mode of being of mental disorders. It is a philosophical study in an Aristotelian perspective, with special emphasis on the anthropological–cultural dimension. It is difficult for such an inquiry to be carried out from within psychiatry or clinical psychology, committed as these fields are to their own logic and practical conditions. The issues are, in any case, more ontological than strictly clinical in nature. We therefore turn to Aristotle, and specifically his doctrine of the four “causes,” to flesh out the social and cultural dimensions of mental disorders. In accordance with the present analysis, the material cause of disorders would be found in the contingencies of life; the formal cause would pertain primarily to the way clinical conditions themselves can serve as models of ‘being ill’ in our society; the efficient cause would correspond to the patients themselves, understood as active (albeit less than fully conscious) agents as well as to the pharmaceutical industry and the mass media; the final cause would be found in different adaptive functions served by the disorder. We conclude that the “mode of being” of most (if not all) mental disorders—in particular, their status as mental disorders—can often have more to do with cultural forms than with biological factors.

The Mechanics of Legitimation: An Aristotelian Perspective on Environmental Narratives

Narratives dominate the environmental agenda. Emery Roe has first confronted such narratives as 'Ex­cept-Africa' and secondly argued that these narratives cannot be easily undermined. Rather, counter­narratives need to be generated that can better represent the nuanced realities of the situations to which they pertain. But what makes a successful narrative? This article argues that successful environmental narratives (a) conform to a certain literary schematic of how to construct a good narrative and (b) that it is from the combined elements of this schematic that they derive the facility to influence, shape and determine the actions of their 'readers'. That is, it is from the mechanics of their construction that their legitimising influence is drawn. This paper is divided into four sections. Firstly, there is a demonstration, using two parallel literary texts, of how the Aristotelian model of narrative functions. Secondly, this Aris­totelian conceptual framework of narrative is applied to environmental discourses, focusing on the 'Except-Africa' narrative, to demonstrate that successful environmental narratives share the exact com­ponents of literary texts. Thirdly, the focus shifts to several sub-narratives of the 'Except-Africa' narra­tive to illustrate how the mechanics of the Aristotelian model in concert, but principally the component ethos, are crucial when examining the consequences of narrative mobilisation. The paper suggests that when constructing counter-narratives, the schematic that is highlighted here could be a useful tactic to try and undermine the backbone of the environmental policy-making agenda.

The Place of Musica in Medieval Classifications of Knowledge

ABSTRACT Medieval classifications of knowledge (divisiones scientiarum) were created to impose order on the ever-expanding breadth of human knowledge and to demonstrate the interconnectedness of its several parts. In the earlier Middle Ages the trivium and the quadrivium had sufficed to circumscribe the bounds of secular learning, but the eventual availability of the entire Aristotelian corpus stimulated a reevaluation of the scope of human knowledge. Classifications emanating from the School of Chartres (the Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor and the anonymous Tractatus quidam) did not venture far beyond Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore of Seville. Dominic Gundissalinus (fl. 1144–64), a Spaniard who based parts of his elaborate analysis of music on Al-Fārābī, attempted to balance theory and practice, in contradistinction to the earlier mathematical emphasis. Aristotle had rejected musica mundana, and his natural science left little room for a musica humana based on numerical proportion. Consequently, both had to be reinterpreted. Robert Kilwardby's De ortu scientiarum (ca. 1250) sought to integrate the traditional Boethian treatment of musica with an Aristotelian perspective. Responding to the empirical emphasis of Aristotle's philosophy, Kilwardby focused on music as audible phenomenon as opposed to Platonic “sounding number.” Medieval philosophers were reluctant to assign (audible) music to natural science or to place it among the scientie mechanice. One solution argued that music, though a separate subiectum suitable for philosophical investigation, was subalternated to arithmetic. Although drawing its explanations from that discipline, it nevertheless had its own set of “rules” governing its proper activity. Thomas Aquinas proposed to resolve the conflict between the physicality of musical sound and abstract mathematics through the theory of scientie medie. These stood halfway between speculative and natural science, taking their material objects from physical phenomena but their formal object from mathematics. Still, Thomas defended the superiority of the speculative tradition by asserting that scientie medie “have a closer affinity to mathematics” (magis sunt affines mathematicis) than to natural science.

Aquinas’ Theory of Happiness and its Greek, Byzantine, Latin and Arabic Sources

Scholars have traditionally considered Aquinas’ theory of happiness as fundamentally Aristotelian. However, this interpretation does not seem an adequate characterization of Aquinas’ doctrine that appears as the result of the influence of several traditions. In interpreting Aristotle, Aquinas is influenced by two Byzantine Neoplatonic commentators of Aristotle – namely, Eustratius and Michael of Ephesus. In developing his theory, Aquinas tries to harmonize the Aristotelian perspective with Latin Neoplatonic notion of perfect happiness, put forward by Augustine, and both the Greek theory of the human intellect proposed by Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arabic doctrine of the human soul, expressed by the Liber De Causis. The Sententia libri Ethicorum provides the best opportunity to trace how Aquinas’ doctrine arises out of a dialogue between these different traditions.

This Thing Called 'The Philosophy of Education'

The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Philosophy of Education brings together a number of book chapters and articles in the philosophy of education. These cover a wide range of issues that engage and, in many cases, trouble contemporary philosophers of education, beginning with the perennial and fundamental one of the relationship between philosophy and education. The other sections, which include a rich selection of readings, concern the nature of education and its politics, policy-making and the moral dimensions of teaching. The whole is preceded by a provocative introductory essay written by Wilfred Carr, the book's editor. In it he suggests a different Aristotelian perspective on these issues, a different narrative from the usual contemporary post-analytic one we are used to and a means of responding to them, inspired mainly by the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. This essay both takes up Carr's provocations in this Introduction and comprehensively reviews the book and the chapters in it.

Testing and Contesting Classical Rhetorics

This essay argues that classical Greek rhetoric was informed by the ethic of competition and the aesthetic of exhibition and performance. It proposes that this rhetoric can be profitably studied in the terms of the Sophistical, Platonic, Isocratean, and Aristotelian perspectives. The essay recalls the author's early experiences with rhetoric and articulates the logic of his Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece. At the same time, it promises a theatrical play (in the spirit of Plato's Symposium) that illustrates the four perspectives.

Educational Theory and Practice in an Aristotelian Perspective

Despite a historical distance, Aristotle's discussion of different forms of knowledge, in particular in the Nicomachean Ethics, offers a novel perspective on the modern understanding of the relationship between educational theory and practice. In the world of education today, it is a convention that theory and practice should enter into a fruitful exchange process with each other. However, a retrospective look at Aristotle's discussion of knowledge and his three categories of knowledge, which concern a theoretical, a productive and a socio-ethical domain, can serve to illuminate that educational theory and practice belong to qualitatively different categories and therefore do not immediately enter into a fruitful relation. A look back will show that scientific propositional knowledge does not have a knowledge monopoly and relevance in all of life's conditions and also that theoretical, general knowledge is not in itself applicable to action. Finally, in tune with more recent learning theories, as for instance situated learning theory based on apprenticeship, Aristotle points out that different forms of knowledge are learnt in different ways.

Book Reviews

Books ReviewedIan Steedman, Consumption Takes Time—Implications for EconomicTheoryA.S Bhalla, Market or Government Failures? An Asian PerspectiveIrene Van Staveren, The Values of Economics. An Aristotelian PerspectiveGiuseppe Bertola, Tito Boeri and Guiseppe Nicoletti (eds), Welfare and Employment in a United EuropeFumio Hayashi, Econometrics

The Value of Rational Nature

Kant tells us in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that rational nature is an end in itself; that it is the only thing which is unconditionally valuable; and that it is the ultimate condition of all value. A striking trend in recent Kant scholarship is to regard these value claims, rather than the formalism of universalizability, as the ultimate foundation of Kant’s theory. But does rational nature as Kant conceives it deserve such veneration? Can it really carry the world of value on its shoulders? I think not. As will become clear, I do not doubt the value of rational nature. My claim is rather that we cannot account for the value of rational nature if we conceive it as Kant does. Rational nature cannot be valuable in a Kantian world, where there are no self-subsistent principles about what are good states of affairs, or activities, or whatever, of the sort that a Moorean or a Platonist or a perfectionist believes in. My own views are generally Moorean, and I shall occasionally offer a Moorean perspective on the value of rational nature for comparative purposes, but my criticisms of the Kantian view could be made from an Aristotelian perspective as well, in which the agent pursues not the Good, but a good human life. My main object is not to develop any particular alternative to the Kantian view, but merely to show how unsatisfactory the Kantian view is when we look at it closely.