Aristotle Claims Research Articles

The Price of the Plot in Aristotle'sPoetics

Plato's critique of imitative tribe Book X of Republic calls for a defense of poetry, and Aristotle initiates that effort Poetics. Taking his cue from Plato, he makes imitation the key concept and thus associates poetry with other kinds of representation, perhaps the single most influential move the history of Western aesthetic theory, for this set of practices corresponds, roughly speaking, to our fine arts.' The second step this defense is the identification of the art of poetry a heterogeneous group of imitative discourses that includes dramas, mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues, as well as elegiac and epic poets (47b10). What poets do, Aristotle claims, is imitate action rather than assert propositions, which means that neither scientific treatises verse nor imitations of men talking philosophy, but also fact doing it, are poems. This brusquely rejects the received idea that verse makes the poet: if someone brings out a work of medicine or natural science verse, they normally call him a poet; but there is nothing common between Homer and Empedocles except the verse-form (47b16-18). Poetry had been, as it still often is common speech, identified with verse, but a few sentences Aristotle set the course for Western poetic theory by making fictional representation the defining characteristic of poetry. The process of definition did not stop here, however, and that is where problems arise. Having identified the art of poetry, Aristotle then focused on what was highest it and thus claimed to reveal its essence, that is, its purpose: drama was superior to narrative, tragedy to comedy, and incidents, i.e. the plot, are the end of tragedy, and the end is most important of (50a23). Aristotle demotes narrative and lyric poetry and makes the other five elements of drama that he had picked out-characters, diction, reasoning, spectacle and song (50a9)-mere means. Although this may be justified the case of the last two, to make character principle unnecessary and reasoning and style (the term I shall substitute for Richard Janko's diction) the province of other arts, and thus not grounds for assessing poets, seems odd indeed. The main bad consequence of Aristotle's view is to minimize what one might call the expressive aspect of poetry (what we infer about a speaker's state of mind from his or her words). Ironically, he had silently rejected the germ of just such a theory early Poetics. In this article I want to: (1) explain why Aristotle gave such primacy to the plot, the bare story, (2) elaborate on the bad consequences of that effort, and (3) suggest how one might improve the resulting theory on the basis of his own first proposal about the nature of poetry. There is considerable agreement, even among modern Aristotelians, that there is something amiss with Aristotle's theory of poetry. Gerald Else, the author of the most distinguished modern English commentary on Poetics, says that [w]hen all is said and done, Aristotle's real conviction about words and word-magic was that they were a necessary evil, 'all imagination and there for the sake of the listener,' i.e., not for the general truths that imitations of action could provide.2 In a similar vein, Wayne Booth, speaking as Aristotle redivivus, says that in our energetic pursuit of how to discern (or

Allen Tate and the Metaphysics of Metaphor

But we shall not know the world by looking at it; we know it by looking at the hovering fly. --Allen Tate, Hovering Fly, (117) I. The Challenge of the Chicago Criticism John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate both claimed that poetry is a form of knowledge. It is the of life as a whole, a kind of independent of and irreducible to other kinds of knowledge. Such views are implicit in early and evocative statements like Ransom's claim that the metaphysical poetry of the seventeenth century the courage of its metaphors (The World's Body 137), as well as in Ransom's responses to the Chicago critics, but Tate was more insistent than Ransom in these knowledge claims, and focused them on the importance of metaphor. Among all the disputants in the collision between the Chicago critics and the New Critics, Allen Tate was the most diligent in asserting Aristotle's broad claims for the importance of poetry and metaphor in human life and cognition. Tate's reward was respectful attention among those who sympathized with his metaphysical concerns, which they discerned not only in his criticism but also in his social and political views. Among everyone else, Tate was rewarded with incomprehension, and a considerable measure of ridicule for daring to declare without fully being able to articulate just how literature could be a form of knowledge. I will show how well grounded Tate's views actually were, especially in the Aristotelian tradition the Chicago critics claimed to represent. Although Tate's views may be rejected by those with differing philosophical commitments, they cannot be dismissed as unworthy of serious consideration without doing a serious injustice both to his intentions and his achievement. For most of his career, Ransom traced his basic views on poetry's place in human life back to Aristotle, but his own thinking was more deeply rooted in Kant, and he was not fully prepared to respond when the Aristotelian basis of the New Critical ideas was brushed aside by the neo-Aristotelians of the Chicago school. Although their understanding of ancient literary theory reflected some of the distortions of their critical antagonists, Tate and Ransom were right about Aristotle. In fact, their readings of Aristotle and Longinus were profound and revelatory, though deeply inconvenient to the theoretical tendencies of their day. For most of his critical career, Tate was seeking, and even postulating, Aristotelian approaches to metaphor that were largely invisible to twentieth-century criticism globally, because of that era's own metaphysical and epistemological tendencies, and locally, because of an obstructive and diversionary neo-Aristotelianism. Although Tate has been faulted for his deficiencies as a theoretician, those deficiencies, such as they were, became visible chiefly as Tate brought to perennial and fundamental questions deeply insightful, if necessarily partial answers, in an intellectual milieu adverse to their reception. The global issues I mean are the philosophical trends within which an appreciation of New Critical views had to emerge. When English professors, like those I shall discuss below, transported to the pages of the Sewanee Review notions of Aristotle gleaned from the translations of Richard McKeon and the commentaries of R.S. Crane in The English Journal, they had to traverse a long and uncertain path of academic philosophy, where lurked the newly-awakened dragons of the pragmatic and the analytic schools. These philosophical influences are evident in the eagerness of the Chicago critics to represent themselves as and analytical. While these words conveyed nothing meaningful about their criticism, they served well as apotropaic devices meant to shield the bearers from the fiery breath of Popper, Russell, Whitehead, and the early Wittgenstein. Similarly, a facile polarization of Plato and Aristotle, as standard bearers of a metaphysically antiquated idealism, on the one hand, and of a rigorous, inductive particularism, on the other, was the Chicago critics' sincere view of their subject as well as the necessary camouflage of travelers bearing valuable baggage by a hostile road. …

THE CHRISTIAN VIRTUE OF MERCY: AQUINAS' TRANSFORMATION OF ARISTOTELIAN PITY

In his discussion of the virtue of mercy (ST, II‐II.30), Thomas Aquinas draws upon two seemingly opposed sources. On the one hand, Thomas takes Aristotle as an authority on the subject of compassion. Aristotle maintains in his discussion of pity in the Rhetoric that pity is felt for those who suffer undeservedly since we do not pity but rather blame those who suffer as a result of their own wicked actions. On the other hand, Jesus in Matthew's gospel feels pity for the crowds. ‘At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them for they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd’ (Matt.9:36). In his commentary on this text from Matthew, Thomas identifies two possible interpretations for the troubled and abandoned condition of the crowd. The crowd is said to be troubled in so far as it is vexed by demons and abandoned in so far as it lies prostrate because of infirmities. The crowd can also be said to be troubled in so far as it is vexed by errors and to be abandoned in so far as it is fallen because of sin.1 Jesus, then, according to Thomas and contrary to Aristotle's claim, feels pity for the crowds as a result of the crowd's misery brought on by their own sinful deeds.In this paper, I examine how Thomas harmonizes these conflicting sources. More specifically, I hope to show both how Thomas uses Aristotle's observations on pity and at the same time transforms those observations in light of Christ's mercy on sinners. Thomas' use and transformation of Aristotle's account of pity provides an enlightening perspective from which to interpret Thomas' initially troubling claim that God feels no pity over the suffering of creatures, which we will consider briefly by way of a conclusion to this paper.

Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations (review)

Reviewed by: Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations Marina Berzins McCoy Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations. Scott Schreiber . Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. pp. 240. $68.50, hardcover; $22.95, paperback. Scott Schreiber's Aristotle on False Reasoning is the first full-length English commentary on Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations in the last century. Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations is a text that has received relatively little attention in the last century of scholarship, despite a revival of interest in other aspects of Aristotle's work concerned with the nature of good argument and rhetoric. (The 1995 French translation and commentary by Loius-Andre Dorion is a notable exception.) Schreiber finds the primary reason [End Page 92] for inattention to this text to lie in the tendency of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy to resolve problems in reasoning through linguistic clarification (xiv). Aristotle's claim that some errors are due to language while others lie outside the realm of linguistic error is not one to which contemporary analytic philosophy has been particularly sympathetic. The Sophistical Refutations has been neglected in light of contemporary logic. Schreiber's book attempts to return to Aristotle's project on his own philosophical terms, in order to better understand why Aristotle classified errors in reasoning as he did. Schreiber's approach is to examine each of the twelve types of false reasoning that Aristotle lays out in the Sophistical Refutations, with particular attention to Aristotle's examples, in order to understand the principles behind the overall system. Schreiber argues that Aristotle had good reason for separating errors due to language from those outside of language: Aristotle's classification of error is tied to his notion of the resolution of false arguments. To understand how to resolve a sophistical argument, we must first understand how it could have been believed to be true. Since Aristotle's aim in the Sophistical Refutations is to show why certain sorts of arguments are deceptive to some who hear them, his method of explaining errors is less a pure examination of their logical errors than of how such erroneous arguments can deceive. Aristotle is concerned with two types of problems with sophistical argument: first, why such an argument is false; and second, why it might appear to be true. Schreiber shows that most commentators have not given sufficient attention to the second of these concerns in their attempts to understand Aristotle's taxonomy. As Schreiber puts it, "Examples of false reasoning are unified into groups and differentiated into subgroups not by the nature of the confusions that they engender but by the different ways that confusion is cleared up" (54). False reasoning is due not only to mistakes in logic, but also to mistaken beliefs about language and reality. Careful examination of Aristotle's thinking allows us to see the importance of beliefs about the world in good and bad argument. For the most part, Schreiber's examinations of Aristotle's examples are lucid and helpful in understanding both the particular example at hand as well as the general picture of Aristotle's classifications. Schreiber continually returns to the importance of Aristotle's own view of language and argument in contrast to the approaches of contemporary linguistics and logic. For example, while some twentieth-century scholars have attempted to explain Aristotle's distinction between homonymy and amphiboly in terms of the contemporary distinction between semantics and syntax, [End Page 93] Aristotle seems to distinguish the two according to whether a general predicate signifies many particulars regardless of context, or in a propositional context (31). In the end, Schreiber does not think that the categories of homonymy and amphiboly can be completely distinct, even on Aristotle's own grounds, but still finds the categories useful. Schreiber is also careful to provide criticism of Aristotle's categories when warranted, both defending Aristotle against his contemporary critics when he thinks they have misunderstood him, and pointing out genuine weaknesses in Aristotle's arguments. Schreiber's book is clearly intended as a response to the contemporary Anglo-American reading of Aristotle. Much of the book assumes at least some familiarity with the ways in...

Aristotle on Physis: Human Nature in the Ethics and Politics

In EN II.1, Aristotle claims that our nature (physis) is inadequate for moral virtue. We are not, he says, in the same relation to virtue as a stone falling to earth; moral excellence is neither by nature nor contrary to our nature but reached by habituation (cf. 1103a15–20). Other texts such as Pol. I.13 and Pol. VII.12 about natural capacities, as well as those like Phys. II.1 and Meta. V.4 about physis in general, complicate the picture concerning the bases for moral excellence in EN. This essay considers the range of applications of physis, focusing on the practical works, so as to examine the extent to which Aristotle thinks moral and political nature is amenable to external determinants such as cultural education.

Factions and the Paradox of Aristotelian Practical Science

Politics V presents preserving and destroying the constitution as exhaustive alternatives, leaving no apparent room for improving the constitution. Aristotle claims that ‘if we know the causes by which constitutions are destroyed we also know the causes by which they are preserved; for opposites create opposites, and destruction is the opposite of security’ (V.8.1307b26–29). The first seven chapters present the causes by which constitutions are destroyed, and then chapters 8 and 9 show the causes by which they are preserved. Yet in important ways, the dictum is false: knowing the causes of constitutional change is not equivalent to knowing how constitutions are preserved, and, more radically, destruction and security are not the only alternatives facing someone in potentially revolutionary situations. The many ways in which knowledge of the causes of factions and knowledge of the methods of preservation are not equivalent supply the energy and interest that drive Book V’s argument.

Aristotle onNousof Simples

In so many of his epistemological writings, Aristotle defends a sensible flavor of gradualism about our cognitive capacities: we Start with the partial grasps afforded by what is better known to us, and if things go well, we end up with understandings of those objects better known by nature. The picture is of a step-wise process, rather than a transforming moment of illumination.In a difficult passage inMetaphysicsIX, however, Aristotle introduces a kind of cognition which admits of no more or less, no better or worse. With respect to simples(ta asuntheta),Aristotle Claims, knowing is like touching — there is contact, or there isn't. Put differently, for simple objects, what is necessary for thinking of them at all is sufficient for grasping them completely. For this reason, Aristotle sees error about simples as impossible: any successful thinking about them will be such as to preclude error. The only possible mistakes are failures even to have them in mind.

Heidegger and the Educated Life

Martin Heidegger's interest in ancient Greek philosophy, especially the work of Plato and Aristotle, has incited speculation about the source of some of the problems in Heidegger's own work. It is thought that certain problems in Plato and Aristotle make their way into Heidegger's thought, without him being aware of it. One of those problems has to do with whether Heidegger is advocating a certain kind of life or if he really has anything to say about life at all. One of the people who has criticized what Heidegger has to say about life is his well-known student, Hans-Georg Gadamer, who claims that Heidegger's philosophy does not tell us anything meaningful about practical life. This sentiment is echoed by others, and in particular by those who are interested in what Heidegger has said about Plato and Aristotle. Interestingly, the conclusion reached by the Platonic and the Aristotelian critiques of Heidegger's work is a similar one: in Being and Time, Dasein becomes, through the call of conscience, a radically individualized entity, separated from others. The consequences of this radical individualization range from the fairly minor (it contradicts everything he says about Dasein as Being-in-the-world with others in Being and Time and what he later says about the relation between human beings and things in the world, such as art, architecture, poetry, and technology) to the catastrophic (insofar as it lends philosophical credibility to Nazi Germany's social and cultural isolation). But if the conclusions reached are the same, the premises are different. One critique claims that Heidegger's call of conscience derives from what Plato says in the Republic about the soul in dialogue with itself.1 If so, then the problem of Dasein's radical individualization can be traced back to Heidegger's affinity with Plato. Another critique claims that Dasein's radical isolation can be traced back to Aristotle's claim at the end of the Nicomachean Ethics that the highest form of life is the contemplative life.2 In this essay, I do not intend to say that either of these critiques is wrong. On the contrary, I think that they are both right, at least insofar as each claims that there is a tension in Heidegger's philosophy between what he says about the world and what he says about Dasein's radical individualization. Moreover, I believe that tracing this tension back to Greek philosophy is justified, considering Heidegger's profound interest in the Greeks and the influence they had on him. Indeed, one finds this same tension in both Plato and Aristotle: in Plato's Republic the tension can be seen in what he says about the philosopher who wants to contemplate the forms but must return to the cave to engage in political activity. And at the end of Aristotle's Ethics, which focuses on how to live an active moral life, he claims that the contemplative is the highest form of life. What I do not agree with is the idea that this suggests some kind of contradiction, in Plato, Aristotle, or Heidegger. Aristotle's claim about the highest form of life does not contradict everything he said about action; nor does what Plato says about the contemplative philosopher contradict his claim that the philosophers must serve as politicians. What is thought to be a contradiction is really a tension and, I think, a productive one. To show what I mean by that, I would like to suggest in this paper that Heidegger is proposing a certain kind of life, a thoughtful and contemplative, yet still active and public life. There are different ways to go about doing this, and many interpreters have done so. Primarily, Heidegger's defenders have endeavored to show that his early philosophy is proto-practical, prior to the distinction between theoretical and practical, but in a sense more practical in that he is interested in the Being of practical human life. In this essay, I would like to take a different approach by looking at Heidegger's early and late readings of Plato as a way of suggesting that the kind of life Heidegger is advocating is similar to the philosophical life as that is embodied in the figure of Socrates. …

The Logic of Necessity in Aristotle--an Outline of Approaches to the Modal Syllogistic, Together with a General Account of de dicto - and de re -Necessity

This article investigates the prospect of giving de dicto- and de re-necessity a uniform treatment. The historical starting point is a puzzle raised by Aristotle's claim, advanced in one of the modal chapters of his Prior Analytics, that universally privative apodeictic premises simply convert. As regards the Prior and the Posterior Analytics, the data suggest a representation of propositions of the type in question by doubly modally qualified formulae of modal predicate logic that display a necessity operator in two distinct positions. Can the N-operator occurring in these positions be given a unified semantical treatment (which would justify dispensing with a notational differentiation)? A positive answer, based on a suitably shaped truth condition for N-formulae, is given, and is supported in the final section with an alternative proof theoretically based conception of a property's essential belonging to an individual.

Aquinas on Human Well-Being and the Necessities of Life

The Thomist 66 (2002): 61-99 AQUINAS ON HUMAN WELL-BEING AND THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE JOHN D. }ONES Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin RE YOU SURE you really need that?" We are all familiar with this sort of question. In allocating resources in our personal nd social lives, we often assign a key role to distinguishing what people need from what they do not need or perhaps merely desire. David Macarov, for example, claims that a basic function of social welfare programs is to distinguish needs from desires.1 Discourse about needs ("needs discourse") also plays a key role in various psycho-social theories of development and well-being.2 But needs discourse is not merely practical in nature; it raises a host of complex theoretical problems related to defining needs, distinguishing basic needs from other needs, determining the relation between culture and needs, and so forth. 3 1 David Macarov, Social Welfare: Structure and Practice (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1995), 17-18. 2 Abraham Maslow's need-based theory of psychological development is perhaps the best example in this genre. 3 Needless to say, there is an immense contemporary literature on all aspects of needs discourse. For a small sample of some recent work, one can consult Fernando I. Soriano, Conducting Needs Assessments: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1995); Janie Percy-Smith, ed., Needs Assessments in Public Policy (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1996); Philippe van Parijs, Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform (London: Verso, 1992); D. P. Ghai, et. al., The Basic-Needs Approach to Development: Some Issues Regarding Concepts and Methodology (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1977); Paul Streeten, First Things First: Meeting Basic Human Needs in the Developing Countries (New York: Published for the World Bank [by] Oxford University Press, 1981); Edmond Preteceille and Jean-Pierre Terrail, Capitalism, Consumption, and Needs, trans. Sarah Matthews (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985); Conrad Lodziak, Manipulating Needs: Capitalism and Culture (Boulder, Co: Pluto Press,1995); Katrin Lederer 61 62 JOHN D. JONES Yet, however pervasive is the role of needs discourse in contemporary life, that role pales in face of the foundational role Aquinas assigns to it in his conception of human life, both individual and social. One of the fundamental properties of happiness is self-sufficiency, namely, that it is in itself (per se) sufficient as a final end of human life. Commenting on Aristotle's claim that happiness is a self-sufficient good because it needs nothing exterior (nullo exterior indigentem),4 Aquinas observes that the happiness of this life "has self-sufficiency, since, namely, it contains in itself everything that is necessary for a human."5 At the same time, the self-sufficiency of happiness entails that humans are naturally social, since "one person does not suffice for things necessary for life if he lives alone."6 Further, the major communities in everyday human life are defined and distinguished from one another in terms of the sorts of needs they satisfy and the corresponding degree of self-sufficiency they attain. The household (domus) provides those things which are necessary for daily life. The household is the locus of the most elemental human associations between man and woman, master and slave, and father and son, each of which Aquinas, following Aristotle, claims to be necessary for the generation and the preservation of life.7 The vicus, which Aquinas defines in terms of the street of a medieval town in which a particular art or craft was practiced, provides the necessities required for the practice of the craft and, thus, for the satisfaction of those needs which the single family cannot provide.8 The city, to which both the household and Johan Galtung, eds., Human Needs: A Contribution to the Current Debate (Cambridge, Mass.: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, 1980); William Leiss, The Limits to Satisfaction (Kingston, Ontario, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988); and John D. Jones, Poverty and the Human Condition (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990): 159-78. 4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.5.1097b15. 5 "habet per se sufficientiam, quia scilicet in se continet omne illud quod est homini necessarium" (I Ethic., lect. 9). Latin texts are drawn from the editions contained in...

The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy Qingjie James Wang (bio) Chenyang Li . The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy. Edited by David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. xii, 234 pp. Hardcover $59.50, ISBN 0-7914-4135-0. Paperback $19.95, ISBN 0-7914-4136-9. This book is a competent, scholarly comparative study of several important philosophical issues such as being, truth, language, morality, rights and duty, religion, and democracy. It offers a critical comparison of the fundamental positions held by major thinkers of both the Chinese and Western traditions—for example Zhuang Zi, Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Aristotle, Heidegger, Kripke, feminists, and liberal philosophers. On the basis of this comparison, Li concludes that although different value systems are incompatible or even contradict each other in their ontological and logical grounding, they can to some extent still coexist and complement each other. The book has seven chapters that can be divided into two parts. The first three chapters deal with questions that are of a more theoretical nature. In the last four, Li attempts to answer the question of whether the theoretical differences in ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of language could and should affect our attitudes with regard to value, family responsibility, religious beliefs, and politics. Chapter 1 compares the "substance ontology" of Aristotle and the "contextual perspective ontology" of Zhuang Zi. According to Li, "substance ontology" holds that "for each individual entity (or at least a natural entity), there is only one essence and one primary being" (p. 14). In contrast, Zhuang Zi's "contextual perspective ontology" views things at two levels: the level of Tao and the level of entities. At the level of Tao, "Everything in the world has its root in the Tao. In this sense, all are One" (p. 15). At the level of entity, "each individual entity can be both a 'this' and a 'that.' An entity's being a 'this' does not exclude its also being a 'that'" (p. 15). These two levels are related in such a way that "an individual's being a 'this' and being a 'that' are ways of the Tao's presenting itself" (p. 15). Li uses Zhuang Zi's well-known stories of the ox and the butterfly to illustrate his point. Then he concludes that "to say an entity is essentially or primarily a man or a butterfly is already to be misled. For him [Zhuang Zi] an entity can be both a 'this' and a 'that'; it may remain the same entity while transforming from one category into another" (p. 29). Because there is no substantial essence in an entity as the primary being, as Aristotle claims, there should be no single objectively right answer to the question of what, essentially, an entity is. This leads to the question of the essence of truth, which is the main topic of chapter 2. In this chapter, Li starts with a discussion of Heidegger's criticism of [End Page 165] the correspondence theory of truth, which is traced back historically to Aristotle. According to this theory, Li says, "the essence of truth lies in the agreement of the assertion with what is being asserted," that is, "with an object or reality" (p. 37). Heidegger challenges the Aristotelian substance ontology and the Cartesian dichotomy of subject/object as the grounding of the correspondence theory of truth. In Heidegger's view, "truth cannot possibly have the structure of an agreement between knowing and the object in the sense of a likening of one entity (the subject) to another (the object). Correspondence between the statement and the thing cannot signify a thing-like approximation between dissimilar kinds of things" (p. 37). Rather than the correspondence theory of truth, Heidegger proposes the essence of truth as aletheia, an early Greek word for truth, and interprets it as disclosing a way of human existence, that is, a way of being of Dasein or a way in which Dasein is "to be." Li finds that this radical existential and non-epistemic interpretation by Heidegger of the Greek concept of truth...

Aristotle on Hope

1. Since the earliest of the Christian writers, hope has been considered one of the three major theological, and specifically Christian, virtues. But what history has the discussion of hope had among philosophers writing from a more secular perspective, and what sort of value can be placed on hope in a non-Christian context? As part of this inquiry, I intend in this paper to look at the place of hope in Aristotle.1 Aristotle mentions hope and hopefulness in several contexts, but perhaps most notably in his discussions of courage, and I will begin my investigation there. First, however, a remark on methodology: The Greek term typically translated as "hope" in the Christian New Testament is elpis. In the New Testament context, elpis by itself generally implies "good hope," or "hope for good things" (e.g., Rom 8:24), even if such hope is misdirected (1 Tm 6:17).2 In Aristotle, however, the term elpis (along with its verbal form elpizô) plays a more neutral role, being the rough equivalent of mere expectation. In On Memory, for example, Aristotle contrasts memory, which concerns the past, with elpis, the looking forward to the future, without any indication that this future will be good or evil (De Mem 449b25-27; see also 449b11-12). In an ethical context, we find both those who anticipate [elpizousi] evil for themselves (NE 9.4, 1166b15), and those whose, "hopes for the future are good [tôn [End Page 461] mellontôn hai elpides agathai]" (NE 9.4, 1166a25).3 In all of these contexts, elpis itself is used in a neutral sense, and one can "hope for"—or, better, "anticipate" or "expect"—either good or evil, destruction or salvation (elpis tôn sôtêriôn, Rhet. 2.5, 1383a18). When Aristotle wants to indicate specifically a hope for good things, he generally uses a modified phrase such as elpizein agathon, or the descriptive term euelpis,"hopeful."4 The latter term does not even appear in the New Testament writings, arguably because its positive aspect was already implied, either by the term elpis itself or by the assumptions of the religious context.5 Thus, when we are looking in Aristotle for the concept of hope—a hope for good things—we are to look not for mere elpis, as we find in the early Christian writings, but for the appropriate modification of elpis, or, as I will begin with here, for euelpis. 2. As indicated above, some of the most noteworthy occurrences of the term euelpis—Aristotle's term for being hopeful, as opposed to being merely [End Page 462] expectant—come in connection with Aristotle's discussions of courage. In particular, Aristotle sets up several contrasts between those who are euelpis and those who exhibit the virtue of courage, contrasts that may lead us to question the value of hope in an Aristotelian framework. At NE 3.6, Aristotle claims that [P1] a courageous man is also fearless at sea and in illness, though not in the same way as sailors are. Because of their experience, the sailors are optimistic6 [hoi de euelpides eisi para tên empeirian], while the courageous man has given up hope of saving his life [apegnôkasi tên sôtêrian—he has turned away from the judgment that he will be saved] . . . (NE 3.6, 1115a35 ff.) This passage should be paired with those passages in NE 3.8 where Aristotle discusses in more detail the pseudo-courage that arises from experience [empeiria]. This pseudo-courage is displayed not only by sailors at sea, but also by mercenaries [stratiôtai] in battle, soldiers who have professional experience and skill in warfare: [P2] For they have the best insight into the many false alarms which war seems to <bring with it>. They give the impression of being courageous, because the others do not know what is happening. Moreover, their experience [empeirias] enables...

Shareholder Value and Group Analysis

The article suggests a group-analytic approach to explain the behaviour of groups in situations determined by economic forces beyond their control. Its starting point arises from two propositions: Aristotle's claim that all human beings are basically members of communities and pursue a common goal, namely to enable everyone to lead a `good' life, and the argument presented by the philosopher Robert Solomon, that modern management needs to respect ethical obligations. A practical example is given to illustrate the interaction between leadership responsibility and commercial considerations. This leads to the conclusion that group analysis is a useful method to better understand the pressures and insecurities that accompany globalization and to help people to overcome such anxieties.

Aristotle: Form, function, and comparative anatomy

Aristotle: Form, function, and comparative anatomy

Aristotle's Literary Aesthetics

AbstractAgainst the consensus that Aristotle in the Poetics sets out to give tragedy a role in exercising or improving the mature citizen's moral sensibilities, I argue that his aim is rather to analyse what makes a work of literature successful in its own terms, and in particular how a tragic drama can achieve the effect of suspense. The proper pleasure of tragedy is produced by the plotting and eventual dispelling of the play's suspense. Aristotle claims that poetry 'says what is universal' not in order to suggest that poetry achieves anything of the effect of philosophy, but to explain how in creating his plots the poet takes into consideration what, in general, could be expected to happen. Chapter 4 of the Poetics is not a theory of mimesis but an analysis of the lowest common denominator of the pleasure we take in fictions. The inevitability or likelihood by which events in the tragic plot are to be connected has an aesthetic rather than a moral function. Doing away with the irrationality of chance and increasing the human intelligibility of the action is not its point; the point is to furnish the plot with the second half of the formula for successful suspense: that events in the plot should happen 'against expectation because of one another'. The first half of the formula is examined under the rubric of peripety or reversal. The formula as a whole describes the pivotal moment when the pieces of the plot suddenly fit with a configuration that only in retrospect can we see to have been falling into place all along. Pity and fear are the emotions on which Aristotle focusses because they are the emotions engaged by the tightening-towards-release of literary suspense. And the pleasure of catharsis is the pleasure of that release.

Aristotle on the philosophical nature of poetry

In Poetics chapter 9, Aristotle claims that the poet's function differs from the historian's. The historian should describe what has happened, but the poet should say ‘what sorts of thing might happen, that is, the things possible according to likelihood or necessity’ (1451a36–8). The difference is not between fiction and non-fiction. Some past events happened according to likelihood and are thereby candidates for poetic representation (1451b29–32). Rather, the poet differs from the historian with respect to the level of abstraction at which he considers the actions and experiences of agents. The historian should engage in accurate and thorough ἱστορ⋯α—‘research’ or ‘fact-gathering’—by carefully recording his or others' observations of particular events. The poet, on the other hand, looks for causal relations among fictional or non-fictional events, for he cares whether his composition has a plot with events that happen because of other events and not merely after them (cf. 1452a20–l). The poet may discern in the historian's materials some causally related events fit for dramatic or epic representation, but that is not the historian's concern. As Aristotle says in chapter 23, the historian should report ‘whatever befell one or more people during a particular period of time, each of the events relating to the others by chance’ (1459a23–4). The last clause is an overstatement; we have just noticed Aristotle's admission that some past events were likely to happen. Also, he elsewhere says that ‘future events will for the most part be like past events’, presumably because they share a similar causal structure (Rh. 1394a8). The remark's point is clear enough, though: the historian should report what happened whether or not the events exhibit explanatory coherence.

Does Economics Provide a Unified Account of Aging Behavior and Aging Policy?Aging and Old Age.Richard Posner

Richard Posner, founder of the and movement, is chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. A prolific scholar, he is best known for extending neoliberal economic thinking, especially Gary Becker's views about investment in capital, into wide range of nonmarket areas, including topics as diverse as torts, sex, AIDS, jurisprudence, law and literature, and race. In Aging and Old Age, he extends the life-cycle, human capital model to include age-related changes in capabilities. These include forms of physical and cognitive decline and, quite centrally, shift to from imagination. 1 Posner identifies this shift in cognitive style with Aristotle's claim that the old live by memory, the young by hope, further equating it with the contemporary distinction between crystallized and fluid intelligence (roughly, the distinction between experience-based skills and knowledge and capabilities involved in solving novel problems). He believes this purported change in style of thinking supports the view that multiple selves sequentially share the same body. The multiple-selves account in turn requires important modifications of the conventional economic view. Posner confidently tells us in his introduction that economics, or, more specifically, his suitably extended account of the economics of nonmarket behavior, provides a unifying perspective in which to view the whole range of social problems concerning the elderly (p. 1). Econom-

Aristotle's Theory of Material Substance: Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul.

This book offers an original account of one of Aristotle's central doctrines, his theory of material substance. Gad Freudenthal argues that Aristotle's concept of heat is a crucial but hitherto ignored part of this account. Aristotle's 'canonical', four-element theory of matter fails to explain the coming-to-be of material substances (the way matter becomes organised) and their persistence (why substances do not disintegrate into their components). Interpreters have highlighted Aristotle's claim that soul is the active cause of the coming-to-be and persistence of living beings. Dr Freudenthal draws on dispersed remarks in Aristotle's writings, to argue that Aristotle in parallel also draws on a comprehensive 'naturalistic' theory, which accounts for material persistence through the concepts of heat, specifically vital heat, and connate pneuma. This theory, which bears also on the higher soul-functions, is central in Aristotle's understanding of the relationship between matter and form, body and soul. Dr Freudenthal aims not only to recover this theory and to highlight its explanatory roles, but also to make suggestions concerning its origin in Presocratic thought and in Aristotle's own early theology. He further offers a brief review of how later ages came to grips with the difficulties inherent in the received version of Aristotle's matter theory. This book is an important contribution to the proper understanding of a central Aristotelian doctrine, which straddles 'chemistry', biology, the theory of soul, and metaphysics.

Aristotle and the Recovery of Political Judgment

Renewed interest in the concept of political judgment—a mode of reasoning that steers a middle way between abstract, technical reasoning and willful self-assertion—frequently takes the form of a return, qualified in various ways, to Aristotle's concept ofphronesisor prudence. I examine this renaissance of interest in Aristotelian prudence through a study of the works of several leading democratic theorists and Aristotle scholars and conclude that they stop short of some of the very elements of Aristotle's thought that can assist us in promoting prudence. In particular, I try to show that these contemporary advocates of political judgment undermine the case for politicalscience(Aristotle's primary concern) and thereby risk losing the independent judgment that Aristotelian political science supports. They fail to give sufficient weight to Aristotle's claim thatphronesis, while distinguishable from scientific reason or philosophy, functions best even as a practical science when it accepts certain of philosophy's guiding insights.

Self-Interest and Virtue

The Aristotelian view that the moral virtues–the virtues of character informed by practical wisdom–are essential to an individual's happiness, and are thus in an individual's self-interest, has been little discussed outside of purely scholarly contexts. With a few exceptions, contemporary philosophers have tended to be suspicious of Aristotle's claims about human nature and the nature of rationality and happiness (eudaimonia). But recent scholarship has offered an interpretation of the basic elements of Aristotle's views of human nature and happiness, and of reason and virtue, that brings them more into line with common-sense thinking and with contemporary philosophical and empirical psychology. This makes it fruitful to reexamine the question of the role of virtue in self-interest.