Aristotle's Argument Research Articles

Hartman's quandary: Reconciling pluralism and realism for virtue ethics in business

AbstractThere is considerable consensus on the idea that Aristotelian virtue ethics advocates moral realism. In numerous works, the well‐known business ethicist Edwin Hartman grapples with reconciling the unitary vision of life that a particular kind of moral realism advocates and the pluralist respect for diverse cultures and belief systems that comprise our world. This paper closely follows Hartman's efforts to reconcile his liberal values with his guarded support for Aristotelian moral realism. We argue that the realist interpretation of Aristotle's function argument can be employed to strengthen Hartman's critique of the concept of Homo economicus, which is often posited by its proponents and critics alike as the only viable position for a business manager. Drawing from Aristotle, the paper posits a novel notion of species‐excellence as the ultimate telos of human life and an objective basis for a critique of Homo economicus.

Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and The Third Man Argument

AbstractThe Third Man argument, as it originated in Plato's Parmenides, is unjustly read into Aristotle. The Parmenides argument is briefly examined, followed by an analysis of the relevant Aristotelian texts, with a special emphasis on the commentary of Thomas Aquinas. Three different versions of Aristotle's Third Man argument are identified, of which none contain the essential infinite regress that characterizes the Parmenides argument. Finally, current scholarship on the Third Man argument, especially as it pertains to Aristotle, is reviewed. In this respect, I note that the overwhelming tendency has been to identify Aristotle's Third Man argument with that of the Parmenides, in spite of the fact that Aristotle only once articulates his version of the Third Man argument, and that this articulation is vastly different from its Parmenides counterpart. I conclude that contemporary Third Man scholarship must take this into account.

O FUNDAMENTO ANTROPOLÓGICO DA EXCELÊNCIA EM ARISTÓTELES

RESUMO
 Nosso trabalho apresenta o fundamento antropológico da ética aristotélica a partir da leitura do Livro I da Ética a Nicômaco à luz da filosofia como modo de vida. Analisamos a relação entre antropologia e ética acompanhando os argumentos sustentados por Aristóteles situando a ética dentro da filosofia prática, investigando a natureza do bem humano e o aspecto antropológico com o qual Aristóteles introduz as questões éticas a se desenvolver no restante da Ética a Nicômaco, que está entre os textos filosóficos mais importantes de toda a história do pensamento ocidental. Nela encontramos o rigor com o qual Aristóteles aborda o problema da moralidade. Decerto não é nosso objetivo exaurir a discussão a respeito do tratado mais traduzido do Estagirita. Nosso propósito é mais modesto: procuramos analisar o aspecto antropológico da excelência. Tomamos como fonte estrutural a tese do historiador da filosofia Pierre Hadot para análise da questão.

What does it mean to be anti-social? Potentiality and political ontology in The Buribunks

ABSTRACT Carl Schmitt's ‘The Buribunks’ describes a posthuman future where the very human being of the Buribunks is ontologically entangled with the production and dissemination of their diaries. These written records serve as the medium by which Buribunks exist in a socially proper way – that form of life Aristotle, Agamben, Arendt and others refer to as bios. The individual Buribunk may exist as an organism by eating, breathing, etc., but it is only by writing that the Buribunk may live as Buribunk. To exist without writing is, for the Buribunks, not to live – radically reversing the metaphysical stakes of life established through Aristotle's argument on potentiality and Agamben's commentary thereupon concerning (im)potentiality. Drawing on the metaphysics of (im)potentiality in relation to Buribunkian diary-writing, I argue that the injustice of Buribunkdom is the foreclosure of impotentiality. That is to say, through the ‘elimination’ of the ‘anti-social’ individuals who elect not to participate in diary-writing, the Buribunks lack true freedom because their potentiality is only relevant when actualised. Schmitt's story offers a dystopian and cautionary tale about the danger posed by embracing a political ontology that necessarily limits the metaphysical freedom of the individual.

Aristotle (with the help of Plato) against the claim that morality is ‘only by convention’

I examine Aristotle's brief remarks in N.E. I.3 to the effect that fine and just things – ta kala and ta dikaia – have much diversity and variation (diaphora kai planē) and hence are thought to be by convention only, not by nature. He rebuts this by remarking that goods (ta agatha) too admit of some variation. I briefly explore the nomos/phusis contrast, and the import of ‘diversity and variation’, with a glance at the issue of how to understand Aristotle's remarks about adultery, theft and murder (N.E. 1107a8ff). In a further discussion of the ‘by convention’ thesis (N.E. 5.7) Aristotle argues that what is changeable (i.e. variable according to circumstance) can still be ‘by nature’, thus rebutting the view that what is by nature must be unvarying. In effect, I argue, Aristotle allows that all just things (e.g. rules of action) vary according to circumstance, but denies that this means they are just ‘by convention only’.Helpful to understanding Aristotle's brief argument in 1.3 against the ‘by convention only’ thesis is Theaetetus 172ab, reprised at 177cd. At both points Socrates insists that even if just things are held to depend on a city's conventions, no-one would have the face to say the same about what's good, i.e. beneficial. The relation between the fine and the just, on the one hand, and the good in the sense of the beneficial, on the other hand, is the key to how (in their different ways) Plato and Aristotle answer the view that morality is ‘by convention only’. See also Republic VI, 505a and 505d.

St. Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Temperance and Aristotle

St. Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Temperance and Aristotle Leo Elders S.V.D. For some decades now, one can witness a renewed interest in the non-Aristotelian sources of the thought of St. Thomas, and in particular in his debt to the Fathers of the Church and neo-Platonist sources.1 Fully acknowledging the importance of these studies and St. Thomas's real indebtedness to these sources, the editors of a recent volume underscore—and rightfully so—that, "for this reason, Aquinas's theological use of Aristotle requires renewed attention, lest the study of Aquinas's theology become one-sided."2 It is in this same spirit that I will survey and analyze, after a brief introduction into temperance in the Greco-Roman world, the use of Aristotle in St. Thomas's treatise on temperance in the secunda secundae of his Summa theologiae [ST]. What a close reading of these questions and the use of Aristotle's arguments therein, and in particular from his Nicomachean Ethics [EN], will show, I hope, is the extent to which Aristotle is Aquinas's principal philosophical interlocutor. [End Page 465] Temperance in Ancient Greece and Rome In ancient Greece, the words sōphrōn (σώφρων) and sōphrosynē (σωφροσύνη) signified reservation and restraint in one's conduct and knowing one's place. To behave oneself in a temperate way is the opposite of being passionate.3 In particular, the young should be trained to adopt this attitude of self-restraint. In the Charmides of Plato, sōphrosynē is the beginning of spiritual health, and in the Republic, Plato formulates his doctrine of the four cardinal virtues as corresponding respectively to the mind and the three appetitive parts of the soul4. Aristotle treats temperance extensively in EN 3.10 as a virtue that has its seat in the irrational part of the soul and makes us attain the mean with regard to bodily pleasures. However, he excludes from this need of restraining our desires the delight we find in objects of vision and of hearing, and part also of the delight in odor. Natural appetites may go wrong in the direction of excess, which is a sort of self-indulgence. Here, the virtue of temperance should intervene. A temperate person moderates his desires. Temperance is a disposition of the appetitive part of the soul that makes it obey reason. If one possesses this virtue, his desires will be moderate and there will be no need to repress them. Reaching "the mean" is to desire in the right degree, the right time, the right manner, and so on.5 Aristotle endorses the view that some pleasures are good while others are bad.6 He confirms, therefore, the commonsense view of moderation and a generally accepted distinction between the different kinds of pleasure. The position of Epicurus on pleasure must be understood as a recommendation to seek moderate pleasures of taste, sex, vision, and hearing. He wrote about himself the following words: "I know not how to conceive the good, apart from these pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form."7 But, as J. M. Rist observes, Epicurus writes elsewhere that he [End Page 466] is not talking so much about the sensual pleasures as about freedom from bodily pain and mental affliction: sober reasoning brings us the happy life.8 Epicureanism became a missionary doctrine that spread through the Roman Empire in spite of the strong opposition it met from the Academy, the Peripatetics, and Stoicism, in particular from Chrysippus.9 The beginning of its decline was brought about by its denial of afterlife.10 As to the ethical doctrine of the Stoa, the four main moral virtues were strongly confirmed by Chrysippus: he considered them expressions of one and the same reason11 that unfolds itself into four directions, the four cardinal virtues. With regard to choosing desirable things, this central reason and activity of the hêgemonikon12 becomes sōphrosynē, self-control, which brings all our movements and impulses into conformity with reason. It is the expression of the harmony of the soul. For the Stoics, the connection between the virtues is so strong...

METAPHYSICS A.7, 988b16-21

The last six lines of Aristotle's Metaphysics A.7 draw some important conclusions about Aristotle's predecessors' (the Presocratics' and Plato's) grasp of the four types of cause. Aristotle argues that his account of his predecessors supports his conception of the four causes and his claim that in first philosophy, too, we should seek to understand our subject-matter on the basis of these four causes. I offer a detailed textual and philosophical interpretation of these lines, connect them with Aristotle's argument in Metaphysics A.1-6, and examine their metaphysical, epistemological, and methodological presuppositions.

Changing Kinds: Aristotle and the Aristotelians

Aristotle is routinely blamed for several errors that, it is supposed, held 'science' back for centuries - among others, a belief in distinct, homogenous and unchanging species of living creatures, an essentialist account of human nature, and a suggestion that 'slavery' was a natural institution. This paper briefly examines Aristotle's own arguments and opinions, and the perils posed by a contrary belief in changeable species. Contrary to received opinion even amongst some of his followers, Aristotle was not a species essentialist and his ethical theory, properly expanded, provides arguments against bioengineering human and other species without a clear view of what should count as beauty.

The fallacy of composition: Guiding concepts, historical cases, and research problems

Although the fallacy of composition is little studied by theorists and trivially illustrated in textbooks, some view it as ubiquitous and highly significant. Furthermore, although definitions regard the concept as unproblematic, it contains three distinct elements that are often confused, and is often carelessly conflated with the fallacy of division. And although some apparently claim that fallacies are figments of a critic's imagination, they are really proposing to study fallacies in the context of meta-argumentation. Guided by these ideas, I find three important historical examples: Aristotle's geocentric argument from natural motion, as critiqued by Galileo; a step in the theological argument from design, as critiqued by Hume; and Michels's iron law of oligarchy, as critiqued by social scientists Dahl and Lipset. Finally, I formulate some problems for future research on compositional arguments: distinguishing incorrectness from fallaciousness; elaborating general principles of evaluation; clarifying the three distinct subtypes; shifting from the arbitrary pluralism of argument-identification to the normal meta-argumentation of argument-analysis; and further historical–empirical search for such fallacies in various controversies, over holism, over global warming, and over national debts.

Political Animals Revisited

Political Animals Revisited

Aristotle's Cognitive Science: Belief, Affect and Rationality

AbstractI offer a novel interpretation of Aristotle's psychology and notion of rationality, which draws the line between animal and specifically human cognition. Aristotle distinguishes belief (doxa), a form of rational cognition, from imagining (phantasia), which is shared with non‐rational animals. We are, he says, “immediately affected” by beliefs, but respond to imagining “as if we were looking at a picture.” Aristotle's argument has been misunderstood; my interpretation explains and motivates it. Rationality includes a filter that interrupts the pathways between cognition and behavior. This prevents the subject from responding to certain representations. Stress and damage compromise the filter, making the subject respond indiscriminately, as non‐rational animals do. Beliefs are representations that have made it past the filter, which is why they can “affect [us] immediately.” Aristotle's claims expressceteris paribusgeneralizations, subject to exceptions. No list of provisos could turn them into non‐vacuous universal claims, but this does not rob them of their explanatory power. Aristotle's cognitive science resolves a tension we grapple with today: it accounts for the specialness of human action and thinking within a strictly naturalistic framework. The theory is striking in its insight and explanatory power, instructive in its methodological shortcomings.

Cancer drugs in the United States: Justum Pretium--the just price.

In 2011, health care spending in the United States was estimated at $2.7 trillion,1 making it the sixth largest economy in the world, larger than the national budget of France. National health care spending is approximately 18% of the US gross domestic product, more than $8,000 per person, compared with 6% to 9% in Europe and elsewhere, with apparently similar patient outcomes. Total Medicare expenditures in 2011 were $549 billion.2 A study comparing the Canadian universal health care program in older patients with the Medicare program in the United States suggested that adopting more-prudent health care strategies could have saved $2.56 trillion from 1980 to 2009, or approximately one fifth of our national debt, without compromising benefit.3 In the debate about health care and Medicare solvency, strategies that reduce health care costs without compromising treatment efficacy and patient safety should be explored. Several experts have addressed health care costs in excellent analyses and editorials,4–9 but their efforts have not translated into concrete decisions and results that benefit patients, providers, insurers, or payees. However, an interesting exception occurred recently when Bach et al,10 in a New York Times editorial, compared the efficacy and cost of two anticancer agents—ziv-aflibercept (Zaltrap; sanofi-aventis, Bridgewater, NJ) and bevacizumab (Avastin; Genentech, South San Francisco, CA)—in the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer. After noting ziv-aflibercept had similar efficacy but was twice the cost of bevacizumab, they stated it would be excluded from their hospital formulary.10 Within 1 week, sanofi-aventis, the company producing ziv-aflibercept, reduced its price by 50%. Thus, expert review of anticancer therapies for their cost-benefit ratios may influence institutional usage and drug pricing while preserving a healthy profit margin for pharmaceutical companies. Aristotle is credited to be the first to discuss the relationship between price and worth in his book Justum Pretium—the just price. Sixteen centuries later, Saint Albert the Great and Saint Thomas Aquinas refined Aristotle's argument. Their conclusion: of moral necessity, price must reflect worth. In the context of cancer therapy, the prices of new anticancer agents seem to be decided by pharmaceutical companies according to what the market will bear. There is little correlation between the actual efficacy of a new drug and its price, as measured by cost-efficacy (CE) ratios, prolongation of patient life in years, or quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs).7 Compared with a decade ago, the price range of new anticancer agents has more than doubled, from $4,500 to more than $10,000 per month.4,5 Of the 12 anticancer drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2012, only three prolonged survival, two of them by less than 2 months. Yet nine were priced at more than $10,000 per month. Many so-called targeted therapies have been priced between $6,000 to 12,000 per month, or approximately $70,000 to 115,000 per patient annually (Table 1).11 However, novel or reformulated chemotherapy drugs like pralatrexate (Folotyn; Allos Therapeutics, Westminster, CO; $120,000 per course), omacetaxine (Synribo; Teva Pharmaceuticals, North Wales, PA; $28,000 for induction, $14,000 for monthly treatments), and pegylated asparaginase (Oncaspar; Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals, Gaithersburg, MD; $22,000 per course) are also expensive. Hillner and Smith7 suggested that profiteering (ie, making profit by unethical methods, such as raising prices after natural disasters) could be applied to this recent trend, where a life-threatening disease is the natural disaster. Table 1. Cost of Targeted Therapy Pharmaceutical companies justify the high price of drugs as necessary to support investment in research and development. The often-cited cost of bringing anticancer drugs to FDA approval is $1 billion.12 This figure is roughly calculated by dividing total expenditures on research and development by the number of agents that receive FDA approval. However, this figure may be inflated, because it includes ancillary expenses, salaries, bonuses, and other indirect costs not related to research or development13 as well as an 11% compounded discount rate over 10 years based on stock market returns on capital investment.14 Other independent estimates of cost of drug development put the figure as low as 4% to 25% of this estimate.15–17 Allowing the producer-dominated market to set drug prices has spiraled the cost of cancer drugs out of control. In this analysis, we highlight examples of the cost benefit of different anticancer agents and suggest scenarios for reduced drug pricing, while preserving the profit-making incentive, by linking price to a true measure of quality: preservation and meaningful prolongation of life.

Aristotle on the Virtue of the Multitude

It is generally believed that one argument advanced by Aristotle in favor of the political authority of the multitude is that large groups can make better decisions by pooling their knowledge than individuals or small groups can make alone. This is supported by two analogies, one apparently involving a potluck dinner and the other aesthetic judgment. This article suggests that that interpretation of Aristotle's argument is implausible given the historical context and several features of the text. It argues that Aristotle's support for the rule of the multitude rests not on their superior knowledge but rather on his belief that the virtue of individuals can be aggregated and even amplified when they act collectively. This significantly alters our understanding of Aristotle's political thought and presents a powerful alternative to the epistemic defenses of mass political activity popular today.

HIGHER-ORDER AWARENESS IN ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS

Abstract Alexander of Aphrodisias discusses higher-order awareness in perception twice: in Quaestiones 3.7, where he offers a detailed exegesis of Aristotle's arguments at the beginning of De anima 3.2 on how we perceive that we see, as an explanation of what Alexander calls ‘sunaisthêsis’; and in Alexander's own systematic treatise, the De anima. In the Quaestiones, Alexander develops an interpretation of Aristotle that has since become dominant, the moderate capacity reading, according to which the same faculty that enables us to see also enables us to perceive that we are seeing. But he also makes the provocative claim that higher-order awareness is itself a necessary consequence of perceiving and is entailed by some of Aristotle's central doctrines. It is difficult to make good on this claim, though, and Alexander avoids making it in his own De anima, which offers a more nuanced and defensible position on the question.

Metaphysics XII 7, 1072A27-B1: An Argument of Identity

The paper analyses the argumentative structure of a difficult passage from Aristotle's Metaphysics XII 7 on the basis of a topos of sameness provided in Top. VII 1. In doing this the article gives an example of how Aristotle's treatises on dialectic can prove useful to understand what he says in his more philosophically committed writings. The article also shows how general argumentative techniques and more or less explicit specific philosophical assumptions interact in shaping Aristotle's arguments and how the distinction of these different factors can help us have a better grasp on Aristotle's text.

Deliberation, Democracy, and the Rule of Reason in Aristotle'sPolitics

Deliberative democratic theorists argue that important moral questions turn on whether regimes are sufficiently deliberative. To attribute “deliberativeness” to a regime, we need an account of “deliberative integration” that connects such a holistic assessment to the acts or qualities of individuals and smaller groups. I turn to Aristotle'sPoliticsfor instruction in developing such accounts, arguing that he judges regimes according to how reliably they act pursuant to excellent common deliberation—a manner of excellent rule that I call the “rule of reason.” I then interpret Aristotle's metaphorical argument for the “wisdom of the multitude” to establish the claim that democracies may best integrate citizens’ deliberations. This interpretation illuminates Aristotle's complex evaluation of regimes, including his ambivalent views on the rule of the many. It also suggests a structure for contemporary accounts of deliberative integration helpful even for those who differ from Aristotle in their basic moral concerns.

New music and its myths: Athenaeus' reading of theAulosrevolution (Deipnosophistae14.616e–617f)

AbstractScholarship on the late fifth-century BC New Music Revolution has mostly relied on the evidence provided by Athenaeus, the pseudo-PlutarchDe musicaand a few other late sources. To this date, however, very little has been done to understand Athenaeus' own role in shaping our understanding of the musical culture of that period. This article argues that the historical context provided by Athenaeus in the section of theDeipnosophistaethat cites passages of Melanippides, Telestes and Pratinas on the mythology of theaulos(14.616e–617f) is not a credible reflection of the contemporary aesthetics and strategies of the authors and their works. Athenaeus is both following the structure of Aristotle's discussion of the topic of theaulosinPolitics8.1341a-1342b and accepting the élite ideological position given there. Athenaeus' text thus does not provide evidence for the historical context in which late fifth-century authors were composing, but rather constitutes an attempt to illustrate Aristotle's argument with poetic examples from late fifth-century poets.

Aristotle on Natural Slavery

AbstractAristotle's claim that natural slaves do not possess autonomous rationality (Pol. 1.5, 1254b20-23) cannot plausibly be interpreted in an unrestricted sense, since this would conflict with what Aristotle knew about non-Greek societies. Aristotle's argument requires only a lack of autonomous practical rationality. An impairment of the capacity for integrated practical deliberation, resulting from an environmentally induced excess or deficiency in thumos (Pol. 7.7, 1327b18-31), would be sufficient to make natural slaves incapable of eudaimonia without being obtrusively implausible relative to what Aristotle is likely to have believed about non-Greeks. Since Aristotle seems to have believed that the existence of people who can be enslaved without injustice is a hypothetical necessity, if those capable of eudaimonia are to achieve it, the existence of natural slaves has implications for our understanding of Aristotle's natural teleology.

Is Natural Slavery Beneficial?

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

Plato and Aristotle on Rhetorical Empiricism

Abstract Current interpretations of early Greek rhetoric often rely on a distinction between the empirical stage of rhetoric (associated with the sophists) and the theory of rhetoric which was invented by the philosophers Plato and Aristotle. But insofar as the distinction between experience and theory is itself a product of philosophical criticism and reflects the philosophical priorities of the authors who introduced it, its application in the interpretation of pre-Platonic rhetoric is anachronistic. By examining the contexts in which Plato's and Aristotle's arguments are cast, I propose to show the ways in which their accounts distort our picture of their predecessors.