Aristotle's Treatment Research Articles

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.

Heidegger's Ontology of Life before Being and Time : Scope and Limits

Heidegger's Ontology of Life before Being and Time: Scope and Limits Roberto Rubio (bio) Translated by Felipe Fernández (bio) In his lecture course of summer 1926, Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy, Heidegger states: From the presentation of the origin of two fundamental determinations of Being, namely, and , it already became clear that thereby receives an exemplary significance. Indeed, this is precisely the first-ever phenomenological grasp of life, and it led to the interpretation of motion and made possible the radicalization of ontology. (1993, 182 / 2008, 153) 1 The cited passage asserts that Aristotle's ontology of motion attains both its motivation and its most radical orientation from the phenomenon of life. Such a statement should not be understood merely in the sense of an historical and philosophical thesis, but as a programmatic approach of Heidegger's philosophy in dialogue with Aristotle. This is suggested by the title of the chapter to which this passage belongs: "Ontology of life and of Dasein." [End Page 65] The characterization of as the exemplary meaning for Aristotle's radicalization of ontology seems to indicate the programmatic orientation of Heidegger toward organic life, more particularly animal life, in continuity with Aristotle. The quoted passage, however, is pointing in a different direction. The context of the passage shows that Heidegger is referring to considered as " in the extreme form of (1993, 175, 178 et seq.). Aristotle's radicalization of ontology from the notion of life thus consists in the foundation of all mobility and change in pure actuality and presence: . . . . Life has a , an . Life as the most proper presence at hand: presence out of itself and constantly complete . . ." (Heidegger 1993, 175 / 2008, 146). This setting out is in continuity with the developments of the Natorp-Bericht of 1922: there, Heidegger criticized Aristotle's radicalization of motion's idea toward the divine nous and theoria, opposing to it the program (also inspired by Aristotle) of a praxis-oriented ontology (1993, 385). Even when the misunderstanding regarding the initial citation and the image of Aristotle that Heidegger presents have been clarified, the question remains: Does Heidegger redirect his critique of Aristotle's notion of toward his own reelaboration of the issue? In other words, is there, accompanying his destruction, a construction of an ontology oriented to life as ? 2 This issue has particular relevance in the light of current ontological debates regarding life, characterized both by a criticism of the anthropocentric orientation and by a renewed interest in animality (see, for example: Agamben 2002; Derrida 2006; Barbaras 2008; Garrido 2009). 1.Early Heideggerian Reception of Aristotle's Ontology Young Heidegger's treatment of Aristotle, just like that of other philosophical referents, combines a double gesture: destructive and constructive. The pars destruens includes at least the following operations: a study of the transmission of concepts and conceptions to be interpreted and oriented to clarify their historical-problematical context; the critique of the internal limits of the conception to be interpreted; and the indication of strategies [End Page 66] or approaches that, even when not explicitly present in the interpretandum, may shed light on it. For its part, this task of démontage carries in itself the impulse for the constructive assimilation of the interpreted conception toward a new proposal. Heidegger's destructive-constructive reception of Aristotle states that the ontology of the Stagirite as a whole is fundamentally oriented toward , that is, toward the motion or process oriented to an end ( ). Even when Aristotle makes a distinction between moved beings proper to the sublunary world and incorruptible beings proper to the superior region, extending to the Unmoved Mover, Heidegger understands that such a distinction only makes sense from the question of processual motion and its origin. Aristotle's ontology revisited thus consists in a "pandynamics . . . of Being in general" (1993, 170 / 2008, 143). 3 Heidegger's next step in his transformative reception of Aristotle consists in showing that the universal ontological field of the being in motion is articulated in three modes: the production and productive knowledge , the praxis and practical knowledge , and lastly, the contemplation and theoretical knowledge (sofiva). At the base of such interpretation of the ontological division of sciences in Metaphysics (VI...

Griechische Wissenschaftstexte: Formen, Funktionen, Differenzierungsgeschichten (review)

Reviewed by: Griechische Wissenschaftstexte: Formen, Funktionen, Differenzierungsgeschichten Eckart Schütrumpf Markus Asper. Griechische Wissenschaftstexte: Formen, Funktionen, Differenzierungsgeschichten. Philosophie der Antike, 25. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2007. Pp. 453. €66.00. ISBN 978-3-515-08959-3. For over a century modern scholars or scientists have been judged, and the distinguished ones publicly recognized, for the literary quality of their work. The Roman historian Theodor Mommsen was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1902), and the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung awards the annual Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose, not only to scholars in the humanities, but to scientists as well. In light of this established practice of treating scholarly and scientific writing as literature, it seems hard to understand, as Asper states at the beginning of his comprehensive study of Greek scientific texts, that such texts of all periods and languages remained "stepchildren" of literary studies (9). While they have received some attention from a few scholars, e.g., F. Blass, Die Attische Beredsamkeit (2nd ed. 1892), who presented some discoveries about the avoidance of hiatus in Plato and Aristotle (Blass is not cited by Asper), and E. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa (first published 1898), who included in his treatment of literary prose sections on Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Epicurus, these authors did not pursue the investigation of scientific texts in a systematic fashion and aimed at the opposite of what Asper attempts since they tried to identify qualities of literary prose in scientific texts, and by doing so blurred the boundaries between scientific texts and other prose literature. Asper, on the other hand, undertakes from the perspective of literary studies to develop a taxonomy of concepts for the analysis and assessment of scientific texts. He identifies various strategies of sharing and safeguarding knowledge in a wide range of selected scientific texts that cover diverse areas such as law, mathematics, medicine, and music, and analyzes them in categories of the history of literature, while disregarding distinctions according to discipline. In his extended introduction Asper clarifies the subject matter and approach. A distinctive feature of the specific "genre" of scientific texts (of which there existed no theory in antiquity) is that they are nonnarrative; that is, they are not subject to a time structure or tied to specific persons or situations ("de-contextualized"). They are defined foremost by their function and only in a secondary manner by their form, which is dependent on the text's function. The time frame of the texts explored ranges from the Pre-Socratics to Late Antiquity. Asper discerns an increased differentiation over time of adopted forms. He could not, and does not, aspire to cover all scientific texts. There is no chapter on Plato (whose Timaeus was at least understood by later philosophers as a scientific text on the universe), nor, regrettably, [End Page 112] on Aristotle's treatises (Asper discusses, however, Met. Δ, 78–81). Here I dare to predict that his sensitivity to form and style would have shattered the still-prevailing view that these treatises are "lecture notes." In the two main sections of the book, Asper investigates the texts under two rubrics, discrete and continuous texts. Discrete texts are lists whose entries lack syntactical or logical connection and presuppose some sort of preexisting understanding or oral explanation, whereas continuous texts are autonomous and do not rely on an existing consensus between author and recipient. This book is based on meticulous research. In his treatment of the various categories of scientific texts, Asper does not summarize some sort of scholarly consensus on a particular work, but examines aspects of content, traditional elements, date of composition, genesis of the text, structure, various formal elements, and function of the works under investigation, and he always reaches results that by virtue of the criteria employed advance our understanding. Some of his essays on specific texts (like on the Anonymus Londinensis, 293–304) are masterpieces of analysis; they are concisely written, well organized, and demonstrate good judgment in their conclusions. This study is an impressive piece of scholarship which nobody interested in scientific texts, and not only in classics, can ignore. In addition to an extensive bibliography, this book has three indices. Eckart...

LES QUALITÉS DU CONSEILLER: SAVOIR, BIENVEILLANCE, FRANC-PARLER (PLATON, GORGIAS, 486 E 6-487 D 7)

O Górgias representa um momento essencial no sentido de precisar a concepção Socrática e Platônica do conselheiro (sumboulos). As qualidades que Sócrates atribui, ironicamente, a Cálicles: conhecimento (epistêmê), boa vontade (eunoia) e discurso franco (parrhêsia), devem ser consideradas como as qualidades dos filósofos na medida em que ele é o conselheiro autêntico. Como assunto de fato, estas qualidades são opostas às características da alma do orador e do homem público: hábil em conjeturar (stokhastikê), viril (andreia) e naturalmente agressivo nas relações humanas (phusei deinê prosomilein tois anthrôpois), características que Cálicles contrasta com o quadro que pinta de Sócrates, como um homem de privacidade, carente de virilidade. Esta passagem do Górgias encontra eco, além disto, nos trtados de Aristóteles: a Retórica (livro II) e a Ética Nicomaquéia (livro VI).

Friendship and Hospitality: Some Conceptual Preliminaries

The series friends, rivals, enemies is a seemingly ‘natural’ classification for the relations of states, while the parallel series kin, neighbors, strangers functions as an informal classification system for social relations in general. That we may owe foreigners the hospitality due to strangers has become a matter of discussion among normative theorists, thanks to Kant's Perpetual Peace. Thus the conjunction of friendship and hospitality calls for a conceptual assessment. This assessment uses Aristotle's treatment of friendship (and Derrida's treatment of Aristotle's ‘familial schema’) to establish three primary models of social relations (father to sons, husband to wife, brother to brother). Only ‘brothers’ (agents modeled as brothers) can be friends, rivals, or enemies. Only ‘fathers’ can be hosts who offer strangers the hospitality of the household. By the same token, only ‘fathers’ can be guests or take hostages. Such an assessment brings the conceptual concerns of two fields — international relations and political theory — closer together. In so doing, it rejects anarchy's conceptual hegemony in the field of international relations.

Jean-Luc Nancy’s Concept of Body

This article carries out a systematic exposition of the concept of the body in Jean-Luc Nancy, with all the risks of reduction that such an exposition entails. First it is necessary to return to Western philosophy's founding text on living corporality, that is, Aristotle's treatise on the soul. The oppositions that can be established between the Greek thinker's psyche (soul) and Nancy's dead Psyche are not so radical as may at first be thought: In both it is a question of thinking the soul as the difference, the retreat or departure in which the exposition of bodies consists. The article continues with an analysis of touch and the self and concludes with an elaboration of the idea of the body within the general program of the deconstruction of Christianity.

Aristotle on Definition (review)

Reviewed by: Aristotle on Definition Devin Henry Marguerite Deslauriers . Aristotle on Definition. Philosophia Antiqua, 109. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2007. Pp. x + 229. Cloth, $139.00. Aristotle on Definition is an exceptional piece of scholarship. Its arguments are carefully justified, sophisticated, and far-reaching. Those interested in Aristotle's theory of definition will find this book a nice compliment to David Charles' Meaning and Essence. Whereas Charles examines Aristotle's theory of syllogistic definitions, Deslauriers focuses mainly on the concept of immediate definitions (the sort of definitions that function as first principles in a science). [End Page 478] It is impossible to do justice to the entire book. In what follows I shall attempt to isolate one of its main lines of argument to give the reader a sense of the book's content. In chapter 2, Deslauriers draws our attention to four types of definition identified in the Posterior Analytics and sets out to explore the differences between them. She focuses on two basic kinds of definition, what she calls "syllogistic" definitions and "immediate" definitions. Syllogistic definitions are accounts that indicate what something is through a middle term and are formulated by rearranging the terms of a demonstrative syllogism, whereas immediate definitions express propositions that cannot be displayed in demonstrations. Instead, they are arrived at and displayed through division by genus and differentiae. According to Deslauriers, Aristotle's account of these two basic kinds of definition in AnPo. 2. 10 is based on a fundamental distinction he draws concerning the relation of the object of definition to its cause: the objects of syllogistic definitions (e.g., eclipse, thunder) are complex items in the sense that they have something else as their cause, while the objects of immediate definitions (e.g., human, god) are simple items that do not have distinct causes. Deslauriers shows that simple items must, in fact, have aitia. Aristotle's point is that they do not have aitia distinct from themselves (cf. AnPo. 93a3–6). Since a form is one kind of aitia, were it the case that simple items lacked causes, Aristotle would have to be understood as positing items with no form (56–57). Thus, both immediate definitions and syllogistic definitions involve stating the cause of the object of definition. The following chart summarizes the results of chapters 2 and 3: Simple Items Complex Items Objects of immediate definitions. Objects of syllogistic definitions. Answer ti estin? Questions. Answer dioti? Questions. No aitia distinct from themselves. Have aitia distinct from themselves. Aitia is formal cause. Aitia is efficient cause. Definition cannot be displayed in a demonstration; arrived at and displayed through division by genus and differentiae. Definition can be displayed in a demonstration; formulated by rearranging the terms of a demonstration in which the middle term is the aitia. Deslauriers argues that immediate definitions (unlike syllogistic definitions) are necessary precisely because the relation between their objects and the cause of those objects is immediate. With simple items there is nothing distinct from the thing itself that acts as the cause of the connection between subject and attribute (AnPo. 2. 4 , 91a25–32). Because the causality and necessity of immediate definitions is non-derived, immediate definitions alone can function as first principles of a demonstrative science. In the remainder of the book, Deslauriers tackles a number of issues arising from Aristotle's treatment of definition in the Metaphysics. For example, she argues that the Metaphysics discussion of definition is focused primarily on immediate definitions and that the investigation of substance in Metaph. Z 4–5 seeks to exclude from consideration the objects of syllogistic definitions, since they lack the requisite kind of unity (insofar as they have aitia other than themselves). One implication of this is that, strictly speaking, the objects of syllogistic definitions described in AnPo. 2 cannot be defined and hence syllogistic definitions are not definitions in the proper sense (118, 124). Deslauriers also looks at the problem (raised in the Metaphysics) of how to construct immediate definitions that are able to represent the essence of natural bodies that necessarily include matter. She points out that the objects of immediate definitions are not "simple" in the sense of having no parts; the species essence, represented...

Dickens and the Idea of the Comic Novel

The idea of comedy inherited by Dickens and his contemporaries derived from classical, medieval, and Renaissance traditions, in which comedy dealt with 'low-life' subjects and exposed the 'ludicrous' in human actions, but which also allowed for happy endings, rewards for the virtuous, punishments for 'bad' characters, and, following the Shakespearian model, the celebration of human love. This essay argues that although Dickens was sometimes dismissed as a humorist by Victorian critics, his work should be seen in the mainstream of the English tradition of comic fiction. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are explored in the light of these arguments. ********** In the preface to his edition of Shakespeare of 1765 Samuel Johnson complained that Shakespeare's first editors, Heming and Condell, seemed not to have distinguished between the genres of comedy, history, and tragedy 'by any exact or definite ideas'. Johnson went on to describe what he saw as the vague notion of comedy which was acceptable to Jacobean audiences: 'An action which ended happily to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, constituted a comedy.' (1) Largely thanks to the example and the subsequent influence of Shakespeare's comedies over the span of English literature this loose definition has taken on some intellectual weight. Indeed, if we balance it with the splendidly bland theory of fiction expressed by Miss Prism in the second act of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, it can be seen as having shaped a good number of moral, but not necessarily exclusively 'comic', novels. For Prism, fiction simply 'means' that 'the good ended happily, and the bad unhappily' (though Cecily Cardew nicely protests that the theory 'seems very unfair'). (2) If we were to superadd Shakespeare's concern with the significance of love and marriage to what Johnson describes as Heming and Condell's idea of 'comedy', we might safely arrive at a very loose definition of what is often called 'romantic comedy'. This 'romantic comedy' is, of course, at odds with the 'classical' idea of what constituted the comic. For Plato the comic spirit was rooted in the representation of self-ignorance. In the Philebus he has Socrates argue that 'those [...] who combine their delusion with weakness and incapacity to be revenged on a scoffer you may truly call comic figures [...] In the strong, ignorance of self is odious and repulsive [...]. Where it is weak, we see the proper place and true character of the comic.' (3) This notion is echoed by Aristotle, with a new stress on social status, in his definition of the 'ludicrous': Comedy is [...] an imitation of characters of a lower type--not, however, in the full sense of the word, bad; for the Ludicrous is merely a subdivision of the ugly. It may be defined as a defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. Thus, for example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not cause pain. (4) Despite our lack of Aristotle's larger treatise on comedy, it has been assumed that these Greek principles came to influence Roman comedy and, beyond the ancient world, the comic dramas and stories of medieval and Renaissance Europe. The medieval comic tale seems to have retained many of the elements outlined by Aristotle. Commenting generally on the traditions of comic storytelling, and on audience responses to comedy, which held sway until the late eighteenth century, Derek Brewer has written: No general study of humour was made in the Middle Ages. It is an interesting question whether such a quality, or entity, was even recognised. There was some discussion of comedy and tragedy, usually of a learned and rather muddled kind, based on an inadequate study of classical sources. Discussions of comedy rarely do more than imply humour [...] the kind of funniness enjoyed in the Renaissance was very similar to the traditional and medieval forms. …

Aristotle and the Graces

This paper is a reading of Aristotle's book on justice (Book V of the Ethics) as what he says it is, a study of the disposition or inclination towards doing just (or unjust) acts. In that light, the content of Aristotle's famous treatments of distributive and corrective justice are only incidental, for their true role is as clues to a meaningful picture of the Just and the Unjust person. Aristotle's treatment of Being Just as a specific virtue is the most detailed treatment he offers of any moral virtue. Being Just as distributive justice emerges as a commitment to the equal treatment of all citizens, but to an equality tempered by always contentious considerations of merited reward. Being Just as corrective justice is a commitment to protecting and repairing the sphere of each person's dignity and opportunity from damaging and sometimes malicious interactions. But more is required. For Being Just means overcoming the disordered and misdirected desire that both Aristotle and Plato call wanting - tyrant-like - more-of-and-more-than. If that is overcome by re-directed libido, the virtuous will then have to integrate more subtle elements if they are to achieve an inclination to this tempered, but real equality. These elements are two. One is present only implicitly, the passion Aristotle calls nemesis, a demand that the world - and justice within the world - must never permit an evil person to go unpunished or a good one, to suffer harm. That passion cannot be admitted, but at best can only be temporarily stilled. The second impediment arises from the dynamic of human communities that are made up of diverse and actively striving individuals: such citizens, haunted by suspicion grounded in their own pleonexia, demand that the community be one of laws. That creates a true dilemma, for in Aristotle's estimation, no set of rules can cabin any virtue. The Rule of Law is in tension with the particularity of justice in real life, and that tension is ultimately only bearable through the invention of equity, the trusted deviation from the law to preserve the law. In making this abstract I have had to leave untouched the subject matter of the first and two last chapters, but in my paper I do treat these. More importantly, I also show how all political community and the inclination to seek to be a Just Person rests on a gracious act of reciprocal commitment.

Aquinas’s Impediment Argument for the Spirituality of the Human Intellect

In several texts, Thomas Aquinas employs a controversial demonstration for the spirituality (that is, intrinsic independence from matter) of the human potential intellect—an argument deriving from a famous, though somewhat abstruse, passage in Book III of Aristotle's De Anima . Because Aquinas's development of this intriguing proof can itself be accused of insufficient rigor, rendering it susceptible to objections, it behooves us to explore this problem from the beginning. Hence, at the very outset, I reproduce two standard translations of the controverted passage from Aristotle's treatise on psychology: Therefore, since everything is a possible object of thought, mind, in order, as Anaxagoras says, to dominate, that is, to know, must be pure from all admixture; for the co-presence of what is alien to its nature is a hindrance and a block: it follows that it too, like the sensitive part, can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain capacity. Thus that in the soul which is called mind (by mind I mean that whereby the soul thinks and judges) is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing. For this reason it cannot reasonably be regarded as blended with the body: if so, it would acquire some quality, e.g. warmth or cold, or even have an organ like the sensitive faculty: as it is, it has none. It was a good idea to call the soul “the place of forms,” though (1) this description holds only of the intellective soul, and (2) even this is the forms only potentially, not actually. And, since the intellect [can] think every [object of thought], it must exist without being blended [with something else] in order that, as Anaxagoras says, “it may rule,” that is, in order that it may know. For, if it appears along [with some other thing], the [latter will] prevent or obstruct [the knowledge of] another kind [of thing]; hence it is necessary for [the intellect] to be of no nature other than that of [mere] potentiality. So the part of the soul which is called “intellect” (by “intellect” I mean that [part] by which the soul [can] think and believe) is actually none of the things prior to thinking. In view of this, it is not even reasonable that it should be blended with the body, for it might then acquire some quality, e.g., coldness or heat, or there might be even an organ [for it], as there is for the sentient power; but, as it is, there is no [such organ]. So those who say that the soul is a place of forms speak well, except that it is not the whole soul but only the thinking part of it, and that [that part] is not actually but potentially the forms [of things].

Tragedy and Timon of Athens

One of the most vexed terms in literary criticism is tragedy. As critics we often denounce the popular use of the term when the death of the family pet is called a terrible yet we would be hard put to give a precise explanation of a more exact sense that would cover all the uses in our critical writing. The model of Greek tragedy, the ideas in Aristotle's treatise, the examples of Early Modern English and seventeenth-century French plays, the theories of Hegel and Nietzsche, and countless modern texts and critical analyses: all these come together to offer a wide span of mutually contradictory senses. Is tragedy a subgenre of drama, defined by a set of formal elements? Is it a vision of the world that is represented in different genres? Does it entail a philosophical or theological stance? Is it dependent on a specific set of social conditions? Has it died, or is it always with us? Is the term neutrally descriptive or honorific, so that to be a tragedy is to be great literature? One might well argue that there is no essential definition of the term, that a critic's only task is to make clear what he or she means when using it and then to adhere to that definition. There is much to be said for that view, but there are perils in a laissez-faire approach to terminology. First, it is easy for both reader and writer to slide between different senses, generating confusion and false arguments. Thus, because a play incorporates a set of formal criteria that constitute tragedy, it may be assumed to embody a distinctive tragic vision. Second, some definitions of tragedy incorporate dubious assumptions: since Christian tragedy is defined (by some) as impossible, no play written by a presumed Christian can be a tragedy. Third, finding one's way among writings with a wide spread of contradictory meanings of tragedy is confusing; broad agreement on the general sense of key terms is important for a critical conversation to ensue. I should like to offer some principles for regulating the free market in definitions of tragedy, not quite a definition proposal for one preferred sense, since I believe in the value of critics' experimenting with the term, but some guides that should help to clarify the conversation. I shall use Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, that most problematic of plays, as a test of the principles offered. It is a play that pushes the limits of tragedy, that may even have got into the section of the First Folio as an afterthought, (1) and that has inspired much controversy about its generic location. (2) In what ways is it sensible and useful to talk about Timon as a tragedy? My governing assumption is that the most valuable function of the generic term tragedy is clarification of the individual play, not the other way around. Timon offers a good test of how the principles I offer can make the idea of tragedy helpful in understanding a difficult play. Perhaps the main peril in critical ideas of tragedy is what might be called generic enthusiasm. Because many great works of literature from Aeschylus to Racine and beyond are tragedies, the genre itself is often sanctified: to be a tragedy is to earn a place in the pantheon, and not to be a tragedy is to fail of deification. Tragedy and epic are especially subject to this attitude, unlike the sonnet, for example. No one thinks that writing a sonnet is equivalent to writing a great poem. At most doing so demonstrates a certain technical competence. But in the same way, if one's definition of tragedy is formal, there seems to be no justification for making it also honorific: there can be and are many bad, boring, and insipid tragedies. Judgments of quality do not follow necessarily from the fact that a text matches a set of formal criteria. Rather it is tragedy defined as a distinctive vision that is the usual source of the honorific weight: tragedy is great because it asserts the truth of a profound view of the world or portrays the world as embodying that truth. …

Gadamer's Praise of Theory: Aristotle's Friend and the Reciprocity Between Theory and Practice

Gadamer's rethinking of the interconnection of theory and practice can lead to a resolution of the debate in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship regarding the priority of theory or practice in Aristotle's Ethics. This is especially true in light of Aristotle's treatment of friendship which, as I will try to show, provides support for Gadamer's claim. In Aristotle's notion of friendship, theory and practice come together, and the activity of friendship is for Aristotle the highest expression of human life precisely because true friendship requires the unity of theory and practice. I argue that Aristotle's sense of eωρια, contemplation, his sense of ultimate happiness that is constituted by the life of theory, is conceived by Aristotle in a thoroughly practical and political sense. Specifically I claim that the practice of theory is the politics of friendship.

Aristotle's Great-Souled Man

Aristotle's discussion of the great-souled man (megalopsuchos) is crucial to any interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics. Yet there is no scholarly consensus about the nature and significance of the megalopsuchos. This article examines Aristotle's treatment of the great-souled man within the context of the Ethics as a whole and in connection with other relevant passages elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus. In particular, Aristotle's identification of Socrates as a great-souled man in the Posterior Analytics provides an interpretative key to his discussion of greatness of soul in the Ethics. Aristotle's presentation of the great-souled man reflects an ambiguity at the heart of virtue itself, and underscores the Socratic character of the fundamental lessons of the Ethics. According to Aristotle, the true megalopsuchos is Socrates.

The Heraclitus Anecdote

This paper examines extant interpretations of the well-known anecdote about Heraclitus by the oven, some of which may have escaped the notice of scholars working in the analytic tradition. According to the interpretation elaborated in this paper, two different fireplaces are referred to in the anecdote. This claim is supported with evidence drawn from a variety of sources and disciplines. Thus interpreted, the anecdote becomes more plausible historically and better suited to the context of Aristotle's treatise than in previous interpretations.

Curiosity versus Disbelief in Advertising

Certain housewives found something “hard to believe” in a food advertisement; others did not. But the same per cent of both groups showed increased willingness to serve the product advertised. For Years Communications Practitioners have been vitally concerned with their believability. Since Aristotle's famous treatise on rhetoric, propagandists, ministers, writers, advertisers and other professional persuaders have sought the key to belief. The one group which has paid most attention to the believability of persuasive communications is advertisers. Two basic premises have been implicit in advertisers’ traditional investigations of believability: first, that there are two alternative and mutually exclusive audience reactions to an advertisement once it has been noticed and understood: people will either believe it or disbelieve it; and second, that consumers’ overt analyses or ratings of an ad's content predict its effect.

The Political Teaching of Avicenna

¯, Abu ¯ 'Alial-H. usayn Ibn Sinaor Avicenna, and Abual-Walid Muh. ammad Ibn Ah. mad Ibn Rushd or Averroes - we are best acquainted with the life of Avicenna. Thanks to the efforts of his devoted pupil and long-time companion, Abu¯ 'Ubayd 'Abd al-Wah . id al- Juzjani ¯, we have something resembling an autobiog- raphy of Avicenna with a biographical appendix by al-Juzjani ¯. We learn from it that Avicenna was an assiduous and devoted learner from the days of his youth to his death. With no reticence, and very little modesty about his accomplishments, Avicenna enu- merates his early studies and details the order in which he pursued learning. His prowess as a scholar and author is presented in even more glowing terms by al- Juz ja ¯n i ¯. Avicenna was born in Afshanah in 370/980, but his family soon moved to near-by Bukhara where he began his studies. Having proved himself in the study of the Quran and related works of literature by the age of ten, he turned first to Indian mathematics and Islamic jurisprudence, then began to study philosophy. Subsequently, he set about reading Porphyry's Isagoge, logic in general, Euclid, Ptolemy's Almagest, and even- tually undertook the natural sciences and metaphysics. For the latter two pursuits, he claims, he read both the original texts - presumably Aristotle - and the com- mentaries. Such theoretical inquiries soon gave way to more practical ones as he focused his attention upon medicine. Since Avicenna found "medicine . . . not one of the difficult sciences," he "excelled in it in a very short time" (Life, pp. 24-26). Then, momentarily forgetting his earlier claim of having studied jurisprudence when only ten, Avicenna mentions that he first studied jurisprudence at the age of sixteen - engaging in disputations from time to time - and later came back to logic and to "all of the parts of philosophy." The latter two pursuits kept him very busy, but he would occasionally relieve his fatigue by drinking a goblet of wine ( Life, p. 30). After thoroughly mastering the forms of the syllogisms and their various premises, he moved on to metaphysics but found Aristotle's treatise on the subject nearly incomprehen- sible. Only his good fortune in happening upon a copy of al-Far a ¯b i ¯'s On the Goals of the "Metaphysics" saved him. These studies occupied Avicenna until the age of eighteen, at which time he found an occasion to present himself as a physician to the ailing ruler of Bukhara, Nuh . Ibn Mans . ur, and subsequently gained access to this ruler's well-stocked library. Avicenna's autobiographical account concludes with a summary account of the many books he wrote and an even more abbreviated listing of his travels. His pupil, al-Juz ja ¯ni ¯, continues the story by explaining in greater detail the trying circumstances in which Avicenna composed his works. In the process, he portrays a man who wrote at an intense, almost frenetic, pace and who used his medical knowledge to push his body beyond normal limits. The account is lightened only by al- Juzjani ¯'s passing remarks about how Avicenna would rest from his toils by drinking wine with intimate com- panions and about his extraordinary sexual appetite. The latter are worthy of note only because of the ascetic moral teaching emanating from Avicenna's pen, but it is evident that this uniquely gifted scholar's pursuit of bodily pleasure in no way kept him from his all- consuming desire for learning. Avicenna presumably had his first exposure to politics from his father, a village administrator for the same Nuh . Ibn Mans. ur of the magnificent library. After his father's death, Avicenna first accepted an adminis- trative post from this ruler, then later moved to other locales where he served as a jurist or practiced the

Pity and Compassion as Social Virtues

The altruistic emotions of pity and compassion are discussed in the context of Aristotle's treatment of the former in the Rhetoric, and Nussbaum's reconstruction of that treatment in a recent account of the latter. Aristotle's account of pity does not represent it as a virtue, the context of the Rhetoric rather rendering his account one of a peculiarly self-centred emotion. Nussbaum's reconstruction builds on the cognitive ingredients of Aristotle's account, and attempts to place the emotion of compassion more squarely in the moral sphere. It is argued that Nussbaum's reconstruction nevertheless falls short of capturing the altruism which is central to the virtue of compassion, and which therefore explains its role as a ‘basic social emotion’.

Interrogating the Identities of Excellence: Liberal Education and Democratic Culture in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics"

Postmodern liberalism's concern with the relationship between culture and identity has intensified the long-running debate within liberalism about the relationship between successful political institutions and the development of civic virtue or character among the citizens. Aristotle's dialogic treatment of ho spoudaios (the excellent human being) in the Nicomachean Ethics contributes to the liberal conversation by interrogating a number of the conceptions of ho spoudaios prevalent within the democratic culture. In connecting his investigation of ho spoudaios to a variety of conceptions of political virtue, Aristotle makes clear that questions about the content of good citizenship cannot be separated from questions about human excellence, offering a teleological approach improving the accounts offered by neutralist, purposive and postmodern variants of liberalism.

Aristotle's Endoxa and Plausible Argumentation

Aristotle's conception and use of ta endoxa are key points to our understanding of Aristotelian dialectic. But, nowadays, they are not of historical or hermeneutic importance alone, as, in Aristotle's treatment of endoxa, we still see a relevant contribution to the modern study of argumentation. I propose here an interpretation of endoxa to that effect: namely, as plausible propositions. This version is not only defensible in the Aristotelian context, it may also shed new light on some of his assumptions and methodological shortcomings – e.g. concerning the 'plausible/implausible' pair –; finally, it will even enable us to show certain basic hints and guidelines, advanced by Aristotle's study of endoxa, which still serve nowadays to orientate our studies of argumentation from the angle of a theory of plausible argument currently under construction. These hints and guidelines suggest a pragmatic, gradual and comparative discursive concept of plausibility, and point, in particular, towards the reasonable dealing with, and weighing up of, differences of opinion within this frame of reference.

The Articulation and Hierarchy of Knowledge in Aristotle's Thought

Aristotle's endeavor, at least insofar as we can judge from the way it has been transmitted to us and from the titles of the lost works, is often presented as the first work of an encyclopedic nature, as it seems to embrace and order all of the elements of knowledge. Does Aristotle not advance a classification of sciences, in Metaphysics, E, 1, as well as a systematic outline of the “sciences of nature” in his Meteorologica, I, 1? And again, although logic is often presented as not belonging to the system of sciences since it is not counted as a science in Metaphysics, E, 1, is Aristotle not generally considered the inventor of this discipline? The impression is all the stronger in that Andronicus of Rhodes, in the first century b.c., edited Aristotle's works by roughly adopting the threefold division of philosophy into Logic-Physics-Ethics, a division that had become common during the Hellenistic period though more particularly proper to the Stoic system. Since then, all the editions of Aristotle, in every language, have been made to serve the order in which Aristotle's treatises were thus edited.