Aristotle's Ethics Research Articles

The Teleological and Deontological Structures of Action: Aristotle and/or Kant?

It is usually assumed in moral philosophy that a teleological approach, as exemplified by Aristotle's ethics of virtue, and a deontological approach, as heralded by Kant's ethics of duty, are incompatible; either the good or the right, to designate these two major traditions by their emblematic predicates. My purpose in this paper is to show that a theory of action, broadly understood, may provide the appropriate framework of thought within which justice can be done to both the Aristotelian and Kantian, the teleological and deontological moments of morality.

The Role of Philosophy in Aristotle's Political Science

Unlike Plato, Aristotle seems to construct his political theory without specific reference to the activity of the highest part of the soul, the activity of philosophy or contemplation. In the Politics, however, the initial characterization of the city as the highest partnership because it fosters the highest good suggests that philosophy cannot be simply irrelevant to the search for the best regime. Thus, Aristotle seems to face a Platonic aphoria. How can one reconcile contemplation with politics without diminishing the value of political life or compromising the ethical framework which identifies contemplation as the crowning human good? Beginning from Aristotle's specific work on first philosophy, the Metaphysics, the author suggests that Aristotle sees politics and philosophy as being separable from, yet compatible with, one another. This complex relationship helps to clarify some of the difficult interpretive questions concerning the structure of Aristotle's ethics and to reaffirm the importance of...

Aristotle's ethics.

Aristotle's ethics.

Distributive justice in Aristotle's ethics and politics

Distributive justice in Aristotle's ethics and politics

Eudemian Ethics 1220b 11–13

When characterizing ta pathē in the Eudemian Ethics Aristotle claims that they are usually accompanied by perceptual pleasure or pain. He says:λέγω δ πάθη μν τ τοιατα, θυμν ϕόβον αἰδ πιθυμίαν, ὂλως οἶς ἒπεται ώς π τ πολὺ αἰσθητικ ήδον ἢ λύπη καθ' αὑτά.By affections I mean such things as anger, fear, shame, desire – in general anything which, as such, gives rise usually to perceptual pleasure and pain. (translation by Woods)

II. The Connection between Aristotle's Ethics and Politics

II. The Connection between Aristotle's Ethics and Politics

The Meaning of Prohairesis in Aristotle's Ethics

The Meaning of Prohairesis in Aristotle's Ethics

The Ethical Use of the Old Testament in Luther and Calvin: A Comparison

‘The Holy Scriptures teach ethics, or the theory of duties, far better than any Ciceros or Aristotles’, claimed Luther, comparing the Bible with the standard ethical handbooks of antiquity, both Latin (Cicero's De Officiis) and Greek (Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics). Luther had in fact lectured on Aristotle's Ethics in 1508/9, a few years before he received the degree of ‘Doctor in Biblia’. It was as a Professor of Bible, mainly of the OT, that Luther earned his living for over thirty years, and Calvin too expended a large proportion of his efforts as preacher, commentator and lecturer on the OT. Comparisons of their use of the OT have tended to concentrate on the law and to a lesser extent on Christological (Christocentric) hermeneutics. This essay will endeavour to cast the net more widely and to broach the question of the law as it arises within a broader context.

Aristotle on the Friendships of Utility and Pleasure

IT HAS COMMONLY been held that of the three forms of friendship distinguished by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, only in the paradigm form--fr iendship on account of the good (i.e., virtue)---do the friends exhibit disinterested' concern for each other. In the other two, inferior, form--fr iendship on account of utility and friendship on account of pleasure--i t has been thought that disinterestedness has no place and that there is little room for the qualities that are distinctive of friendship? Recently,John Cooper has forcefully argued :~ that in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle does in fact give place to disinterested concern in the inferior friendships and that, consequently, these relationships are significantly more interesting than previously believed. In this article I argue that though Cooper does show that arguments supporting the common interpreta-

Aristotle and the Happy Dead

A LTHOUGH Nicomachean Ethics 1. 10-11 is not part of the textual core of Aristotle's ethics, it nevertheless ought not to be disregarded: these two chapters show Aristotle's attempt to relate his account of happiness to a popular Greek aphorism that forbids the attribution of happiness to anyone alive. Thus, as Kurt Pritzl argues in the preceding article, the passage is of interest for an understanding of Aristotle's methodology, an interest which has been obscured by much of the traditional commentary. While Pritzl has provided a helpful setting of the passage in its social context and a useful commentary on some points of interpretation, there inevitably remains more to be said. This reflection upon his article first reinforces his reading of one passage, but in the second part qualifies his general assessment of these chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics.

Satisfaction and Payment in Middle English Literature

Satisfaction and Payment in Middle English Literature Jill Mann Girton College, Cambridge IN TIIE DEBATE between the Four Daughters ofGod in passus 18 of Piers Plowman, Peace, in the course of justifying the redemption ofman, describes the need for opposites to define each other. Without woe, we should not know the meaning of "weal"; without night, we should not be able to understand the meaning of "day." Just so, she concludes (lines 216-17): 1 1 All quotations ofPiers Plowman are from George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, eds., Piers Plowman: The B Version (London: Athlone, 1975). Quotations ofChaucer are from F. N. Robinson, The Works ofGeoffrey Chaucer, 2d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). John Livingston Lowes, "Chaucer's 'Etik,'" MLN 25(1910):87-88, claimed that Chaucer's reference below is not to the AristotelianEthics; he drew attention toJohn ofSalisbury's use of the term "ethicus" for writers of sententious tendency in general, and among them, for Horace, one of whose recommendations to moderation is cited byJohn with the preface "ut enim ait ethicus" (Policraticus 8.13). Interesting as this suggestion is, it is a perhaps un­ necessarily complicated way ofaccounting for the line in theLegend, particularly since Lowes does not discuss the evidence for Chaucer'sknowledge ofthePolicraticus, and other studies of this question have not been able to demonstrate more than a very limited indebtednessto this work; see W. W. Woollcombe, in Essays on Chaucer (London: N. Triibner, 1896), pp. 295-98; Eleanor Prescott Hammond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (New York: Mac­ millan, 1908), p. 93; and Thomas R. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, 3 vols. (London:James R. Osgood, Mcilvaine & C., 1892), 2:362-64. A further parallel with the Policraticus suggested more recently byJohn Fleming, in "Chaucer's Clerk andJohn of Salisbury," ELN 2(1964):5-6, is not, again, conclusive. As for the Ethics, on the other hand, although no complete translation into Latin was available before Grosseteste's version (produced in 1240-49), Latin versions ofbooks 2 and 3 (known as the Ethica vetus), and ofbook 1 (known as the Ethica nova), were already circulating widely in the thirteenth century (see Aristoteles latinus, pars prior, ed. Georges Lacombe, 2d ed. [Bruges and Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1957), pp. 67-71). I have, therefore, thought it worthwhile to quote some passages of the Ethics at relevant points in the following discussion. I quote from the edition of R.-A. Gauthier, Ethica Nichomachea, Anstoteles Latinus (Leiden and Brussels: E. J. Brill and Desclee de Brouwer, 1972) XXVI.1-3, 2. I have also used the four manuscripts ofthe Latin Ethics preserved in thelibraryofGonville and CaiusCollege,Cambridge, to whose Librarian I am grateful for permission to consult them. 17 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER "...til modicum mete with vs, I may it wel auowe, Woot no wight, as I wene, what is ynogh to mene." It is the meaning of"enough"-more specifically, the meaning attached to the word in Middle English poetry- that I should like to explore in this paper. "Enough" is a simple, everyday word that is easily passed over, a prosaic word for a rather prosaic concept, we probably feel, thinking ofthe cautious, commonsense attitude expressed in proverbial phrases like "Moderation in all things," or "Enough is enough." But in late-medieval literature-in Chaucer, in the Pearl poet, in Julian of Norwich-it be­ comes a poetic word, a word that vibrates with emotional and intellectual connotations. A close examination oftwo texts in particular, Pearland The Clerk's Tale, will help show this. The term "enough," as the words of Peace have already reminded us, makes sense only in relation to other terms, and setting out some ofthem will provide an appropriate framework for the analysis ofthese texts and a guide to what is important in their own language. In the first place, "enough" is, by definition, the midpoint between "too much" and "too little," or between "more" and "less." To locate and to adhere to this midpoint is, according to the Nicomachean Ethics ofAristotle, to achieve virtue; "vertu is the mene, / As Etik seith," as Chaucer puts it in The Legend of Good Women (lines 165-66). Obvious enough in itself, this...

Aristotle's Ethics and Plato's Republic: A Structural Comparison

The architectonic of the Nicomachean Ethics, as that has come down to us, corresponds closely to that of Plato's Republic. That the substance of the Aristotelian ethic, both in its main orientations and in the texture of its argumentation, is Platonic through and through, is of course not in dispute. What appears not to have been noticed is the correspondence between the ways in which the two works are organized. The correspondence is so extensive that it seems hard to doubt that Aristotle (or whoever put the Ethics together) hung his work on Plato's armature. If that is the case, much light should be shed on the later project by divergences between the tactics of the two works at the main points of coincidence. On the assumption that the Republic is a highly structured work and the Ethics is not evidently so, the procedure followed is analogous to that recommended and followed by Socrates in the Republic (368D): confronted by two apparently similar messages, one hard and one easy to read, we should read the easy one first and then look to see if the hard one says the same.

The Meaning of ΘΡΑΣΟΣ in Aristotle's Ethics

Previous articleNext article No AccessNotes and DiscussionsThe Meaning of ΘΡΑΣΟΣ in Aristotle's EthicsEugene GarverEugene Garver Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 77, Number 3Jul., 1982 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/366713 Views: 2Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1982 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Apostolos N. Stavelas On Aristotle's Conception of Fear, Aither 11, no.2222 (Sep 2019): 88–100.https://doi.org/10.5507/aither.2019.008R. A. Boehm Alexander, “Whose Courage Was Great”: Cult, Power, and Commemoration in Classical and Hellenistic Thessaly, Classical Antiquity 34, no.22 (Oct 2015): 209–251.https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2015.34.2.209

A theory of friendship in st. Basil of Caesarea, in relation to Aristotle's ethics

<p>Το άρθρο αυτό επισημαίνει ορισμένες ομοιότητες ανάμεσα στην έννοια τής<br />φιλίας όπως έμφανίζεται στίς ’Επιστολές του 'Αγ. Βασιλείου του Καισαρέα<br />καί στήν θεωρία τής φιλίας τοϋ ’Αριστοτέλη, όπως έκφράζεται στα ’Ηθικά<br />Νικομάχεια καί στά ’Ηθικά Ενδήμεια. Είναι δυνατό νά γίνουν παραλληλισμοί<br />στά άκόλουθα θέματα: α) ή χρησιμότητα τής φιλίας, β) ή ομοιότητα στήν </p><p>αρετή καί ή ταυτότητα σέ πνευματικούς στόχους ώς θεμελιώδεις βάσεις μιας<br />ειλικρινούς φιλίας, γ) τό κίνητρο τής άμοιβαίας άπόλαυσης καί των κοινών<br />προτιμήσεων άνάμεσα σέ φίλους, δ) ή άναγκαιότητα τής ομόνοιας, ε) ή κοινότητα<br />τής έπικοινωνίας μεταξύ των φίλων, στ) ή ανάγκη των φίλων νά μοιράζονται<br />χαρές καί λύπες, ζ) τέλος, ή κοινή αντιμετώπιση τής διάλυσης<br />τής φιλίας.<br />Στο έργο τού Βασιλείου όλα αυτά δείχνουν νά απορρέουν άπύ τύν ’Αριστοτέλη,<br />παρόλο πού δεν υπάρχουν στα γράμματά του δηλώσεις πού νά το<br />μαρτυρούν άμεσα. ’Άλλωστε, ό Βασίλειος προσκομίζει ακριβέστατες έκφράσεις<br />γιά τά αίσθήματά του (εΐτε αυτά τά βίωνε σέ βάθος είτε άντικατόπτριζαν<br />τήν εκλεπτυσμένη εύγένεια τού καιρού του) ή τά όποια βρίσκονται σέ πλήρη<br />συμφωνία μέ τά ’Αριστοτελικά σημεία πού προαναφέρθηκαν.<br />’Ακόμα κι αν αύτά είχαν καταστεί κοινό κτήμα μέσα στο άμάλγαμα πού<br />παρουσίαζε ή παιδεία τον 4ο αιώνα, είναι ακόμα παρόντα καί μπορούν νά εντοπιστούν<br />στο έργο τού Βασιλείου, ό όποιος πιθανότατα θεώρησε τις μάλλον<br />προσωποπαγείς καί πρακτικές άπόψεις τού ’Αριστοτέλη γιά τή φιλία, έκφρα-<br />στικότερες από τήν θεωρητική άπόσταση τού Πλάτωνα καί των Στωϊκών<br />— καθώς έπίσης καί πιο άρμονικές μέ τήν θέση του σάν χριστιανού.</p>

Virtue and Self-Love in Aristotle's Ethics

We are often told that there is a striking and important difference between ancient Greek moral philosophy and modern moral philosophy. Whereas the moderns emphasize principles of right action and what a person is obligated to do, ancient moral philosophy is concerned with character and what it is to be a good, that is, a virtuous human being. For the Greeks, virtue was not a matter of making our actions conform to a specific code of conduct or to the moral law. Instead, it was a matter of being in the right psychological state. This idea is explicit in Socrates’ famous claim that knowledge is sufficient for virtue: once we know that virtue is an indispensable means to the final good ofeudaimonia,we will choose virtue.

TheLysison Loving One's Own

Cicero,Lucullus38: ‘…non potest animal ullum non adpetere id quod accommodatum ad naturam adpareat (Graeci idοỉκεῖονappellant)…’From earliest childhood every man wants to possess something. One man collects horses. Another wants gold. Socrates has a passion for companions. He would rather have a good friend than a quail or a rooster. In this way, Socrates begins his interrogation of Menexenus. He then congratulates Menexenus and Lysis for each having what he himself still does not possess. How is it that one gets a friend, Socrates asks?Since the nineteenth century many who have read these lines have found them repulsive. Scholars have damned theLysisfor its selfish egoism, for regarding persons as personal belongings. At the turn of the century some sought to discredit the dialogue as a forgery and a calumny. Others debated the dating of the dialogue as Socratic or Platonic, seeking whom to blame rather than whom to credit. And those who have regarded the dialogue as Platonic have tried to redeem it by detecting hints of Plato's theory of Forms. A few have attempted to salvage reputations by understanding the argument of theLysisas areductioof egoism, or else by invoking the loyalty of Socrates' friends and the history of Plato's friendship for Dion of Syracuse to speak up for their defence. Guthrie has condemned the dialogue as a failure of method and presentation (‘even Plato can nod’), and Vlastos has pronounced it a failure of love: ‘The lover Socrates has in view seems positively incapable of loving others for their own sake, else why must he feel no affection for anyone whose good-producing qualitieshedid not happen to need?’TheLysisappears to make no positive contribution to the Greek tradition on friendship when compared to theSymposiumor thePhaedrus. And in the subsequent tradition, whatever Aristotle might have borrowed from the dialogue he uses for his own purposes. Aristotle too is quite critical of specific points raised in theLysis. Now it might seem that Aristotle made a place for the selfish love of theLysisin his own theory, as an inferior grade of utility love. But even this cannot be so, if we are to agree with recent studies of Aristotle's ethics. According to Aristotle, if a client is friendly to his benefactor because of the latter's usefulness, this utilitarian motive must accompany a genuine concern (εὔνοια) for the benefactor's own interest in that relation, if they are to be friends. Inferior and genuine friendship may differ in purpose but not in regard for the well-being of the beloved. This respect for the object of one's love has no parallel in theLysis, according to the standard reading of the dialogue.

Chaucer and Internationalism

Chaucer and Internationalism Elizabeth Salter University of York, England BOCCACCIO, in his T,attat,11, ;. Laud, Dant,, d,sccibes the special part which Dante had played in elevating the Italian vernacular to a high literary status: [W]hich vernacular he first exalted and brought into repute amongst us Italians, no otherwise than did Homer amongst the Greeks, or Virgil amongst the Latins.Before him, though it is supposed that it had already been practised some short space of years, yet was there none who ... had the feeling or the courage to make it the instrument of any matter dealt with by the rules of art....But he showed by the effectthat every lofty matter may be treated in it; and made our vernacular glorious above every other.1 Whether Chaucer knew this statement or, indeed, any of Dante's more complex pronouncements upon the nature and the potential of the vernacular for literary purposes, it can stand as an exemplary definition of the kind ofcontext in which he must have viewed the development ofhis own poetry: a context essentially European, not narrowly insular, which offered both theory and precedent for the creation of high-prestige vernacular literature, often involving curial patronage of some distinc­ tion. He certainly knew of the achievements of the French within that context; even at the beginning of his career in an aristocratic household he would have had good reason to attend to the internationally famous poetry of Machaut and his contemporaries and to understand, also, how important was the process of translation as a proof of confidence in the capacity of a language to express matters of learned as well as courtly significance. Before the great series of translations commissioned by 1 The Early Lives ofDante, trans. P. H. Wicksteed (London: 1904), p. 39. For the Italian text, see P. G. Ricci, Giovanni Boccaccio, Opere (Milano, Napoli: 1965), pp. 595-96. 71 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Charles V of France-the French versions of Aristotle's Ethics, Politics, and Economics; Augustine's City ofGod; John of Salisbury's Policraticus­ his father, Jean II, had ordered a translation ofLivy and ofthe Bible with its Commentaries. 2 The learned interests of the French royal house throughout the middle and the later years of the fourteenth century­ witnessed by the magnificent collection ofroyal books which became the library of the Louvre-were served by the conviction of kings and their translators that the French language was adequate to encounter the difficult content and the 'merveillous stille'3 of Latin originals. To the old question of 'why did Chaucer write in English?' we can nowadays return better answers than those traditionally based upon a fighting notion of the 'triumph' of English.Not, of course, that the fourteenth century lacked such notions: a surprisingly varied assortment of people, from the eminent friar, Robert Holcot, to anonymous ro­ mance and sacred-history writers and members ofParliament, identified the English language with an aggressive sense of English nationality, which often found expression in strong and understandably anti-French terms.The resentment clearly heard in the CursorMundi, "Selden was for ani chance/ Praised Inglis tong in France ..."4 comes out curiously in Holcot's equation of "learning French" and "learning to tell lies";5 it fosters suspicion in Parliament in the 1340's, when the Chancellor of England, Sir Robert Sadington, announced what he knew ofthe invasion plans of the French: 'Et si est il en ferme purpos a ce que nostre Seigneur le Roi et son Conseil one entendu en certeyn, a destruire la lange Engleys et de occuper la terre d'Engleterre . . . '6 Such sentiments, stimulated no doubt by propagandist needs of a moral as well as a political nature, have little to do with Chaucer's decision to deal in English.The undistinguished verse of the Cursor Mundi reminds us that most ofthe advances made during the first halfof the fourteenth century in the use of English as a literary medium are of negligible meaning as far as quality is concerned.The Auchinleck manu2 See L. Deslisle, Recherches sur la Librairie de Charles V (Amsterdam: 1967), 2 vols. 3 Deslisle, pp. 114-15. 4 Ed. R. Morris, EETS...

Aristotle's Ethical Holism

Aristotle's ethics are not the least discussed Aristotle. And the central notion of eudaimonia has been illumined by recent controversy.1 Yet aspects of it remain not only disputed but fuzzy, and there is still work to be done to dispel, or define, the unclarities. What does seem clear is that this Aristotle ought to surprise us. His eudaimonia is 'the highest of goods achievable by action' (NE trans. W. D. Ross-as always below except when otherwise stated -I 4, 1095aI6 f.); it may be the single 'end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this)' (I 2, 1o94aI8 f.). At least since the demise of hedonism, no concept of our moral psychology has stridden the practical world quite like this colossus. Aristotle here finds, or invents, a focal unity to fix the structure, and influence the content, of our goals and decisions. It will be the thesis of this paper that Aristotelian man assesses and pursues his goods with an eye directed at once exclusively and comprehensively to the pattern of a lifetime. Its final suggestion will be that such a man can hardly exist.

The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.

The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.

The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle

The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle