Importance Of Aristotle Research Articles

Core Aspects of Dance: Aristotle on Positure

Abstract This article is part of a larger project in which I construct a historically informed philosophy of dance, called “figuration,” based on new interpretations of canonical philosophers. Figuration consists of two major parts—namely, (a) four basic concepts, or “moves”—positure, gesture, grace, and resilience—and (b) seven types, or families, of dance—concert, folk, societal, agonistic, animal, astronomical, and discursive. The present article is devoted to the first of these moves, positure, regarding its importance for Aristotle and its applicability to my seven families of dance. One goal of figuration, and the central goal of this essay, is to model and justify a dancing aesthetic education, pursuant to psychological and political flourishing. More specifically, figuration holds that a maximally virtuous and flourishing community is one that facilitates dance, which requires dance education (in both theory and appreciation). Within this philosophy, positure’s specific contribution to aesthetic education lies in the concept of positure itself, which I define as “a poetically creative, politically situated, dynamic imitation of stasis.”

PORQUE DESAPARECEU O MARGITES?

Recorrendo a testemunhos literários e aos mais recentes fragmentos encontrados em Oxirrinco, este artigo procurará compreender as razões pelas quais o Margites, obra de uma enorme importância para Aristóteles, terá perdido o seu valor original, acabado por desaparecer quase completamente do cânone literário ocidentalainda nos primeiros séculos da nossa era.

Reflection of “Philosophy” on Art and Philosophy of Art

More focus is needed at faculties of fine arts on the quality and quantity of the philosophy education as well as on its methodology within the scope of “art philosophy”. It is a requirement that different methods and techniques should be used in arts education and that the students have competency in questioning and interpreting art works through different approaches. Do we need to use the language of philosophy in art philosophy lesson? Or does the use of the language of philosophy cause an uncertainty? Of course these questions may be increased and many answers can be found. However, for a more effective arts education we need to search the dialogues of Plato or the importance of Aristotle's Poetics. Students of the Faculty of Fine Arts should understand and grasp the qualities of knowledge which is the basis of philosophy instead of studying an intense education of philosophy. This would help them to analyze the place and importance of philosophy in arts. It is believed that the mutual interaction process between artistic image and scientific image and different disciplines will contribute to the aesthetical pleasure, judgement and behaviour of the students. In this context, we will attempt to find an answer to the question “how more can we take advantage of philosophy and readings in the education of arts philosophy.

Aristotle’s dilemma

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle appears to use an elegant short argument to attack Plato’s doctrine of the good, which argument equally appears to attack Aristotle’s own doctrine of the good. I consider these two questions: First: Why does Aristotle reverse the judgment of Socrates/Plato on the issue: Which is better – things that are (only) good in themselves, or things that are both good in themselves and good for their consequences? Second: Why does Aristotle attack Plato’s doctrine that the Form of the Good is the chief good, with an argument that appears to threaten his own view that eudaimonia is the chief good? I think the answers to these two questions are related. The elegant short argument in question I call “Aristotle’s Fast Argument.”After apologizing for criticizing views held by friends of his, Aristotle deploys the Fast Argument as a clincher to cap off his refutation of Plato’s view that the Form of the Good is the chief good: “And one might ask the question, what in the world they mean by ‘a thing itself’, if in man himself and in a particular man the account of man is one and the same. For in so far as they are men, they will in no respect differ; and if this is so, neither will there be a difference in so far as they are good. But again it will not be good any the more for being eternal, since that which lasts long is no whiter than that which perishes in a day.” (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1096 a34–b4). I explore this sketchily presented Fast Argument. I consider why Aristotle may think it is valid and why he does not seem to realize that, on readings that make it effective against Plato’s view, his Fast Argument also seems to apply to his own view that eudaimonia is the chief good. This is what I will call “Aristotle’s Dilemma.” If the Fast Argument is interpreted too narrowly, its point about the whiteness of a white thing being independent of its duration will not apply to the goodness of the Form of the Good. If it is interpreted broadly enough to undermine the claim of the Form of the Good to be the chief good, it will equally undermine that claim for eudaimonia. Finally, I discuss some of the things Plato and Aristotle say about the chief good, and comparable things Immanuel Kant says about the good will. I draw some speculative conclusions that focus on the importance for Aristotle of the goodness of the chief good not being at risk.

Aristotle and Others

The importance of Lynne Spellman's treatment of Aristotle's theory of substance' is far greater than its modest size would suggest. Her persuasive reading of Aristotle stresses links with Plato, arguing that for Aristotle what primarily exists are is forms of natural kinds, indistinguishable from one another within a given kind and hence knowable, not numerically distinct from the sensible individuals in which they are present (this being the Platonic separation that Aristotle rejects) but not identical with them either. Socrates-qua-member-ofnatural-kind, i.e. Socrates-in-what-he-shares-with-human-beings-generally, is primary; Socrates with all his material accidents is secondary a distinction which is put to good use in the final chapter in tackling the problem of teleological versus non-teleological explanation. Features of S.'s reading of Aristotle (though not her explanation of it in terms of a modification of Platonism) are anticipated in some of the writings attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias. The account on p.88 of the relation between species-form and individual strongly resembles that in Alexander On Providence p.89 Ruland (and, at the level of genus, in quaestio 1.1 1), with S.'s horse Secretariat replacing Achilles' horse Xanthos. S.'s recognition (p.120) that it is material, not formal factors that distinguish tokens of types is parallelled in Alexander, quaestio 1.3; and S.'s view of form leads her, like Alexander in numerous contexts, to stress the permanence of species though not of their individual members (p.121). The similarity between S.'s understanding of Aristotle and Alexander's is not conclusive for its correctness; but it reinforces its plausibility. One niggle; an index of passages discussed would have been helpful. Gad Freudenthal2 argues that Aristotle's basic four-element theory cannot explain the functioning and continued existence of living things, which must be due to vital heat (defined, 28-9, as heat carrying informing movements), a theory dating back to Aristotle's De Philosophia (84; cf. 191 on its importance for Aristotle's later thought) and subsequently supplemented not replaced by the inadequate and uncompleted doctrine of connate pneuma as the substrate of vital heat (130, 142; cf.195 on the difficulties as compared with the Stoic theory). Medieval Peripatetics filled the gap by a non-Aristotelian appeal not to vital heat but to an Neoplatonized Active Intellect (39, 196ff.). The notion that

The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages. The Commentaries on Aristotle's and Boethius' 'Topics' (review)

442 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:3 JULY I987 style. He assumes familiarity with both the Aristotelian corpus and modern theory of action and thus he plunges into the discussion of technical questions without providing sufficient background for many readers. Equally troublesome is his expropriation of the diverse formulae employed by modern philosophers, which results in the use of a large number of quite different schemas to express Aristotle's thought. Furthermore , in order to find modern analogues, Charles ascribes certain positions to Aristode which are not likely to bear careful scrutiny. The attribution of equivalence class materialism to Aristotle falls in this category as does the separation of valuational from motivational factors in practical deliberation. At a later stage of the conversation, Charles tends to transform ideas introduced earlier and this too threatens the cogency of some of his conclusions. For instance, the difference between a basic and a non-basic action seems at first to follow from the identification of the former with a process and the latter with an activity, but this line of argument is jettisoned when certain processes are subsequently classified as nonbasic acts. Another case in point is the description of the practical syllogism in the second chapter and the explanation of acras/a in the third and fourth chapters. The initial account makes desire a mode of accepting the conclusion of a practical syllogism which issues in an action. However, in the case of acrasia, even though the acratic agent has drawn the conclusion that doing X is better than Y, she/he employs a second practical syllogism, concludes that doing Y is good and acts accordingly. To explain the agent's failure to act on the conclusion of the first syllogism, Charles introduces a distinction between "appropriately accepting" (and acting on) a practical conclusion and simply accepting it. This solution undermines his earlier argument that the conclusion of a practical syllogism is a proposition which is acted on and it introduces a distinction between types of desire which is not captured by his analysis of the practical syllogism, Charles has written a comprehensive and thoughtful book. It should stimulate interest in Aristotle's philosophy of action as a viable alternative to recent approaches , and it should foster a deeper appreciation for the use of modern theories to elucidate Aristotle's views. D.K. MODRAK University of Rochester Neils JCrgen Green-Pedersen. The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages. The Commentaries on Aristotle's and Boethius' 'Topics'. Analytica. Investigations in Logic, Ontology and the Philosophy of Language. Munich: Philosophia Verlag GmbH., a984. Pp. 458. DM 158, All but dismissed by W. D. Ross (Aristotle, 61) as an obsolete exercise in sophistic, Aritode's Topics has staged a remarkable comeback. Partly because of its importance for Aristotle's thought and partly due to its influence on thinkers from late Antiquity through the Renaissance the Topics remains central to the history of western philosophy , science, and theology. The present work proposes: (a) to provide the necessary BOOK REVIEWS 443 background for a fuller examination of the medieval topical literature and (~) to contribute to a survey of its 'genres' so that a "more comprehensive" view of medieval logic may be attained. The study has five parts. (0 "The Sources of the Medieval Doctrine of the Topics" introduces Aristotle's Topics and Boethius' De differentiis topicis. (~) "The Medieval Approach to the Sources" examines commentaries on Aristotle and Boethius. (3) "The Doctrine of the Topics in the Middle Ages" surveys commentaries from the tenth through the fifteenth century. (4) "A General Conclusion" summarizes some central ideas of the study. Finally, two appendices contain eighteen previously unprinted texts and list commentaries on the Topics and De differentiis topicis. The Topics including the Sophistici elenchi are Aristotle's chief works in dialectical as opposed to demonstrative reasoning. Demonstration proceeds from a knowledge of first principles to the conclusions formally deducible from them. Dialectic examines the consequences of propositions on any subject matter apart from knowledge of its first principles. Where the former yields the truths of science the latter issues only in the verisimilitudes of considered opinion. Many other points of comparison must be omitted here...