Aristotle's Ethics

ABSTRACT: This paper serves two purposes: (i) it can be used by students as an introduction to chapters 1-5 of book iii of the NE; (ii) it suggests an answer to the unresolved question what overall objective this section of the NE has. The paper focuses primarily on Aristotle’s theory of what makes us responsible for our actions and character. After some preliminary observations about praise, blame and responsibility (Section 2), it sets out in detail how all the key notions of NE iii 1-5 are interrelated (Sections 3-9). The setting-out of these interconnections makes it then possible to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the purpose of the passage. Its primary purpose is to explain how agents are responsible for their actions not just insofar as they are actions of this kind or that, but also insofar as they are noble or base: agents are responsible for their actions qua noble or base, because, typically via choice, their character dispositions are a causal factor of those actions (Section 10). The paper illustrates the different ways in which agents can be causes of their actions by means of Aristotle’s four basic types of agents (Section 11). A secondary purpose of NE iii 1-5 is to explain how agents can be held responsible for consequences of their actions (Section 12), in particular for their character dispositions insofar as these are noble or base, i.e. virtues or vices (Section 13). These two goals are not the only ones Aristotle pursues in the passage. But they are the ones Aristotle himself indicates in its first sentence and summarizes in its last paragraph; and the ones that give the passage a systematic unity. The paper also briefly consider the issues of freedom-to-do-otherwise, free choice and free-will in the contexts in which they occur (i.e. in the final paragraphs of Sections 6, 7, 12, 13).

Este libro relaciona distintos análisis de la concepción moral de nuestra época con estudios de autores clásicos de la filosofía, con el fin de sostener la propuesta de una ética abierta, o ética del crecimiento, basada en diversas consideraciones sobre la naturaleza humana. El objetivo  central no es exponer una doctrina de preceptos morales, sino mostrar la relevancia de la responsabilidad morar al realizar juicios de valor.

Le zoonosi contemporanee ci costringono a porci una domanda che già gli antichi pensatori si erano posti più o meno esplicitamente. Le risposte sono spiazzanti e per molti versi attuali: mangiamo gli animali perché non siamo dèi (e quindi perché non siamo mai stati – o non siamo più – puri) o perché, semplicemente, siamo onnivori. Per Aristotele, nello specifico, mangiamo gli animali perché le tecniche a nostra disposizione ce lo permettono, anche se in ciò che ci viene permesso – secondo lui – dovrebbe sempre esserci una misura.

This project explores the topic of dependency of happiness on external goods in Nicomachean Ethics. In this project I defend the following thesis: the dependency of happiness on external goods, in EN, is interpreted in the light of its political self-sufficiency, and in the light of our political humanity; this dependency is of three kinds: 1) enhancing-instrumental, 2) constitutive, and 3) subsistent.
The political self-sufficiency of happiness means that, the ultimate good of man, the good of the ruling science of Politics, is self-sufficient based on the self-sufficiency of the city. According to Aristotle, every human being, by nature, is political. The nature of every human being is fundamentally relational. We are what we are, among and with others in the city. This constitutive political human nature functions best only in the city. Based on this political anthropology I interpret the dependency of the human political good on external goods in EN.
https://wipfandstock.com/happiness-and-external-goods-in-nicomachean-ethics.html

At the beginning of Book III of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that the emotions (pathê) are praised and blamed when they are voluntary (hekousion). However, Aristotle does not elaborate on how an emotion can be voluntary. In this paper I try to provide an account of what Aristotle might have meant by this claim. I consider both reasons to deny this claim and the dominant qualified reinterpretation of this claim, an interpretation I call the 'derivative approach,' which maintains that we are to be praised or blamed for emotions only if they are consequences of our voluntarily acquired characters. I argue that 1) Aristotle was sincere when he said that there are voluntary pathê and 2) the derivative approach to accepting Aristotle's claim is motivated by misunderstandings of Aristotle's notion of the voluntary. In conclusion, I argue that Aristotle's notion of the voluntary is sufficiently broad to include pathê non-derivatively.

This article provides a critical analysis of the situationist challenge against Aristotelian moral psychology. It first outlines the details and results from 4 paradigmatic studies in psychology that situationists have heavily drawn upon in their critique of the Aristotelian conception of virtuous characteristics, including studies conducted by Hartshorne and May (1928), Darley and Batson (1973), Isen and Levin (1972), and Milgram (1963). It then presents 10 problems with the way situationists have used these studies to challenge Aristotelian moral psychology. After challenging the situationists on these grounds, the article then proceeds to challenge the situationist presentation of the Aristotelian conception, showing that situationists have provided an oversimplified caricature of it that goes against the grain of much Aristotelian text. In evaluating the situationist challenge against the actual results from empirical research as well as primary Aristotelian text, it will be shown that the situationist debate has advanced both an extreme, untenable view about the nature of characteristics and situations, as well as an inaccurate presentation of the Aristotelian view.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-013-9249-8
https://doctorcroom.com/croom-2014a

In this essay, I undertake a critical phenomenological exposition of the conditions of ethical community as they present themselves in light of the anthropocene. I begin by approaching the present human condition by following Arendt in her considerations of what more recently has been termed the Anthropocene. I will take her notion of the process character of action as a lodestar in a so-called anarcheological reading of Aristotle that opens for a thinking of unbounded possibility and unbounded affinity, and that shows how Aristotle's ethics, like so many other ethical and moral theories, is really a project of metaphysical closure in the face of the poignantly sensed, but theoretically marginalized, anarchic apertures of communitary life. In order to prepare for an ethics capable of perpetually affirming, rather than closing off, these anarchic apertures of the human condition, I bring the insights won in the anarcheological reading of Aristotle into conversation with accounts of the ethical responses presented by the Native American nation of the Crow toward the end of the 19 th century, when they-in a sense not-dissimilar to what we now experience in the anthropocene-faced the end of the world. I conclude by extracting form this some elements for a thinking of ethics at the end of worlds that affirms the unbounded apertures of human community.

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics’ (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of ‘environmental’ ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? This is the ethical question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deserts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse.

Som a l’inici del segle XXI. Mirem al nostre voltant i descobrim que tota moral és essencialment irracional... Tota? No! Una tradició moral ha estat capaç de superar els embats de la història; la tradició moral aristotèlica es perfila capaç de superar la crítica nietzscheana.

This is an earlier paper (1992), published in the journal of Ancient Greek philosophy, Apeiron. In de Anima Aristotle considers several candidate definitions aiming to answer the question, "What is a living thing?" And "What distinguishes living from non-living things?" I argue that, contrary to some commentators, Aristotle doesn't complete this task until DA II 3-4, and that his conception of a living thing is both teleological-- but also ecological. This alternative reading of de Anima has some modestly surprising implications for Aristotle's hylomorphism.

This paper gives a comprehensive textual interpretation of Aristotle’s account of weak willed akratic action in his Nicomachean Ethics VII, 1-3. It is argued that Aristotle understands weak willed akratic action as a specifically moral phenomenon (not as a problem of the theory of human action), and that he analyses it in terms of a process of self-deception, in which the agent provides herself with a (for her in the particular moment) morally acceptable description of her akratic course of action against her otherwise better knowledge. This allows her (for the moment of sensual affection by the desired course of action) to follow her appetite, while temporarily maintaining her self-esteem as a person of moral integrity.

The notion of collective responsibility is not without its difficulty. One may claim that, as men are responsible for the lives they lead, so collectively they must be responsible for the resultant situation. But that claim is too rapid to be convincing. No doubt, single elements in the resulting situation are identical with the actions or the effects for which individuals are responsible. But the resulting situation as a whole was neither foreseen nor intended, or when it does happen that it was, still such foresight and intention are apt to reside not in the many but the few and rather in secret schemes and machinations than in public avowal. 1 Thus Lonergan on some difficulties in an idea that he will nonetheless go on to defend. In this short note I will look at one difficulty in the idea of collective responsibility by introducing the idea of collective intention. Here we may begin by recalling St. Anselm, " Every will inasmuch as it wills something, wills as it does because of something … Wherefore every will has a what and a why, for we will absolutely nothing unless there be a reason why we will. " 2 Or in other words, we may speak of an agent X who wills an object Y because of an intention Z. The problem as regards common responsibility is that we can suppose two agents (or groups sharing a common aim) who find a common cause in wanting the same object but do so for different reasons. In other words, X1 and X2 both want Y but X1 wants Y for the sake of Z1 but X2 for the sake of Z2 where Z1 ≠ Z2. We may also recall that St. Thomas, in his commentary on that locus classicus of Aristotle on the idea of responsibility, by no means reduces responsibility to intentionality. For he argues that " it is unreasonable to assert that a man who does unjust actions does not wish to be unjust. " And he deploys the metaphor of someone who goes for a walk on a hot day and becomes sweaty. 3 Although it was unintended it was foreseeable that the walker would become sweaty – but concretely the agent is responsible. For here and now the choice is either to walk and get sweaty or to avoid the sweat by not walking: the choice manifests the preference schedules of the agent. In this sense one wills the effect if one wills the cause. Returning to collective responsibility, we can imagine two groups getting together to attain a common object, perhaps agreeing to act in particular circumstances (at a definite time, for example) when the action may be seen to lead to consequences that are actively intended by the first group but not by the other. Indeed, if such intentions were spelled out to the others some of the others would harbour misgivings on that project: X2 does not want Z1. This of course underlines Lonergan's point about " secret schemes and machinations " – for the first group may be aware that their intentions are not commonly shared, and this is why they keep them secret. Still, in this example where certain consequences are foreseen by only one group, we can suppose that eventually those consequences will become obvious to others, at any rate to those willing to raise questions-awkward because they indict X2 for choosing Y when it contributed to Z1 even though X2 did not intend Z1.

Dissertação apresentada ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia da Universidade de Brasília como requisito para a obtenção do
título de Mestre em Filosofia.

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo estudar a virtude intelectual da prudência (φρόνησις) em Aristóteles e ver sua importância para que o indivíduo construa uma vida feliz. Este estudo concentra-se principalmente na Ética a Nicômaco, mas também será utilizado a Ética a Eudemo, o outro tratado aristotélico sobre a ética, como auxílio para compreensão do pensamento do Estagirita sobre a prudência. Para tanto, este estudo está dividido em três capítulos. No primeiro,  analisamos a ideia de Supremo Bem como felicidade. Vemos o que a caracteriza e porque ela é o fim mais desejado. Também é visto qual o tipo de vida que melhor condiz com a função  própria do ser humano. No segundo capítulo, examinamos as virtudes intelectuais e morais. Entretanto, damos uma ênfase maior nas virtudes morais porque são o fundamento para que a phronêsis possa se sobressair. Ademais, analisamos a relação entre a virtude moral e o prazer, pois este último
possui um papel importante na busca da eudaimonia. No terceiro capítulo, tratamos da virtude intelectual da prudência. Vemos suas características, suas partes integrantes, como se desenvolve e atua defronte à realidade. Compreendemos o que é a deliberação  e
a escolha, assim como, estudamos quais são as três virtudes intelectuais menores: boa deliberação, inteligência e ponderação.

We may often find ourselves in a difficult position if someone asked us what features make our friends attractive to us. Some people would probably claim that it's the similarities that bind friends together; others would, oppositely, claim that it's the dissimilarities that explain their friendship. In addition, some people would claim that it's all the particularities that attract us in others while others would claim that it's all the general characteristics that my friend has which are attractive to us. As we will see, Aristotle is in favor of the similarity and generalist side of the debate. In particular, he argues that there is a psychological mechanism in all agents, that helps them detect similar attributes, general in nature, in each other, which are naturally pleasant to both, and can explain their mutual attraction as friends. In this paper, I will defend Aristotle by arguing that his theory has more chances of giving a solid explanation regarding the attraction between friends against the views that favor particularity or dissimilarity as the main roots of attraction that we feel towards our friends. The most important advantage of Aristotle's theory against the others is that it goes deep into the foundations of friendships to detect what is grounded on what. His idea, as I understand him is that even though some people might find their friends attractive due to their particularities or dissimilarities they are both grounded on similarities and general attributes which fundamentally explain their mutual attraction. Despite though the advantages of his theory, Aristotle faces serious objections against both his similarity and generalist view. I answer to several possible objections at the end of the present essay.

Medical ethics is the study of ethics in the context of modern medical practices, medical personnel, technologies, and institutions. The study of medical ethics is indispensable for training ethically informed professionals in a variety of medical fields. • In this course we will utilize a case-study approach in order to explore the personal, historical, legal, economic, and political dimensions of medical ethical issues. • Lectures will be given on normative ethical theory and Rawlsian, Marxist, and Libertarian theories of justice in order to facilitate informed discussion. Collaborative learning and class participation will be of vital importance in this class.

The article studies the relationship between the well-being and the ludic principles of human agency. According to Gwen Gordon the research of the connection between the play and the health (well-being) is highly omitted in contemporary psychology. As the psychological concept of eudaimonism refers primarily to Aristotle’s ethical philosophy, the article starts to analyse Aristotle’s concept of happiness and ethics. It will be shown that Aristotelian ethics has a teleological, morally normative, elitist and universal framing. This is why the idea of eudaimonism, personal singularity and non-normativity in contemporary psychology cannot structurally use its alleged Aristotelian source. The succeeding study of Eudaimonia in Fink and Agamben offers the possibility to use the concept of play as a basic structure of human self-relationship, place of self-development and creation of the real. “To be happy” doesn’t mean in this case to achieve any state of inner harmony, unity and/or flourishing, but to have the capacity to live in a conflict, to go through the moments of destruction and transformation and to create new reality. The article reinterprets Aristotelian concept of happiness which excludes the ludic principles from any form of the “serious”, „real“ well-being and shows how the play can take a genuine part in the mature human personality.

This is a unique opportunity for early career researchers to join The Alan Turing Institute. The Alan Turing Institute (ATI) is the UK’s new national institute for data science, established to bring together world-leading expertise to provide leadership in the emerging field of data science. The Institute has been founded by the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL and Warwick and the EPSRC.

This is a targeted call, by which we intend to recruit researchers in subjects currently underrepresented by our fellowship cohort. Fellowships are available for 3 years with the potential for an additional 2 years of support following interim review. Fellows will pursue research based at the Institute hub in the British Library, London. Fellowships will be awarded to individual candidates and fellows will be employed by a joint venture partner university (Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL or Warwick).

Accompanied by a new translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics X, this volume presents a hybrid between a traditional commentary and a scholarly monograph. Aristotle's text is divided into one hundred lemmata which not only explore comprehensively the content and strength of each of these units of thought, but also emphasise their continuity, showing how the smaller units feed into the larger structure. The Commentary illuminates what Aristotle thinks in each lemma (and why), and also shows how he thinks. In order to bring Aristotle alive as a thinker, it often explores several possible ways of reading the text to enable the reader to make up their own mind about the best interpretation of a given passage. The relevant background in Plato's dialogues is discussed, and a substantial Introduction sets out the philosophical framework necessary for understanding Book X, the final and most arresting section of the Ethics.

The school of Athens is a painting done by Raphael between the year 1509 and 1911, an ancient time that is displayed by the architectural design and the garments that the participant have as well. It brings together Mathematicians, Philosophers and Scientists that were known in different centuries all together to share and accumulate knowledge amongst themselves. The painting was meant to serve as a decoration in the palace of Apostles found in Vatican called the Stanze di Raffaelo. The painting uses allegorical figures that are comprised of thinkers in the ancient times grouped together under a great dome that many researchers argue to have been influenced by the Roman architecture (Blake, 2014).

"My inquiry will focus on an attempt to locate an ethos of music education. Because I acknowledge that the ethos of a society must logically precede a study of ethics (Ryan, 1972, p. 291, Miller, 1974, p. 309), and given the dramatic changes over the past 30 years in the ways that we create, record, store, access, and perform music, much of my exploration will be positioned in an examination of music and new digital media in the 21st century and how it is used by countless adolescents. Thus, in the development of my line of rhetoric I will (1) begin with basic Aristotelian (1984, 1999) notions of art making, artistic activity, and ethos, (2) discuss the relationship between téchne and technology, and (3) téchne and logo, (4) briefly describe the phenomenon of music making in the digitally enriched 21st century, (5) attempt to discover an ethos of music and music education in the 21st century, and (6) based on the possible discovery of an ethos, determine the ethical outcomes regarding curriculum and pedagogy in music education.

I argue that that the profession has not been responsible in the ways that we have constructed an ethos—any notion of ethos—over the past 80 years, in music education textbooks, music curricula, research, and position documents, and in the ways that we (re)present reasons for why music belongs in the schools. Our profession seems to be grasping at straws in our advocacy for ‘justification’ and ‘academic positioning,’ while we may merely need to identify the individuals and communities of people whose lives have been changed by their experiences with music and enlist them to help us (re)define and refine our role not only in education but in society. At best, we may have an ethos that is antiquated and not related to 21st century youth, and most catastrophically, no sensibility regarding the music identity of the majority of youth in digitally enabled nations. It seems that we possess no center, no unified voice, no sense of music of the 21st century, and no sense of “knowing our market” (see Rideout et al, 2010). We need to (re)elaborate what is perceived as ‘music activity,’ in and out of schools and in structured and unstructured learning situations (Gouzouasis & Bakan, 2011). Moreover, we are not speaking to the very people who can understand the need for music education in the schools—the youth of today, who will become the creators and consumers of music and policy makers of tomorrow. Thus, this paper questions how we can create an ethos of music education for our profession without including the individuals who are being ‘educated’ by our notions of music education—our youth themselves.
"

“Vicious Art or Vicious Audience? Understanding the Effects of Art on the Youthful and Vicious Audience in Aristotle’s Poetics”

According to Aristotle, tragedy can be morally instructive if managed correctly. We believe that this qualification—correct management of the instructive capacity of art—requires further investigation. In particular, Aristotle’s apparent acceptance of the arts must be critically reviewed through the lens of his moral psychology. This paper examines an Aristotelian analysis of the effects of tragic art on the moral psychology of persons of different character types. We contend that two distinct groups of people who lack keen moral perception—the youth and vicious people—render the efficacy of moral education through tragedy a delicate matter.
Those who benefit most directly from watching tragedy are what we shall call morally knowing subjects. A morally knowing subject is one who already recognizes the good in general (e.g., it is usually wrong to steal from and murder other people, and it is usually good to be charitable and truthful). Morally knowing subjects include the virtuous, continent, and incontinent characters (and, as we shall discuss, possibly older youths on the brink of developing one of these character types). Such a person has some knowledge of the good and, for that reason, can correctly identify and compare instances of injustice in the plot of a tragedy. The virtuous person is most keen to judge, as she already knows and loves the good. For her especially, tragedy is cathartic. Tragedy allows her to rehearse her moral knowledge while putting it into the context of orthogonal fear and pity. The continent and incontinent persons, like the virtuous, can easily identify sympathetic characters. Watching tragedy helps them to rehearse aligning their emotional responses with their moral knowledge. For them, tragedy can be most instructive. However, this educative value seems contingent upon the subject’s moral knowledge. For example, a morally knowing subject knows, prior to viewing a performance of Medea, that while adultery is wrong, filicide is worse. Such a subject might feel pity for Medea initially when her husband, Jason, betrays her. However, upon the realization that Medea will murder their children in retaliation, the morally knowing subject experiences fear for the children’s welfare, and no longer sympathizes with Medea. Inept moral perception might preclude one from having this morally correct emotional response.
Youths and vicious people each have, in a way, inept moral perception. Youths are uninformed and the vicious misidentify the good. At first blush, it might appear that tragedy would not help such people develop (or improve) their moral character. However, we argue that the spectacle relevant to youths and the vicious is much broader than the stage. Provided the vicious and very young playgoers are surrounded by mostly morally knowing subjects, they too can learn from tragedy. For instance, if a youth or a vicious person were to continue to identify with Medea even after her plans for filicide are apparent, but it is obvious that the majority of people in the audience feel differently, then the youth or vicious person might come to question their own moral judgment.

Table of contents

1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism; 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy; 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a form of life; 4. Epicurus and ethics as care for oneself; 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions; 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism; 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism; 8. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelianism; 9. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism; 10. Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian moral doctrine and Aristotelian ethics; 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry; 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living
13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism; 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality; 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism; 16. Richard Price and intuitionism; 17. Adam Smith and sentimentalism; 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism; 19. Immanuel Kant, the practical use of reason and judgment; 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and a critique of Enlightenment universalism; 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment; 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism; 23. Edmund Husserl and the a priori of action; 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism; 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics; 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism; 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy; 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics; 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics; 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics.