Philosophy Commons^™

Theoria As Practice And As Activity, Julie Ward

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Book X chapter 7 of Nicomachean Ethics (henceforth, EN), Aristotle reaches two decisive conclusions: frst, the activity of our intellect which he terms θεωρία is the highest kind and comprises “complete happiness” (ἡ τελεῖα εὐδαίμονια, EN 1177a19); second, a theoretical life, being divine, counts as the highest, and is the one to aim at (EN 1178a5-7). These are compelling claims, rightly generating much scholarly comment, particularly about the balance of excellent theoretical and moral activity in the best human life.2 Yet the present paper proposes to follow a diferent standard, one with a broader, thematic approach to θεωρία. My …

Classical Philosophical Approaches To Lying And Deception, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

This chapter examines the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on lying. It it outlines the differences between different kinds of falsehoods in Plato (real falsehoods and falsehoods in words), the difference between myths and lies, the 'noble' (i.e., pedigree) lie in The Republic, and how Plato defended rulers lying to non-rulers about, for example, eugenics. It considers whether Socrates's opposition to lying is consistent with Socratic irony, and especially with his praise of his interlocutors as wise. Finally, it looks at Aristotle's condemnation of lies, and asks whether lies to enemies, and self-deprecating lies by the magnanimous person, are …

The Mall Ain’T Dead Yet! An Aristotelian Argument For The Continuation Of Physical Retail Space With The Rise Of Modern Technology, Tarah Gilbreth

CMC Senior Theses

According to Aristotle, for a human being to live their best life, that is a life that flourishes, is to live a political life. A political life is lived best in a polis , or a self - sufficient community, so therefore, the most flourishing human life is one lived in a polis . Also, for a polis to be self - sufficient, its citizens must be flourishing, so there exists a special sort of constitutive relationship between the polis and its citizens. There are certain capacities available to human beings in the polis that promote their flourishing (namely loyalty …

Learning To Live And Love Virtuously, Henry Deruff

CMC Senior Theses

John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant authored two of the most famous pieces of work in ethical theory (Utilitarianism and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, respectively), yet both fail for various reasons to give us direction by way of living good lives. This thesis begins by outlining those shortcomings, before offering Aristotelian virtue ethics as the solution. Virtue ethics, as conceived by Aristotle, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Julia Annas, delineates a process – grounded in our real lives – by which we may improve as people and therefore flourish, or live good, moral lives: the habituation of the …

Aristotle On Democracy And Democracies, Kevin M. Cherry

Political Science Faculty Publications

It is a commonplace that Aristotle, like his teacher Plato, was a critic of democracy. This is, to a certain extent, true: Plato and Aristotle both saw democracy, at least as practiced in Athens, as prone to tumultuousness and imprudence. The failed Sicilian expedition, the execution of Socrates, the failure to heed Demosthenes's warnings about Philip of Macedon and Aristotle's own reported flight from Athens all highlighted the weaknesses of Athenian democratic institutions. Yet Aristotle's understanding of political science requires him to consider not only what the simply best regime might be, as Socrates purports to do in the Republic, …

Homonymy And The Comparability Of Goods In Aristotle, Robert Duncan

Dissertations

My dissertation will draw attention to an underexplored problem in Aristotle's theory of the good and advance two alternative proposals about how it can be solved. Aristotle endorses an inconsistent triad of premises concerning homonymy, comparability, and goodness. First, he argues that the good is homonymous: there is no single characteristic, goodness, which is shared by all good things. Rather, he argues that different kinds of good things require different accounts specifying what it is for them to be good. Second, he holds that homonyms are incomparable. If two things are homonymously F, then we are not entitled to claim …

From Taquería To Medical School: Juan Carlos, Aristotle, Cognitive Enhancements, And A Good Life, Glenn "Boomer" Mac Trujillo

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper begins with a vignette of Juan Carlos, an immigrant to America who works to support his family, attends classes at a community college, and cares for his ill daughter. It argues that an Aristotelian virtue ethicist could condone a safe, legal, and virtuous use of cognitive enhancements in Juan Carlos’s case. The argument is that if an enhancement can lead him closer to eudaimonia (i.e., flourishing, or a good life), then it is morally permissible to use it. The paper closes by demonstrating how common objections to cognitive enhancement fail to undermine Juan Carlos’s justifiable use of the …

Differentiating Averroes’ Accounts Of The Metaphysics Of Human Epistemology In His Middle And Long Commentaries On Aristotle’S De Anima, Caleb H A Brown

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

Averroes (an Islamic Andalusian philosopher in the 12^th century) discusses the metaphysics of human epistemology extensively, and his socio-religious context sheds light on this discussion. Several of his works, most prominently his three commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima, attempt to explain how finite, particular minds interact with universal, eternal intelligibles. Current scholarship focuses on the two longer commentaries, the Middle Commentary and the Long Commentary, but there is no consensus regarding which of these presents Averroes’ final articulation of the metaphysics of human epistemology. Those who maintain that Averroes wrote the Middle Commentary last tend to minimize …

What's So Private About Private Property?, Matthew Blake Wilson

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This work attempts to determine what kinds of institutions—if any—the state should implement to protect private property, and investigates how individuals and communities operating within those institutions ought to behave. Because the laws produced by such institutions may conflict with community rights, social welfare, and justice, the political authorities—including judges and legislators—who operate the institutions must determine whether, and under what conditions, individual property rights ought to prevail over conflicting rights. I argue that considerations of privacy are necessary for making these determinations. Privacy—the condition that requires limitations upon the ability of others to access one’s physical spaces—has normative significance …

Aspects Of Intentionality In Two 16th Century Aristotelians, James B. South

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Aristotle And Game Theory On Human Nature And Ethics, Beau R. Revlett

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

This paper considers whether Aristotle’s ethics is consistent with one modern scientific view of humans. The modern scientific view discussed is based on Nancy Cartwright’s argument that game theory uncovers something akin to the Aristotelian natures of humans. Following Martha Nussbaum, this paper focuses on the role of human nature in Aristotle’s ethics. Specifically, it focuses on two kinds of ethical conclusions Aristotle grounds in claims about human nature: one about what can be coherently desired for a human being, one about the social arrangements appropriate to human beings. This paper considers Nussbaum’s interpretation that Aristotle’s claims about human nature …

Being Wise Before Wisdom: The Historical Development Of Phronēsis From Homer To Aristotle, And Its Consequences For Hans-Georg Gadamer's Hermeneutic Ethics, Giancarlo Tarantino

Dissertations

Hans-Georg Gadamer claims that the Aristotelian concept of "phronesis" or "practical wisdom" plays a decisive role throughout the process of interpretation and understanding. Scholars have often been divided over just what this means or entails for hermeneutics. This dissertation argues for a strongly ethical reading of Gadamer's claim, based on (1) a Gadamerian view of the nature of concepts and conceptuality, and (2) an historical reconstruction of the development of phronesis from Homer to Aristotle. Recovering forgotten and underappreciated historical features of phronesis allows for a critical revaluation of Gadamer's philosophy as a whole, including the outlines of an "emotionally …

Character Luck And Moral Responsibility: The Character Of The Ordinary Person In Aristotle's Rhetoric And Politics, Marcella Linn

Dissertations

There are many significant factors, such as one’s natural temperaments and upbringing, that are outside of one’s control and affect one’s character. This calls into question one’s responsibility for one’s character, and if we are not responsible for our characters, then it seems we cannot be held responsible for the many actions that stem from them. I will show how a person can be responsible for her character and actions stemming from it despite the pervasiveness of character luck. To do this, I develop an account of character and responsibility from various passages in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric, and Politics. …

The Poet And The Polemist: Demystifying The Natural Law Theory Of John Milton, John J. Mazola

Theses and Dissertations

A summation of the influences behind Milton's Natural Law theory as found in the works of Aristotle, Grotius, Hobbes, and Thomas Aquinas. The essay's intent is to uncover this important thread that runs through both Milton's Poetic Verse as well as his Polemic tracts.

Construing Character: Virtue As A Cognitive-Affective Processing System, Denise Vigani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation, Construing Character: Virtue as a Cognitive-Affective Processing System, develops an empirically plausible account of neo-Aristotelian virtue based on the psychological model of personality as a cognitive-affective processing system. The psychological model holds that an individual’s subjective construal of a situation is crucial to understanding that individual’s behavior. The account of virtue developed in the dissertation begins, therefore, with an elaboration of the distinctive way in which the virtuous person construes situations, which is used to develop and defend a McDowellian view of practical reasoning. Aristotle’s method of individuating the virtues is defended and employed to outline a …

Aristotle, The Pythagoreans, And Structural Realism, Owen Goldin

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Aristotle’s main objection to Pythagorean number ontology is that it posits as a basic subject what can exist only as inherent in a subject. I then show how contemporary structural realists posit an ontology much like that of Aristotle’s Pythagoreans. Both take the objects of knowledge to be structure, not the subject of structure. I discuss both how pancomputationalists such as Edward Fredkin approach the Pythagorean account insofar as on their account all reality can in principle be expressed as one (very big) number, made up of discrete units, and even more moderate varieties of structural realism, like that of …

Ancient Animal Ethics: The Earliest Arguments For The Ethical Consideration Of Nonhuman Animals, Joshua J. Sias

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Primarily focused on the ancient Greek philosophers, this work offers a survey of the earliest arguments for and against the inclusion of nonhuman animals in human realms of ethical consideration. By following the trends of ancient western thought concerning animal ethics, the influencing factors behind the downfall of the subject in Medieval times, both in terms of discourse and practice, is discovered in the philosophical exchange that preceded medieval thought.

Aristotle's Clivus Naturae, John Thorp

Philosophy Presentations

It is usually thought that Aristotle's understanding of the soul sees it has having four distinct parts, cumulatively arranged, resulting in a kind of scala or ladder: all living things have the nutritive and reproductive soul; animals have, in addition, the sensitive soul, and most of them also the locomotive soul; only humans have all these plus the intellective soul. This ladder-like picture emerges from his theoretical work de Anima. In his more empirical studies, though, the discreteness of these levels is softened, and the image is more that of a clivus or slope, rather than a scala or ladder …

The Cognitive Implications Of Aristotelian Habituation And Intrinsic Valuation, David F. Mccaslin

CMC Senior Theses

Habituation in the Aristotelian tradition claims that we develop our moral virtues through repeated and guided practice in moral actions. His theory provides important insights for moral education and as a result many contemporary philosophers have debated how to properly interpret his writing. This thesis will explore Aristotelian habituation and the competing interpretations surrounding it, namely the cognitivist and mechanical views. It will then criticize the mechanical view and argue that the intrinsic valuation of virtuous actions evidences a cognitivist interpretation of habituation in the Aristotelian tradition.

Topic 6: Aristotelian Ethics: The Virtue Of Success, Lee Eysturlid

Considerations in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Virtue, Oppression, And Resistance Struggles, Trevor William Smith

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation explores and develops an account of the moral obligation to engage in resistance struggles against oppression and it does so by situating oppression squarely within the framework of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. It is argued that when oppression is investigated through the lens of virtue ethics the harmful and damning nature of oppression must be understood as a substantial moral, not merely political, problem. In short, it is shown that oppression acts in a variety of ways as a barrier for the achievement of flourishing for the oppressed. Turning from, and building on, this investigative and largely descriptive analysis …

Demarcating Aristotelian Rhetoric: Rhetoric, The Subalternate Sciences, And Boundary Crossing, Marcus P. Adams

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The ways in which the Aristotelian sciences are related to each other has been discussed in the literature, with some focus on the subalternate sciences. While it is acknowledged that Aristotle, and Plato as well, was concerned as well with how the arts were related to one another, less attention has been paid to Aristotle’s views on relationships among the arts. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle’s account of the subalternate sciences helps shed light on how Aristotle saw the art of rhetoric relating to dialectic and politics. Initial motivation for comparing rhetoric with the subalternate sciences is Aristotle’s …

Divine Practical Thought In Plotinus, Damian Caluori

Philosophy Faculty Research

Plotinus follows the Timaeus and the Platonist tradition before him in postulating the existence of a World Soul whose function it is to care for the sensible world as a whole. It is argued that, since the sensible world is providentially arranged, the World Soul’s care presupposes a sort of practical thinking that is as timeless as intellectual contemplation. To explain why this thinking is practical, the paper discusses Plotinus’ view on Aristotle’s distinction between praxis and poiêsis. To explain why it is timeless, it studies Plotinus’ view on Aristotle’s distinction between complete and incomplete actuality. The …

Notes On The Moral History Of Usury, John Thorp

Philosophy Presentations

No abstract provided.

Heidegger And The Problem Of Modern Moral Philosophy, Megan Emily Altman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The guiding question of this project is, "Why does it count as a critique of Heidegger that he does not defend a particular moral position?" A standard criticism levied against Heidegger is that, since he has nothing positive to say about post-Enlightenment moral theory, he has nothing to contribute to moral philosophy, and this marks his greatest shortcoming as a philosopher. Why is there a demand for Heidegger, or any other philosopher, to theorize about morality, when we do not have this expectation for, say, aesthetics, theology, or various other regional domains of human life? Why should we expect Heidegger …

A Voice Full Of Money: Metaphor And The Art Of Meaning, Kathryn V. Mccracken

Senior Honors Theses

The common definition of metaphor as a “comparison between two things that does not include the words ‘like’ or ‘as’” has, in the recent decades, lost the respect of serious students of language. Originating in Aristotelian thought, this “Comparison Theory” of metaphor is oversimplifying and therefore inadequate. By using examples to outline these inadequacies, a more accurate, more robust view of metaphor emerges. Far from being a mere literary flourish, the concept of metaphor—especially as metaphor is identified as the means through which symbols function—is at the very base of the general process of meaning conveyance through language.

In order …

Reflections On Reading Plato And Aristotle At Lancaster, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

While serving as a Visiting Fellow at Lancaster University, I was asked to lead an informal seminar on Classical Philosophy. It was to be a reading group of postgraduate students and staff, focusing on two foundational texts of Western civilization: Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. I happily accepted. The resulting two-hour, weekly sessions over Michaelmas Term were lively times of philosophical effervescence, full of probative questions, interesting interpretations, diverse evaluations, vigorous debates, and shared insights. Postmodernists engaged in the holy act of Interpreting the Text, we nonetheless strained to grasp the “true meaning” of the texts, to extend our …

Busting Myths About ‘Species’, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lying For The Sake Of The Truth: The Ethics Of Deceptive Journalism, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

Should journalists go undercover and misrepresent who they are in order to write exposé stories? This chapter examines the case of Ken Silverstein, the Washington editor of Harper's Magazine. Silverstein lied to lobbying firms about being a prospective client so he could expose firms' strategies to help tyrannical regimes and dictators. Although a utilitarian ethical approach would dictate that Silverstein should have gone undercover and lied to obtain the truth, an approach based on virtue ethics would discourage such actions.

Speaking And Rhetoric In The Community: The Implications Of Aristotle's Understanding Of Being, Logan C. Vescio

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes Martin Heidegger's early interpretation of Aristotelian concepts. The goal is to acquire an increased understanding of the ideas underlying Aristotle's political philosophy, as well as those underlying Heidegger's own later philosophy. The investigation begins with a critique of Kantian logic and the assumptions which underlie it, which are ultimately traced back to Aristotle. The passages that pertain to Kant's interpretation are assessed by Heidegger, who concludes that it is speaking, not explicit definition, that grounds possibility for life in a human sense. To demonstrate Heidegger's argument, the thesis transitions into an assessment of the Greek view of …