I try to show that Aristotle does not restrict 'praxis' to those activities which have their end in themselves. NE VI 5, 1140b6-7 need not to be taken as an argument in favour of the restricted interpretation: the wording of the passage is compatible with the interpretation that the end of a praxis is (another) praxis (e.g. eupraxia), the end of a poiesis on the other hand is never a poiesis. This interpretation fits better the use of 'praxis' throughout the (...) NE. MM A 34, 1197a4-12 is discarded since the MM is not written by Aristotle. Next I discuss the relation between the verbs 'prattein' and 'poiein' on the one hand and the corresponding nouns 'poiesis' and 'praxis' on the other, in order to determine their exact meaning. To conclude, Aristotle's distinctions are compared to certain tenets of H. Arendt in her 'Vita Activa'. (shrink)

The article re-examines the Aristotelian backdrop of Arendt’s notion of action. On the one hand, Backman takes up Arendt’s critique of the hierarchy of human activities in Aristotle, according to which Aristotle subordinates action (praxis) to production (poiesis) and contemplation (theoria). Backman argues that this is not the case since Aristotle conceives theoria as the most perfect form of praxis. On the other hand, Backman stresses that Arendt’s notion of action is in fact very different from Aristotle’s (...) praxis, to the extent that Arendt thinks of action as an external to the means-ends scheme, whereas Aristotle ultimately remains caught in this scheme proper to poiesis in thinking of praxis as its own end. According to Backman, Arendt’s concept of action can therefore be understood as a critique, rather than as a rehabilitation, of Aristotelian praxis. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The paper discusses Martin Heidegger’s account of the anyone in Being and Time in connection with his reinterpretation of Aristotle’s categories of poiesis and praxis, carried out in his Lecture on Aristotle’s Ethics. The main purpose of the paper is to rethink the relation between production and action developed in Hannah Arendt’s Vita Activa, by understanding them as two different ways of enacting our relation to the world. By showing the inseparability between anyone and self in Heidegger’s account, and (...) therefore by drawing a parallel between these two different ways of existing and Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of poiesis and praxis, the paper aims at reformulating Arendt’s distinction between work and action. The purpose is to show – with and against Arendt’s conception – that there is no authentic action without a transformation of the sphere of production. Furthermore, by analyzing the constitutive ambivalence of the activity of building, the paper describes – with and against Heidegger’s perspective – the possibility to transform the self-assurance involved in each making, i.e. in our productive way of being. This transformation points to an ongoing process and lies in facing our self-assurance, thereby acknowledging our constitutive groundlessness and building a public and political place. (shrink)

In order to explain the contemporary relevance of Aristotle’s thought, the following discussion explores various examples of Aristotelian theories, concepts, and distinctions which remain at the centre of the philosophical debate. From the domain of logic we consider the notion of category, which was developed by G. Ryle, the distinction between apophantic and semantic discourse, that was stressed by J. Austin, the debate on the principle of non- contradiction, and the theory of fallacies; from the domain of physics, we examine (...) the concepts of substrate, form, continuum, and time, which have been discussed by I. Prigogine and R. Thom; from the field of biology, we consider the function of form in animal generation, which M. Delbrück has compared to the role of DNA; from the field of psychology, we look at the notion of soul as a complex of dispositions, which has been identified by many philosophers as a solution of the “Mind-Body Problem;” from the realm of ethics, we investigate the distinction between action and production, an approach developed by H. Arendt, and the virtue of phronesis, which has been developed by H. G. Gadamer and A. McIntyre. In particular, we discuss the Aristotelian theory of the ambiguity of the concept of being, the notion of “focal meaning,” that has been developed by G. E. L. Owen, and the function of form in the identification of individuals, which has been pursued by M. Frede. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Confronting Aristotle's EthicsDavid DepewConfronting Aristotle's Ethics by Eugene Garver Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. ix + 290. $49.00, cloth.Readers of this journal are likely to be familiar with Eugene Garver's 1994 Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character. The main claim advanced in that important book is that for Aristotle rhetoric is an art because it has internal norms and ends. From this, it follows that although (...) any red-blooded rhetor probably does aim at winning a case, advancing a political career, getting rich, and other external goals, what is artful in rhetorical craft (technikos), and hence expressive of the distinctive human capacity for human rationality, is timely argumentation that binds premises to actionable conclusions through displays of good character and apt emotional response. This ordered combination of ethos, pathos, and logos recruits, or if you will interpellates, an audience that is uniquely capable of judging cases, proposals, and performances reasonably. In this way Aristotle defends rhetoric as a genuine art—an intellectual virtue—against Plato's Gorgias.To arrive at this conclusion Garver draws more widely on other parts of the Aristotelian corpus than rhetorical scholars normally do. In particular, he contrasts external with internal ends by using Aristotle's metaphysical distinction between movements, processes, or behaviors (kineseis), of which the world is chock-full, and actualizations or realizations (energeiai) of capacities, which are more rare. Because rhetorical art, qua artful, is an actualization, Garver infers that it is a "practical art" and so brushes up closely against ethical-political praxis. [End Page 184]How closely? To be sure, they are not identical. Praxis actualizes our rational capacities by issuing in deeds done for their own sake rather than in an ordered series of acts whose intelligibility and worth are, in the end, measured by their outcomes or products, as in arts (poiesis) (46). For this reason a rhetor or a doctor can display artfulness by consciously misbehaving as well as by doing his or her job well, whereas willful misbehavior on the part of a moral agent automatically disbars him or her from possessing practical wisdom (phronesis) at all (46; see Nicomachean Ethics [NE] 1140b22–25). Accordingly, even though moral virtues and technical skills are both acquired by slowly internalizing norms that at first aim only at external ends (29) and are both matched to their distinctive ends through their internal rational norms, Aristotle makes it abundantly clear that "the arts, including rhetoric, do not bring the soul into a good condition" (10). They are not the wellspring or protector of the intrinsically good actions that are constituents of happiness. that role is assigned to moral virtues such as prudence, courage, liberality, and, when these are practiced in relation to others, justice and friendship.Confronting Aristotle's Ethics begins by reviewing the above account of rhetorical art in Garver's earlier book. Precisely because that account posits a greater affinity between ethical virtue and craft knowledge than most contemporary analyses of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Garver feels a need to spell out more carefully than usual why Aristotle thinks that the arts, even at their best, cannot yield the intrinsically good acts that the moral virtues do and why for Aristotle the habitual performance of just such acts is constitutive of happiness (eudaimonia). To answer these questions is the aim of the book.Garver reports that satisfactory answers are surprisingly rare even in otherwise sophisticated contemporary Aristotelian studies (5–7). Now and again he points to one reason why this might be so. Since at least the eighteenth century, Aristotle's ethical theory has been commended by sloughing off its original political integument. Even Hannah Arendt, a devotee of Aristotle's conception of the public life if ever there was one, says that public figures must leave happiness to the private lives of little people. this depoliticization of ethics has allowed contemporary commentators to evade Aristotle's burden of proof. As good readers of Aristotle they may try to distance themselves from people who think that there might be an art of happiness by which one can technically realize one's desires. (Your local Barnes and Noble will... (shrink)

This paper aims to show how Heidegger and Arendt’s reappropriations of Aristotle’s thought are structured around a reinterpretation of the double definition of man as a practical being, that is, aszôon logon echonandzôon politikon. I argue that by interpreting the notions that compose and circumscribe this definition — those of life (zôê),logos, production (poiêsis), action (praxis) and contemplation (theôria), Heidegger and Arendt find the main characteristic of human beings by developing upon two distinct possibilities contained in the ambivalent (...) Aristotelian concept ofpraxis. However, they both blur the distinction between activity (energeia) and motion (kinêsis), which expose their critique oftheôriato two difficulties — one concerning the praxical character oftheôria, the other its temporality. (shrink)

The article exposes diverse historical-philosophical meanings of the concepts of praxis and practice. Using the works of Aristotle, I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, K. Marx, H. Lotze, and H. Arendt, the author demonstrates the main ways of distinguishing between these two notions. The article clarifies meanings of praxis and prudence in Aristotle’s philosophy. The crucial transformation of the sense of practice in classical German philosophy, its further neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian interpretations are also considered. The author reveals a range of categorical (...) forms of comprehending the practical and traces the basic directions of the development of definitions of praxis and practice, indicating the historical-philosophical contexts of their evolution. The article compares the conceptions of the acting subject developed by I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, K. Marx, and H. Lotze. Special attention is given to the explication of H. Lotze’s practical philosophy in building and distributing the conception of active life. Marxist and Lotzean approaches to praxis are compared, and their role in the formation of its current interpretations is revealed. These interpretations are problematized, taking into account the partly reconstructed initial meanings of praxis in Aristotle’s philosophy. The author justifies the relevance of H. Lotze’s legacy in Russian philosophy, examining the categories of social action and active life, the acting subject and society. The article demonstrates prospects for their reconsideration in social philosophy by approaching H. Lotze’s practical philosophy. The conclusion highlights consequences of the replacement of the Aristotelian definition of praxis with the Lotzean version, the possibility and necessity of reproducing the initial sense of praxis as different from practice in diverse historical-philosophical interpretations. (shrink)

Within contemporary philosophy, both Hannah Arendt and Maurice Blondel are distinguished for situating action at the centre of their reflection. Investigation of their philosophical positions is facilitated by their common and constant reference to Aristotle, especially his findings on praxis. More particularly, both cite and comment on Nicomachean Ethics IX 7, where Aristotle discusses the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary. While Arendt uses the text to show how Aristotle undervalued praxis, through confusing it with poiesis, Blondel exploits the (...) passage for his phenomenology of action, which finds its elusive perfection in a friend. (shrink)

H. Arendt developed largely her hermeneutical interpretation of understanding in line with the rethinking of I. Kant’s philosophical heritage. Although she was able to offer a rather original interpretation of the theoretical views of the great German philosopher, her hermeneutic strategy was also influenced by the approaches to their understanding that were proposed by her teachers M. Heidegger and K. Jaspers. Arendt’s hermeneutical teaching proceeds from the need to realize the close unity of practical action and spiritual activity (...) of the human subject - Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa. Accepting the initial position of Heidegger’s metaphysics of finiteness about the “abandonment” of man in the flow of time, Arendt simultaneously follows Jaspers’ call for the need for an existential-hermeneutic interpretation of practical action and the abilities of the spirit by their understanding on the basis of Kant’s legacy. Singling out thinking, will and judgement among the main vectors of self-realization of the spirit, she demonstrates their close relationship with the main types of practical human activity - work, work and action. Analyzing the abilities of the spirit, Arendt emphasizes the major role of thinking, which brings together the processes of knowledge acquisition and meaning creation. It highlights the primacy of the meaning-producing function of the reason in relation to the ability of the intellect to generate true knowledge on the basis of generalization of the data of contemplation. Describing thinking after Kant as a “thing in itself”, Arendt speaks of its involvement in eternity and time in the moment of the present, the ability to generalize the past and design the future. Thinking forms the core of practical reason, which Kant identified with the will, and opens a new horizon of meaning generation in its aspiration to the future. The ability to judge also turns out to be a product of thinking, referring to the past while relying on common sense and imagination. Arendt rightly argues that the “paralysis” of the faculty of judgement, indicating the significance of Kant’s categorical imperative, threatens not only to produce a distorted vision of history, but also the triumph of the “banality of evil” in the sphere of politics. (shrink)

Nicolai Hartmann, in an interesting discussion of Aristotle’s account of moral virtue, has called attention to the difference between the contrariety of opposed vices and the contrast of certain virtues. The äκρa or extremes, somewhere between which Aristotle thought that any morally virtuous disposition must lie, are not conciliable. The same man cannot combine or reconcile, in the same action, cowardice and bravery, intemperance and insensibility, stinginess and thriftlessness, passion and lack of spirit. These are pairs of contraries, between which (...) a virtue lies; but the virtue is not a synthesis of the extremes in a pair. (shrink)

The literary criticism of the Greeks and Romans furnishes some of the most baffling documents which have come down to us from antiquity. Nor could it be otherwise. Few elements of language can be at once so ephemeral and so elusive as the overtones of words used in aesthetic contexts; even in our own language it is only with a conscious effort that the appropriate overtones of words used by quite recent critics can be recalled. Such recall must be much (...) more difficult where the reader is concerned with a dead language; in the case of some terms it may well be virtually impossible; but where the ancient critic is discussing ethical criteria for literature, as Aristotle does in Poetics 13, the modern interpreter is in a somewhat better position, for ethical terms are used in wider contexts, contexts which involve action, and there is more opportunity for studying their usage and endeavouring to recapture their elusive overtones. (shrink)

Arendt's book is an analysis of the vita activa, which comprises the three human activities of labor, work, and action. Her presentation involves a critique of modern and current conceptions of them and of many other social phenomena, and an emphasis on distinctions customarily neglected. The interpretation of her book, disregarding the many factual statements it contains, proceeds in a theoretical vein, analyzing her major conceptions, and then turns practical, asking what we as social scientists who listen to her (...) must do (focusing on ?behavior? and ?action?, ?values?, the means?end scheme, and man's historicity and dualism). The paper concludes with a brief explication of areas of research seen to emerge out of Arendt's work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS ON THE EVALUATION OF HUMAN ACTIONS WILLIAM H. MARSHNER Christendom College Front Royal, Virginia AMONG THE questions dealt with in the Prima Secundae are those of what moral goodness "is" and on what basis it is attributed to some human actions but denied of others. Aquinas's answers are currently a matter of contention between the proportionalists and their critics, as is his answer to the question of how (...) human actions are classified. The presentation in the Prima Secundae does give rise to problems, thanks in part to Aquinas's pedagogical procedure. That procedure can be described as bit-by-bit exposition. Rather than set forth his whole view of a topic in one place, in a synthesis of some sort, and applying it piecemeal thereafter as subsequent questions may demand, the Common Doctor keeps his whole view back, exposing no more of it than is needed to resolve the particular issue at stake in a given article. The result of this, quite often, is that qualifications crucial to a fair comprehension of what he holds are scattered over places far removed from each other. Because what he holds on the classification and evaluation of human actions consists of several parts, each complicated, and all connected, his solution is unsuited to bit-by-bit exposition. Genuine doubts as to what the parts are, and how they come together, can arise. The purpose of the present paper is to present a synthesis that lets the whole picture emerge; as it emerges, certain attempts to read Aquinas in a manner supportive of the proportionalist position will be shown to conflict with the design of the whole. In his preface to qq. 18-20 in the Prima Secundae, Aquinas 347 348 WILLIAM H. MARSHNER describes their subject matter as the goodness or badness (bonitas vel malitia) of human actions. These abstract nouns are derived from the corresponding adjectives, "good" and "bad," and the very first thing Aquinas tells us (in the first sentence of q. 18, a. 1) is that "good" and "bad" are to be asserted of human actions in the same way as they are asserted of other things.' So how is that? A BACKGROUND TOPIC: 'GOOD' AND 'BAD' IN GENERAL If one should take up any item at all-an apple, a shoe-and say that the item is good, would one be purporting only to describe it as it is, or would one be purporting also to evaluate it in light of how it ought to be? Differently posed, does a proposition of the form "x is good" represent a product of speculative reason alone, or does it include an element, at least, from practical reasoning? Recent analytical philosophy is quite clear that the latter option is correct. "Good" and "bad" are terms which express evaluation rather than some sort of disinterested, theoretical description. 2 Aquinas can be read, at least, as holding the same view. In a text in which he defined a completely general sense of "good" (more general, for example, than just "human good"), he said: ratio boni est quod aliquid sit appetibile.3 To make out what this dictum means, two remarks are in order. First, the ratio of a term "T" is the reason anything is called T. Aquinas identified it as the aspect of things which the mind grasps and signifies through "T."4 He meant the aspect which would be "what it takes" for a thing to merit or verify the term, in case the term is applied to it. Thus the ratio of "good" is what it takes for 1 Respondeo dicendum quod de bono et malo in actionibus oportet loqui sicut de bono et malo in rebus.... ' The analytical philosophers derive a portion of their clarity on this issue from the celebrated remarks of David Hume on the difference between "is" and "ought": A Treatise on Human Nature, III, i,l. 3 See ST I, q. 5, q. 1. corpus, and many other places. Aquinas often quoted Aristotle's definition of "good" as what all things seek or tend toward (appetunt); the Stagirite's text is in the Nicomachaean Ethics, book I, chapter 1. 4 Ratio enim significata per... (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] Modern revolution as the beginning of founding a new political order has to confront the vicious circle inhered in all beginnings: in so far as it is the beginning, where does its principle come from? Or, if there is no principle, how could the beginning establish one? Set in the context of modern political experience, the aporia is equal to the problem of how modern politics to be self-grounded or how to reestablish (...) political authority in modernity? By an exploration into the relevant writings of Hannah Arendt, the article tries to investigate the vicious circle of beginning and principle in the political realm, and to point out that Arendt has told a story about the mutual generating of beginning and principle, turning the so-called vicious circle into a hermeneutic circle, in which those implicit principles become explicit through the performance of founding actions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:19. HUME AND BARKER ON THE LOGIC OF DESIGN I find myself in complete agreement with what I take to be the main thesis of Stephen Barker's paper. It is certainly a mistake to concentrate our attention on the negative critique which Hume directed at the modes of argument of his rationalist predecessors and contemporaries and directed even more at the mode of certain conviction with which they presented (...) conclusions arrived at by arguments that did not have a logically compelling force. Hume was very much concerned with the problem of just what kind of force an argument that was not logically compelling could have; and he was even more concerned (perhaps) with the problem of how the logical structure of non-compelling argument could best be exhibited so that the logic of the argument would not be confused with its force. He made significant contributions to both of these problems; and I think he knew what he was doing well enough not to deserve the charge of inconsistency which Barker seems inclined to bring against him. There are some questions which he did not address, for the very good reason that they could only arise, or at least they could only be formulated clearly, as a result of the clarification of our ideas and our situation that Hume himself achieved. His distinction between "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact" may be overly simplistic. But in all its simplicity this distinction is powerful enough to enable Hume to deal quite shortly with any claim that it is inconsistent to want to achieve this goal of knowing and saying what is true, just because we have shown that we have no logical guarantee that we shall achieve it. Christian orthodoxy has always maintained that we are all of us equally "sinners"; but no orthodox Christian moralist has ever maintained the Stoic paradox that all sins are equal. It is precisely because we know that we cannot achieve Stoic wisdom that we cannot possibly be tempted to 20. accept that paradox. Hume's achievement was to show that (in spite of the serpent's false promise) our situation with respect to knowledge has always been just as parlous as our situation with respect to action. But even in these unhappy circumstances it is not inconsistent to strive for whatever measure of truth we can achieve; and to strive at the same time for absolute logical clarity about the limits of our insight and about the comparative merits of all proposed approaches to the goal. But I must not devote my time to an issue that Barker wisely asks us to keep an open mind about. I want to discuss the form and substance of the arguments with which Barker supports the thesis that I do agree with, rather than take up an aside of his that I happen not to agree with. So then, first, let us consider the fault that he finds in the "fifth way" of Thomas. He says that it "begs the question". It "obscures the nexus of controversy" because the first premiss of the syllogism makes a crucial assumption that needs to be proved. Now I deny that the "fifth way" obscures the nexus of controversy in that way. Thomas (and all of his competent hearers) knew perfectly well that his first premiss had not been universally accepted. He was stating the view of Aristotle about the generally purposive character of nature, and he knew that it had been doubted. But he did not think that a rational believer could hesitate about the choice between Aristotle's position and that of the atheist defenders of chance. Anyone who did hesitate was a fool, and arguments could not touch him. That some men were fools, and could "say in their heart, 'There is no God'", was part of the "problem of evil" which we must consign trustfully to the inscrutable wisdom of God (save in so far as Scripture reveals to us the origin of and reason for our fallen condition). In Hume's world, Aristotle's conception of the orderliness of Nature had been supplanted by Newton's. Newton accepted the atomist view that "natural bodies... (shrink)

The democratic principle in its extreme form is the assertation that the mere fact of free birth is alone sufficient to constitute a claim to all offices. It is never the claim of a majority to rule, but it is the demand that every one, whether rich or poor, high- or low-born, shall be equally represented in the constitution. This is what Aristotle calls the principle of numerical equality.-from "Chapter VI: Democracy"One of the most renowned classical scholars of the turn (...) of the 20th century here offers a lucid and highly readable overview of a difficult and little understood aspect of Greek history: its public law, not just how it was structured but how it behaved in action. This 1896 book-perfect for university students, amateur historians, and readers of the history of the law-covers the full range of Greek legal development, from the origin of the city-state and the beginnings of the Greek monarchy to the social and political institutions of the far-flung Greek civilization to the rise of federalism and its long-term historical impact on the cultures that came after.British classical scholar A.H.J. GREENIDGE was a lecturer in ancient history at Brasenose College, Oxford. He is also the author of Roman Public and Private Law (1894), Legal Procedure in Cicero's Time (1901), and Roman Public Life (1901), among many other works of ancient history. (shrink)

Many Greek moralists are eudaemonists; they assume that happiness is the ultimate end of rational human action. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and most of their successors treat this assumption as the basis of their ethical argument. But not all Greek moralists agree; and since the eudaemonist assumption may not seem as obviously correct to us as it seems to many Greek moralists, it is worth considering the views of those Greeks who dissent from it.

Hans-Georg Gadamer's contribution to hermeneutics can be summarized in a nut shell in his thesis that there is a “wirkungsgeschichtliche” dimension in all understanding. In this article I make four remarks on the meaning of this concept. Firstly: the universal claim of Gadamer does not claim to describe the totality of understanding, but only an essential and forgotten dimension. Secondly: there are three ascending perspectives on art, tradition and speaking that constitute together the Wirkungsgeschichte. Every one of them demonstrates that (...) understanding is not primarily an action of objectification, but a happening of participation. Thirdly: there are similar thinking patterns by different philosophers that demonstrate that Gadamer's concept of the Wirkungsgeschichte is not so new and strange. Lastly: Gadamer's use of Aristotle's concept of phronesis or judgement (practical reasoning) is the concretization of the Wirkungsgeschichte and his great contribution to hermeneutics. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.21(4) 2002: 274-290. (shrink)

We have good reason to believe that Nicomachean Ethics VI. 2 is a Nicomachean revision of an originally Eudemian text. Aristotle seems to have inserted lines 1139a31-b11 by means of a marginal note, which the first editor then mistakenly added in the wrong place, and I propose that we move these lines so that they follow the word κοινωνεῖν at 1139a20. The suggested note appears to be Nicomachean for several reasons but most importantly because it contains a desire-based account of (...) the practical intellect as teleologically oriented to action. The NE articulates consequences of this account regarding practical philosophy’s methodology and teleological orientation to action. The EE does not articulate such consequences, and instead seems to assume an object-based account of the practical intellect. Consequently, it would seem that, between the EE and the NE, Aristotle revised his conception of the practical intellect and consequently his conception of practical philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Hellenistic Debates Action, Reason, and Assent Alexander: Aristotle as an Indeterminist Epicurus: Determinism Excludes Freedom Epicurus: Argument against Determinism Stoics: Fate without Fatalism Stoic Causes Assent as Principal Cause A Stoic Defense of Compatibilism References: primary sources.

Virtue ethics now constitutes one of three major approaches to the study of ethics by Anglophone philosophers. Its proponents almost all recognize the source of their approach in Aristotle, but relatively few of them confront the problem that source poses for contemporary ethicists. According to Aristotle, ethikê belongs and is subordinate to politikê. But in the liberal democracies within which most Anglophone ethicists write, political authorities are not supposed to legislate morality; they are supposed merely to establish the conditions necessary (...) for individuals to choose their own life paths. Contemporary ethicists who have addressed this question have proposed three very different answers to the question of how virtue ethics ought to be related to politics in modern nation-states. Martha Nussbaum seeks to provide all human beings with the capacities—intellectual and moral as well as material—they need to choose the best way of life. Arguing that the modern nation-state is incapable of providing its citizens with the education they need to live a good life, Alasdair MacIntyre looks to smaller, tradition-based communities. Because political action is coercive and truly ethical action is voluntary, Douglas den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen insist, ethics and politics should be strictly separated. This article examines each of these attempts to revive an Aristotelian understanding of ethics, bringing out the advantages and problems involved. (shrink)

IT HAS OFTEN BEEN SUPPOSED that Aristotle's account of thought and action imposes severe limits on the functions and scope of practical reason; and insofar as Thomas Aquinas accepts Aristotle's account, he seems to be forced into the same restrictive view of practical reason. Practical reason expresses itself primarily in deliberation ; and the virtue that uses practical reason correctly is the deliberative virtue of prudence. Aristotle believes that deliberation is confined to means to ends, while will is focused on (...) ends. Some ends that are assumed on some occasions may on other occasions also count as means to more ultimate ends; but it seems that the most ultimate ends must be taken for granted in any deliberation. Since every deliberation must take for granted some end to which the deliberation finds means, the conclusions of rational deliberation must ultimately be about means to ultimate ends that are not themselves subject to practical reason. (shrink)

From its beginnings in Aristotle, logic was intended to account not only for reasoning that is theoretical (or conclusion-oriented), but for reasoning that is practical (or actionoriented). However, despite an interest in the topic that continues to the present, the practical side of reasoning has remained broadly speculative. At least in some domains (mathematics, in particular), there are well developed proof-theoretic and semantic theories that yield quite detailed models of correct reasoning, and these models are useful for both theoretical and (...) practical purposes. In contrast, the logical work on practical reasoning has remained broadly speculative and disengaged from applications. Logical formalisms have not been forthcoming that would be useful either in designing an agent that needs to act intelligently, or in helping an intelligent agent to evaluate its reasoning about action. (shrink)

Exploring informal components of clinical reasoning, we argue that they need to be understood via the analysis of professional wisdom. Wise decisions are needed where action or insight is vital, but neither everyday nor expert knowledge provides solutions. Wisdom combines experiential, intellectual, ethical, emotional and practical capacities; we contend that it is also more strongly social than is usually appreciated. But many accounts of reasoning specifically rule out such features as irrational. Seeking to illuminate how wisdom operates, we therefore build (...) on Aristotle’s work on informal reasoning. His account of rhetorical communication shows how non-formal components can play active parts in reasoning, retaining, or even enhancing its reasonableness. We extend this account, applying it to forms of healthcare-related reasoning which are characterised by the need for wise decision-making. We then go on to explore some of what clinical wise reasoning may mean, concluding with a case taken from psychotherapeutic practice. (shrink)

Essays that put noted political thinkers of the past—including Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Wollstonecraft, Marx, and Confucius—in dialogue with current environmental political theory. Contemporary environmental political theory considers the implications of the environmental crisis for such political concepts as rights, citizenship, justice, democracy, the state, race, class, and gender. As the field has matured, scholars have begun to explore connections between Green Theory and such canonical political thinkers as Plato, Machiavelli, Locke, and Marx. The essays in this volume put important figures (...) from the political theory canon in dialogue with current environmental political theory. It is the first comprehensive volume to bring the insights of Green Theory to bear in reinterpreting these canonical theorists. Individual essays cover such classical figures in Western thought as Aristotle, Hume, Rousseau, Mill, and Burke, but they also depart from the traditional canon to consider Mary Wollstonecraft, W. E. B. Du Bois, Hannah Arendt, and Confucius. Engaging and accessible, the essays also offer original and innovative interpretations that often challenge standard readings of these thinkers. In examining and explicating how these great thinkers of the past viewed the natural world and our relationship with nature, the essays also illuminate our current environmental predicament. Essays on Plato • Aristotle • Niccolò Machiavelli • Thomas Hobbes • John Locke • David Hume • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Edmund Burke • Mary Wollstonecraft • John Stuart Mill • Karl Marx • W. E. B. Du Bois • Martin Heidegger • Hannah Arendt • Confucius Contributors Sheryl D. Breen, W. Scott Cameron, Peter F. Cannavò, Joel Jay Kassiola, Joseph H. Lane Jr. Timothy W. Luke, John M. Meyer, Özgüç Orhan, Barbara K. Seeber, Francisco Seijo, Kimberly K. Smith, Piers H. G. Stephens, Zev Trachtenberg, Andrew Valls, Harlan Wilson. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean (...) theme of a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics.Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God. After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics. (shrink)

In this article, Hannah Arendt's concept of action will be used to problematize current transformations of the health care sector and examine some responses by ethicists in light of those transformations. The sphere of human interaction that should typify health care work is identified as an action of unpredictable praxis in contrast to controllable procedures and techniques which increasingly take place in the health care sector.

What I want to call the “Myth of Performativity” is a theoretical conception, mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, about what distinguishes praxis in the strict sense from other kinds of human activities. According to the Myth, actions constitute pure performances—i.e., a sheer display of ethical virtue—and do not leave behind themselves concrete traces in the world—i.e., any traces significant for appraising their goodness. If that is what performativity would amount to, it can only be mythical. So how can the Myth be (...) a pitfall? The reason is that the Myth takes inspiration from a correct understanding of actions: to differentiate actions from other kinds of human activities—for instance, from productions —it is useful to ascribe a sort of performativity to the former. The Myth becomes, however, a real risk once one distorts the performativity proper to actions and, instead, celebrates pure performativity. And the Myth of Performativity in this latter form becomes an irresistible temptation for those who hold inappropriate views about the political realm and the role assumed therein by certain Promethean activities which are supposed to be performative in a paradigmatic way. In this paper I mean to show that, throughout his work, Taminiaux’s concern remains one and the same: to alert us to the dangerous attractions of the Myth of Performativity. I will expound the above claims in two steps; first, by showing—pace Arendt and Taminiaux—that Aristotle himself had militated against the Myth and, second, by demonstrating that the phenomenology of action casts doubt on the legitimacy of the Myth. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous entendons examiner la figure du poète-historien antique dans les textes de H. Arendt. Voyant une filiation entre l’épopée d’Homère et l’historiographie d’Hérodote et de Thucydide, Arendt oppose leurs récits, qui mettent au centre les actions humaines, au concept moderne de processus, porté à son paroxysme par le totalitarisme, qui annihile, de fait, toute possibilité de penser l’action, nécessairement imprévisible. Nous soutenons qu’elle adopte cette parole narrative du poète-historien quand elle pratique elle-même le récit de (...) vie dans Men in Dark Times (Vies politiques), narrant des vies singulières de héros, au sens d’acteurs politiques. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt is often--but somehow not unfailingly--credited, together with Alasdair MacIntyre, Paul Ricoeur and Charles Taylor, as being one of the central voices in the philosophical turn to the concept of narrative of a generation or more ago. Some have even cited her 1958 The Human Condition as providing a particular impetus for later accounts of narrative. This essay examines what contemporary philosophical accounts of narrative might still owe Arendt, exploring her approach to narrative in theory as well (...) as practice. The first part looks at Arendt's use of philosophical sources from the tradition--Aristotle, Augustine and Hegel--with an eye to how her appropriation of these figures differs from that of contemporary philosophers of narrative. Three of Arendt's typically bold and rich claims about narrative action emerge as important: the notion of action as revealing an agent's own daimon: the condition that such action be revealable within a world or shared public space which has resilience yet vulnerability; and the potential for agents revealed within such a world to discover some form of narrative rebirth in their efforts at storytelling. The second section examines the extent to which Arendt herself allowed those claims to be tested and thought through in her own attempts (in Men in Dark Times, Rahel Varnhagen and elsewhere) at constructing biographical narratives. (shrink)

How can we critique political theory when all we have to use are its own conceptual tools? As Hannah Arendt observed, it can only be done through leaps, inversions, and the turning of concepts upside-down. But this twisting operation must be done in order to turn those who philosophize back to the hard work of real life change. In Turning Operations, renowned theorist Mary G. Dietz challenges specific contemporary modes of theorizing politics-from feminist theory to Habermasian discourse- -while appropriating (...) some of political theory's own approaches and some of its most striking figures, including Aristotle, Nietzsche, Weber, Beauvoir, and Arendt in order to foment some leaps, inversions, reversals and turns on politics along the way. Dietz confronts a number of current debates, arguing that most are filled with artificial division and empty terms. She argues that we must abandon commonly supported dichotomies-masculine versus feminine, speech versus action, liberty versus community -to create abetter discourse, and a better world. Turning Operations is an essential new contribution to democratic and feminist political thought. (shrink)

In the article, the author analyzes methodological approaches to the study of the concept of historical responsibility, comparing the German tradition of study with the voluntary actions ontology of M.M. Bakhtin 's. The German tradition, influenced by the thinking of World War II, emphasizes the perception of responsibility in the context of the relationship with guilt, which raises a substantial question about the nature of responsibility and its boundaries. In particular, H. Arendt formulates the concept of banality of evil, (...) focusing on the disappearance of internal perception of responsibility, but does not solve the question of the origins of such feeling. The Russian religious tradition, presented by M.M. Bakhtin, allows to propose a way to solve the issues raised due to the identification of ontological grounds of individual responsibility. Nevertheless, M.M. Bakhtin conclusions are also important for solving the problem of collective responsibility. Bakhtin addresses responsibility as an ontological characteristic of human existence, opposing its freedom. Responsibility manifests itself in acts, but ontologically precedes a separate action performed by a person. The role of the act is that it allows the person himself to understand the burden of responsibility and act on these prerequisites. The transfer of the Bakhtins methodology from individual to collective responsibility makes it possible to link the moment of its occurrence not to public recognition, but to the very fact of the individual 's entry into a certain community. The ontological integrity of the individual also acquires a social dimension, not only synchronic but also diachronic. According to the author, the application of the Bakhtins methodology in the field of social research makes it possible to consider problems of historical responsibility in the context of more fundamental philosophical questions about the relationship between individual and collective identity, the dynamics of identity, the combination of regularity and variability in human behavior. (shrink)

Le present ouvrage propose une etude systematique de la conception de la condition humaine contenue dans Condition de l'homme moderne de H. Arendt. Il en eclaire l'orientation, a la fois par rapport a la tradition ancienne et classique de la philosophie et par rapport au contexte immediat de la phenomenologie et de l'existentialisme contemporains. Il met en evidence une structure de la condition humaine, un agencement des differentes conditions qui la composent et l'accent mis par Arendt sur un (...) pluriel de conditions de base plus que sur les traits generaux habituellement mis en avant (la finitude, la mortalite). Outre la triade bien connue des trois activites fondamentales, le travail, l'oeuvre, l'action, il explicite une triade d'activites mentales, l'intelligence, la connaissance et la pensee. Il examine le statut de la pensee dans la condition humaine et le paradoxe de sa capacite de retrait par rapport a elle. La conception arendtienne de la condition humaine, non depassee a ce jour, est une reference capitale pour l'humanite, aujourd'hui inquiete de l'avenir de son monde. La version allemande du livre de Arendt, remaniee par rapport a l'edition anglaise originale, est prise en compte. (shrink)

This book elaborates a moral realism of phenomenological inspiration by introducing the idea that moral experience, primordially, constitutes a perceptual grasp of actions and of their solid traces in the world. The main thesis is that, before any reference to values or to criteria about good and evil—that is, before any reference to specific ethical outlooks—one should explain the very materiality of what necessarily constitutes the ‘moral world’. These claims are substantiated by means of a text- centered interpretation of Aristotle’s (...) _Nicomachean Ethics_ in dialogue with contemporary moral realism. The book concludes with a critique of Heidegger’s, Gadamer’s and Arendt’s approaches to Aristotle’s ethics. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the central role of praxis in Arendt’s conception of the human world and the structure of political life as a site of subjective interaction and narrative discourse. First, Arendt’s use of Aristotle will be presented in terms of the meaning of action as a unique philosophical category. Second, Arendt’s encounter with the work of Martin Heidegger will be shown to involve a critical response to his reading of Aristotle. Finally, (...) the revised conception of praxis that derives from her philosophical reflections will be related to the experience of narrative as a necessary complement to human plurality. (shrink)

In this article I demonstrate how Hannah Arendt both appropriates and transforms Aristotle’s view of political friendship. I argue that the brief discussion of Aristotelian political friendship in The Human Condition relies on an earlier de-materialization of Aristotle’s work on friendship. This de-materialization of Aristotle’s view of friendship allows Arendt to discuss Aristotelian friendship as a kind of ‘respect’, where ‘respect’ is a philosophical notion unavailable to Aristotle. Ultimately, for Arendt, the experience of friendship opens up a (...) space for human beings to begin to practice a distinct way of seeing one another – a ‘respect’ – that can in turn be practiced in public, making the experience of friendship an important precursor to action. (shrink)

Book synopsis: For the Pre-Socratic philosophers the soul was the source of movement and sensation, while for Plato it was the seat of being, metaphysically distinct from the body that it was forced temporarily to inhabit. Plato's student Aristotle was determined to test the truth of both these beliefs against the emerging sciences of logic and biology. His examination of the huge variety of living organisms - the enormous range of their behaviour, their powers and their perceptual sophistication - convinced (...) him of the inadequacy both of a materialist reduction and of a Platonic sublimation of the soul. In De Anima, he sought to set out his theory of the soul as the ultimate reality of embodied form and produced both a masterpiece of philosophical insight and a psychology of perennially fascinating subtlety. (shrink)

Abstract Hannah Arendt frequently referred to herself as a phenomenologist in that she wished to reveal how action, in the Greek sense of praxis, engenders a public space of appearances or of phenomenality. The life of the Greek city?state, of the polis, was made possible through this activity, this bios politikos. However, beginning with Plato and continuing right down to Hegel and Heidegger, there has been a sustained attempt to cover up and conceal the specific phenomenality of the bios (...) politikos in favour of the bios theoretikos, involving the substitution of poiesis and theoria for the life of praxis. At the roots of this concealment of the active life is a misunderstanding of the true nature of the theoretical and its highest form, namely, thinking. (shrink)

Eudemian ethics -- Nicomachean ethics -- Magna moralia -- Virtues and vices.

This paper compares two influential but conflicting contemporary models of politics as an activity: those of Hannah Arendt and Alain Badiou. It discovers the fundamental difference between their approaches to politics in their opposing evaluations of the contemporary political significance of the legacy of Plato, Platonism, and the Platonic Idea. Karl Popper’s and Arendt’s analyses of the inherently ideological nature of totalitarianism are contrasted with Badiou’s vindication of an ideological “politics of the Idea.” Arendt and Badiou are (...) shown to share an understanding of politics as a realm for the human deployment of novelty and world-transformation. Their key disagreement concerns the form of activity that accomplishes this deployment. For Arendt, political activity has the basic form of noninstrumental and nonteleological action (praxis), devalued by the Platonic tradition of political philosophy. Badiou, by contrast, follows Plato in regarding politics essentially as a process of production (poiēsis) oriented to an ideal end. (shrink)

The question that interests us here can be thus formulated: what is the place of thinking in the structure of the ethical practice? In other words, how does that “mind’s activity”, commonly opposed to the action, lies itself in the practical reasoning capable of signing an ethical sense to the action? Whatever is the relation that we can establish between the thinking and the good, between the aiming of the good and the act that makes it effective, we can ask (...) ourselves if the same happens with their opposites: the lack of thought and the evil. Such question leads us, finally, to the limits of the ethical action as such. However, if it is necessary to well think to well act, can we say that the lack of thought or discernment causes the bad action? Two authors will be mainly mobilized to this study: Hannah Arendt and Aristotle. (shrink)

Aristotle was the first philosopher in the Western tradition to address politics systematically and empirically, and he remains a central figure in political theory. This essential volume presents Aristotle's complete political writings—including his Politics, Economics, and Constitution of Athens—in their most authoritative translations, taken from the complete works that is universally recognized as the standard English edition. Edited by Jonathan Barnes, one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient philosophy, and with an illuminating introduction by Melissa Lane, an authority on (...) ancient political philosophy, this compact but comprehensive volume will be invaluable for all students of politics, philosophy, classics, or Western thought. (shrink)