Browsing by Author "Wolt, Daniel"
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Item Open Access Energeia in the Magna Moralia(Brill, 2023-01) Wolt, DanielThere is no clear consensus among scholars about the authenticity of the Magna Moralia. Here I present a new case for thinking that the work was composed by a later Peripatetic, and is not, either directly or indirectly, the work of Aristotle. My argument rests on an analysis of the author’s usage of ἐνέργεια, which is a fruitful way to investigate the date of the work: the term was apparently coined by Aristotle but in later antiquity came to be used in ways inconsistent with Aristotle’s own usage. I argue that in several passages from the Magna Moralia the term is used in this distinctively late sense and that it is not plausible to think that this innovation could have occured in Aristotle’s own lifetime or shortly thereafter.Item Open Access Energeia in the magna moralia a new case for late authorship(Brill, 2021-07-07) Wolt, DanielThere is no clear consensus among scholars about the authenticity of the Magna Moralia. Here I present a new case for thinking that the work was composed by a later Peripatetic, and is not, either directly or indirectly, the work of Aristotle. My argument rests on an analysis of the author’s usage of ἐνέργεια, which is a fruitful way to investigate the date of the work: the term was apparently coined by Aristotle but in later antiquity came to be used in ways inconsistent with Aristotle’s own usage. I argue that in several passages from the Magna Moralia the term is used in this distinctively late sense and that it is not plausible to think that this innovation could have occured in Aristotle’s own lifetime or shortly thereafter.Item Open Access Philosophy and politics in Julian’s letter to Themistius(2023-02) Wolt, DanielJulian’s Letter to Themistius is one of our most valuable sources for understanding Julian’s political thought. More specifically, it is perhaps our most valuable source for investigating the extent to which Julian’s approach to governance was or was not influenced by his philosophical commitments. Here I focus on this question and argue that, understood in its proper intellectual context, the Letter provides us with good reason for thinking that Julian’s political philosophy (and the programme that he implemented as emperor) was profoundly influenced by the Platonist tradition. While Julian does distance himself both from the philosopher-king of the Republic and the lawgiver of the Laws, this should not be taken as a wholesale rejection of the possibility of an applied Platonist political philosophy. A standard Platonist doctrine by Julian’s time distinguished between not two but three levels of political reform: the divine ideal of the Republic, the second-best state of the Laws, and a third state, arising from reform. A careful reading of the Letter provides support for the idea that Julian aimed at the latterItem Open Access Phronêsis and Kalokagathia in Eudemian Ethics VIII.3(Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2022-01) Wolt, DanielIn Eudemian Ethics VIII.3, Aristotle treats a virtue that he calls kalokagathia, "nobility-and-goodness." This virtue appears to be quite important, and he even identifies it with "perfect virtue" (EEVIII.3, 1249a17). This makes it puzzling that the Nicomachean Ethics, a text that largely parallels the Eudemian Ethics, does not discuss kalokagathia at all. I argue that the reason for this difference has to do with the role that the intellectual virtue practical wisdom (phronesis) plays in these treatises. The Nicomachean Ethics, I argue, makes use of a more expansive conception of phronesis than does the Eudemian Ethics. Hence, the work that is done by kalokagathia in the Eudemian Ethics-crucially, accounting for the unity of the virtues-is done in the Nicomachean Ethics by phronesis.Item Embargo The historiography of philosophy. by Michael Frede(Philosophy Documentation Center, 2023-03-01) Wolt, DanielItem Open Access Two conceptions of voluntary action in the Nicomachean Ethics(Wiley, 2020) Wolt, DanielIt is nearly universally agreed among commentators that according to Aristotle's account of voluntary action in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), only voluntary actions are blameworthy. I argue for a qualified rejection of this assumption: some actions that Aristotle counts as blameworthy do not meet the criteria for voluntariness set out in NE 3.1. However, in NE 3.5 and elsewhere, one finds a broader conception of voluntary action, and it is true that, for Aristotle, an action must be voluntary on this broader conception in order to be blameworthy. While the narrow conception only counts actions that are under the agent's direct control as voluntary, the broader conception includes also actions that are under the agent's indirect control. The compresence of these two conceptions in the NE is not simply a matter of sloppiness on Aristotle's part. Rather, he has good philosophical reasons for employing both.