Browsing by Subject "Aristotle"

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Open Access
Aristotle on the naturalness of death from old age
(Akdeniz Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, 2018) Kıymaz, Tufan
In this work, I explore and critically evaluate Aristotle’s views on the naturalness of dying from old age. His views are not straightforward, because Aristotle regards old age as a kind of decay and he talks about decay sometimes as natural and sometimes as unnatural. Nature, according to Aristotle, has two aspects, matter and form. I argue that, in Aristotle’s system, decay is always materially natural but formally unnatural. Likewise, natural death is death caused by old age and although getting old is never formally natural, it is, in a particular sense, materially natural. In Aristotle’s view, getting old does not have the same mechanism as inorganic decay such as wine’s turning into vinegar, but it is a result of the materially natural decay of lungs, which leads to the exhaustion of the vital heat in the heart.
Open Access
Energeia in the Magna Moralia
(Brill, 2023-01) Wolt, Daniel
There 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.
Open Access
Energeia in the magna moralia a new case for late authorship
(Brill, 2021-07-07) Wolt, Daniel
There 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.
Open Access
Inorganic compounds and teleological explanation in Aristotle’s meteorology 4.12
(Brill, 2024-09-23) Krizan, Mary Katrina
Aristotle’s Meteorology 4.12 is puzzling, in part because the chapter appears to extend teleological explanation to include certain inorganic materials without natural biological functions, such as metals and stone. This paper examines two attempts to explain why such materials can have functions, and shows that they are problematic. As an alternative, I argue that raw inorganic materials—as well as separated parts of organisms—can have extrinsic functions. Extrinsic functions can explain why natural inorganic materials can be sorted into natural kinds, even if their functions are ultimately related to their uses in the productive arts.
Open Access
Phronêsis and Kalokagathia in Eudemian Ethics VIII.3
(Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2022-01) Wolt, Daniel
In 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.
Open Access
Re-thinking twelfth-century virtue ethics: the contribution of Heloise
(Taylor & Francis, 2013-07-25) Berges, S.
Twelfth-century ethics is commonly thought of as following a stoic influence rather than an Aristotelian one. It is also assumed that these two schools are widely different, in particular with regards to the social aspect of the virtuous life. In this paper I argue that this picture is misleading and that Heloise of Argenteuil recognized that stoic ethics did not entail isolation but could be played out in a social context. I argue that her philosophical contribution does not end there, but that she departs from both the stoics and her teacher, Abelard, in her defence of the ideal of moderation. By insisting that virtue must strike a mean between two extremes, she shows that Aristotelian virtue ethics were present in the intellectual life of the twelfth century.
Open Access
Understanding the role of the laws in Plato's statesman
(Society for the Advancement of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia, 2010) Berges, S.
In the Statesman, Plato seems to be advocating that in the absence of a true king who will rule independently of laws, the next best thing as far as just rule is concerned is to adhere rigidly to existing laws, whatever they are. The rule of the true king is given as an example of virtuous rule in the sense that virtue politics or jurisprudence holds that laws cannot always deal justly with particular cases. But Plato's view of what we must do when there are no true kings forthcoming seems to preclude a virtue theoretical understanding of politics and laws. In this paper I will investigate the view that the image of the true king, who relies on written laws for convenience only, provides a model for a more realistic appeal to virtue in jurisprudence, that is, a respect of laws that is compatible with equity, in the sense understood by Aristotle.