scholarly journals Philia: the biological foundations of Aristotle’s ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Torres
Keyword(s):  
Building Block ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Biological Mechanisms ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Biological Perspective ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
Ethics And Politics

AbstractThis article is the first one to offer an investigation, from a biological perspective, of “natural philia” or “kin-based” philia (commonly translated as “friendship”) in Aristotle’s practical philosophy. After some preliminary considerations about its place in Aristotle’s ethical treatises, the discussion focuses on Aristotle’s biology. Here we learn that natural philia, couched in terms of a biological praxis rather than a trait of character, is widespread in the animal kingdom, although in different ways and to varying degrees. To account for such differences, Aristotle establishes a Scala Philiae in two different biological texts—Historia Animalium and Generation of Animals—where natural bonds in animals are classified in view of their strength and duration. Each level of Aristotle’s Scala is examined. Finally, the argument returns to Aristotle’s ethical and political texts, drawing greater attention to the biological mechanisms that underlie natural philia in human beings. I conclude that natural philia provides one fundamental biological building-block of Aristotle’s ethics and politics.

scholarly journals PLATÃO: AS PAIXÕES DA UNIDADE "CORPOALMA" SEGUNDO O TIMEU

Sapere Aude ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
Maria Dulce Reis
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
The Status ◽  
Present Text ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Uma das últimas obras escritas por Platão, o Timeu, nos parece um dos textos mais ricos para identificarmos o estatuto das paixões na filosofia de Platão: a origem dessas paixões/afecções, suas propriedades, seu papel no equilíbrio psíquico e na condução das ações humanas. Tal riqueza, profundidade e extensão teórica constituiu grande parte de nossa tese de doutoramento, que visou demonstrar a articulação entre Psicologia, Ética e Política nos diálogos República, Timeu e Leis. No presente texto, nos limitaremos a apresentar nossa interpretação a respeito de passagens da cosmologia do Timeu dedicadas a tratar da constituição da unidade corpoalma humana, o que inclui suas afecções. Nosso recorte limita-se a mostrar que as afecções – próprias ao que há de apetitivo, irascível e racional na unidade corpoalma humana – decorrem da encarnação, e o seu direcionamento psíquico é capaz de conduzir os seres humanos à saúde ou à doença, à virtude ou ao vício.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Platão. Filosofia Antiga. Psicologia. Páthos. ABSTRACT:One of the last works written by Plato, the Timaeus, seems to us one of the richest texts to identify the status of passions in Plato's philosophy: The origin of the passions/affections, their properties, their role in the psychic balance and the conduct of human actions. Such wealth, depth and theoretical extension constituted a large part of our doctoral thesis, that aimed to demonstrate the articulation between Psychology, Ethics, and Politics in the dialogues Republic, Timaeus, and Laws. In the present text, we shall confine ourselves to our interpretation of passages in the cosmology of the Timaeus devoted to the constitution of the human body-soul unity, which includes its affections. Our clipping is limited to showing that the affections - proper to that which is appetitive, irascible and rational in the human body-soul unity - elapsed from the incarnation and its psychic direction are capable of leading human beings to health or sickness, into virtue or vice.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Platão. Filosofia Antiga. Psicologia. Páthos.

scholarly journals The Modernity of Aristotle’s Ethics

MANUSYA ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Charles Freeland
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The Many ◽  
Theoretical Science

Aristotle understood ethics to be a practical rather than a theoretical science. It is a pragmatics, if you will, concerned with bringing about a good life . But the problem and the question from which Aristotle’s ethics begins arid to which it constantly returns concerns the relation of the theoretical to the practical: his concern is for the type or mode of discourse one could use in providing an account of the good life (Eudaimonia). Is this a propositional, apophantic discourse, a discourse claiming to represent the truth and what is true and from which one could then go on to prescribe a course of action, or, and this may be closer to Aristotle, is the philosophical discourse on ethics rather a descriptive one which takes humankind for what it is, not what it ought to be? This relation between theory and practice, between description and prescription, between science and action, is a question and a problem for Aristotle. It is my purpose to take up this question in connection with Aristotle’s texts on Eudaimonia. Another question shall be raised here: What is the relevance of Aristotle’s treatment of Eudaimonia to our contemporary, “modern” concern for ethics and the good life? I would assume, naively perhaps, that even today we are not indifferent to this question of what is a good life, and that we are not indifferent to the many ways in which the “good life” has been described. It would seem, then, that Aristotle’s texts have a particularly striking importance for us today insofar as we prolong the philosophical questioning of the possibilities for ethical and political discourse today and continue to ask who and what we are as human beings.

scholarly journals Kant’s ethics as practical philosophy: On philosophy of freedom

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 25-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ľubomír Belás
Keyword(s):  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Compact Form ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
Linguistic Form ◽  
Kant's Ethics

Abstract The paper focuses on some important philosophical issues of Kant’s philosophical legacy, especially on Kant’s thoughts on man and his acting in community with other human beings, his fellows, (Conjectural Beginning of Human History) from the aspect of morality based on moral-practical terms and categories. The field of Kant’s practical-critical thoughts is not only unusually broad but also full of ideological dynamics offered in a precise and modern linguistic form. The paper claims that Kant offers his own answer for the fourth question “Was ist der Mensch” (“What is man?”), introduced in Logic (Kant, 1992, p. 538) and at the same it also introduces a historical dimension to the issue of man, included in his short writings, in a compact form.

scholarly journals ὁμόνοια: The Hinge of Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics?

Dialogue ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-30
Author(s):  
THORNTON C. LOCKWOOD
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Scholarship on the political ramifications of Aristotle’s account of friendship has focused on “political friendship” and has lost sight of the importance of his account of “like-mindedness” or “concord” (ὁμόνοια). Such a focus is mistaken for a number of reasons, not least of which is that, whereas Aristotle has a determinate account of like-mindedness, he has almost nothing to say about political friendship. My paper examines the ethical and political aspects of like-mindedness in light of a disagreement between Richard Bodéüs and René Gauthier about the autonomy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a work of ethical theory.

The Neurophilosophy of Pain

Philosophy ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 66 (256) ◽  
pp. 191-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Gillett
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Qualitative Properties ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Physiological Mechanisms ◽  
The One ◽  
Mental Events

The ability to feel pain is a property of human beings that seems to be based entirely in our biological natures and to place us squarely within the animal kingdom. Yet the experience of pain is often used as an example of a mental attribute with qualitative properties that defeat attempts to identify mental events with physiological mechanisms. I will argue that neurophysiology and psychology help to explain the interwoven biological and subjective features of pain and recommend a view of pain which differs in important respects from the one most commonly accepted.

scholarly journals The Soul, the Virtues, and the Human Good: Comments on Aristotle's Moral Psychology

Labyrinth ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Kathi Beier
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
Ethical Inquiry ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

In modern moral philosophy, virtue ethics has developed into one of the major approaches to ethical inquiry. As it seems, however, it is faced with a kind of perplexity similar to the one that Elisabeth Anscombe has described in Modern moral philosophy with regard to ethics in general. For if we assume that Anscombe is right in claiming that virtue ethics ought to be grounded in a sound philosophy of psychology, modern virtue ethics seems to be baseless since it lacks or even avoids reflections on the human soul. To overcome this difficulty, the paper explores the conceptual connections between virtue and soul in Aristotle's ethics. It claims that the human soul is the principle of virtue since reflections on the soul help us to define the nature of virtue, to understand the different kinds of virtues, and to answer the question why human beings need the virtues at all. 

V Teaching Virtue: The Sophists on Happiness and Success

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 96-110
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
Conceptual Schemes ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Human World ◽  
Ethics And Politics

One frequently overlooked aspect of the sophists’ reflection concerns the kind of problems that today might be included in an ethical treatise, such as happiness and pleasure. Usually it is claimed that the sophists shifted the focus of enquiry from nature to the human world, but then the emphasis is almost exclusively placed on the political side of these investigations (which is no doubt significant, as we have seen in the previous chapter). This is a misleading perspective, which applies modern conceptual schemes to the ancient world, creating distortions and misunderstandings. Before Aristotle, there is no point in distinguishing between the ethical and the political spheres, since ethics and politics ultimately constitute two aspects of the same problem: how to reach fulfilment and thus lead a happy life. Certainly, in order to answer this question it is necessary to embark on an analysis of political problems, such as justice or the best form of government: the fact that human beings live together is something that must be taken into account. But the ultimate goal is self-realization. This is the end towards which everyone tends.

ECOLOGICAL ETHICS AS A CULTURAL EVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITY

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-285
Author(s):  
Lubov Vladykova
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ecological Ethics ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Natural Substances ◽  
Ecological Aspects ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Ethics And Politics

The present paper deals with the project of ecological ethics as a distinctive field of ethics, transgressing the sphere of interpersonal relations to which ethics used to be restricted until relatively recently. Ecological ethics articulates the relation between human beings and other living entities and alternatively other nonhuman natural substances. Ecological ethics has become an interdisciplinary poly-discourse, an attempt to draw attention to the deeper meaning of life; it has become a new way of reflecting on our place in the natural world by raising questions about what we need to know (competence of science), how we need to act (competence of ethics and politics) with regard to the environmental and ecological aspects of understanding of our existence. In addition, the present paper adds to these theoretical implications the concept of pronaturalness[1]based on the fact that our decision to adopt this attitude determines our status of moral, rational and intelligent beings capable of amplifying our positions and perspectives of nature in a global context.

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