Aristotle on Wittiness

2019 ◽  
pp. 103-121
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Ethical Virtue ◽  
Complete Account

This chapter offers a complete account of Aristotle’s underexplored treatment of the virtue of wittiness (eutrapelia) in Nicomachean Ethics 4.8. It addresses the following questions: (1) What, according to Aristotle, is this virtue and what is its structure? (2) How do Aristotle’s moral psychological views inform Aristotle’s account, and how might Aristotle’s discussions of other, more familiar virtues, enable us to understand wittiness better? In particular, what passions does the virtue of wittiness concern, and how might the virtue (and its attendant vices) be related to the virtue of temperance (and its attendant vices)? (3) How does wittiness, as an ethical virtue, benefit its possessor? (4) How can Aristotle resolve some key tensions that his introducing a virtue of wittiness apparently generates for his ethics? In addition to exploring these questions, this chapter challenges some commonly accepted accounts of Aristotle’s views on the nature of the laughable.

Aristotelian and Neoplatonic Ethics in Michael Psellos and John Italos

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-146
Author(s):  
Dominic J. O’Meara
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ethical Virtue

"This paper examines the use made by Michael Psellos and John Italos of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics together with Neoplatonic sources (in particular Porphyry’s Sentences) on the subject of virtue. Examining chapters 66-81 of Psellos’ De omnifaria doctrina and Essays 81 and 63 of Italos’ Problems and Solutions, I argue that both philosophers have a coherent theory of virtue which integrates Aristotelian ethical virtue in the Neoplatonic hierarchy of the virtues. Keywords: Psellos, Italos, Aristotle, ethics. "

Reading the Nicomachean Ethics as an Investigation

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-196
Author(s):  
Guy Schuh
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Small Point

Abstract Aristotle tells us that the Nicomachean Ethics is an “inquiry” and an “investigation” (methodos and zētēsis). This paper focuses on an under-appreciated way that the work is investigative: its employment of an exploratory investigative strategy—that is, its frequent positing of, and later revision or even rejection of, merely preliminary positions. Though this may seem like a small point, this aspect of the work’s methodology has important consequences for how we should read it—specifically, we should be open to the possibility that some contradictions in the text are the result of his employment of this investigative strategy. In the paper, I describe this investigative strategy, discuss what motivates Aristotle to employ it in the work, and go through three contradictions that are plausibly identified as examples of its use—specifically, his claims that courageous people do and do not fear death, that friendship is and is not mutually recognized goodwill, and that virtuous people do and do not choose noble actions for their own sake.

‘Ought’ in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Annas
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics

Much attention has been paid to the issue of whether, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle uses what we would recognize as deontic concepts. On the basis of a study of dei and other constructions I argue that Aristotle’s use of them is often misconstrued and should be interpreted as giving reasons that are reasons of virtue, not a distinct alternative. Many issues remain live in the interpretation (and the translation) of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; in this essay I offer a contribution to one of these, the nature and role of deontic concepts in the work. I offer this essay with pleasure to a celebration of Terry and Gail’s work.

Practical Truth

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Charles
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Third Way ◽  
The Third ◽  
Two Component ◽  
Major Competitor ◽  
Additional Support

This paper concerns Aristotle’s discussion of practical truth in Nicomachean Ethics VI.2.1139a17–b5. The essay falls into five sections. In the first three, I outline two styles of interpretation of Aristotle’s remarks and suggest that one of them (which I call ‘the third way’) gives a better reading than that offered by its major competitor (which I call ‘the two-component’ view). In the fourth I consider some texts in the remainder of NE VI which provide additional support for the third way of reading. In a brief concluding section, I seek to locate Aristotle’s view of practical truth, so understood, in a broader philosophical context.

Aristotle on How Pleasure Perfects Activity (Nicomachean Ethics x.5 1175a29-b14): The Optimising-View

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Machek
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis article offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s ambiguous and much-discussed claim that pleasure perfects activity (NE x.4). This interpretation provides an alternative to the two main competing readings of this claim in the scholarship: the addition-view, which envisages the perfection conferred by pleasure as an extra perfection beyond the perfection of activity itself; and the identity-view, according to which pleasure just is the perfect activity itself. The proposed interpretation departs from both these views in rejecting their assumption that pleasure cannot perfect the activity itself, and argues that pleasure makes activity perfect by optimising the exercise of one’s capacities for that activity. Those who build or play music with pleasure do so better than those who do not delight in these activities. The basis of this interpretation is Aristotle’s little-read remarks from the following chapter, i. e. NE x.5, about how pleasure “increases” the activity.

Die Ursprünge des spätantiken philosophischen Curriculums im kaiserzeitlichen Aristotelismus

Elenchos ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Matthias Perkams
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Early Date ◽  
Alexander Of Aphrodisias ◽  
Rule Out

Abstract The paper presents the first known evidence of the so called “late ancient philosophical curriculum” ethics, physics, theology, by demonstrating that this division of philosophy can be found already in the introduction of Aspasios’s commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. It is argued that this text can be dated roundabout 70 years earlier than the earliest reliable testimony hitherto known in Clemens Alexandrinus. Furthermore, the paper presents some neglected evidence for this curriculum from different works of Alexander of Aphrodisias. Based upon those texts and a new analysis of some already well-known passages, it proposes to regard the scheme ethics, physics, theology as an originally Aristotelian model, which has been later taken over by Platonists. This does not rule out the possibility that Platonic ideas have been influenced the scheme at a very early date.

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