The Good and the Good Human Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Maria Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Human Good

Chapter 2 defends Aristotle’s premise that the final agential good is the well-lived human life. This premise does not receive much critical attention in the literature. Scholars tend to go along with Aristotle’s mode of exposition, granting that the earliest steps of the Nicomachean Ethics are agreed-upon. Against this, the chapter argues that Aristotle is making a controversial, weighty, and compelling claim. In drawing on the NE, the argument continues, one may pause here. One may accept that the highest agential good is a good human life, without buying into the next steps of the NE, which lead toward a ranking of lives. The chapter defends the premise that the human good is a well-lived life, and develops it such as to make room for a plurality of good human lives.

What is Good? A Study of Educational Insights in Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, II and III)

2022 ◽  
pp. 097168582110587
Author(s):  
Abhijeet Bardapurkar
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
Human Good

This work is a study of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, II and III) to characterize the good: the good that features in education and good life. Nicomachean Ethics teaches us that human good is neither in thought/theory, nor in action/practice alone, it is neither an exclusively individual prerogative, nor an outright social preserve. And, human good is impossible without education. The practice of education can neither be isolated nor conceptualized apart from the demands of human life. If education is for human well-being—for human good—the good then is not in action alone, but action in accordance with the excellence (or virtue) 1 of the actor. What unifies reason and action, knowing and doing is learning to be an excellent (or virtuous) person—a person who is well-disposed in her affections and action, whose judgements are true, and decisions correct; and whose intellect and character are in harmony with the human nature.

‘What Would Happen If We Were No Longer Able to Narrate?’ Dystopian Speculations and Other Reflections on the Relevance of Narratives for Human Life

2013 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Werner Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Cognitive Frame ◽  
Fitness Training ◽  
Point Of Departure

Abstract The contribution highlights the overwhelming importance of narrative for human life. It takes its point of departure from a hypothetically negative assumption: the fiction of an anti-utopian island ‘Udiegesia’, whose inhabitants have lost the ability to narrate. A scenario detailing what would presumably happen in such a case leads on to a (positive) survey of the manifold fields in which narrative is in fact used as a cognitive frame to make sense of, provide orientation in, and a ‘fitness training’ for, life and human societies, a survey which is - in part - inspired by Brian Boyd’s propagation of ‘evocriticism’.2 In the concluding section the claim that all human knowledge is “based on stories”3 will receive brief critical attention. It will be argued that such an exclusive stance is as problematical as the idea that the complexities of narrative’s forms and its various functions for human life can be fully explained by evolutionary theory alone.

Colloquium 5 Aristotle on What to Praise and What to Prize: An Interpretation of Nicomachean Ethics I.12

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-178
Author(s):  
Jan Szaif
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Argumentative Strategies ◽  
Relevant Material

Abstract This essay offers an analysis and interpretation of the rarely commented-on chapter I.12 of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle’s goal in this chapter is to prove that human happiness belongs to the class of prized goods, also characterized as divine goods, whereas virtue ranks lower, being a merely praiseworthy good. It is not easy to see why this chapter is placed at the end of Aristotle’s general discussion of the highest human good in Book I or why he included it at all. My goal is to show that it does make a contribution to the architecture of the Nicomachean Ethics as a whole by helping to prepare the ground for one of the main argumentative strategies in the treatise X.6–8 on scientific contemplation as the key component of supreme happiness. To this end, I analyze each step of the argumentation in I.12, drawing also on relevant material from other Aristotelian texts, and then demonstrate the connection with some of the arguments in X.6–8.

Concluding Remarks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Maria Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Guise Of The Good ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Good Lives

The Concluding Remarks ask what follows if the main lines of argument throughout the book are compelling. First, it is argued that the motivation of pursuits deserves more philosophical attention than it currently receives and that the Guise of the Good defended in the book provides resources to address well-known problem cases such as desiring the bad, accidie, and more. Second, the Concluding Remarks revisit one of the book’s main ambitions: to develop Aristotle’s first premise, that the human good is the good human life, such as to account for plurality of values and diversity of good lives. Third, the Concluding Remarks suggest that particular actions are set off by assent to what, to the agent, appears as to be done. This adds to the overall argument for situating the GG in the relationship between small-, mid-, and large-scale motivation rather than in the analysis of particular actions.

The Metaphysics of the Sphere of Action

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Maria Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Is Value

Chapter 7 examines a principle Aristotle formulates in Nicomachean Ethics I.3: ethics must be adequate for its domain. The ethicist must ask herself what her inquiry is about, study the nature of her theory’s subject matter, and observe norms of theorizing that are adequate for it. The subject matter of ethics is value as it figures in human life. Aristotle ascribes two features to this value: difference and variability. Other theorists, he notes, are misled by difference and variability and become relativists. They observe a lack of strict regularity and falsely conclude that the domain of value is messy, unsuitable for any general insights. In Aristotle’s view, the sphere of agency displays for the most part regularities. The chapter defends this proposal as an important metaphysical insight and discusses how it adds to the much-debated claim that situations in which agents act are particulars.

Aristotelian Necessity

2020 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Candace Vogler
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Philippa Foot

AbstractAt the center of contemporary neo-Aristotelian naturalism is the thought that we can account for a great deal of ethics by thinking about what is needful in human life generally. When we think about practices like promising, virtues like justice or courage, and institutions that serve to produce, maintain, and help to reproduce well-ordered social life we can make some headway we consider the sense in which our topic makes some forms of human good possible and even, in some cases, actualizes the very good made possible thereby. G.E.M. Anscombe introduced this kind of thinking about ethics, which Philippa Foot named ‘Aristotelian Necessity'. In this essay, I take a hard Look at Anscombe’s work on the topic, and then consider her later insistence that crucial aspects of ethics could not be understood in these terms.

scholarly journals O DESENVOLVIMENTO DO JULGAMENTO MORAL E SUA RELAÇÃO COM AÇÕES POLÍTICAS E JURÍDICAS: UMA ILUSTRAÇÃO A PARTIR DO PENSAMENTO DE ARISTÓTELES

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (119) ◽  
pp. 309
Author(s):  
Leonardo Alves Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Moral Judgement ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Material Constitution ◽  
Rational Structure ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
The Social

O trabalho procura enfrentar o tema do julgamento moral e sua relação com ações políticas e jurídicas através da filosofia de Aristóteles. De acordo com sua Metafísica da forma e matéria, exploro a interpretação aristotélica da constituição psíco-material do homem, exposta no De anima. Com base nessas considerações iniciais, a “obra do homem” é estudada no horizonte da Ética a Nicômacos. As virtudes éticas e intelectuais formarão o juízo moral do homem, na medida em que ele gradualmente tome posse de sua alma racional, a medida especificamente humana. Embora uma qualidade da alma, o agir moral não pode, contudo, simplesmente negligenciar as circunstâncias corpóreas da vida humana. Finalmente, a Política tematiza o contexto sócio-político-jurídico (as várias formas de constituição e suas bases sócio-econômicas) em que a vida moral alcança seu pleno florescimento ou se defronta com obstáculos que a desviam de sua estrutura racional.Abstract: Taking as a guide Aristotle’s philosophy, this paper seeks to address the issue of moral judgement and its relationship with political and juridical actions. According to the philosopher’s Metaphysics of form and matter, I investigate the Aristotelian idea of the psycho-material constitution of man, as presented in De anima. Based on the above mentioned considerations, “the function of man” is studied within the horizon of the Nicomachean Ethics. Moral and intellectual virtues form man’s moral judgement as he gradually gets possession of his rational soul, the human measure par excellence. Although it is a quality of the soul, the moral deed cannot, however, neglect the corporeal condition of human life. Finally, Aristotle’s Politics deals with the social, political and juridical context (the several forms of constitution and their socio-economic bases) in which moral life reaches its full unfolding or faces obstacles that deviate it from its rational structure. 

Every Man a Legislator: Aristotle on Political Wisdom

Apeiron ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-414
Author(s):  
Dhananjay Jagannathan
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Made In

Abstract I argue that Aristotle’s unmodern conception of politics can only be understood by first understanding his distinctive picture of human agency and the excellence of political wisdom. I therefore undertake to consider three related puzzles: (1) why at the outset of the Nicomachean Ethics [NE] is the human good said to be the same for a city and for an individual, such that the NE’s inquiry is political? (2) why later on in the NE is political wisdom said to be the same state of soul as practical wisdom? (3) why in the Politics does Aristotle identify practical wisdom as the peculiar excellence of rulers when deliberation was said to be the common work of all citizens insofar as they are genuinely citizens? While these puzzles have individually received treatment in the literature, they have seldom been treated together. Taken independently, the passages in question can seem to express a more familiar conception of politics. In particular, each of the sameness claims made in (1) and (2) has too easily been assimilated to a more modern conception of the relation of ethics to politics and thereby domesticated. As I hope to show, in (1) Aristotle is not simply asserting that the human good in a city supervenes on the good as achieved by its inhabitants (since this by itself, while true, would fall short of establishing the political character of his inquiry in the NE); and in (2) he is not claiming only that political wisdom is a species of practical wisdom, but is rather asserting a more thoroughgoing identity between various types of deliberative excellence that are conventionally distinguished and assigned different names. Working through these passages will provide a sufficient basis for tackling (3), the question about the respective excellences of rulers and citizens. I will show that, despite his restriction of the exercise of practical wisdom to rulers, Aristotle imagines that non-ruling citizens will also exercise their political agency and thereby require a distinct rational excellence. More precisely, for Aristotle, there are two forms of political agency, deliberation on behalf of one’s community, which is perfected by practical-political wisdom, and the comprehension (sunesis) exercised by citizens on the basis of the view of life preserved by their character-virtues. Understood this way, the division of labor between rulers and citizens does not generate two spheres of activity, political and private, which could have unrelated excellences or concern distinct goods.

scholarly journals BEYOND EQUAL LIBERTY: RELIGION AS A DISTINCT HUMAN GOOD AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Moschella
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Special Protection

AbstractIn this essay I argue that religion, understood as harmony with the transcendent source of existence and meaning, is a good that practical reason grasps as an objective, distinct, and important aspect of human well-being, one that reasonably takes pride of place among the various aspects of a good human life due to its architectonic role in structuring and adding a transcendent meaning to all of the other goods that we pursue. On the basis of this view of religion, I suggest that religious belief and practice deserve special protection in law, above and beyond mere preferences and even other conscientious commitments. I develop this view through a dialectical engagement with Ronald Dworkin, Brian Barry, and Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager.

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