Colloquium 3 Questioning Aristotle’s Radical Account of Σωφροσύνη

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-97
Author(s):  
Christopher Moore
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Canonical Analysis ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Conceptual Clarification ◽  
Theoretical Scheme

Abstract This paper investigates Aristotle’s canonical analysis of σωφροσύνη in Nicomachean Ethics 3.10–12 against the background of earlier and subsequent uses, and analyses of the virtue term. It argues that Aristotle’s is an outlier, brilliant but factitious, created to fit a theoretical scheme rather than reflect Greek understanding. Aristotle obscures the creativity of his account, presenting it as an ordinary language conceptual clarification that it is not. Many contemporary readers accept Aristotle’s narrow theory—that σωφροσύνη is moderation with respect to those pleasures of touch related to nutrition and reproduction—as true, which may indicate that they are insufficiently familiar with fifth- and fourth-century literary, intellectual, and philosophical uses of the term. An important problem with this acceptance is that it prevents readers from recognizing the equal plausibility of non-Aristotelian accounts of σωφροσύνη, for example those found in Plato’s Charmides and other dialogues.

scholarly journals Motivet der blev væk for litteraturteorien

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (123) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Nils Gunder Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Abstract Concept ◽  
Life World ◽  
Conceptual Clarification ◽  
Multiple Texts ◽  
The Individual

The article argues that classical concepts in literary theory such as “motif” and “theme” have been undertheorized in recent decades. They have been taken for granted as “ordinary language”-vocabulary in no need of conceptual clarification. But the dimension of content in a literary text cannot be sufficiently theorized without precise definitions of “motif” and “theme”. The article claims that the theme is always an abstract concept, an idea, extrapolated from the text by its interpreter, whereas the motif presents itself in the text as an observable constellation between mimetic elements from the human life world that can be traced with variations through multiple texts or other fictional modes. The motif can be more or less specified and will always be located somewhere on a continuum between the abstract theme and the individual text. The article then tries to enrich this understanding of the motif by confronting it with the textual theories of Paul Ricoeur and James Phelan. It is furthermore discussed whether the critique of ideology in the Marxist years played a role in the marginalization of the motif. The relevance of the reconstructed concept is finally demonstrated in an outline of an analytical approach to three novels (The “Hvium”-trilogy) by the Danish author Ida Jessen and it is concluded that this type of approach enables observations that would have been less obvious entering the textual universes on higher or lower levels than the motif being always in between the theme and the text.

Early Greek Ethics

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
International Team ◽  
Philosophical Ethics ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Dissoi Logoi

Early Greek Ethics is devoted to Greek philosophical ethics in its “formative” period. The formative period is the century and a half that extends from the last decades of the sixth century BCE to about the first third of the fourth century BCE. It begins with the inception of Greek philosophical ethics and ends immediately before the composition of Plato’s and Aristotle’s mature ethical works: Republic and Nicomachean Ethics. The ancient contributors include Presocratics such as Heraclitus, Democritus, and figures of the early Pythagorean tradition such as Empedocles and Archytas of Tarentum (who have previously been studied principally for their metaphysical, cosmological, and natural philosophical ideas); Socrates and his lesser known associates such as Antisthenes of Athens and Aristippus of Cyrene; sophists such as Gorgias of Leontini, Antiphon of Athens, and Prodicus of Ceos; and anonymous texts such as the Pythagorean acusmata, Dissoi Logoi, Anonymus Iamblichi, and On Law and Justice. In addition to chapters on these individuals and texts, the volume includes chapters on select fields and topics especially influential to ethical philosophical thought in the formative period and later, such as early Greek medicine, music, friendship, justice and the afterlife, and early Greek ethnography. Consisting of thirty chapters composed by an international team of twenty-eight philosophers and classicists, Early Greek Ethics is the first volume in any language devoted to philosophical ethics in the formative period.

Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

Gemeinsprachliche Ressourcen beim Wissens- und Wissenschaftstransfer - die Rolle der Deixis bei der propositionalen Komposition in universitären Vorlesungen in den Fächern Physik und Maschinenbau

Fachsprache ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 104-122
Author(s):  
Winfried Thielmann
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Academic Teaching

Abstract Languages for special purposes have mainly been considered from the point of view that they are specialized, i.e. that they satisfy the terminological needs of expression of specialized groups. The purpose of this contribution is to demonstrate that specialized discourses such as university lectures may make specific use of ordinary language devices. An analysis of sections from German lectures in physics and mechanical engineering reveals that deictics play a special role in propositional  composition. The findings are relevant for the general principles of linguistic science and knowledge transfer as well as for teaching German as a first or second academic language. Schlagwörter: Sprache wissenschaftlicher Lehre – Deixis – Physik – Maschinenbau – propositionale Komposition Key words: Language of academic teaching – deictics – physics – mechanical engineering – propositional composition

Scham und Autonomie

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Conceptual Clarification ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conventional Behavior ◽  
And Control

Autonomy is associated with intellectual self-preservation and self-determination. Shame, on the contrary, bears a loss of approval, self-esteem and control. Being afflicted with shame, we suffer from social dependencies that by no means have been freely chosen. Moreover, undergoing various experiences of shame, our power of reflection turns out to be severly limited owing to emotional embarrassment. In both ways, shame seems to be bound to heteronomy. This situation strongly calls for conceptual clarification. For this purpose, we introduce a threestage model of self-determination which comprises i) autonomy as capability of decision-making relating to given sets of choices, ii) self-commitment in terms of setting and harmonizing goals, and iii) self-realization in compliance with some range of persistently approved goals. Accordingly, the presuppositions and distinctive marks of shame-experiences are made explicit. Within this framework, we explore the intricate relation between autonomy and shame by focusing on two questions: on what conditions could conventional behavior be considered as self-determined? How should one characterize the varying roles of actors that are involved in typical cases of shame-experiences? In this connection, we advance the thesis that the social dynamics of shame turns into ambiguous positions relating to motivation, intentional content,and actors’ roles.

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