Colloquium 3 Commentary on Elliott

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-96
Author(s):  
May Sim
Keyword(s):  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Character Formation ◽  
Rational Reflection

Abstract Jay Elliott considers Aristotle’s view on the voluntariness of virtue and vice in his Nicomachean Ethics III.5 by exploring two rival interpretations. According to Elliott, the libertarian reading emphasizes the freedom that mature agents have to change their characters after rational reflection but neglects the role that upbringing plays in character formation. In contrast, the compatibilist reading stresses the agents’ upbringing in shaping their beliefs and desires. Elliott explains that because compatibilists maintain that agents’ actions stem from their own beliefs and desires, their actions, which reveal their character, are voluntary. Nevertheless, Elliott holds that because the agents, for the compatibilists, lack the power to change their beliefs and desires, the compatibilist account downplays the voluntariness of character in Aristotle’s own view. Elliott criticizes these rival interpretations and focuses on the concept of “practice” to argue that Aristotle’s view of character is both voluntary and subject to one’s upbringing. I discuss Aristotle’s concepts of voluntariness and practice in evaluating Elliott’s interpretation.

Aristotle contra Plato on the Voluntariness of Vice: The Arguments of Nicomachean Ethics 3.5

Phronesis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachana Kamtekar
Keyword(s):  
Voluntary Action ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Character Formation ◽  
Causal Account

AbstractAristotle’s arguments in NE 3.5 target Plato’s position that vice is not blameworthy but to be pitied because involuntary, i.e. contrary to our wish for our good—not the ‘Socratic paradox’ that wrongdoing is involuntary. To this end, Aristotle develops a causal account of voluntary action based on Plato, Laws 9, but replaces Plato’s character-based classification of actions with his own distinction between performing actions of a certain type and having a character of that type. This distinction, central to Aristotle’s account of character-formation by habituating actions, allows Aristotle to show how character, whether vicious or virtuous, can be voluntary.

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.

Moral Philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Forster
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Character Formation ◽  
First Order ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Self Formation

Herder develops a number of very important principles both in meta-ethics and in first-order morality. In meta-ethics he argues for a form of sentimentalism, but a form of it that acknowledges a role for cognition in the sentiments involved and which emphasizes their radical variability between periods and cultures. He also invents a “genetic” or “genealogical” method predicated on such variability and applies it to moral values in particular in order to make them better understood. And finally, he develops an ambitious theory and practice of moral pedagogy that rests on his sentimentalism and which accordingly focuses on causal influences on moral character formation, such as role models and literature. In first-order morality he invents an important pluralistic form of cosmopolitanism to replace the more usual but problematic homogenizing cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment; an influential ideal of individual Bildung, or self-formation; and a distinctive ideal of humanity.

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