Kalokagathia and the Unity of the Virtues in the Eudemian Ethics

Apeiron ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-57
Author(s):  
Giulia Bonasio
Keyword(s):  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Strong Version ◽  
The Common ◽  
Eudemian Ethics ◽  
Theoretical Thinking ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

AbstractIn this paper, I argue that in the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle proposes a strong version of the unity of the virtues. Evidence in favor of this strong version of the unity of the virtues results from reading the common books within the EE rather than as part of the Nicomachean Ethics. The unity of the virtues as defended in the EE includes not only practical wisdom and the character virtues, but also all the virtues of practical and theoretical thinking. Closely related, in the EE, Aristotle proposes a different best agent from the one of the NE. The best agent of the EE is the kalos kagathos. The person who is kalos kagathos has “all” the virtues. Kalokagathia is a whole and the virtues are its parts. I investigate how we should understand this whole and the relation between the individual virtues within this whole.

Converging Aristotelian faculties: a note on Eth. Nic. VI xi 2–3 1143a 25–35

1979 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 158-160
Author(s):  
Troels Engberg-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Total State ◽  
Theoretical Wisdom ◽  
The One ◽  
States Of Knowledge

(2)Εἰσὶ δὲ πᾶσαι αἱ ἕξεις εὐλόγως εἰς ταὐτὸ τείνουσαι 25 λέγομεν γὰρ γνώμην καὶ σύνεσιν καὶ φρόνησιν καὶ νοῦν ἐπὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἐπιφέροντες γνώμην ἔχειν καὶ νοῦν ἤδη καὶ φρονίμους καὶ συνετούς. πᾶσαι γὰρ αἱ δυνάμεις αὗται τῶν ἐσχάτων εἰσὶ καὶ τῶν καθ᾿ ἕκαστον καὶ ἐν μὲν τῷ 29 κριτικὸς εἶναι περὶ ὧν ὁ φρόνιμος, συνετὸς καὶ εὐγνώμων ἢ συγγνώμων τὰ γὰρ ἐπιεικῆ κοινὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἁπάντων ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ πρὸς ἄλλον. (3) ἔστι δὲ τῶν καθ᾿ ἔκαστα καὶ τῶν ἐσχάτων ἅπαντα τὰ πρακτά καὶ γὰρ τὸν φρόνιμον δεῖ ψινώσκειν αὐτά, καὶ ἡ σύνεσις καὶ ἡ γνώμη περὶ τὰ 34 πρακτά, ταῦτα δ᾿ ἔσχατα. (4) καὶ ὁ νοῦς τῶν ἐσχάτων ἐπ᾿ ἀμφότερα καὶ γὰρ… VI xi 2–4The structure of book VI of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is not pellucid. The general purpose of the book is to define the concept of practical wisdom or φρόνησις and the method by which Aristotle attempts to reach his aim is that of contrasting practical wisdom with other seemingly relevant concepts. The main contrast here, underlying the book as a whole, is that between practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom (σοφία) or ‘science’ (ἐπιστήμη).Another, less general, contrast is the one drawn in chapters ix–xi, from which the above quotation is taken, between practical wisdom and a series of three fairly specific states of knowledge, or capacities: excellence in deliberation (єὐβουλία, ix), ‘understanding’ (σύνєσις, x) and ‘judgement’ (γνώμη, xi 1). These are practical abilities and hence are closely connected with practical (as opposed to theoretical) wisdom but they are not identical with that type of knowledge. The exact way in which they differ from practical wisdom is left somewhat in the dark, but it is possible, I believe, to see them as distinguishing parts of the total state of knowledge which is practical wisdom.

On the So-Called Common Books of the Eudemian and the Nicomachean Ethics

Phronesis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-116
Author(s):  
Dorothea Frede
Keyword(s):  
Self Control ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
The Common ◽  
Eudemian Ethics ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics

AbstractIn recent decades the view that the disputed central books of Aristotle’s ethics are an integral part of the Eudemian rather than of the Nicomachean Ethics has gained ground for both historical and systematic reasons. This article contests that view, arguing not only that the Nicomachean Ethics represented Aristotle’s central text throughout antiquity, but that the discussion in the common books of such crucial concepts as justice, practical and theoretical reason, self-control and lack of self-control, are more compatible with the undisputed books of the Nicomachean Ethics than with those of the Eudemian Ethics.

scholarly journals Aristotle’s Criticism of the Platonic Idea of the Good in Nicomachean Ethics 1.6

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 309-342
Author(s):  
Melina G. Mouzala
Keyword(s):  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Relational Goods ◽  
Absolute Good ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Eudemian Ethics

In Nicomachean Ethics 1.6, Aristotle directs his criticism not only against the Platonic Idea of the Good but also against the notion of a universal Good. In this paper, I also examine some of the most interesting aspects of his criticism of the Platonic Good and the universal Good in Eudemian Ethics 1.8. In the EN, after using a series of disputable ontological arguments, Aristotle’s criticism culminates in a strong ethical or rather practical and, simultaneously, epistemological argument, from which a dialectical postulatum emerges. This argument aims to show that we have to discover the dialectical stages or grades which constitute the relation between the ultimate End, i.e., the Good simpliciter or the absolute Good, and the relational goods till the last prakton good in which each specific praxis ends. According to the present reading, Aristotle sets out to establish a kind of Dialectic of the ends (Dialektikē tōn telōn) or Dialectic of the goods (Dialektikē tōn agathōn), which puts emphasis on the descent to the specific good, which is appropriate to and cognate with each individual, be that a person, praxis, science or craft. It is also suggested that this might be relevant to Aristotle’s tendency to establish a separation of phronēsis, i.e., practical wisdom, from sophia, i.e., wisdom, in the Nicomachean Ethics.

scholarly journals Traditional and Modern Concepts of Rhetoric: Six Peculiarities

wisdom ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Hovhannes HOVHANNISYAN
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Modern System ◽  
Logical Content ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

The article explores the common denominators and differences of traditional and modern understandings of rhetoric. It reveals main tendencies of development of rhetoric as a field of theoretical knowledge and transformations of the problematics. The issue of interrelation between logical-content and extra-logical (psychological, aesthetic, ethical, linguistic, ritual) factors in traditional and modern concepts of rhetoric is discussed. The following thesis is substantiated that in modern concepts of rhetoric both the arsenal of tricks used and the area of operation are expanded to include other forms and manifestations of human communication in line with the individual-to-audience model. It is argued that, unlike traditional rhetoric, which is largely monologue-based, modern concepts mostly implement rhetoric tricks in negotiation, debate, and competition situations. The article analyzes the issue of correlation between oral public and direct speech on the one hand, and, on the other, written speech and mediated means of communication in the traditional and modern concepts of rhetoric. The view is substantiated that in the modern system of rhetoric, much importance is attached to ethical questions, to the issues whether the means used are permissible or inadmissible in terms of effective communication norms. The relations between the philosophical theory of rhetoric (general rhetoric) and its individual spheres are discussed.

scholarly journals Aristotle’s Criticism of the Platonic Idea of the Good in Nicomachean Ethics 1.6

2017 ◽  
pp. 309-342
Author(s):  
Melina G. Mouzala
Keyword(s):  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Relational Goods ◽  
Absolute Good ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Eudemian Ethics

In Nicomachean Ethics 1.6, Aristotle directs his criticism not only against the Platonic Idea of the Good but also against the notion of a universal Good. In this paper, I also examine some of the most interesting aspects of his criticism of the Platonic Good and the universal Good in Eudemian Ethics 1.8. In the EN, after using a series of disputable ontological arguments, Aristotle’s criticism culminates in a strong ethical or rather practical and, simultaneously, epistemological argument, from which a dialectical postulatum emerges. This argument aims to show that we have to discover the dialectical stages or grades which constitute the relation between the ultimate End, i.e., the Good simpliciter or the absolute Good, and the relational goods till the last prakton good in which each specific praxis ends. According to the present reading, Aristotle sets out to establish a kind of Dialectic of the ends (Dialektikē tōn telōn) or Dialectic of the goods (Dialektikē tōn agathōn), which puts emphasis on the descent to the specific good, which is appropriate to and cognate with each individual, be that a person, praxis, science or craft. It is also suggested that this might be relevant to Aristotle’s tendency to establish a separation of phronēsis, i.e., practical wisdom, from sophia, i.e., wisdom, in the Nicomachean Ethics.

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 Eclesiological Communitarism of Miroslav Volf

2020 ◽  
pp. 127-150
Author(s):  
Valentin Siniy
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Church Community ◽  
Creative Development ◽  
Miroslav Volf ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Doctrine Of The Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Communities

Abstract: The article analyzes the features of the doctrine of the church of the outstandingProtestant theologian of the early XXI century Miroslav Volf. Volf's understanding of the church as a reality that preceded the emergence of the individual as a Christian means a radical break with liberal Protestant ideas of the church community as created by the voluntary decision of individuals. But Volf does not share the collectivist idea of ​​the church as an organism in which the individual is completely subjugated to the whole. It is established that Volf creates a communitarian model of the church, in which the church community is understood as the unity of diversity. Unity itself has the character of interpersonal relations. Individuals with different charisms in the community interact with each other like the fellowship of the Three in God. Communitarianism in Volf's ecclesiology as a "middle way" between liberal individualism and total collectivism has all the hallmarks of postliberal theological theory. It is proved that Volf's communitarianism became a creative development of Christian personalism of the XX century with its emphasis on the existential freedom of the individual and the importance of interpersonal relations. Volf succeeded in building ecclesiological communitarianism not so much because of his many specific speculations about the organization of church communities, but because of his vision of personalism. Namely, as we noted above, Volf combines the idea of ​​personality as dependent on its relations with other personalities (here he develops Ratzinger's theory) with the vision of personality as an apophatic secret that is higher than all its properties and charisma (here he creatively interprets the theory Zizioulas). Accordingly, a personality that exists in absolute openness to the influences of other personalities on the one hand, and is absolutely unique on the other, makes possible the existence of a communitarian church community. Volf emphasizes that the catholicity (completeness and completeness) of the individual Christian personality is as necessary as the catholicity of the whole church community. The characterization of the individual as a conciliar presupposes not only the traditional ideal of the integrity of all faculties and the charisma of the individual in his intention to communicate with God, but also the vision of the legitimacy of the inner diversity of the individual. The possible complexity of the identity of the individual is almost infinite, and the willingness to accept it in the community - the main feature of Volf's communitarianism. Similarly, every ecclesial community must be ready to accept as Christian all other ecclesial communities, whatever the peculiarities of their identity. It is clear that such an understanding of catholicity is possible only in Protestantism. As Volf rightly points out, Catholicism presupposes that the ecclesial community must be the local embodiment of the common ecclesial identity of the whole structure, and Orthodoxy emphasizes that a separate community is necessarily identical in identity to the common identity of the church through the Eucharist. Volf's communitarianism allows us to describe church communities and their associations as network structures in which all individuals are active actors whose abilities and charisms are important for the constitution of communities.

An emerging digital community: the CD-ROM artists

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
KRISTINE H. BURNS
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Cd Rom ◽  
Digital Community ◽  
Unique Manner ◽  
The Common ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Underground Music ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Visual Element

Over the past five years, a digital community of CD-ROM artists has begun to emerge. The one element that serves as the common thread to this particular community is that these artists and their works are based on a new musical presentation, one fully tied to a visual element, an interactive, exploratory world that is tailored to the individual user's progress through a finite number of elements. In short, although intermedia works have a long history, now the user may explore at his/her own pace. This unique manner of presentation has emerged into the worlds of art music, underground music, and performance art.

scholarly journals Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics: Their Common Field of Inquiry and Their Common Reader

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-182
Author(s):  
Leszek Skowroński
Keyword(s):  
Strong Support ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Effort ◽  
Common Field ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

The aim of the article is to indicate that there is quite strong support in the text of the Nicomachean Ethics for the argument that its inquiry is “political” rather than “ethical” in character – the textual evidence provides reasons to challenge the traditional belief that Aristotle separated ethics from politics and started the rise of ethics as a new branch of philosophy. In addition, one can posit a hypothesis (and this has already been done) that the reader, whom Aristotle had in mind while writing what we now know as the Ethics, was a politician-lawgiver (and not just any educated Greek or – which is even less probable – any human being). So the reader aimed at in the Ethics is the same as the reader aimed at in the Politics – a politician-lawgiver. The Ethics and the Politics are a two-part but inseparable compound that together make a textbook for a politician-lawgiver. Both parts should be read together because the one cannot be understood correctly (i.e. as closely as possible to the intentions of their author) without the other. Aristotle studies human good not from the point of view of the individual but from the point of view of the human community. The highest human good – the philosopher’s eudaimonia – is achieved not by individual effort (or not fundamentally by that) but as a result of good laws and a well-organized life in a polis.

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