scholarly journals The Initial Anthropology in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

wisdom ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Georgia APOSTOLOPOULOU

In the ‘Foreword’, I address some aspects of Academician Georg Brutian’s philosophy. The Initial Anthropology paper follows. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle considers the relation of ethical theory to anthropology in a specific way. He sets out an initial anthropology that describes the human through its common and non-common elements to plants as well as to ‘other animals’. The conclusion is that the human animal is the only living being that is endowed with reason and carries out ‘practical life’. We may call this difference ‘the anthropological difference’. In his ethical theory, Aristotle points to the limits of the anthropological difference. On the one hand, he holds that only practical theory can explain the ‘practical life’ as well as the ‘human Good’. On the other hand, he highlights that the human is higher than the ‘other animals’, since the human is endowed with the divine element of intellect; nevertheless, there are beings that are ‘more divine’ than the human. Thus Aristotle corroborates the human and its practical life, without abandoning the Socratic-Platonic view of the Divine. In this aspect, the alleged anthropocentrism of Aristotle’s ethics is to be reconsidered.

Elenchos ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 119-146

Abstract Solon’s extraordinary claim, that we should call “no one happy who is still living” (τέλος ὁρᾶν), presents a fascinating and distinctive argument about happiness and the length of a human life. The issues Solon raises are important, and even if we think his pessimistic conclusion is an exaggeration we can still appreciate his central concern how conceptions of happiness and the length of a human life are connected. The purpose of this paper is to explore a few of these problems, in particular the reason why Aristotle’s reply to Solon in the Nicomachean Ethics is somewhat ambiguous. We find Aristotle addressing Solon’s claim at the outset of Eth. Nic. A 10, troubled in one sense by its conclusion, yet struck by its partial truth. On the one hand, he thinks that εὐδαιμονία requires a “complete life” (βίος τέλειος), or at the very least, a sufficient and “complete span of time” (τέλειος χρόνος), both of which are compatible with Solon’s advice that we should postpone calling someone happy until a later point in life. But on the other hand Aristotle defines εὐδαιμονία in such a way that raises the question whether he needs to accept Solon’s claim in any form. In particular, if happiness is defined in terms of excellent activity (ἐνέργεια κατ’ ἀρετήν), as Aristotle repeatedly claims, why should we wait until a person dies to call him or her happy? Why shouldn’t excellent actions, at the very time they are performed, count someone as happy? The puzzle, in short, is the fact that Aristotle defines happiness in terms of ἐνέργειαι, activities that are complete without developing over time, and yet also claims that happiness requires a “complete lifetime”, a βίος τέλειος.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-145
Author(s):  
André Luiz Cruz Sousa

The aim of this paper is to study a set of three issues related to the understanding of partial justice and partial injustice as character dispositions, namely the distinctive circumstance of action, the emotion involved therein and the pleasure or pain following it. Those points are treated in a relatively obscure way by Aristotle, especially in comparison with their treatment in the expositions of other character virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics. Building on the expression ‘capacity towards the other’ (δύναμις ἐν τῷ πρὸς ἕτερον), the paper highlights the interpersonal nature of the circumstances of just and unjust actions, and points how such nature is directly related to notions such as ‘profit’ (κέρδος) or ‘getting more’(πλεονεκτεῖν) as well as to the unusual conception of excess, defect and intermediacy in Nicomachean Ethics Book V. The interpersonal nature of just and unjust actions works also as the starting-point for the interpretation both of the pleasure briefly mentioned in 1130b4 as characterizing the greedy person and of the emotion involved in acting justly or greedy, which is mentioned in an extremely elliptical way in 1130b1-2: the paper argues, on the one hand, that the pleasure felt in acting justly or unjustly concerns not only the goods that are the object of just or unjust interactions, but also the way such interactions affect the people involved; on the other hand, it argues that the emotion actuated in just or unjust interactions relates to the agent’s concern or lack of concern with the good of those people.


1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71
Author(s):  
Piotr Lenartowicz

Biologists are not used to the term „substance". They prefer to say „a living being", „an organism", a „specimen of species Homo sapiens'' - for instance. Chemists, on the other hand, when they say „this is a new substance" they usually mean the same Aristotle would mean - I think. The chemical meaning of the term „substance" is closest to the one I am going to discuss in this paper. To know a substance, one has to accumulate and store a multitude of different forms of evidence concerning this „natural behavior". So that concept of the „nature" of a given chemical substance is necessarily very complex and it cannot result from a single sensation, or a momentary observation


Dialogue ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-30
Author(s):  
THORNTON C. LOCKWOOD

Scholarship on the political ramifications of Aristotle’s account of friendship has focused on “political friendship” and has lost sight of the importance of his account of “like-mindedness” or “concord” (ὁμόνοια). Such a focus is mistaken for a number of reasons, not least of which is that, whereas Aristotle has a determinate account of like-mindedness, he has almost nothing to say about political friendship. My paper examines the ethical and political aspects of like-mindedness in light of a disagreement between Richard Bodéüs and René Gauthier about the autonomy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a work of ethical theory.


2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 745-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samu Pehkonen ◽  
Hanna-Mari Ikonen

Over the last two decades, the Finnish community of dog agility practitioners has worked diligently towards gaining recognition for agility as a sport. The process reached an important milestone in 2016 when the National Sports Council listed the Finnish Agility Association as eligible for financial support from the state. As one of the pioneer countries in this regard, Finland is of great interest, as the agility sport continues to become more popular and professionalised worldwide. Using the findings from a qualitative study of media coverage and expert interviews about attempts to gain recognition for agility as a sport, this article explores the strategies that practitioners and the Finnish Agility Association have utilised in their work. This article shows that recognition comes with the need to find a balance between elite sports, on the one hand, and sport for all on the other. Although agility may risk losing some of its particular character as a human–animal teamwork dynamic, it has the potential to contribute to the culture of sports more widely.


Author(s):  
Sascha Salatowsky

In order to attain a deeper understanding of Aristotelian philosophy in the Renaissance, it is necessary to consider the theological implications of given facts. This article discusses a basic problem centring on the reception of Aristotle’s Ethics. The Nicomachean Ethics was widely regarded as the basis for a virtuous ethical life, yet how could a pagan philosophy, with its concepts of happiness, virtue, justice, etc., be the basis of a Christian society? The aim of the present article is to show how Lutheran scholars solved this problem in confrontation with Catholic and Calvinist scholars of the time. The first part deals with the two basic components of Aristotle’s Ethics, namely the doctrines of happiness (Eudaimonologia) and virtue (Aretologia), and attempts to show that Aristotle’s Ethics should not be understood as a system of rules, but rather as a handbook for the cultivation of practical habits in the free human being who strives to live a good life. The second part examines two key ideological confrontations in relation to Aristotle’s philosophy: between Lutherans and Calvinists in respect of definition of theology and philosophical and theological virtues on the one hand, and between Lutherans and ›the Enthusiasts‹ in respect of the concept of virtues on the other.


2007 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carson Holloway

This paper seeks to illuminate magnanimity by examining Shakespeare's Coriolanus in light of Aristotle's account of greatness of soul in the Nicomachean Ethics. I contend that contemplation of Coriolanus's similarity to Aristotle's magnanimous man allows us to harmonize two apparently discordant elements of the magnanimous man's character: his seriousness about the good, on the one hand, and his apparently status-oriented intolerance of insult, on the other. Nevertheless, Coriolanus falls short of Aristotle's standard; reflection on his defects reveals that genuine magnanimity requires prudence and a philosophic detachment from the city's moral convictions that Shakespeare's hero lacks.


1993 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 480-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gose

There is a strange and unacknowledged paradox in the historiography of the Incas. On the one hand, few would deny that theirs was a typically theocratic archaic state, a divine kingship in which the Inca was thought to.be the son of the Sun. On the other hand, the standard descriptions of Inca political structure barely mention religion and seem to assume a formal separation between state and cult.1I believe that these secularizing accounts are misguided and will show in this essay that the political structure of the pre-Columbian Andes took form primarily around a system of sacred ancestral relics and origin points known generically ashuacas. Each huaca defined a level of political organization that might nest into units of a higher order or subdivide into smaller groupings. Collectively they formed a segmentary hierarchy that transcended the boundaries of local ethnic polities and provided the basis for empires like that of the Incas. However, these huacas were also the focus of local kinship relations and agrarian fertility rituals. The political structure that they articulated therefore had a built-in concern for the metaphysical reproduction of human, animal, and plant life. Political power in the pre-Columbian Andes was particularly bound up with attempts to control the flow of water across the frontier of life and death, resulting in no clear distinction between ritual and administration.


Author(s):  
Joanna Miklaszewska

<p>Bolesław Wallek Walewski był jedną z czołowych postaci krakowskiego życia muzycznego w okresie międzywojennym. Do jego najwybitniejszych dzieł należy opera <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em>, której libretto jest kontynuacją <em>Halki</em> Stanisława Moniuszki. W artykule scharakteryzowano muzyczne związki pomiędzy obu operami, widoczne m.in. we wprowadzeniu przez Wallek Walewskiego cytatów motywów z <em>Halki</em>, a także wskazano różnice stylistyczne między obydwoma dziełami. Wyznaczają je trzy elementy: warstwa językowa librett, główne założenia dramaturgiczne oraz styl muzyczny. Libretto <em>Halki</em> napisane zostało przez W. Wolskiego bez aluzji do elementów gwarowych, natomiast B. Wallek Walewski w libretcie <em>Pomsty Jontkowej</em> wykorzystał w szerokim zakresie gwarę podhalańską. W przeciwieństwie do <em>Halki</em>, osią dramatu Wallek Walewskiego jest motyw zemsty górala na możnych panach. Styl muzyczny opery Walewskiego wykazuje pokrewieństwo z muzyką Wagnera, z nurtem muzycznego folkloryzmu (poprzez nawiązanie do folkloru podhalańskiego), oraz impresjonizmu. W artykule poruszono ponadto problem recepcji dzieła. <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em> była najbardziej znanym i często wystawianym w Polsce dziełem operowym krakowskiego kompozytora. Jej prapremiera odbyła się w Teatrze Wielkim w Poznaniu w 1926 roku. Na przełomie lat dwudziestych i trzydziestych opera ta cieszyła się w Polsce dużą popularnością, wystawiły ją także inne teatry operowe w kraju (z wyjątkiem sceny warszawskiej). Po II wojnie światowej <em>Pomstę Jontkową</em> wystawiła Opera Wrocławska.</p><p>SUMMARY</p><p>Born in Lvov but fi rst of all associated with the musical circles in Krakow, Bolesław Wallek Walewski (1885-1944) referred to one of Stanisław Moniuszko’s most famous operas – <em>Halka</em> [Helen] – when composing his own opera Pomsta Jontkowa [Jontek’s Vengeance] (1924). The contemporaries regarded Halka and Pomsta Jontkowa as a series. Both operas share common elements: <em>Halka</em> (Warsaw version) and <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em> are four-act operas, the same characters appear in their librettos (Jontek, Zofia), and in both works the confl icts between the gentry and the peasants are highly important. The musical connections between the operas are evidenced by Walewski’s use of the leading motifs. Moreover, both in <em>Halka</em> and in <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em>, there are highlanders’ dances. Walewski also includes melodies from Halka into his work.</p><p>The principal difference between the two operas is determined by three elements: the language of the librettos, the main dramatic assumptions, and the musical style. The libretto of <em>Halka</em> was written by Włodzimierz Wolski (1824-1882) without references to dialectal elements whereas Walewski liberally used the Podhale highlanders’ dialect in his libretto. Moreover, unlike <em>Halka</em>, which emphasizes the personal experiences of the main heroine and social confl icts, the axis of Walewski’s drama is the motif of the highlander’s revenge on the wealthy lords. The musical style of <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em> shows, on the one hand, a similarity with Richard Wagner’s music (harmony, instrumentation, and the way of treatment of leitmotifs), while on the other – a similarity to the trend of musical folklorism and impressionism. An innovative idea is the combination of impressionist features with the stylization of highlanders’ folklore.</p><p><em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em> was the best known opera of the Krakow composer in Poland in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, and at the same time it was one of the most original Polish operas of the interwar period. It combines traditional elements with modern ones, and it is an expression of the late inspirations by Wagnerian music and esthetics in Polish music, as well as referring to the best traditions of the Polish national opera.</p>


2021 ◽  

An interesting study on interspecies relations in cities, set in concrete cultural phenomena. It is a radical re-definition of human-animal relations, an analysis of mutual dependencies, a description of complexity and dynamics of changes in urban spaces. On the one hand, the publications refers to various cultural contexts, on the other hand, it shows local characteristics of the presented phenomena and the Polish perspective, which includes different towns. The book may inspire reflections on relations between humans and animals in future cities as well as the ways of organising them, especially in the context of the 19th and 20th century modernising movements.


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