The Complexities of Practical Reason in The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics

scholarly journals Truth in Practical Reason: Practical and Assertoric Truth in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michail Pantoulias ◽  
Vasiliki Vergouli ◽  
Panagiotis Thanassas
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Controversial Subject ◽  
Practical Syllogism ◽  
The Subject ◽  
De Interpretatione

Truth has always been a controversial subject in Aristotelian scholarship. In most cases, including some well-known passages in the Categories, De Interpretatione and Metaphysics, Aristotle uses the predicate ‘true’ for assertions, although exceptions are many and impossible to ignore. One of the most complicated cases is the concept of practical truth in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics: its entanglement with action and desire raises doubts about the possibility of its inclusion to the propositional model of truth. Nevertheless, in one of the most extensive studies on the subject, C. Olfert has tried to show that this is not only possible but also necessary. In this paper, we explain why trying to fit practical truth into the propositional model comes with insurmount­able problems. In order to overcome these problems, we focus on multiple aspects of practical syllogism and correlate them with Aristo­tle’s account of desire, happiness and the good. Identifying the role of such concepts in the specific steps of practical reasoning, we reach the conclusion that practical truth is best explained as the culmination of a well-executed practical syllogism taken as a whole, which ultimately explains why this type of syllogism demands a different approach and a different kind of truth than the theoretical one.

Teaching the Questions: Aristotle's Philosophical Pedagogy in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics

2007 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Salkever
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Single Set

It is widely acknowledged that the style of Plato's political philosophizing is radically different from the systems and doctrines approach established by Hobbes and confirmed and redirected by Kant. But what about Aristotle? Does he intend to produce systematic political theory in sharp contrast to Plato's question-centered dialectics? This essay argues that Aristotle's political science is equally as dialogical as Plato's. Taken together, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics form a single set of lectures, craftily organized to lead its immediate Greek audience (the equivalent of Socrates' interlocutors in Plato) deeply into the questions and problems that are Aristotle's theoretical basis for the paradigmatically human activities of practical reason (phronêsis) and thoughtful choice (prohairesis). He accomplishes this goal by allowing none of the answers he or his audience might propose to stand unchallenged, thus acting as another, albeit soberer, Socrates to his politically concerned audience then and, potentially, now.

Virtue and Goals of Actions in Aristotle’s Ethical Treatises

2020 ◽  
pp. 191-218
Author(s):  
Hendrik Lorenz
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Eudemian Ethics ◽  
The Way

The present paper focuses on Aristotle’s claim in the Eudemian Ethics that the virtues of character are ‘states to do with decision’, by which he means that they are somehow responsible for decisions. In the paper’s first two sections, I explicate the way in which he thinks the character-virtues contribute to the correctness of the virtuous person’s decisions. In two subsequent sections, I articulate two philosophical objections to the picture that will have emerged. I defend Aristotle against the first objection. In articulating the second objection, I rely on texts from the Nicomachean Ethics and the De motu animalium that John Cooper’s work on Aristotle’s moral psychology has greatly illuminated. I argue that the second objection cannot be answered in a satisfactory way, and that it identifies a philosophical weakness in the moral psychology of the Eudemian Ethics, namely that it operates with an overly restrictive conception of practical reason.

James Dundas, the First Lord Arniston, on the Idea of Moral Philosophy and the Concept of Will

2020 ◽  
pp. 158-173
Author(s):  
Alexander Broadie
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Deliberative Process ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Last Judgment ◽  
The Will ◽  
Made In

This chapter focuses on the Scottish judge James Dundas, the first Lord Arniston, whose 313 page manuscript Idea philosophiae moralis (The idea of moral philosophy) has only recently come to light. Written in 1679, the year of Dundas’s death, the Latin manuscript, the only philosophical work he is known to have written, fits squarely within the category of Reformed orthodox scholasticism. Dundas begins in an Aristotelian spirit by expounding a concept of moral philosophy that rather closely resembles the concept that emerges from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, though Dundas believes Aristotle’s exposition to be the poorer for its not including a concept corresponding to that of the Fall. Dundas also discusses the concept of the will, with special reference to the question whether the will necessarily wills in accordance with the last judgment made in a deliberative process by practical reason, and he emerges from his discussion as a determinist who nevertheless believes that we have free will.

FILSAFAT RUMAH TANGGA: TELAAH PEMIKIRAN KHAWAJAH NASHIRUDDIN ATH-THUSI

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Itmam Aulia Rakhman
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
Complex Society ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Mind

Ath-Thusi uses Aristotle's understanding of the practical reason of the theory of surgery. According to Ath-Thusi, the cause of deviation is anything excessive. Thus, the unbalanced state of the soul is caused by the advantages, disadvantages, or morbidity of the mind. Diversity in a society is a necessity, a household, as the smallest community of a complex society and full of differences, it is certainly necessary to be based on the building of togetherness and mutual respect between one another. This article will describe the creative ideas of Khawajah Nashiruddin Ath-Thusi related to the philosophy of the household in order to answer the present-day problematic of the family.

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