What is Good? A Study of Educational Insights in Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, II and III)

This work is a study of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, II and III) to characterize the good: the good that features in education and good life. Nicomachean Ethics teaches us that human good is neither in thought/theory, nor in action/practice alone, it is neither an exclusively individual prerogative, nor an outright social preserve. And, human good is impossible without education. The practice of education can neither be isolated nor conceptualized apart from the demands of human life. If education is for human well-being—for human good—the good then is not in action alone, but action in accordance with the excellence (or virtue) 1 of the actor. What unifies reason and action, knowing and doing is learning to be an excellent (or virtuous) person—a person who is well-disposed in her affections and action, whose judgements are true, and decisions correct; and whose intellect and character are in harmony with the human nature.

Gellius and Gallus on the Limits of Regret

Aulus Gellius reports a set of criticisms of Cicero raised by Asinius Gallus. The criticisms include the claim that Cicero uses the notion of regret (paenitentia) incorrectly by implying that regret may be an appropriate response to something not voluntarily performed or chosen. This claim is assessed in the light both of the general picture of ancient accounts of regret assembled so far and also in the light of R. Jay Wallace’s recent account of the limits of regret and the relationship between regret and affirmation. This returns to the discussion of what a virtuous person may and may not regret.

The Doing of Justice and the Priority of Acting from Virtue

Aristotle famously distinguishes between merely doing a virtuous action and acting in the way in which a virtuous person would. Against an interpretation prominent in recent scholarship, I argue that ‘acting virtuously,’ in the sense of exercising a virtue actually possessed, is prior to ‘virtuous action,’ understood generically. I propose that the latter notion is best understood as a derivative abstraction from the former, building upon a reading of a neglected distinction between per se and coincidentally just action in Nicomachean Ethics 5, and thus shed light on the meaning and philosophical significance of the priority of acting from virtue.

What Are You Guarding?

What role should anger play in a virtuous life? If anger’s rightful target is injustice, and the world is marked by persistent injustice, is it virtuous to be habitually angry? Or, on the contrary, if Christlike character is marked by gentleness, should a virtuous person have little to no anger? To address this puzzle, DeYoung incorporates insights from two strands in Christian thought—one drawing on counsel from the desert fathers and mothers to eschew anger as a manifestation of the false self, and the other from Aquinas, who argues that some anger can be virtuous, if it has the right object and mode of expression. Next, she examines ways that formation in virtuous anger depends on other virtues, including humility, and other practices, such as lament and hope. Finally, she argues for appropriate developmental and vocational variation in anger’s virtuous expression across communities and over a lifetime.

Vicious Thoughts

According to many virtue ethicists, a wrong act is one that a virtuous person would not perform. Because most virtues involve dispositions to feel and think as well as act, a natural extension of this claim may appear to support the conclusion that it is morally wrong to have vicious thoughts. However, because moral reasons are widely thought to be very strong if not overriding, any such argument must be backed by an explanation of how a thought’s viciousness can give us a suitably strong reason not to have it. This chapter examines the two most promising theories of virtue and vice, eudaemonism and Platonism, and concludes that neither provides the needed explanation.

Aristotle’s Account of Moral Perception (EN.VI.8) & Nussbaum’s Priority of the Particular Thesis

Consider a contemporary retrieval of Aristotle’s account of moral perception. Drawing from EN.VI.8, Martha Nussbaum argues that we perceive moral particulars prior to ethical principles. First, I explain her priority of the particular thesis. The virtuous person perceives value in the world, as part of her moral deliberation. This perceptual skill is an important aspect of her virtuous activity, and hence also part of her eudaimonia. Second, I present her priority thesis with a dilemma: our perception of moral particulars is either non-inferential or it is inferential. If Nussbaum accepts a non-inferential interpretation, then she is committed to an unsavory view about moral epistemology –one that invites intuitionism and relativism. But if she accepts a non-inferential account, then the moral particular is no longer prior to the ethical principle. I suggest that her better option is to grab the second horn. This move avoids the problems of the first horn without sacrificing her neo-Aristotelian commitments or her overarching view that the perception of moral particulars is ineliminable to moral deliberation (and eudaimonia). At the same time, this move renders her priority thesis trivial.

Standing by or Standing Up?—How Philosophy Can (In)form Our Understanding of Bystander Behaviours in Workplace Bullying Dynamics

There is increasing awareness of the value of interdisciplinary collaboration within academia. Scholars argue that by drawing upon the conceptual, methodological, and interrogative paradigms of at least two disparate disciplines, researchers are challenged to re-evaluate and reconsider their own discipline-centric assumptions. A consequence of such purposeful boundary-blurring is an increased rigour and richness in the analysis of raw data, as well as the development of revealing insights through the novel application of discrete conceptual perspectives and theories. In such a way, dominant, taken-for-granted methodological and analytical assumptions are destabilised, as researchers are obliged to embrace contrasting perspectives while reassessing the epistemological foundations of their work. This paper focuses on the phenomenon of bystander responses to workplace bullying dynamics. While traditional scholarship into workplace bullying emanates from disciplines such as business, psychology, law, medicine and sociology, for example, this paper argues that philosophy, as a subject/field, may provide the researcher with a fresh interrogative lens through which to (re)view the phenomenon of workplace bullying, along with the consequential response of bystanders to such noxious behaviours. It suggests that, by drawing upon the philosophical concept of virtue ethics—which posits the question “What would a good or virtuous person do?”—we are afforded a robust theoretical framework to support a thoughtful and reasoned destabilization of contemporary perspectives on bystander behaviours and motivations.

Virtue, Body, Mind and Spirit in the Shijing: New Perspectives on Pre-Warring States Conceptions of Personhood and Virtue

This paper addresses the location of virtue within a virtuous person. It examines the relations of body (shen 身, ti 體, xing 形, gong 躬), mind (xin 心) and spirit (shen 神) in the Shijing 詩經, which describes virtue (de 德) in terms of the bodies and minds of virtuous agents. I argue that virtue is attributed to outward behavior, rather than inner state, and that that behavior is described via the performance of the shen or gong body.

The Concept of Nazi Ethic: Challenge to Moral Philosophy

Thinking about Auschwitz is bound to being moral, but Auschwitz turned into a challenge to the very idea of morality, the collapse of its entire conceptual con­tent. One of the main challenges lies in the concept of Nazi ethic: the prevailing understanding of morality in everyday consciousness and moral rhetory does not allow us to consider it as an oxymoron. This is indicated by abundant moral rhetoric, preoccupation with moral problems, the presence of everything which the idea of ​​morality is connected with – norms, values, the dominance of duty over inclination, appeal to moral imperativeness and conscience, ideas of good and evil, images and lists of virtues, moral evaluation of yourself and others, ideas of duty, dignity, responsibility, the primacy of morality over law. The idea of fighting evil, the image of which is set by the ideology of Nazism, became the moral basis of Auschwitz, reproducing the logic of a “just war”. At the heart of Nazi morality there is the gap between a virtuous person and his deed, which allows that killing does not makes someone a murderer. Killing is also seen divid­edly: the most important are its motives and how it is done, which should be “hu­mane”, clement both for the murderers and for the victims, and therefore morally sanctioned. The author shows that morality is an important part of Auschwitz me­chanics. Nazi morality is not opposed by any other expanded morality, but only by individual actions of rescue, not mediated by moral ideology. Disallowance of the concept of Nazi morality closes the idea of morality to non-killing as a pre-non-moral beginning that is not a norm or a prohibition mediated by moral ideas.