ON PASSION AND DESIRE: CONFRONTING AN AMBIGUITY IN ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS Sobre pasión y deseo: despejando una ambigüedad de la ética aristotélica (original) (raw)
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Aneu Orexeos Nous: Virtue, Affectivity, and Aristotelian Rule of Law
2012
Passages in Aristotle’s Politics Bk III are cited in discussions of the “rule of law”, most particularly sections in 1287a where the famous characterization of law as “mind without desire”occurs and in 1286a where Aristotle raises and explores the question whether it is better to be ruled by the best man or the best laws. My paper aims, by exegetically culling out Aristotle’s position in the Politics, Nichomachean Ethics and Rhetoric, to argue that his view on the rule of law and its relations to human subjects is considerably more complex and considerably more interesting. Despite Aristotle’s dictum, laws are not expressions or institutions of a pure and passionless rationality, and in order to be framed, understood and administered well, one must both have the sort of solid understanding of virtues, vices, passions, and motives of human action that Aristotle’s moral philosophy provides and have developed, at least to some degree, certain virtues. My paper will focus particularly on three themes: the role of the passions and desires in judgement, action, virtues and vices; the inescapability of passions and desires in the functioning of law; the possibility for rule of law and a certain level of virtue to be mutually supporting. ""
The literature on Descartes's view of the passions over the past twenty years or so has shown the rich and varied ways that he regarded the passions as contributing positively to cognition and practical life. This paper is concerned with Descartes's view on the passions' moral value, that is, their value with respect to achieving the ethical ends of virtue and happiness. In this regard, there is no question that the passions possess a kind of conative value because of their power to move or incline us in ways that contribute to ethical ends. For example, the passions can motivate virtuous actions, as when the love of others moves " a truly noble and generous soul " to behave as a true friend (PS 83; AT X 390). Similarly, the passions can contribute to virtue by moving our thoughts—for instance, by directing our attention or inclining our judgments—as when the passion of generosity helps to cultivate the virtue of humility by countering the tendency to think excessively of oneself (PS 154-5; AT X 446-7). This paper's question is whether the passions also contribute to ethical ends in a cognitive sense by informing us of the moral value of things, in other words, telling us whether things are good or bad with respect to the ends of virtue and happiness. I respond to two prima facie reasons to think that the answer is no. Firstly, in order for the passions to inform us in this way they would have to be the sort of mental state that purports to tell us the way things are, in other words, that contains some sort of presentation or assessment of things. To borrow language from present day philosophy of mind, they would have to be contentful mental states. But this way of thinking about the passions is opposed by a long tradition, running from Descartes's contemporaries to today, that regards Cartesian passions as purely conative or appetitive movements, along the lines of Thomistic passions. Secondly, even if the passions are contentful, it is not clear that their contents accurately report the value of things with respect to ethical goals.
eHumanista, 2022
Aristotle’s psychological theory about the passions of the soul, transmitted through his own and through Aquinas’s writings, had a decisive influence on the representation of passions in late medieval literature. Although theoretically morally neutral, passions’ connotations of passivity were widely illustrated in medieval literature with negative connotations. This is exemplified in a reading of Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor in light of Aquina’s Summa and XV century Compendio de ética nicomáquea.
The politics of passion: Aristotle and the preliminaries of morality
1998
Michael Dummett opens his monumental Frege: Philosophy of Language in a rather personal mood: "I am always disappointed when a book lacks a preface: it is like arriving at someone's house for dinner, and being conducted straight into the dining-room." 1 Transferring the comparison from prefaces to introductions, I could, in the same personal vein, say that I am always glad when a book lacks a lengthy introduction. If I am hungry, I prefer to skip the drinks and snacks in the antechamber; they might, and frequently do, spoil my appetite. This introduction, then, will be short, but, I hope, not too short to be useless. This is not, nor pretends to be, a work of classical scholarship. Its purport is not historical; nor is it my intention to reproduce 'what Aristotle really thoughf. It is perhaps best described as a modest contribution to what one could call the 'neo-scholastic revival' of the study of Aristotle. It provides a rather speculative, and probably controversial, interpretation of the adage 'ethics is practical'. It self-consciously exploits modern apparatus in arguing that the key to its decipherment lies not in Aristotle's ethical writings, but rather in its presuppositions. The argument is, in essentials, not difficult, although it might be easy to loose track. I shall not therefore, beat about the bush and rise to the occasion this introduction offers-to give a concise version of the story, which may serve the reader, so to speak, as an itinerary rather than a travel guide. In the first chapter, I design an argument against a fashionable, but mistaken interpretation of Aristotle's ethical method. It centers around a principal methodological term, phainomena, or, as it is frequently rendered 'appearances'. Contrary to what the 'new orthodoxy' (as I shall call it) claims, these are not, in a key passage in the Nicomachean Ethics, endoxa, or, common beliefs. Ethical inquiry, it is true, proceeds by examination of beliefs, but this it can do because they presuppose a command of the 'appearances' on the part of the subject These 'appearances' are, to put it bluntly, facts; and there are other ways than dialectical examination in which one becomes familiar with these. 1. Our chapter heading is, in fact a platitudinous pun on the title of what is standardly stigmatised as an 'extremely boring' or 'stodgy 7 work of moral philosophy. 1 Nevertheless, in The Methods of Ethics, first published in 1874, Henry Sidgwick managed to develop and present what has been called, with a keen sense for hyperbole, "the prototype of the modern treatment of moral philosophy." 2 Our pun is not only trite, but also confusing. A 'Method of Ethics' for Sidgwick is "any rational procedure by which we determine what individual human beings 'oughf-or what it is 'righf for them-to do, or seek to realise by voluntary action". 3 These several co-existing 'Methods' should be kept distinct from, so to say, the Method of The Methods. Sidgwick strikes a well of selfevident starting-points in the "Common Sense Morality of mankind" to test the Methods against, so as to secure a wide acceptance of his conclusions by the more reflective segments of society. 4 The procedure of mapping the market of common belief, the "impartial reflexion" and "reduction to consistency" of dialectic, Sidgwick owes to Aristotle. It is this method to which our pun refers. Sidgwick's acknowledgement, proffered in an upsurge of autobiographical excitement, marks one of those scant moments at which the Methods' monotonous hum is pierced through. 5 Like Sidgwick, modern moral philosophers are, in their more self-scrutinising moods, fond of labelling themselves heirs to Aristotle. For instance, John Rawls regards his own approach in moral theory as an offshoot of this conception "adopted by most classical British writers through Sidgwick", but (in a footnote) ultimately traced back "to Aristotle's procedure in the Nicomachean Ethics". 6 1 See Bernard Williams' Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, held at Newnham College, Cambridge, 'The point of view of the universe: Sidgwick and the ambitions of ethics', reprinted m Williams (1995), p. 156. 2 Schncewind (1977), ρ 1 The italics are mine. 3 Sidgwick (1907), ρ 1 The methods Sidgwick discerns are intuitionism, philosophical egoism, and utilitarianism. «Schneewind (1977), p. 193 5 Sidgwick (1907), p. xx-xxi. « Rawls (1971), ρ 51 and n26 See Nussbaum (1978), p. 105 and n7. The footnote leads us to a passage from the third chapter ('The Nature of the Inquiry') of W.F.R. Hardie's 1968 book on Aristotle's Ethical Tlteoiy, which is for a considerable part devoted to the refutation of Bumet's view that the Nicomachean Ethics is "dialectical throughout". Hardie (1968), pp. 37-45; Burnet (1900), pp. v, xxxtx-XLVl, 13 Considerable tracts of the project, then, are reserved for description of common belief. This is brought out well by Sidgwick himself when he says that his "immediate object-to invert Aristotle's phrase-is not Practice but Knowledge." 7 The question is whether this seemingly innocuous inversion leaves Aristotelian ethical method where it is. Perhaps it can only begin to assume clarity of contour if we re-invert the phrase: ethics, for Aristotle, is, and essentially is, practical, and this has its repercussions on its method. These, however, will not become articulate until the subsequent chapters. The argument of this chapter is only a necessary step in that direction. Its colour is, on the whole, dimly iconoclastic, lit up by an occasional constructive twinkling. It aims at liberating Aristotelian ethical methodology from the 'Sidgwickian' cuffs into which it has been manacled by a recent interpretation. Since this interpretation is sail very much in vogue, it will take some effort to shoot holes in its incrustation. 8 This 'newly orthodox' interpretation, as I shall grandiloquently call it, epitomises one conception of moral philosophy, which, so much is sure, goes back at least to Sidgwick. But it may not go back to Aristotle. 2. The newly orthodox interpretation takes for a point of departure the methodological remarks at EN 1145b2-7, 9 which introduce the treatment of akrasia. An akratic person does what is wrong knowingly, on account of affection (EN 1111ЫЗ-4; 1145Ы2-3). 10 This treatment is generally considered a paradigm case of the application of dialectic to a particular inquiry. 11 1 shall for a start comply by quoting a well-known commentator's translation of the bulk of this passage (b2-6), and supply the missing clause in accolades. 12 Here as in other cases'* we must set down [hthenlas] the phatnomena and begin by considering the difficulties [proton diaporêsantas], and so go on to vindicate if possible all the common conceptions [ta endoxa] about these states of mind [pen lauta ta pathê], or at any rate most of them and the most important; {for when both the difficulties are solved and the endoxa are left [kataleipêtai], it would have been proven adequately [dedeigmenon hikanôs].} (EN 1145b2-7) 7 Sidgwick (1907), ρ vi 9 Some exegetical detail has to be dealt with to bring home the point of this chapter The reader who prefers to skip these issues is advised to make a leap to the next chapter '
Moral Actions in the Nicomachean Ethics: reason, emotion, and moral development [Ph.D. dissertation]
2023
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that both character and reason are responsible for delimiting and implementing the moral actions. The Aristotelian text, nonetheless, brings several exegetical and philosophical issues when one tries to determine exactly which are the roles played by character and reason in moral actions. There is a set of passages in the Nicomachean Ethics in which Aristotle apparently defends the following distribution of roles: the character is responsible for adopting the moral goals while reason has under its responsibility the task of determining how to achieve the goals. This distribution of roles, however, is problematic. It ascribes the role of adopting the moral goals to a capacity that Aristotle classifies as non-rational; furthermore, it restricts the role of reason to find the “means” to achieve those goals. However, in other passages, Aristotle seems to argue in favour of a different distribution of tasks. In such passages, the character is under the sway of reason, which is presented as the character's guide to moral issues. Aristotle's formulations seem to reveal a certain inconsistency in the distribution of roles between character and reason. In this thesis, I investigate Aristotle’s different formulations with respect to the roles played by character and reason in the performance of moral actions. I defend that, in a virtuously structured soul, reason plays the role of guiding character in regard to the goals to be pursued.
The Non-Aristotelian Character of Aquinas's Ethics: Aquinas on the Passions
Coakley/Faith, Rationality, and the Passions, 2012
Scholars discussing Aquinas's ethics typically understand it as largely Aristotelian, though with some differences accounted for by the differences in worldview between Aristotle and Aquinas. In this paper, I argue against this view. I show that although Aquinas recognizes the Aristotelian virtues, he thinks they are not real virtues. Instead, for Aquinas, the passions-or the suitably formulated intellectual and volitional analogues to the passions-are not only the foundation of any real ethical life but also the flowering of what is best in it. Passions are constituents of a virtue in so far as they are subject to reason and moved by reason. 5 Adopting a similar view, Peter King says, Aquinas holds contra Hume, that reason is and ought to be the ruler of the passions; since the passions can be controlled by reason they should be controlled by reason. 6
The Tragic Foundation of Aristotelian Ethics, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 30:2 (2009)
In this paper, I begin by considering the ground or foundation upon which a life of moral action firmly establishes itself for a modern thinker such as Kant and then turn to Aristotle with this type of foundational moment in mind. In so doing, a stark contrast emerges, which provides us with a new, clearer, and, I think, surprising view of Aristotelian ethics. First, whereas the ground on which moral life is based for Kant is perfectly, indeed timelessly present, for Aristotle this ground exists in human life strictly speaking only in the past and in the future. That is, the temporal modes of the foundational dynamic in these two practical philosophies are radically different. Second, whereas for Kant human reason gives us perfect and unmediated access to this ground, for Aristotle the ground of ethical action is irremediably withdrawn, distant from our grasp, although never completely absent. With Aristotle we have before us an ethic that is indeed “grounded” in what is truly good, but it is so in what for us must seem strange and questionworthy ways.