Download or read book Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle written by A. W. Price and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this authoritative discussion of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, A. W. Price considers four related areas: eudaimonia, or living and acting well, as the ultimate end of action; virtues of character in relation to the emotions, and to one another; practical reasoning, especially from an end to ways or means; and acrasia, or action that is contrary to the agent's own judgement of what is best. The focal concept is that of eudaimonia, which both Plato and Aristotle view as an abstract goal that is valuable enough to motivate action. Virtue has a double role to play in making its achievement possible, both in proposing subordinate ends apt to the context, and in protecting the agent against temptations to discard them too easily. For both purposes, Price suggests that virtues need to form a unity--but one that can be conceived in various ways. Among the tasks of deliberation is to work out how, and whether, to pursue some putative end in context. Aristotle returns to early Plato in finding it problematic that one should consciously sacrifice acting well to some incidental attraction; Plato later finds this possible by postulating schism within the soul. Price maintains that it is their emphasis upon the centrality of action within human life that makes the reflections of these ancient philosophers perennially relevant.
Download or read book Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle written by A.W. Price and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A.W. Price explores the views of Plato and Aristotle on how virtue of character and practical reasoning enable agents to achieve eudaimonia--the state of living or acting well. He provides a full philosophical analysis and argues that the perennial question of action within human life is central to the reflections of these ancient philosophers.
Download or read book The Virtue of Aristotle s Ethics written by Paula Gottlieb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text looks at Aristotle's claims, particularly the much-maligned doctrine of the mean.
Download or read book On Patience written by Matthew Pianalto and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us are so busy that we might be tempted to think we don’t have time to be patient. However, that idea involves a serious underestimation of what patience is and why it matters. In On Patience, Matthew Pianalto revives a richer understanding of what patience is and why it is centrally important in both virtue theory and everyday life. Drawing from a wide range of philosophical and religious sources, Pianalto shows that our contemporary tendency to equate patience with waiting fails to do justice to other aspects of patience such as tolerance, perseverance, and the opposition of patience to anger. With this broader understanding of patience, Pianalto further shows how patience supports the development of other moral strengths, such as courage, justice, love, and hope. In these ways, On Patience sheds light on Franz Kafka’s remark that, “Patience is the master key to every situation,” and Gregory the Great’s perhaps surprising claim that, “Patience is the root and guardian of all the virtues.” This first book-length contemporary philosophical examination of patience will be of interest to students and scholars not just of virtue ethics, but also of moral philosophy more broadly.
Download or read book Nicomachean Ethics written by Aristotle and published by SDE Classics. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Brute Within written by Hendrik Lorenz and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-04-06 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hendrik Lorenz presents a comprehensive study of Plato's and Aristotle's conceptions of non-rational desire. They see this as something that humans share with animals, and which aims primarily at the pleasures of food, drink, and sex. Lorenz explores the cognitive resources that both philosophers make available for the explanation of such desires, and what they take rationality to add to the motivational structure of human beings. In doing so, he exposes a remarkable degree of continuity between Plato's and Aristotle's thought in this area. He also sheds fresh light, not only on both philosophers' theories of motivation, but also on how they conceive of the mind, both in itself and in relation to the body.
Download or read book In Pursuit of the Good written by Eric Salem and published by Paul Dry Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is friendship? What is the best life? How does one decide? Try Salem on Aristotle.
Download or read book Techne in Aristotle s Ethics written by Tom Angier and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues for the importance of the concept of 'techne' in constructing a new understanding of Aristotle's moral philosophy.
Download or read book Pursuits of Wisdom written by John M. Cooper and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-25 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a major reinterpretation of ancient philosophy that recovers the long Greek and Roman tradition of philosophy as a complete way of life--and not simply an intellectual discipline. Distinguished philosopher John Cooper traces how, for many ancient thinkers, philosophy was not just to be studied or even used to solve particular practical problems. Rather, philosophy--not just ethics but even logic and physical theory--was literally to be lived. Yet there was great disagreement about how to live philosophically: philosophy was not one but many, mutually opposed, ways of life. Examining this tradition from its establishment by Socrates in the fifth century BCE through Plotinus in the third century CE and the eclipse of pagan philosophy by Christianity, Pursuits of Wisdom examines six central philosophies of living--Socratic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and the Platonist life of late antiquity. The book describes the shared assumptions that allowed these thinkers to conceive of their philosophies as ways of life, as well as the distinctive ideas that led them to widely different conclusions about the best human life. Clearing up many common misperceptions and simplifications, Cooper explains in detail the Socratic devotion to philosophical discussion about human nature, human life, and human good; the Aristotelian focus on the true place of humans within the total system of the natural world; the Stoic commitment to dutifully accepting Zeus's plans; the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure through tranquil activities that exercise perception, thought, and feeling; the Skeptical eschewal of all critical reasoning in forming their beliefs; and, finally, the late Platonist emphasis on spiritual concerns and the eternal realm of Being. Pursuits of Wisdom is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what the great philosophers of antiquity thought was the true purpose of philosophy--and of life.
Download or read book Aristotle s Dialogue with Socrates written by Ronna Burger and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the good life for a human being? Aristotle’s exploration of this question in the Nicomachean Ethics has established it as a founding work of Western philosophy, though its teachings have long puzzled readers and provoked spirited discussion. Adopting a radically new point of view, Ronna Burger deciphers some of the most perplexing conundrums of this influential treatise by approaching it as Aristotle’s dialogue with the Platonic Socrates. Tracing the argument of the Ethics as it emerges through that approach, Burger’s careful reading shows how Aristotle represents ethical virtue from the perspective of those devoted to it while standing back to examine its assumptions and implications. “This is the best book I have read on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. It is so well crafted that reading it is like reading the Ethics itself, in that it provides an education in ethical matters that does justice to all sides of the issues.”—Mary P. Nichols, Baylor University
Download or read book Aristotle on Desire written by Giles Pearson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Desire is a central concept in Aristotle's ethical and psychological works, but he does not provide us with a systematic treatment of the notion itself. This book reconstructs the account of desire latent in his various scattered remarks on the subject and analyses its role in his moral psychology. Topics include: the range of states that Aristotle counts as desires (orexeis); objects of desire (orekta) and the relation between desires and envisaging prospects; desire and the good; Aristotle's three species of desire: epithumia (pleasure-based desire), thumos (retaliatory desire) and boulêsis (good-based desire - in a narrower notion of 'good' than that which connects desire more generally to the good); Aristotle's division of desires into rational and non-rational; Aristotle and some current views on desire; and the role of desire in Aristotle's moral psychology. The book will be of relevance to anyone interested in Aristotle's ethics or psychology.
Download or read book Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship written by Lorraine Smith Pangle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-14 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive account of the major philosophical works on friendship and its relationship to self-love. The book gives central place to Aristotle's searching examination of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Lorraine Pangle argues that the difficulties surrounding this discussion are soon dispelled once one understands the purpose of the Ethics as both a source of practical guidance for life and a profound, theoretical investigation into human nature. The book also provides fresh interpretations of works on friendship by Plato, Cicero, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne and Bacon. The author shows how each of these thinkers sheds light on central questions of moral philosophy: is human sociability rooted in neediness or strength? is the best life chiefly solitary, or dedicated to a community with others? Clearly structured and engagingly written, this book will appeal to a broad swathe of readers across philosophy, classics and political science.
Download or read book Action Contemplation and Happiness written by C. D. C. Reeve and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotle's greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotle's views on knowledge and reality. That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotle's writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotle's philosophy as a whole.
Download or read book The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle written by Jiyuan Yu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, this book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives. It does not simply take one side as a framework to understand the other; rather, it takes them as mirrors for each other and seeks to develop new readings and perspectives of both ethics that would be unattainable if each were studied on its own.
Download or read book Plato s Republic An Introduction written by Sean McAleer and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is an excellent book – highly intelligent, interesting and original. Expressing high philosophy in a readable form without trivialising it is a very difficult task and McAleer manages the task admirably. Plato is, yet again, intensely topical in the chaotic and confused world in which we are now living. Philip Allott, Professor Emeritus of International Public Law at Cambridge University This book is a lucid and accessible companion to Plato’s Republic, throwing light upon the text’s arguments and main themes, placing them in the wider context of the text’s structure. In its illumination of the philosophical ideas underpinning the work, it provides readers with an understanding and appreciation of the complexity and literary artistry of Plato’s Republic. McAleer not only unpacks the key overarching questions of the text – What is justice? And Is a just life happier than an unjust life? – but also highlights some fascinating, overlooked passages which contribute to our understanding of Plato’s philosophical thought. Plato’s 'Republic': An Introduction offers a rigorous and thought-provoking analysis of the text, helping readers navigate one of the world’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory. With its approachable tone and clear presentation, it constitutes a welcome contribution to the field, and will be an indispensable resource for philosophy students and teachers, as well as general readers new to, or returning to, the text.
Download or read book Reason and Character written by Lorraine Smith Pangle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-06-05 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A close and selective commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, offering a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s teachings on the relation between reason and moral virtue. What does it mean to live a good life or a happy life, and what part does reason play in the quest for fulfillment? Lorraine Smith Pangle shows how Aristotle’s arguments for virtue as the core of happiness and for reason as the guide to virtue emerge in response to Socrates’s paradoxical claim that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance. Against Socrates, Aristotle does justice to the effectual truth of moral responsibility—that our characters do indeed depend on our own voluntary actions. But he also incorporates Socratic insights into the close interconnection of passion and judgment and the way passions and bad habits work not to overcome knowledge that remains intact but to corrupt the knowledge one thinks one has. Reason and Character presents fresh interpretations of Aristotle’s teaching on the character of moral judgment and moral choice, on the way reason finds the mean—especially in justice—and on the relation between practical and theoretical wisdom.
Download or read book Confronting Aristotle s Ethics written by Eugene Garver and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the good life? Posing this question today would likely elicit very different answers. Some might say that the good life means doing good - improving one's community and the lives of others. Others might respond that it means doing well - cultivating one's own abilities in a meaningful way. But for Aristotle these two distinct ideas - doi...
