Particularism in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (2):121-147 (2013)
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Abstract

In this essay I offer a new particularist reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. I argue that the interpretation I present not only helps us to resolve some puzzles about Aristotle’s goals and methods, but it also gives rise to a novel account of morality—an account that is both interesting and plausible in its own right. The goal of this paper is, in part, exegetical—that is, to figure out how to best understand the text of the Nicomachean Ethics. But this paper also aims to contribute to the current exciting and controversial debate over particularism. By taking the first steps towards a comprehensive particularist reading of Aristotle’s Ethics I hope to demonstrate that some of the mistrust of particularism is misplaces and that what is, perhaps, the most influential moral theory in the history of philosophy is, arguably, a particularist moral theory.

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Uri D. Leibowitz
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Citations of this work

Moral Particularism and Moral Generalism.Michael Ridge & Sean McKeever - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
What's Aristotelian about neo‐Aristotelian Virtue Ethics?Sukaina Hirji - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (3):671-696.
Explaining Moral Knowledge.Uri D. Leibowitz - 2014 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 11 (1):35-56.

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References found in this work

Ethics without principles.Jonathan Dancy - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Virtue and Reason.John Mcdowell - 1979 - The Monist 62 (3):331-350.
Virtue and Reason.John McDowell - 1979 - In Roger Crisp & Michael Slote (eds.), Virtue Ethics. Oxford University Press.

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