Aristotle’s Non-‘Dialectical’ Methodology in the Nicomachean Ethics

Ancient Philosophy 29 (2):311-335 (2009)
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Abstract

The Nicomachean Ethics is generally thought to be a “dialectical” work, aimed at resolving aporia in a set of endoxa, which it takes as its starting-point. I argue that Aristotle’s aim in the treatise is, rather, to produce definitions of key ethical terms, and that his starting-points are limited to evaluative and discriminative judgments of a certain sort, which are demanded by the nature of the discipline and are not endoxa. I discuss also how the definitions are reached (focusing on the cases of the virtues of character) and the roles that aporiai do play in the process.

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Gregory Salmieri
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

O que é "verdadeiro, mas não esclarecedor" segundo a Ética Eudêmia.Raphael Zillig - 2017 - Archai: Revista de Estudos Sobre as Origens Do Pensamento Ocidental 20:231-254.
The Limits of Definition: Gadamer’s Critique of Aristotle’s Ethics.Carlo DaVia - 2018 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (6):1176-1196.
Dossier: eudemian ethics.Raphael Zillig - 2017 - Archai: Revista de Estudos Sobre as Origens Do Pensamento Ocidental 20:79-92.

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