This book explores for the first time an idea common to both Plato and Aristotle: although people are separate, their lives need not be; one person's life may overflow into another's, so that helping someone else is a way of serving oneself. Price considers how this idea unites the philosophers' treatments of love and friendship (which are otherwise very different), and demonstrates that this view of love and friendship, applied not only to personal relationships, but also to the household and (...) even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism. (shrink)
As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)
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.
As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)
There is a current debate about the grammar of intention: do I intend to φ, or that I φ? The equivalent question in Aristotle relates especially to choice. I argue that, in the context of practical reasoning, choice, as also wish, has as its object an act. I then explore the role that this plays within his account of the relation of thought to action. In particular, I discuss the relation of deliberation to the practical syllogism, and the thesis that (...) the conclusion of the second is an action. (shrink)
John Cottingham identifies “the grand traditional project of synoptic ethics” as an attempt to define the essential features of a good human life within a rational understanding of the world, and of man’s place within it. That the project now seems dated he explains in two ways. First, he notes the recent specialization and professionalization of philosophy, its preference of technical topics to grand questions. Second, he adduces a skepticism that doubts the objectivity, and a liberalism that accepts a plurality, (...) of values. The upshot of both trends is a “committee ethics” that takes on “the task of articulating the structure of an optimal political system in which maximum scope is given for the pursuit of whatever values are in fact chosen by the citizens” —a grandish issue, surely, but neither a personal nor a metaphysical one. Cottingham’s main aim is to cast further doubt on the practicability of the traditional project so long as it is pursued in the traditional “ratiocentric” style. What that is he conveys through discussions of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. (shrink)
Different ideals of friendship feed into different ideals of political community. A political liberal can accept that political association should be a form of friendship,so long as his conception of friendship is a liberal one. Plato hopes for maximal mutual identification, with lovers' lives merging, and citizens applying the term 'mine' together.What then leaves it a problem why philosophers should be willing to rule is that they cannot share the most valuable part of their life — doing philosophy — with (...) most of their fellow-citizens. Plato stills intends a degree of political and interpersonal unity that sounds amiable, but invites fascism. Aristotle takes over some of Plato's structure: friends' lives overlap in the activities they share; and all citizens are to belinked within political friendship. This appears to be a dilute form of perfect friendship, retaining goodwill, but replacing intimacy by acquaintance, and rather pursuing than presupposing similarity. To move from that to a liberal conception of friendship andpolitics we need to allow that friends and fellow-citizens may accept one another's choices without fully endorsing them. Personal affection and respect can and should survive a recognition even of fundamental differences — so long as these are compatible with the values of friendship. (shrink)
In one sense of the term current among analytical philosophers, the quietist_lacks skeptical doubts about the metaphysical or epistemological status of ethical judgments as a class of judgment. He may still have doubts about, say, the current state of morality. There are criteria of courage by which, though they are open-ended, a man may count as acting bravely. It need not follow that he has adopted the best tactics. Yet he must have responded fittingly to danger. But how is that (...) to be identified? “Ought”-judgments are to be understood contextually, with an implicit relativity to certain ends or quasi-ends, and—when the “ought” is only pro tanto—to certain aspects of, or opportunities within, a situation. These judgments are often intuitive in that they do not derive from the application of a principle. Fittingness is an anthropocentric relation that holds within some human perspective; we should not think of it as a feature purportedly inherent in the very nature of things. It is salutary to remember cases where the “ought” is so relativized, say to an undesirable end, that it identifies no reason for action. The nature of the relation does not change when it is relativized to an end that the agent has reason to achieve. “Ought”-judgments should not be interpreted in ambitious ways that make them generally problematic. (shrink)
If we cannot agree that evaluations are judgements that both describe things and express sentiments, we lack any shared understanding of a common topic. If we ever come to agree how the describing and expressing relate, we shall lose a debate. Suppose that evaluation is a mode of description essentially expressive of sentiment, and that some evaluations can be known to be true: then there must exist properties of such a kind that they can be apprehended only from appropriately affective (...) points of view. Alternatively, it may be that evaluation involves some element distinct from description, so that, in principle, one could always accept the descriptive core of an evaluation while distancing oneself from a non-descriptive element that makes it evaluative. We may distinguish the two kinds of view as lumping, or descriptivist-cum-expressivist, and splitting, or descriptivist-plus-expressivist. Both ascribe to evaluations an expressive aspect as well as a descriptive content; what is at issue is whether the former is integral to the latter, or detachable from it. (shrink)
This essay is the journal editor's introduction to part 3 of an ongoing symposium on quietism. With reference to writings of James Joyce, Francis Picabia, J. M. Coetzee, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Elaine Pagels, and Karen King—and with extended reference to Jonathan Lear's study of “cultural devastation,” Radical Hope—Jeffrey Perl explores the possibility that the fear of anomie (“anomiphobia”) is misplaced. He argues that, in comparison with the violence and narrowness of any given social order, anomie may well be preferable, (...) and, in any case, may be no more than another name for quietism. (shrink)
Different questions generate different forms of practical reasoning. A contextually unrestricted ‘What shall I do?’ is too open to focus reflection. More determinately, an agent may ask, ‘Shall I do X, or Y?’ To answer that, he may need to weigh things up—as fits the derivation of ‘deliberation’ from libra. Ubiquitous and indispensable though this is, I mention it only to salute it in passing. Or he may ask how to achieve a proposed end: if his end is to do (...) X, he may ask ‘How shall I do X?’ Or he may ask how to apply a universal rule or particular maxim. Aristotle supplies examples in De Motu Animalium, whose wording I freely adapt to my own purposes: A1 reasons to a necessary means to achieving an end: I will make a cloak. To make a cloak I must do A. So, I will do A. (shrink)
