This volume re-examines some of the major themes at the intersection of traditional and contemporary metaphysics. The book uses as a point of departure Francisco Suárez’s _Metaphysical Disputations_ published in 1597. Minimalist metaphysics in empiricist/pragmatist clothing have today become mainstream in analytic philosophy. Independently of this development, the progress of scholarship in ancient and medieval philosophy makes clear that traditional forms of metaphysics have affinities with some of the streams in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The book brings together leading contemporary metaphysicians (...) to investigate the viability of a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics. (shrink)

The Legacy of Aristotelian Enthymeme provides a historical-logical analysis of Aristotle's rhetorical syllogism, the enthymeme, through its Medieval and Renaissance interpretations. Bringing together notions of credibility and proof, an international team of scholars highlight the fierce debates around this form of argumentation during two key periods for Aristotle's beliefs.Reflecting on medieval and humanist thinkers, philosophers, poets and theologians, this volume joins up dialectical and rhetorical argumentation as key to the enthymeme's interpretation and shows how the enthymeme was the source (...) of a major interpretive conflict. As a method for achieving the standards for proof and credibility that persist across diverse fields of study today including the law, politics, medicine and morality, this book takes in Latin and Persian interpretations of the enthymeme and casts contemporary argumentation in a new historical light. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Aristotelian accounts of disease cannot provide us with an adequate descriptive account of our concept of disease. In other words, they fail to classify conditions as either diseases, or non-diseases, in a way that is consistent with commonplace intuitions. This being said, Aristotelian accounts of disease are not worthless. Aristotelian approaches cannot offer a decent descriptive account of our concept of disease, but they do offer resources for improving on the (...) ways in which we think about the harms that afflict human beings. While they cannot offer an account of ‘disease' they can offer an account of ‘harm'—and this it turns out, is ultimately of greater importance. (shrink)

Since its resurgence in the 1990s, character education has been subject to a bevy of common criticisms, including that it is didactic and crudely behaviorist; premised on a faulty trait psychology; victim‐blaming; culturally imperialist, racist, religious, or ideologically conservative; and many other horrible things besides. Matt Ferkany and Benjamin Creed examine an intellectualist Aristotelian form of character education that has gained popularity recently and find that it is largely not susceptible to such criticisms. In this form, character education is (...) education for practically intelligent virtue, or the intrinsically motivated and psychically harmonious exercise of robust and stable traits involving practical intelligence conducive to individual and collective human flourishing. (shrink)

An Aristotelian Philosophy of Mathematics breaks the impasse between Platonist and nominalist views of mathematics. Neither a study of abstract objects nor a mere language or logic, mathematics is a science of real aspects of the world as much as biology is. For the first time, a philosophy of mathematics puts applied mathematics at the centre. Quantitative aspects of the world such as ratios of heights, and structural ones such as symmetry and continuity, are parts of the physical world (...) and are objects of mathematics. Though some mathematical structures such as infinities may be too big to be realized in fact, all of them are capable of being realized. Informed by the author's background in both philosophy and mathematics, but keeping to simple examples, the book shows how infant perception of patterns is extended by visualization and proof to the vast edifice of modern pure and applied mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

Aristotelian philosophy played an important part in the history of 19th century philosophy and science but has been largely neglected by researchers. A key element in the newly emerging historiography of ancient philosophy, Aristotelian philosophy served at the same time as a corrective guide in a wide range of projects in philosophy. This volume examines both aspects of this reception history.

It is commonly assumed that Aristotle's ethical theory shares deep structural similarities with neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. I argue that this assumption is a mistake, and that Aristotle's ethical theory is both importantly distinct from the theories his work has inspired, and independently compelling. I take neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics to be characterized by two central commitments: (i) virtues of character are defined as traits that reliably promote an agent's own flourishing, and (ii) virtuous actions are defined as the sorts (...) of actions a virtuous agent reliably performs under the relevant circumstances. I argue that neither of these commitments are features of Aristotle's own view, and I sketch an alternative explanation for the relationship between virtue and happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics. Although, on the interpretation I defend, we do not find in Aristotle a distinctive normative theory alongside deontology and consequentialism, what we do find is a way of thinking about how prudential and moral reasons can come to be aligned through a certain conception of practical agency. (shrink)

Aristotelian metaphysics is currently undergoing something of a renaissance. This volume brings together fourteen essays from leading philosophers who are sympathetic to this conception of metaphysics, which takes its cue from the idea that metaphysics is the first philosophy. The primary input from Aristotle is methodological, but many themes familiar from his metaphysics will be discussed, including ontological categories, the role and interpretation of the existential quantifier, essence, substance, natural kinds, powers, potential, and the development of life. The volume (...) mounts a strong challenge to the type of ontological deflationism which has recently gained a strong foothold in analytic metaphysics. It will be a useful resource for scholars and advanced students who are interested in the foundations and development of philosophy. (shrink)

Both Kant and Sidgwick recognize a deep tension between moral and prudential reasons. On the basis of what we can observe, both agree that fulfilling one’s moral obligation is not always prudentially optimal. And, both agree, if acting morally must sometimes come at the cost of one’s own happiness, then we should be skeptical about the possibility of having a completely rationalized — that is, a completely systematic and coherent — account of practical reason. Both suggest that, the empirical world (...) being thus, the only way that practical reason can be rendered coherent is if we assume the existence of God, as the being who will ensure that acting morally is always conducive to one’s happiness, through a system of divine rewards and punishments. -/- Ancient eudaimonism might seem to offer a solution to the dualism of practical reason, and without any theological assumptions. Eudaimonism holds that there is indeed a single ultimate rational aim that can accommodate all of our ethical concerns, namely, the pursuit of an agent’s own happiness. Kant and Sidgwick, however, are pessimistic about the possibility of eudaimonist theories successfully reconciling both ethical and moral concerns under a single system of practical reason. -/- In this paper, I review the challenges that Kant and Sidgwick pose to eudaimonism, and argue that there are resources within ancient theories — and with Aristotle in particular — to potentially resolve at least some of their concerns. Much turns on how exactly we understand ancient eudaimonist theories, and I argue here that this question is far from settled. (shrink)

Throughout the greater part of the twentieth century, both in the analytic and continental traditions, metaphysics was deemed to be passé. The last few decades, however, have witnessed a remarkable growth of interest among analytic philosophers in various traditional metaphysical topics, such as modality, truth, causality, etc. which resulted in the emergence of various forms of analytic metaphysics. The new forms of metaphysics differ from its traditional forms mostly in their methodology and in the range of proposed solutions to particular (...) problems. Besides these and other differences, however, there are also many similarities and there are even some who intentionally develop traditional metaphysical themes using the contemporary analytical methods. All these developments call for detailed exploration, which is the general goal of the present publication Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic. The publication is the fruit of the conference which took place in Prague in 2010 and which had for its aim to bring together those willing to explore relations between the traditional and contemporary concerns, both from among the leading analytic philosophers working in metaphysics and the historians of philosophy devoted to the study of the metaphysical tradition. The specific focus of the conference was a re-examination of topics such as categories, metaphysical structure, substance and accident, existence, modalities, and predication. (shrink)

In this essay an engineer and a philosopher, after many conversations, develop an argument for why the Aristotelian version of virtue ethics is the most promising way to develop what we call artificial moral, social agents, i.e. robots. This, evidently, applies to humans as well. There are several claims: first, that humans are not born moral, they are socialized into morality; second, that morality involves affect, emotion, feeling, before it engages reason; third, that how a moral being feels is (...) related to some narrative, whether moral or not; and finally, that narrativity is what builds a sense of a “moral” I, namely an authorial moral self. (shrink)

This book provides a reconstruction of Aristotelian character education, shedding new light on what moral character really is, and how it can be highlighted, measured, nurtured and taught in current schooling. Arguing that many recent approaches to character education understand character in exclusively amoral, instrumentalist terms, Kristjánsson proposes a coherent, plausible and up-to-date concept, retaining the overall structure of Aristotelian character education. After discussing and debunking popular myths about Aristotelian character education, subsequent chapters focus on the practical (...) ramifications and methodologies of character education. These include measuring virtue and morality, asking whether Aristotelian character education can salvage the effects of bad upbringing, and considering implications for teacher training and classroom practice. The book rejuvenates time-honoured principles of the development of virtues in young people, at a time when 'character' features prominently in educational agendas and parental concerns over school education systems. Offering an interdisciplinary perspective which draws from the disciplines of education, psychology, philosophy and sociology, this book will appeal to researchers, academics and students wanting a greater insight into character education. (shrink)

"The twelve chapters of this volume all began their existence as contributions to workshops held between 2009 and 2011 by a Danish-Swedish research network called The Aristotelian Tradition: The reception of Aristotle's works on logic and metaphysics in the Middle Ages, headquartered in Gothenburg and funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Most of them were written by members of the network, some by invited speakers. While the volume amply illustrates the set of scholarly approaches characteristic of the (...) "Copenhagen School of Medieval Philosophy" (notably a strong philological foundation and an interest in ancient as well as medieval and Greek as well as Latin texts), its thematic diversity reflects the network's breadth of interests. What unites the chapters in this respect is simply a concern with different historical manifestations of Aristotelian thought on logical and metaphysical matters. The volume includes studies of texts by, among others, Apuleius, Boethius, Anonymus Aurelianensis III, Michael of Ephesus, Averroes, Anonymus Cantabrigiensis, Nicholas of Paris, Robert Kilwardby, Anonymus O, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Francisco Suárez, relating to themes and passages in Aristotle's Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics 1, Posterior Analytics 1, Sophistical Refutations and Metaphysics A and Z. The last two chapters consist of a new edition, with English translation and commentary, of the first part of a fiercely anti-Aristotelian work, which has been described as the starting-point for Renaissance Platonism and Aristotelianism alike: George Gemistos Plethon's On Aristotle's Departures from Plato."--. (shrink)

Aristotelian, or non-Platonist, realism holds that mathematics is a science of the real world, just as much as biology or sociology are. Where biology studies living things and sociology studies human social relations, mathematics studies the quantitative or structural aspects of things, such as ratios, or patterns, or complexity, or numerosity, or symmetry. Let us start with an example, as Aristotelians always prefer, an example that introduces the essential themes of the Aristotelian view of mathematics. A typical mathematical (...) truth is that there are six different pairs in four objects: Figure 1. There are 6 different pairs in 4 objects The objects may be of any kind, physical, mental or abstract. The mathematical statement does not refer to any properties of the objects, but only to patterning of the parts in the complex of the four objects. If that seems to us less a solid truth about the real world than the causation of flu by viruses, that may be simply due to our blindness about relations, or tendency to regard them as somehow less real than things and properties. But relations (for example, relations of equality between parts of a structure) are as real as colours or causes. (shrink)

This chapter defends an Aristotelian account of patriotism that differs from, and improves upon, the ‘extreme’ account of Aristotelian patriotism defended by Alasdair MacIntyre in a famous lecture. The virtue of patriotism is modeled on Aristotle’s account of the virtue of friendship; and the resulting account of patriotism falls between MacIntyre’s extreme patriotism and Marcia Baron’s moderate patriotism. The chapter illustrates how this plausible Aristotelian account of patriotism can avoid the dilemma that Baron has pressed against MacIntyre’s (...) extreme account. It also illustrates why the virtue of patriotism cannot coexist with willful forms of ignorance. In its discussion of patriotism and ignorance the chapter draws on a recent study (2018) of the especially strong connection in the United States between patriotism and poverty. (shrink)

The main argument of the article regards Aristotle’s anti-realistic account, which presents a different viewpoint from that which simply fulfils or negates the truth-values of our statements on Mixed Constitutions. In modern times, the idea of a Constitution of many minds or of many individuals is proposed by Sunstein and by Hart, who maintain that neither intentions in juridical procedure nor Constitutional provisions can produce an ideal Constitution. Thus any interpretative procedure assigning to legal reality any definite, once-and-for-all meaning is (...) precarious, according to Aristotle who asks whether we can gain epistemic access to the real essences of Constitutions and their structure. These ideas respond to a challenge in the Works of Contiades, who will help us to turn the ideal Constitution into a realisable model in the situation in which we live nowadays. This is the main challenge to be met by the institutions of Europe in order to safeguard the nature of historical and intellectual values. (shrink)

It is difficult now to imagine an intellectual landscape so thoroughly dominated by one figure as was that of the Schools by Aristotle. Except on certain well-known questions, the presumption was that Aristotle, suitably interpreted, was right. Nevertheless Aristotelianism was no frozen monolith. During the four centuries of its predominance, it continued to change, and admitted on all but fundamental points or those on which ecclesiastical authorities had pronounced, a great latitude—within, as in all such frameworks, the limits of its (...) thinkable. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian naturalism purports to explain morality in terms of human nature, while maintaining that the relevant aspects of human nature cannot be known scientifically. This has led some to conclude that neo-Aristotelian naturalism is not a form of ethical naturalism in the standard, metaphysical sense. In this paper, I argue that neo-Aristotelian naturalism is in fact a standard form of ethical naturalism that is committed to metaphysical naturalism about moral truths and presents a distinctive and underappreciated argument (...) for it. I reconstruct the neo-Aristotelian argument for ethical naturalism in terms of a continuity between the ethical domain and the natural domain of life. I argue that clarifying the meta-ethical import of neo-Aristotelian naturalism not only helps to situate it among other positions in meta-ethics, but also facilitates better critical engagement with the view. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Offers an extremely bold, far-reaching, and unsuspected thesis in the history of philosophy: Aristotelianism was a dominant movement of the British philosophical landscape, especially in the field of logic, and it had a long survival. British Aristotelian doctrines were strongly empiricist in nature, both in the theory of knowledge and in scientific method; this character marked and influenced further developments in British philosophy at the end of the century, and eventually gave rise to what we now call British empiricism, (...) which is represented by philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Beyond the apparent and explicit criticism of the old Scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy, which has been very well recognized by the scholarship in the twentieth century and which has contributed to the false notion that early modern philosophy emerged as a reaction to Aristotelianism, the present research examines the continuity, the original developments and the impact of Aristotelian doctrines and terminology in logic and epistemology as the background for the rise of empiricism.Without the Aristotelian tradition, without its doctrines, and without its conceptual elaborations, British empiricism would never have been born. The book emphasizes that philosophy is not defined only by the ‘great names’, but also by minor authors, who determine the intellectual milieu from which the canonical names emerge. It considers every single published work of logic between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century, being acquainted with a number of surviving manuscripts and being well-informed about the best existing scholarship in the field. ​. (shrink)

Despite the Aristotelian renaissance in the philosophy of education, the development of virtue has not received much attention. This is unfortunate, because an attempt to draft an Aristotelian model of moral development can help philosophers to evaluate the contribution Aristotelian virtue ethics can make to our understanding of moral development, provide psychologists with a potentially richer account of morality and its development, and help educators to understand the developmental phase people are in. In the article, it is (...) argued that the Aristotelian categories of the ‘morally indifferent’, ‘un-self-controlled’, ‘self-controlled’ and ‘properly virtuous’ can be interpreted as the successive stages or levels of a comprehensive developmental model. For each stage, it will be made clear whether people are committed to virtue, whether they act virtuously or not, whether they act with pleasure or pain, and which desires and reasons they have for acting. The article closes with suggestions about what needs to be done if the proposed Aristotelian account of moral development is to become psychologically more realistic and educationally useful. (shrink)

Plenitude, roughly, the thesis that for any non-empty region of spacetime there is a material object that is exactly located at that region, is often thought to be part and parcel of the standard Lewisian package in the metaphysics of persistence. While the wedding of plentitude and Lewisian four-dimensionalism is a natural one indeed, there are a hand-full of dissenters who argue against the notion that Lewisian four-dimensionalism has exclusive rights to plentitude. These ‘promiscuous’ three-dimensionalists argue that a temporalized version (...) of plenitude is entirely compatible with a three-dimensional ontology of enduring entities. While few would deny the coherence of such a position, and much work has been done by its proponents to appease critics, there has been surprisingly little by way of exploring the various forms such an ontology might take as well as the potential advantages of one plenitudinous three-dimensional ontology over another. Here I develop a novel form of plenitudinous three-dimensionalism, what John Hawthorne (Metaphysical essays, 2006a, b) has called “Neo-Aristotelian Plenitude,” and argue that if one is inclined to endorse an abundant three-dimensional ontology, one is wise to opt for a plenitude of accidental unities. (shrink)

The advent of contemporary evolutionary theory ushered in the eventual decline of Aristotelian Essentialism (Æ) – for it is widely assumed that essence does not, and cannot have any proper place in the age of evolution. This paper argues that this assumption is a mistake: if Æ can be suitably evolved, it need not face extinction. In it, I claim that if that theory’s fundamental ontology consists of dispositional properties, and if its characteristic metaphysical machinery is interpreted within the (...) framework of contemporary evolutionary developmental biology, an evolved essentialism is available. The reformulated theory of Æ offered in this paper not only fails to fall prey to the typical collection of criticisms, but is also independently both theoretically and empirically plausible. The paper contends that, properly understood, essence belongs in the age of evolution. (shrink)

In metaphysics and philosophy of science, a significant movement is making inroads, under the banner of ‘neo-Aristotelianism’. This movement has so far been focused primarily on the physical sciences; but given that Aristotle the natural scientist was above all a biologist, it is worth asking what a neo-Aristotelian philosophy of biology would look like? In this paper, I begin a discussion on precisely that question. One interesting result is that the fact that biology is now permeated by evolutionary ways (...) of thinking is all but irrelevant to answering that question. Far more important is how central are concepts of organic form, function and development to biology. Given recent developments, there are reasons to think at least some areas of the biological sciences would welcome a neo-Aristotelian philosophy of biology - i.e. a critical exploration of these concepts from an Aristotelian perspective. (shrink)

A study of a group of elementary school students learning to control a computer‐implemented Newtonian object reveals a surprisingly uniform and detailed collection of strategies, at the core of which is a robust “Aristotelian” expectation that things should move in the direction they are last pushed. A protocol of an undergraduate dealing with the same situation shows a large overlap with the set of strategies used by the elementary school children and thus a marked lack of influence of classroom (...) physics training on this student's naive physics. The data from these two studies are pooled and elaborated into a “genetic task analysis” of how one might come to understand Newtonian dynamics as a more or less natural evolution from the naive state. (shrink)

Through a study of argument, science, art, and human intelligence, Louis Groarke explores and builds on a line of Aristotelian thought that traces the origins of logic and knowledge to a mental creativity that is able to leap to insightful and truthful conclusions on the basis of restricted evidence. In an Aristotelian Account of Induction Groarke discusses the intellectual process through which we access the "first principles" of human thought - the most basic concepts, The laws of logic, (...) The universal claims of science and metaphysics, And The deepest moral truths. Following Aristotle and others, Groarke situates the first stirrings of human understanding in a creative capacity for discernment that precedes knowledge, even logic. Relying on a new historical study of philosophical theories of inductive reasoning from Aristotle To The twenty-first century, Groarke explains how Aristotle offers a viable solution To The so-called problem of induction, while offering new contributions to contemporary accounts of reasoning and argument and challenging the conventional wisdom about induction. In recovering and developing philosophical ideas that have been largely overlooked or misrepresented by more recent sources, An Aristotelian Account of Induction makes a major contribution To The historical study of philosophy and to critical debate. (shrink)

Virtue ethics now constitutes one of three major approaches to the study of ethics by Anglophone philosophers. Its proponents almost all recognize the source of their approach in Aristotle, but relatively few of them confront the problem that source poses for contemporary ethicists. According to Aristotle, ethikê belongs and is subordinate to politikê. But in the liberal democracies within which most Anglophone ethicists write, political authorities are not supposed to legislate morality; they are supposed merely to establish the conditions necessary (...) for individuals to choose their own life paths. Contemporary ethicists who have addressed this question have proposed three very different answers to the question of how virtue ethics ought to be related to politics in modern nation-states. Martha Nussbaum seeks to provide all human beings with the capacities—intellectual and moral as well as material—they need to choose the best way of life. Arguing that the modern nation-state is incapable of providing its citizens with the education they need to live a good life, Alasdair MacIntyre looks to smaller, tradition-based communities. Because political action is coercive and truly ethical action is voluntary, Douglas den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen insist, ethics and politics should be strictly separated. This article examines each of these attempts to revive an Aristotelian understanding of ethics, bringing out the advantages and problems involved. (shrink)

It is widely known that Aristotle rules out the existence of actual infinities but allows for potential infinities. However, precisely why Aristotle should deny the existence of actual infinities remains somewhat obscure and has received relatively little attention in the secondary literature. In this paper I investigate the motivations of Aristotle’s finitism and offer a careful examination of some of the arguments considered by Aristotle both in favour of and against the existence of actual infinities. I argue that Aristotle has (...) good reason to resist the traditional arguments offered in favour of the existence of the infinite and that, while there is a lacuna in his own ‘logical’ arguments against actual infinities, his arguments against the existence of infinite magnitude and number are valid and more well grounded than commonly supposed. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to make a case for Aristotelian friendship as a ‘method’ of moral education qua mutual character development. After setting out some Aristotelian assumptions about friendship and education in the “Aristotle and Beyond: Some Basics about Character Friendship and Education”section, I devote the “Role-Model Moral Education Contrasted with Learning from Character Friends” section to role modelling and how it differs from the idea of cultivating character through friendships. “The Mechanisms of Learning from Character (...) Friends” section then explores the mechanisms of Aristotelian friendship education directly: those identified by him and those which can be elicited more obliquely from his texts. I end in the “Concluding Remarks and Classroom Applications” section with some reflections on how this model of friendship as a moral method could be applied in current educational contexts. While the idea of character friendship as an educational method comes with many assets, it also imports various liabilities that may lead to painful friendship terminations. I have put the spotlight on those liabilities in two previous articles. In contrast, the goal here is to impart a new edge and added force to the idea that a certain Aristotle-defined type of deep friendships may have a unique role to play in facilitating moral growth, above and beyond other developmental learning mechanisms. (shrink)

This essay argues that Confucian ritual propriety (li 禮) and Aristotelian habit (hexis, ἔξις) play analogous roles within their respective ethical systems and that we can come to appreciate important dimensions of each category by juxtaposing it with the other. Despite numerous and deep dissimilarities, both li and hexis work to organize and publicize emotions and dispositions, ground true moral quality in phenomenally-present activity, and (leveraging insights from Marcel Mauss) contribute to shaping and actualizing an agent’s body and behavior. (...) The essay unpacks several semantic subtleties of li and hexis, and attempts to respond to alleged disanalogies. Finally, the success of a such a li-hexis analogy reveals the ways in which Aristotle’s virtues are more socially contingent and Confucian morality is less particularistic than is often allowed; which in turn, I argue, lessens some of the distance between virtue-based and role-based ethical frameworks. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian metaethical naturalism is a modern attempt at naturalizing ethics using ideas from Aristotle’s teleological metaphysics. Proponents of this view argue that moral virtue in human beings is an instance of natural goodness, a kind of goodness supposedly also found in the realm of non-human living things. Many critics question whether neo-Aristotelian naturalism is tenable in light of modern evolutionary biology. Two influential lines of objection have appealed to an evolutionary understanding of human nature and natural teleology to (...) argue against this view. In this paper, I offer a reconstruction of these two seemingly different lines of objection as raising instances of the same dilemma, giving neo-Aristotelians a choice between contradicting our considered moral judgment and abandoning metaethical naturalism. I argue that resolving the dilemma requires showing a particular kind of continuity between the norms of moral virtue and norms that are necessary for understanding non-human living things. I also argue that in order to show such a continuity, neo-Aristotelians need to revise the relationship they adopt with empirical science and acknowledge that the latter is relevant to assessing their central commitments regarding living things. Finally, I argue that to move this debate forward, both neo-Aristotelians and their critics should pay attention to recent work on the concept of organism in evolutionary and developmental biology. (shrink)

The last two decades have seen two significant trends emerging within the philosophy of science: the rapid development and focus on the philosophy of the specialised sciences, and a resurgence of Aristotelian metaphysics, much of which is concerned with the possibility of emergence, as well as the ontological status and indispensability of dispositions and powers in science. Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. Additionally, the relationship between fundamental (...) Aristotelian concepts—such as "hylomorphism", "substance", and "faculties"—and contemporary science has yet to receive a critical and systematic treatment. _Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science _aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries. The chapters in this volume are divided into two main sections covering the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of the life sciences. Featuring original contributions from distinguished and early-career scholars, this book will be of interest to specialists in analytical metaphysics and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Jonathan Lear; XII*—Aristotelian Infinity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 June 1980, Pages 187–210, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

The Aristotelian view of universals, according to which each universal generically depends for its existence on its instantiations, has recently come under attack by a series of ground-theoretic arguments. The last such arguments, presented by Raven, promises to offer several significant improvements over its predecessors, such as avoiding commitment to the transitivity of ground and offering new reasons for the metaphysical priority of universals over their instantiations. In this paper, we argue that Raven's argument does not effectively avoid said (...) commitment and that Raven's new reasons fail. Moreover, we present a novel ground-theoretic interpretation of the Aristotelian view, referred to as strong immanence, and introduce a new argument against the Aristotelian view, intended to sidestep any commitment to the transitivity of ground. (shrink)

At the center of contemporary neo-Aristotelian naturalism is the thought that we can account for a great deal of ethics by thinking about what is needful in human life generally. When we think about practices like promising, virtues like justice or courage, and institutions that serve to produce, maintain, and help to reproduce well-ordered social life we can make some headway we consider the sense in which our topic makes some forms of human good possible and even, in some (...) cases, actualizes the very good made possible thereby. G.E.M. Anscombe introduced this kind of thinking about ethics, which Philippa Foot named ‘Aristotelian Necessity'. In this essay, I take a hard Look at Anscombe’s work on the topic, and then consider her later insistence that crucial aspects of ethics could not be understood in these terms. (shrink)

Aristotle is the most influential philosopher of practice, and Knight's new book explores the continuing importance of Aristotelian philosophy. First, it examines the theoretical bases of what Aristotle said about ethical, political and productive activity. It then traces ideas of practice through such figures as St Paul, Luther, Hegel, Heidegger and recent Aristotelian philosophers, and evaluates Alasdair MacIntyre's contribution. Knight argues that, whereas Aristotle's own thought legitimated oppression, MacIntyre's revision of Aristotelianism separates ethical excellence from social elitism and (...) justifies resistance. With MacIntyre, Aristotelianism becomes revolutionary. MacIntyre's case for the Thomistic Aristotelian tradition originates in his attempt to elaborate a Marxist ethics informed by analytic philosophy. He analyses social practices in teleological terms, opposing them to capitalist institutions and arguing for the cooperative defence of our moral agency. In condensing these ideas, Knight advances a theoretical argument for the reformation of Aristotelianism and an ethical argument for social change. (shrink)