Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason

Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason PDF Author: Pavlos Kontos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000399095
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book offers a new account of Aristotle’s practical philosophy. Pavlos Kontos argues that Aristotle does not restrict practical reason to its action-guiding and motivational role; rather, practical reason remains practical in the full sense of the term even when its exercise does not immediately concern the guidance of our present actions. To elucidate why this wider scope of practical reason is important, Kontos brings into the foreground five protagonists that have long been overlooked: (a) spectators or judges who make non-motivational judgments about practical matters that do not interact with their present deliberations and actions; (b) legislators who exercise practical reason to establish constitutions and laws; (c) hopes as an active engagement with moral luck and its impact on our individual lives; (d) prayers as legislators’ way to deal with the moral luck hovering around the birth of constitutions and the prospect of a utopia; and (e) people who are outsiders or marginal cases of the responsibility community because they are totally deprived of practical reason. Building on a wide range of interpretations of Aristotle’s practical philosophy (from the ancient commentators to contemporary analytic and continental philosophers), Kontos offers new insights about Aristotle’s philosophical contribution to the current debates about radical evil, moral luck, hope, utopia, internalism and externalism, and the philosophy of law. Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Aristotle’s ethics, ancient philosophy, and the history of practical philosophy.

Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason

Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason PDF Author: Pavlos Kontos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000399095
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book

Book Description
This book offers a new account of Aristotle’s practical philosophy. Pavlos Kontos argues that Aristotle does not restrict practical reason to its action-guiding and motivational role; rather, practical reason remains practical in the full sense of the term even when its exercise does not immediately concern the guidance of our present actions. To elucidate why this wider scope of practical reason is important, Kontos brings into the foreground five protagonists that have long been overlooked: (a) spectators or judges who make non-motivational judgments about practical matters that do not interact with their present deliberations and actions; (b) legislators who exercise practical reason to establish constitutions and laws; (c) hopes as an active engagement with moral luck and its impact on our individual lives; (d) prayers as legislators’ way to deal with the moral luck hovering around the birth of constitutions and the prospect of a utopia; and (e) people who are outsiders or marginal cases of the responsibility community because they are totally deprived of practical reason. Building on a wide range of interpretations of Aristotle’s practical philosophy (from the ancient commentators to contemporary analytic and continental philosophers), Kontos offers new insights about Aristotle’s philosophical contribution to the current debates about radical evil, moral luck, hope, utopia, internalism and externalism, and the philosophy of law. Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Aristotle’s ethics, ancient philosophy, and the history of practical philosophy.

Right Practical Reason

Right Practical Reason PDF Author: Daniel Westberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191040517
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book is a study of the role of intellect in human action as described by Thomas Aquinas. One of its primary aims is to compare the interpretation of Aristotle by Aquinas with the lines of interpretation offered in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. The book seeks to clarify the problems involved in the appropriation of Aristotle's theory by a Christian theologian, including such topics as the practical syllogism and the problems of akrasia. Professor Westberg argues that Aquinas was much closer to Aristotle than is often recognized; and he puts forward important new interpretations of the relation of intellect and will in the stages of intention, deliberation, decision, and execution. In the concluding section of the book, he shows how this new interpretation yields fruitful insights on a range of theological topics, including sin, law, love and the moral virtues.

Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will

Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will PDF Author: Norman O. Dahl
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452908370
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Aristotle on Practical Wisdom

Aristotle on Practical Wisdom PDF Author: C. D. C. Reeve
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674072103
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Nicomachean Ethics VI is considered one of classical philosophy’s greatest achievements. Aristotle on Practical Wisdom is the first full-scale commentary on this work to be issued in over a century, and is the most comprehensive and philosophically illuminating to date. A meticulous translation coupled with facing-page analysis enables readers to engage directly with the account of phronêsis or practical wisdom that Aristotle is developing, while a full introduction locates that account in the context of his ethical thought and of later ethical thought more generally. The commentary discusses the text line by line, illuminating obscure passages, explaining technical ones, and providing a new overall interpretation of the work and the nature of practical reason. A companion volume, Action, Contemplation, and Happiness, expands on this interpretation to provide a startling new picture of Aristotle’s thought as a whole. Although the two books can be approached separately, together they constitute one of the most daring and original contemporary readings of Aristotle’s philosophy. Aimed at committed students of these notoriously difficult writings, C. D. C. Reeve’s engaging and lucid books should find a wide audience among philosophers, classicists, and all readers willing to wrestle with a thinker of unparalleled subtlety, depth, and scope.

Evil in Aristotle

Evil in Aristotle PDF Author: Pavlos Kontos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107161975
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Provides the first full study of Aristotle's notion of evil and sheds light on its content, potential, and influence.

Aristotle’s Theory of Practical Cognition

Aristotle’s Theory of Practical Cognition PDF Author: Takatsura Andō
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401771421
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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The Discovery of Practical Reason : Plato, Aristotle, and the Development of a Notion of Deliberation

The Discovery of Practical Reason : Plato, Aristotle, and the Development of a Notion of Deliberation PDF Author: David Vincent Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 828

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Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will

Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will PDF Author: Norman O. Dahl
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816612463
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. One of the central problems in recent moral philosophy is the apparent tension between the "practical" or "action-guiding" side of moral judgments and their objectivity. That tension would not exist if practical reason existed (if reason played a substantial role in producing motivation) and if recognition of obligation were one of the areas in which practical reason operated. In Practical Reason, Aristotle, and the Weakness of the Will,Norman Dahl argies that, despite widespread opinion to the contrary, Aristotle held a position on practical reason that both provides an objective basis for ethics and satisfies an important criterion of adequacy—that it acknowledges genuine cases of weakness of the will. In arguing for this, Dahl distinguishes Aristotle's position from that of David Hume, who denied the existence of practical reason. An important part of his argument is an account of the role that Aristotle allowed the faculty nous to play in the acquisition of general ends. Relying both on this argument and on an examination of passages from Aristotle's ethics and psychology, Dahl argues that Aristotle recognized that a genuine conflict of motives can occur in weakness of the will. This provides him with the basis for an interpretation that finds Aristotle acknowledging genuine cases of weakness of the will. Dahl's arguments have both a philosophical and a historical point. He argues that Aristotle's position on practical reason deserves to be taken seriously, a conclusion he reinforces by comparing that position with more recent attempts, by Kant, Nagel, and Rawls, to base ethics on practical reason.

Politics of Practical Reasoning

Politics of Practical Reasoning PDF Author: Ricca Edmondson
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739172271
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The capacity for reasonable argument about practical and political matters is important to our daily lives. Yet what does arguing really involve? Often, our very concept of what it is to argue seems systematically distorted. Practical, political arguing is too often stylized as hyper-cognitive, ending by treating people as objects rather than other selves — in ways that are fundamentally unreasonable. This book examines what follows from seeing people as deliberating and acting in ways that intertwine a variety of emotional and evaluative processes and effects of virtue or character. From this point of view, practical arguing involves not just cognition, emotion, and virtue, but also practices, including imaginative practices. Politics of Practical Reasoning: Integrating Action, Discourse and Argument uses these ideas to interrogate ways in which reasoning is bound up with the interrelated lives that human beings lead in their everyday, public and political worlds. We build here on efforts to re-concretize practical reasoning in modern traditions linked to phenomenology and Wittgensteinian thought, also referring back to Aristotle and the Stoics in classical times. Medieval theologians and philosophers such as Aquinas confront the same issue, as do Enlightenment thinkers such as Smith and Kant. Using the history of philosophical thought as one of our major sources, the contributors sympathize with the link underscored between interpretation, tradition and reasoning by Gadamer, the stress placed on communicative and emancipatory action by Habermas, and MacIntyre’s notion of praxis as highlighting deliberation within communities. All these approaches respond to practical reasoning as practical. Building on these points of view, the volume both explores what practical reasoning itself means, and applies it to particular questions: what it means to respond to arguments about meaningful work or disability, or how to debate institutional ethics or art. None of these debates is susceptible to exclusively cognitive or technical solutions; this does not mean abandoning them to unreason. Practical and political reasoning is examined here from an appropriately broad spectrum of approaches, founded in a concern for what human reasoning can justifiably be expected to involve, and what justifying it can reasonably be expected to achieve.

Aristotle on Practical Truth

Aristotle on Practical Truth PDF Author: C. M. M. Olfert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190695374
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Aristotle's theories of truth, practical reasoning, and action are some of the most influential theories in the history of philosophy. It is surprising, then, that so little attention has been given to his notion of practical truth. In Aristotle on Practical Truth, C.M.M. Olfert gives the first book-length treatment of this notion and the role of truth in our practical lives overall. She offers a novel account of practical truth: practical truth is the distinguishing function (ergon) of our capacity for practical reason, and it is a special kind of truth which shares a standard of correctness with our desires. According to this account, practical truth is the truth about what is good simpliciter (haplôs) for a particular person in her particular situation. As such, it conforms to Aristotle's technical theory of truth. Olfert argues that, understood in this way, Aristotle's notion of practical truth is an attractive idea that illuminates the core of his practical philosophy. But it is also an idea that challenges a common view, often attributed to Aristotle, that in practical reasoning, we aim at action or acting well as our primary goals, while in theoretical reasoning, we aim primarily at truth and knowledge. Olfert shows that in dialogues such as Charmides, Protagoras, and Republic, Plato describes practical reasoning as being concerned equally and inseparably with grasping the truth and with acting well. She then argues that Aristotle develops this Platonic picture with his notion of practical truth, and with a technical notion of rational action as fitting ourselves to the world. Using key texts from the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, as well as De Anima, Metaphysics, De Interpretatione and Categories, among others, Olfert demonstrates that practical truth deserves to be taken seriously as a central and plausible Aristotelian idea.