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This paper aims to evaluate Marx's conception of alienated labour from the point of view of Alasdair MacIntyre's conception of practice. I will argue that Marx's conception of alienation in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (and elsewhere) is too abstract, and therefore needs to be revised to reflect the reality of the 21st century. It presupposes that, in capitalism, all salaried and waged labour is alienated (a claim recently reiterated by Amy Wendling in her otherwise outstanding Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation). Clearly, this is not the case. The key characteristics of alienation as spelled out by Marx may not be present in a great variety of contemporary jobs dominated by services, especially if they are (or can be seen as) MacIntyrean practices (for example, practicing medicine in a public hospital or working as an engineer in a private company). Drawing on some of the most notable literature on the forms of alienation and reification, I will aim to theorise the conception of meaningful non-alienated labour. Given that practices, as meaningful non-alienated activities, are small islands of human excellence and resistance against the economic pressures of institutional profit maximisation and the self-valorisation of capital, I will conclude the paper by considering the political importance of this conception of labour for anti-capitalist struggles in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the standard view, the function of the unlimited dunamis argument (Physics VIII.10, Metaphysics Λ.7 1073a5–11) is to introduce a new property of the first immovable mover, namely its lack of magnitude. The paper challenges this view and argues that the argument at issue serves to prove that the eternal motion of the first heavenly sphere is caused by an immovable mover rather than by a moved mover. Further, the paper shows that, at least in Phys. VIII, the unlimited dunamis argument is the main argument for the immobility of the Prime Mover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bo Burnham's Inside, promoted as a musical comedy special by its platform Netflix, released in June 2021 to almost unquestioning praise, and has now won 3 Emmys. The work is an evocative retrospective of Burnham's fictionalized experience during the Covid-19 quarantine. Written, performed, filmed, and edited by Burnham himself, the piece reflects his career as a musical comedy performance artist, and also provides an intimate look into his struggles with mental health, internet culture, and artistic ego. Of particular appeal in this piece is the complex pairing of comedy with pathos. Its songs have become ironic backgrounds to TikTok videos and popular sea shanty renditions. Critics remark: 'What he's describing is the near-universal feeling of despair in 2020. And that feels good' (Herman 2021); 'A tricky work that for all its boundary-crossing remains in the end a comedy in the spirit of neurotic, self-loathing stand-up' (Zinoman 2021); 'A claustrophobic masterclass in comedy and introspection, Inside is a beautifully bleak, hilariously hopeful special' (Rotten Tomatoes). It is this complexity which I seek to investigate. I assert that Bo Burnham's Inside achieves its poignancy not through its comedic stylings, but through its implementation of a traditional Aristotelian tragic structure. This paper will discuss the ways in which Burnham follows the tragic structure and the monomyth while engaging with, and subverting, benign violation theory to provide a postmodern catharsis in its audience that feels like comedy, but ultimately provides a shared expression of, and outlet for, the audience's grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many, striving to attain first place in an athletic competition is explicable. Less explicable is striving to attain first place in a virtue (aretē) competition. Yet this latter dynamic appears in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. There is 4.3's magnanimity, the crown of the virtues, which seemingly manifests itself in outdoing one's peers in virtue. Such one-upmanship also seems operant with 9.8's praiseworthy self-lover, who seeks to get as much of the fine (to kalon) as possible for herself. Contrary to many interpreters, this paper argues that praiseworthy self-love and magnanimity involve one-upmanship. The relevant exemplars are not simply striving to be the best that they can be in respect to virtue (in virtuous activity), but to be better than others. The paper argues that Aristotle's axiology, which sets activity (energeia) above state (hexis) and potentiality (dunamis), engenders one-upmanship. For only the level of activity substantially differentiates individuals, settling for inferiority is obviously objectionable, and equal achievement for Aristotle is not static but involves matching and surpassing the achievements of others. The paper concludes that modern discomfort with these dynamics is due to an axiology Nietzsche attributes to Christianity, one that bases human value fundamentally on non-differentiating potentiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At APr 2.4 57a36–13, Aristotle presents a notorious reductio argument in which he derives the claim 'If B is not large, B is large' and calls that result impossible. Aristotle is thus committed to some form of connexivity and this paper argues that his commitment is to a strong form of connexivity which excludes even cases in which 'B is large' is necessary. It is further argued that Aristotle's view of connexivity is best understood as arising from his analysis of affirmation and negation in terms of combination and separation: a proposition that separates two terms cannot entail a proposition that combines the same two terms. In order to motivate this account of connexivity, this paper interprets Aristotle as emphasising the predicative structure, especially the copulae, of the argument's component propositions. The arguments for this are based on a consideration of the larger context of APr 2.2–4. A reconstruction of the argument using propositional variables does not fully capture Aristotle's intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aristotle grants perceptible qualities the power to generate sense perception in animals. But it is unclear whether, for him, these qualities can produce any effect other than perception. In this paper, I address this issue through a novel approach. To show that they can produce non-perceptual effects, I explore contexts in his extant works where qualities appear to do causal work in nature without leading to perception in animals. This inquiry aims to demonstrate that Aristotle’s realism about qualities survives a potential threat posed by views that dispute the qualities’ causal efficacy outside perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tensions between character education and citizenship education have existed for a long time. Some argue that character education is harmful to citizenship education; others claim that they are mutually beneficial and that we can and need to organise them synergistically. In this paper, I argue, through an exploration of civic virtue and ethical virtue in Aristotle’s theory, that citizenship education and character education are compatible and mutually supportive within Aristotelian educational frameworks, and that both are beneficial for students’ moral development and overall flourishing. First, the debate between character education and citizenship education is explored. This is followed by identifying the roles of citizenship education and character education in Aristotelian theory. Next, I examine more specifically the role of ethical virtue and civic virtue in Aristotle’s original works, and I argue that they are compatible (and sometimes overlap) to form an ideal educational outcome. In conclusion, synthesising citizenship education and character education based on Aristotle’s theory can effectively guide students toward flourishing lives, both as individuals and members of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes inspiration from Books III and IV of the Nicomachean Ethics, which discuss the ways in which the student of virtue can go wrong with respect to different vices. It uses this discussion to draw some conclusions about Aristotelian habituation. I will argue that habituation is an appropriate learning strategy for many kinds of students of virtue, not just children; that habituation is multi-faceted and involves habits of emotions, habits of reason and habits of action; and that habituation is messy because it reflects a messy subject matter. I will conclude with some thoughts on how educators can best respond to this messiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper claims that the argument that Aristotle seems to ascribe to Melissus in Physics III.6 about infinity is different from Melissus' original argument. On scrutiny, it turns out that the Aristotelian version of the argument takes Melissus to suppose that being is unlimited because it is not in contact with anything else. I claim that this is not Melissus' notion of unlimitedness for being, and that the Aristotelian version hinges on a reversal of Melissus' own reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper articulates and defends a novel view of the strict distinction that Aristotle makes between human and non-human mental life. We examine two crucially relevant but overlooked arguments that turn on the human capacity for reasoning and inference (syl/logismos) to reconstruct his view of what makes some cognitive processes rational and how they differ from non-rational counterparts. A creature is rational just in case its occurrent cognitive states exhibit a sequential coherence wherein prior cognitive activity constrains subsequent activity for the sake of attaining truth. Processes are rational, then, in virtue of how constituent states relate to each other, not whether any given state involves some peculiar content or grasps some distinct object. This study aids, but does not exhaust, a systematic examination of the rational soul in Aristotle's writing, based on (a) the human/animal comparisons through which he often elucidates rational cognitive capacities and (b) the distinctions that he draws between elements of rational cognition and non-rational counterparts in terms of what minimally suffices to distinguish between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost 80 years, post-war Japanese moral education has adopted a dual-process structure, which states morality is taught through two processes: one through all aspects of school education and the other through a special moral education class. The necessity and effectiveness of this structure were theorised by Eijiro Inatomi. However, it has been almost neglected that his theory is largely based on Aristotle’s theory of virtue. This paper examines Inatomi’s Aristotle-inspired theory and its significance. After reviewing the social and historical background of his theory, I argue that Inatomi successfully adopted Aristotle’s theory of virtue in three respects: human definition, intellectual virtue, and ethical virtue. Finally, I suggest that post-war Japanese moral education can be understood as a nationwide social implementation experiment on the efficacy of Aristotelian virtue ethics and that Inatomi’s notion of cosmos can serve as a conceptual device to enhance the social feasibility of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In NE III.10, 1118b1–3, Aristotle says that the "most shared of the senses is that according to which intemperance [comes about], and it would seem justifiably to be shameful, because it inheres [in us] not insofar as we are human beings, but insofar as we are animals". This statement appears to describe the sense of touch as shameful. This may seem like a strange position for Aristotle to hold, since elsewhere he describes human touch as the most accurate among animal species, which corresponds to our superior intelligence, and as necessary for animal life. In this paper, I argue that Maimonides nevertheless succeeds in showing that Aristotle has a strong theoretical reason for maintaining that the sense of touch is shameful. Maimonides shows that, based on principles of Aristotelian psychology, human touch is indeed shameful because it obstructs intellectual activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The relation between sport and a good life presents a fruitful philosophical challenge and it has been discussed extensively within the philosophy sport literature. This paper will investigate the role of sport in a good life in the philosophical conceptions of Aristotle and Suits. Both authors paid attention to sport and its significance in the context of living well. However, their approaches differ, partly because they emerge in a different historical and cultural context. My aim is to analyse relevant texts of these two authors, presenting their major points, commonalities, and differences. The debate, to a certain extent, highlights instrumental (educational) and autotelic (intrinsic) value of sport. In order to conceptualize properly the role of sport in a good life, we need to take into account both of these aspects. The originality of this contribution can be found in presenting relevant implications of the contrasting positions of Suits and Aristotle to our thinking about modern sport. Finally, I point to the complementarity of their positions and demonstrate their impact on the broader debate concerning good sport and its role in a good life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely believed that the ancient Greeks thought that Thales was the first philosopher, and that they therefore maintained that philosophy had a Greek origin. This paper challenges these assumptions, arguing that most ancient Greek thinkers who expressed views about the history and development of philosophy rejected both positions. I argue that not even Aristotle presented Thales as the first philosopher, and that doing so would have undermined his philosophical commitments and interests. Beyond Aristotle, the view that Thales was the first philosopher is attested almost nowhere in antiquity. In the classical, Hellenistic, and post-Hellenistic periods, we witness a marked tendency to locate the beginning of philosophy in a time going back further than Thales. Remarkably, ancient Greek thinkers most often traced the origins of philosophy to earlier non-Greek peoples. Contrary to the received view, then, I argue that (1) vanishingly few Greek writers pronounced Thales the first philosopher; and (2) most Greek thinkers did not even advocate a Greek origin of philosophy. Finally, I show that the view that philosophy originated with Thales (along with its misleading attribution to the Greeks in general) has roots in problematic, and in some cases manifestly racist, eighteenth-century historiography of philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how small tourism firms driven by an ethical approach to tourism narrate their organisational effectiveness. The study frames the ethical approach articulated in the first-person accounts of these firms' owner-managers using Aristotle's notion of phronesis, that is the process of identifying "good" actions consistent with living well and with an ethical telos. The research consists of a narrative approach via unstructured interviews with owner-managers of small Italian tour operators, members of the Italian Association of Responsible Tourism (AITR) and, as such, driven by an ethical approach to tourism. Data analysis combines features of structural and linguistic narrative analysis. The research findings disclose an organisational effectiveness largely rooted in a personal intuitive disposition gained by practical first-hand experience, personal knowledge, and a moral concern for the achievement of public wellbeing. Moreover, the findings challenge a business-centred approach to organisational effectiveness and question the dominant pro-growth, profit-oriented neoliberal discourses. These considerations can be used for setting the ground in tourism studies for a novel theoretical framework revolving around the ancient Aristotelian tradition of prioritising public wellbeing and happiness over capital accumulation, that further contributes to question market-driven capitalism and neoliberal globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spinoza's views on friendship have been a relatively overlooked aspect of his ethical thought. Even though commentators such as Andrew Youpa and Steven Nadler shed significant light on the significance of Spinoza's views, they do not provide a detailed examination of the possibility of friendship between people who are not similar to one another. In considering to what extent (if at all) a virtuous person can join ordinary people who are dissimilar to her in friendship, my paper attempts to reach a better understanding of the limits, as well as the power, of friendship for Spinoza. First, I show that we can make a meaningful distinction between two kinds of friendship, which I call active friendship and coincidental friendship. Then, I argue that in Spinoza besides these two kinds of friendships, there is also a group of social interactions wherein the virtuous wants to bring the non-virtuous to enlightenment. In examining the nature of these interactions, I conclude that in Spinoza in addition to what we can call the Socratic quest of bringing people to enlightenment, we also find a strategy of insulation, which consists in taking measures so that ordinary people do not pose a threat to the virtuous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most challenging issues with the sources of ancient medicine is to be able to identify the correspondence between the diseases we know today and those reported in ancient medical texts. Ancient diseases' definitions rarely help us, and the symptoms described often correspond to more than one disease. This is especially true about tuberculosis, a disease that historians of medicine habitually associates with the Greek words phthi(n)o (φθίνω), verb, phthisis/phthoe (φθίσις/φθόη), noun, phthinodes/phthisikos (φθινώδης/φθισικός), adjective, all etymologically linked to an Indo-European root that expresses the idea of consumption in a broad sense. This article aims to analyze a group of Greek words, branchos/branchia (βράγχος/βράγχια), krauros/kraurao (κραῦρος/κραυράω), and katarreo (καταρρέω), that appear in nosological contexts very close to the infectious disease that today we call tuberculosis. Moreover, the paper aims to focus on the transmission pathways of TB being via animal-human contact and some ancient strategies to cure it. The symptoms, transmission pathways and therapeutic approach of tuberculosis belong to a homogeneous pathological picture that emerges from a set of texts that date back to the period between the fifth century BC and the second century AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the hypothesis that the prime matter of classical Aristotelian-Scholastic metaphysics is numerically identical to energy. Is P = E? After outlining the classical Aristotelian concept of prime matter, I provide the master argument for it, based on the phenomenon of substantial change. I then outline what we know about energy as a scientific concept, including its role and application in some key fields. Next, I consider the arguments in favour of prime matter being identical to energy, followed by the arguments against this. The method used is that of ontological profile comparison: does the profile of prime matter match, in key features, that of energy? An affirmative answer, that P = E, would be a momentous discovery: it would show that one of the most neglected and derided ideas of pre-modern metaphysics—a contributor to its downfall in the wake of the Scientific Revolution—was correct all along. From a negative answer, we would still learn much about the interaction of science and metaphysics. It turns out, however, given what we currently know, that the answer is not quite as simple as one might hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the work of Barbara Cassin, this paper proposes to examine certain ways of speaking that Aristotle described as not so much human as plant-like [homoioi phutôi] and to consider whether these non-human ways of speaking might yet adduce forms of discourse that serve to model how central principles of justice can be thought. The paper does this by drawing upon Cassin's extensive engagement with Sophistry in the classical world together with her concerted interest in the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa. When Aristotle, in book Gamma of the Metaphysics, dismissed the speech of those spoke "otherwise" (for example, those who failed to obey the law of non-contradiction) he formalised a chauvinism that philosophy had, at least since Plato, derided as sophistry. For Cassin, however, this presumed superiority of one way of speaking over another is something that holds true only when the grounds and elemental terms of a discourse have been and remain uncontested. In this way, language in Aristotle is regulated in advance, and determines what is admissible in the court of discourse according to prescribed and recognisable forms. Accordingly, illuminated by Heidegger and yet (like Arendt) departing from his conclusions, Cassin explores the sense in which language is something ontologically constitutive but in a manner that contests rather than secures its speakers' relations to one another. In place of a metaphysics and ethics of belonging and authenticity, Cassin's work is oriented by figures of precarity and exile such that truth is not so much something to be discovered, once and for all, but to be contested, negotiated, and re-worked each and every time. Key to this form of discourse, the paper will claim, is the uniquely non-juridical approach to justice undertaken by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Here, as Cassin explains, rather than a logic of individual rights and wrongs, there is a performative role for those involved. This "politics via discourse" dislocates the identity of received (rational) subjects and allows for narrative testimony itself not only to bear witness to a past but to signal a future – one based not on the apportionment or allocation of justice but on its ongoing struggle (an eristics or agonistics) for a humanity to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the interplay between intuition and reason in Aristotle's moral psychology. After discussing briefly some other uses of 'intuition' in Aristotle's texts, I look closely at (a) Aristotle's notion of virtue and emotion (Section 2); (b) affinities, or lack thereof, between Aristotle's view and the Two-System (dual-process) model of moral judgement that has made headlines in contemporary moral psychology (Section 3); and some complications of the Aristotelian picture related to the specifics of moral functioning at different developmental levels (Section 4). The lesson drawn is that, despite recent attempts to co-opt Aristotle to the Two-System camp, he was, for all intents and purposes, a One-System theorist with respect to the relationship between intuitive emotion and reason. In that sense, his theories are in line with recent findings in neuroscience which show how emotion stimulates reflection rather than directly driving action. Even the motivational make-up of the 'incontinent' does not (as might perhaps be urged) provide a persuasive counter-example to a One-System interpretation of Aristotle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to argue that social science is an inherently moral enterprise. There are four reasons to see science as a moral endeavor based on the neo-Aristotelian recognition that morality is centered on human goods (e.g., justice and knowledge), not just right action. First, science is guided by epistemic values (e.g., accuracy, transparency) and underwritten by pro-science traits (e.g., honesty, patience). Second, the outcomes of applied science (e.g., disease cures, pedagogy improvements) are valued by scientists and others. Third, attempting to eliminate values from science is counterproductive because it leads to smuggling in moral commitments that are very difficult to critically evaluate, particularly in the social sciences. Finally, the goal of science is knowledge, which is a vital human good. Therefore, science is a thoroughly moral enterprise because human goods are moral aims. I conclude with three implications of this argument for science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the complex debt of Machiavelli's moral and political thought to Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, especially in its Scholastic variant. My claim is that Machiavelli's attitude vis-à-vis Aristotle is twofold because it reflects two different aspects of Aristotle's moral and political theory that are closely intertwined and that were selectively developed by subsequent Aristotelian Scholastic commentators: a teleological and a realist aspect. On one hand, Machiavelli provides a model that dramatically breaks with Aristotle on, for example, the question of the origin of human society and the moral prudence of rulers. On the other hand, Machiavelli's engagement with Aristotle amounts to something more complex than a simple rejection. The Florentine appears to read Aristotle rather selectively, and emphasizes the realist dimension of certain Aristotelian ideas that suit his own original overturning of classical moral and political ideas. I use two paradigmatic themes in which the Aristotelian teleological-realist divide is most evident, i.e. the account of the origin of human society and the case of prudence, in order to prove the dual relationship of Machiavelli's thought with Aristotelianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first Critique, Kant raises two objections against Aristotle’s categories. Kant’s concern, in the first instance, is whether Aristotle generated all categories that there are and if he did not generate any spurious categories. However, for Kant, this is only a symptom of the second – deeper – flaw in Aristotle’s thinking. According to Kant, Aristotle generated his categories ‘on no common principle.’ This paper develops the two Kantian objections, offers an overview of Brentano's (1862. Von der Mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg im Brisgau: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung.) reconstruction of Aristotle’s categories (which claims to have addressed them), develops three objections to this reconstruction, and recommends (Trendelenburg, A. 1846. Geschichte der Kategorienlehre. Berlin: Verlag von G. Bethge.) as a better – albeit still flawed – Aristotelian reply to Kant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of classical quotations in the third pamphlet of the Weiße Rose. Looking in detail at their references to Cicero's On Laws and Aristotle's Politics, I show their careful selective citational practices and situate those in turn within some of the developments and priorities of the reception of antiquity in early twentieth century Germany. Finally, I use the case of the evaluations of the pamphlets that were commissioned from the classicist Richard Harder shortly before the arrest of the Weiße Rose members to raise questions about philological reading and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a novel interpretation of Dasein, as we find it in Heidegger’s Being and Time. On this interpretation, Heidegger models this most famous of all his concepts after Aristotle’s account of the soul from De Anima as isomorphic with whatever it currently cognises. Indeed, Dasein proves central to the inquiry into Being he attempts in that book precisely because, like soul, it is capable of becoming like all beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oscar Wilde's play Salomé is subtitled "A Tragedy in One Act." Wilde, as a classical scholar and winner of the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek at Trinity College, Dublin, would have been only too familiar with Aristotle's definition of tragedy in the Poetics, which relies on key structural elements such as character, action, pity and fear, peripeteia, and catharsis. This paper will examine not only the aesthetics of Wilde's play and the ways it might – and might not – meet the definition of tragedy; it will also explore the play's critical reception to interrogate the ways in which the play intersects with those of Wilde contemporaries, and locate its place in drama's evolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expression 'second nature' can be used in two different ways. The first allows phronēsis (practical wisdom) to count as the sort of thing a second nature is. The second speaks of second natures as distinct ethical outlooks. I argue that a failure to distinguish these ways of speaking of 'second nature' is philosophically significant, in that we are thereby prevented from seeing that phronēsis stands on a different logical footing from ethical outlooks. Recognising their distinctness allows the important question of the relation between them to be posed. Phronēsis, I argue, should be understood as the unity of the ethical virtues. It remains invariant as ethical outlooks vary. Seeing this allows us to pose the important question, otherwise obscured, how phronēsis is mediated through specific cultural contexts. I end with a concrete example of radical ethical upheaval to illustrate phronēsis as operative across ethical outlooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A renewed interest in reading the Hebrew Bible as a work of philosophy has reasserted the value of pursuing comparative studies of Greek and Hebrew literature within their common intellectual environment in the Eastern Mediterranean. This study will contribute to a retrieval of Hebraic philosophy in its ancient context through a comparison of Aristotelian practical wisdom and perception as seen in Nicomachean Ethics with commensurate conceptions of wisdom and perception in Deuteronomy. This comparison will advance an appreciation of Deuteronomy as a work of philosophy in its own right, which is distinct yet comparable to Nicomachean Ethics in educating what Martha Nussbaum calls a "society of perceivers" who are skilled at making wise and discerning decisions to attain the Deuteronomic vision of the good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient philosophers aimed to turn us away from thinking about particularizing affection to thinking about justifiable human relations. The aim of their protreptic discourses was to get their readers, who were citizens, sons, and fathers, to think about their lives by putting these relations into question. I show how this conversion works and explore its political consequences by reading the accounts of friendship in Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, and then comparing those accounts with the views on the causes and justi- fications of human relations of Rousseau, of Christians and post- Christian Kantians, and of the Hebrew Bible and its Rabbinic commentators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new modal logic endowed with a simple deductive system to interpret Aristotle's theory of the modal syllogism. While being inspired by standard propositional modal logic, it is also a logic of terms that admits a (sound) extensional semantics involving possible states-of-affairs in a given world. Applied to the analysis of Aristotle's modal syllogistic as found in the Prior Analytics A8-22, it sheds light on various fine-grained distinctions which when made allow us to clarify some ambiguities and obtain a completely consistent system and prove all of the modal syllogisms considered valid by Aristotle. This logic allows us also to make a connection with the axioms of modern propositional modal logic and to perceive to what extent these are implicit in Aristotle's reasoning. Further work will involve addressing the question of the completeness of this logic (or variants thereof) together with an extension of the logic to include a calculus of relations (for instance the relational syllogistic treated in Galen's Introduction to Logic) which Slomkowsky has argued is already found in the Topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Brentano, Moore, and Chisholm suggest marks of intrinsic value. Contemporary philosophers such as Christine Korsgaard have insightful discussions of intrinsic value. But how do we verify that some specific thing really is intrinsically valuable? I propose a natural way to test for intrinsic value: first, strip the candidate bare of all considerations of good consequences; and, second, see if what remains is still a good thing. I argue that we, as ordinary human beings, have an astonishingly difficult time completing this test for plausible candidates. More precisely, for us as we are, it seems that the conditions for completing the first step of the test militate against the conditions for completing the second step. I conclude, then, that we have a good reason to think that we cannot verify whether or not particular things are intrinsically good. I explore some implications and I consider a number of important objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers have tended to construe friendship as an intimate relationship involving mutual love, and have focused their discussions on this 'true' form of friendship. However, everyone recognizes that we use the word 'friend' and its cognates to refer, non-ironically, to those with whom we share various relationships that are not terribly intimate or which do not involve mutual love. I argue that there exists no general reason to restrict our philosophical focus to 'true' friendships, and allege that we can gain important insights if we broaden our perspective to include lesser friends. I contend that friendships, in the broad sense (encompassing both 'true' and lesser forms), are necessarily relationships that are the product of significant collaborative norm manipulation. And I argue that understanding friendship in this way helps explain important features, including the difference between friendships and familiar relations, the non-fungibility of friends, and why friendships are often in flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous sociological studies indicate that the societal perception of women in Muslim countries is generally poor. These perceptions, argue the promulgators of such ideas, are based on the Qur'an. There is, nevertheless, no consensus on the interpretation of the qur'anic verses that supposedly promote such views. One of the main sources of negative perceptions of women is the Hellenistic learning that permeated the corpus of qur'anic commentaries. This article explores the influence of the translation movement on the exegetical tradition. There is a marked difference between the earliest qur'anic commentaries, written before the works of Aristotle and Galen were translated into Arabic by around 850 AD, and those that came after. While the former show relatively little in the way of androcentric interpretations of the Qur'an, the latter adopt Aristotelian and Galenic views of women's ontological inferiority due to increased coldness and wetness, and use these to justify patriarchal interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview we will explore García-Noblejas' thought on public communication, which is deeply marked by his interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics and influenced by some contemporary thinkers. For García-Noblejas, communication is a service and a form of practical knowledge with five dimensions: ethics, politics, rhetoric, aesthetics, and poetics. Poetics is the most important of these, since its symbolic perspective of the representation of human actions allows us to deeply understand the narrative and dramatic texts typical of journalism, advertising, and propaganda, as well as written and audiovisual fiction. Poetics is the art of creating "possible worlds" in which the reader/spectator recognizes himself (or herself) and with which he dialogues starting from his own identity. García-Noblejas defends public communication that is based on the gift of self and looks to community fruitfulness. He also discusses some frequent pathologies in the media. Finally, he proposes his theory of the Second Navigation to discern the meaning of a text and explains why it is necessary to give a transcendent meaning to the Aristotelian concept of catharsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I contend that parliamentary representative democracy betrays what must be democratic about democratic citizenship – its directness. I examine this betrayal to consider what makes democratic citizenship democratic, what is direct about direct democracy, and how it may provide a means to (re)democratize democracy. To do so, I engage the conundrums about citizenship Aristotle posed in the Politics. For millennia, theorists have used Aristotle's dislike of democracy and related misrepresentations to dismiss direct democracy as impossible for large states. Moreover, the problems he raised have roiled political theory ever since because they established two issues that indicate how profoundly democracy troubles citizenship. The first concerns what it means for "the people" to remain sovereign even when most delegate the political powers of their citizenship to others. The second concerns the historical capacity of democracy to transform the political by disrupting entrenched power and legalized inequality. If so, democracy must somehow institutionalize disruption as a resource to keep it vigorous. I examine how the provocations of sovereignty, equality, and disruption democratize citizenship. These problems are unresolvable in a democracy. Their tensions are necessary to mobilize democratization, as Athenian democracy shows. Attempts to resolve them – such as republican representative democracy – destroy its energies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isaiah Berlin's 'Two Concepts of Liberty' regards both Hobbes and Constant as supporting the negative version. Both took a favourable view of the freedom to live as one pleases. But this shared preference arose from radically different overall philosophies. Hobbes's support for freedom as 'the silence of the laws' reflected his view of happiness as preference-satisfaction. Constant's support for freedom as a sphere of absolute rights was supplemented by support for active citizenship and connected with belief in 'perfectibility' that was itself linked to religion. These theories involve altogether different understandings of the image of an 'area' preserved from interference. Berlin takes over from Constant an appeal to human nature without the idea of progress that had supported it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aram Gershuni is an Israeli artist specialising in realistic and hyper-realistic painting, whose work differs radically from the mainstream of Israeli art and can most distinctly be characterised as 'mimesis', a term that is generally associated with traditional western art. Though Gershuni's still life images may seem at first sight trivial and banal, it is their very banality and mimetic appearance that are significant, reflecting profound and disputed issues in Israeli culture. This article explores Gershuni's still life paintings and offers several perspectives for their interpretation. The analysis is based on textual sources, mostly Classical, that reflect Gershuni's approach and affinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this short essay is to sketch an introductory account of the concept of life in German Idealism and to argue that it is both a philosophically robust concept and a productive lens through which to view a range of systematic issues at the heart of Idealism. Here I am interested in why this concept features so prominently in the systematic accounts of the Idealists, from its role in logic and the philosophy of nature to aesthetics and ethics. To establish bearings and gain traction on this multi-faceted concept of life, I focus on its Aristotelian roots in the systems of Idealism. Broadly speaking, this idealist concept involves an inner purposiveness, which can be traced back to Aristotle's hylomorphic account of the soul as a principle of life, but set to a wider range of systematic uses by some of the Idealists than Aristotle explicitly held of the soul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polanyi's concept of "embeddedness" has been the subject of debate. Various authors have argued that it reveals a contradiction. They contend that Polanyi states that all economies are always embedded, while simultaneously maintaining that the modern market economy is exceptional because it is disembedded. Others claim that there is no contradiction in Polanyi's thought but that he is merely describing a contradiction of the market economy. In this text, I argue that both sides fail to discern two different concepts: "institutedness" and "embeddedness." "Institutedness" denotes the idea that economic behavior is always dependent on and the result of certain forms of social organization. In turn, the distinction between embeddedness and disembeddedness is inspired by the Aristotelian distinction between natural and unnatural economic behavior. This distinction refers to the finality of economic behavior: is it directed at the thriving of an ethical community or is it instead directed at wealth acquisition as an end in itself? I argue that both institutedness and (dis)embeddedness fulfill a crucial, though different, role in Polanyi's critique of market capitalism. I conclude by giving a preliminary outline of what could be the implications for a (neo-)Polanyian political economy of my analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]