Sarah Broadie

(1941 - 2021)

The ‘courage problem’ in Aristotle’s _Ethics_ is this: (1) courage is a virtue; (2) doctrinally, the exercise of virtue is supposed to be pleasant; and (3) typical exercises of courage are painful and dangerous. Aristotle makes moves to solve the difficulty. But what exactly is his solution, and does it work? In response to Raphael Woolf’s interpretation of Aristotle’s solution, according to which the courageous person merely _recognizes_ fearful things as fearful, but does not experience the feeling of fear himself, this chapter argues that the courageous person can really be feeling fear as well as intellectually recognizing the fearfulness of his situation. Neither of these psychological conditions, separately or together, undermines his claim to courage if he does not let either of them get the better of him. An alternative solution to the courage problem is to take the ‘pleasantness’ of virtuous action, in this context, to mean no more than that the virtuous agent is thoroughly identified with his actions and choices, even when they involve grim and painful situations and feelings.

In explaining the nature of _phronēsis_ in _Nicomachean Ethics_ 6, Aristotle invokes what he calls ‘practical truth’. The paper distinguishes and adjudicates between several interpretations of the puzzling phrase, including that of G. E. M. Anscombe. Its main tool of analysis is a distinction between semantic or assertoric truth, and truth in some richer-than-semantic sense. This distinction is illustrated from Aristotelian texts outside the _Nicomachean Ethics_. In conclusion, the paper reflects on the question of what the notion of practical truth contributes to the argument of the _Nicomachean Ethics_.

This chapter examines Aristotle’s rejection of a Platonist theory positing two principles: Form and the Great and Small. He complains that, under the latter, privation is not distinguished from the subject of coming to be. This chapter discusses the background for this dyadic theory in the _Philebus_ and the _Timaeus._ It suggests that Aristotle’s opposition only makes sense if Platonists were proposing to extend it to cover comings to be such as biological reproduction. It also discusses whether, dialectically, Aristotle wins against Platonism within _Physics_ I 9, and in the wider context of his biology. The chapter notes that when the explanandum is eternal motion, the triad of principles is useless, because there is no distinct principle of privation. So, Aristotle himself is chained to a Platonist-style dyadism. The chapter concludes by drawing a connection between this theory and Aristotle’s first mover as both final and efficient cause of eternal motion.

Knowledge, says Hypothesis 3 of the _Theaetetus_, is true judgement with an account. Socrates explicates this _additively_: true judgement is the base, and something called ‘an account’ the addendum. The formula is additive not because it shows knowledge entailing true judgement while being something more. Additivity implies something stronger: that the true judgement that amounts to knowledge if combined with something else would have been available on its own in the absence of this something else, hence in the absence of knowledge. The paper explores what the _Theaetetus_ and _Sophist_ show about this additive theory of knowledge. It argues that (at least for some cases of knowledge) the theory is rejected in the _Sophist_, and has already been called into question in connection with Hypothesis 2 of the _Theaetetus._.

This chapter continues the discussion of Cambiano's on A 1, since Aristotle's chapters A 1-2 are evidently a continuous introduction. The problem of what exactly it is an introduction to, i.e. the perennial question of the unity and diversity of Aristotle's metaphysical treatises, is considered here, although necessarily only in outline. It is also argued that, contrary to some scholarly opinions, this introduction should not be regarded as a protreptic to philosophy as such, i.e. as belonging to the genre of Aristotle's Protrepticus. Whereas that genre aims to promote the pursuit of sophia as a way of life, hence as ultimately an ethical choice or determination of the highest human good, the present text (it is argued) is meant to establish the nature of the highest or most paradigmatic form of cognition as such, leaving aside the question of ranking this in relation to other possible candidates for the highest good overall.

The discrepancy between evidence in the dialogues that Plato endorsed artefactual Ideas and evidence in Aristotle's _Metaphysics_ that he excluded them has been the focus of intense interest. Much of the discussion centres on Plato: what did he hold when, concerning artefact-Ideas? This chapter focuses on the question: why were _any_ early Platonists against artefact-Ideas? This question arises not simply because of examples in Plato's dialogues, but because the Platonists who rejected artefact-Ideas did so in the teeth of the fact that some of their own arguments, if sound, opened the door to such entities. Their rejection of artefact-Ideas was neither casual nor easily renounced. Speculation about the reasons behind it might help piece together what was going on in the early Academy.

Le sujet de l’étude est la relation entre le bonheur et la chance selon Aristote. Ce problème est abordé à partir de la question de savoir si la sagesse et la vertu suffisent au bonheur. Si tel était le cas, une personne pauvre et malade serait heureuse. Pour Aristote, au contraire, le bonheur nécessite des biens non moraux pour être complet. Le bonheur n’est pas seulement ce qui rend les autres choses bonnes, il est aussi ce qui est complet et désirable. Dans ce cas, la question du rapport du bonheur à la chance se pose : le bonheur dépend-il de la chance? Ce problème est lui-même examiné dans le cas particulier d’un bien non moral : la fin de la vie. Aristote est-il d’accord avec le mot de Solon : « Ne pas dire “heureux” ceux qui sont encore vivants, mais seulement une fois la fin atteinte. » Peut-on dire qu’une vie est heureuse même si sa fin est inconnue? Peut-on dire qu’elle est heureuse maintenant, quand on sait qu’elle se terminera misérablement? L’auteur fait une lecture détaillée des deux traitements qu’Aristote donne à cette question en EE II 1 et EN I 10-11. Elle montre que, selon l’ Éthique à Nicomaque, il est possible de dire que quelqu’un est heureux même si l’on ne connaît pas la fin de sa vie. Le bonheur ne dépend pas du hasard dans la mesure où le bonheur dépend entièrement de l’activité vertueuse qui, à son tour, ne dépend que de l’agent. L’article se termine par une analyse plus brève de ce qu’on appelle la « chance constitutive » en EN III 7 et X 10.

This book turns a philosophical lens on to the main themes of Aristotle's Ethics, offering detailed discussions of happiness as an end, virtue, character development, voluntary agency, prohairesis (rational choice), practical wisdom, incontinence, pleasure, and the theoretic ideal. It shows how Aristotle's essentially practical orientation in ethics affects the content as well as the method of his inquiry. Closely examined topics include the difference between practical thinking (about particulars) and the thinking of the “statesman,” the category of “the noble,” the Aristotelian roots of justice in human development, the ambiguities of the craft analogy, how pleasure relates to value judgment, human happiness versus that of God, the uses of leisure, and the eccentricity of the theoretic ideal in the eyes of many of Aristotle's contemporaries. The discussion mainly follows the Nicomachean Ethics, but explores some distinctive doctrines of the Eudemian Ethics too.

Part 1 examines the roles of (a) intelligent cause, (b) empirical materials (fire, earth etc.), and (c) the resulting cosmos, in the account of world-making in the Timaeus. It is argued that the presence of (b) is essential for the distinctness of (a) and (c); and an explanation is proposed for why the biblical idea of creation faces no such problem. Part II shows how different suggestions implicit in Plato's doctrine of the intelligible model give rise to radically different kinds of Platonic metaphysics.