Alexander Stöpfgeshoff

Question 11 in Book 2 of John Buridan’s Questions on the Ten Books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, concerns whether the good can be well divided into the honorable, the useful, and the pleasurable. Aristotle, according to Buridan, claims that it can. But should we follow Aristotle in this respect? Buridan argues that we should not. In his view, the good is extensionally equivalent with the honorable, as well as with the useful and the with the pleasurable. But the relevant division is still important for our understanding of goodness, according to Buridan. He proposes a fitting attitude account of goodness. In its most general sense, the good refers to the desirable, that is, to that which is (or would be) a fitting object of desire. However, we can distinguish between three different ways in which things may be desirable: in themselves (in which case they are honorable), as means to some other good (in which case they are useful) and for ourselves (in which case they are pleasurable). On the substantive level, these always coincide. But that arguably does not follow from the more fundamental account of the nature of the good, according to Buridan.

Can a person truly be courageous, for example, without also being just, moderate, or generous? This paper examines the medieval philosopher Godfrey of Fontaines (d. 1306) and his defense of the Aristotelian idea that practical wisdom (prudence) connects all virtues of character, such as courage and justice, in such a way that they cannot be had independently of each other. In the late 13th century, John Peter Olivi (ca. 1248–1298) challenged this idea. Olivi argued that prudence functions like geometry: one can master one specific part without knowing the whole subject. According to Olivi, one can have good judgment concerning courage while lacking good judgment concerning justice or generosity. Godfrey offers one of the earliest and most sophisticated responses to this challenge. He argues that true prudence is a unified and indivisible virtue. For Godfrey, just as a doctor cannot understand the health of a single limb without understanding how it affects the entire body, a person cannot truly possess one virtue of character without understanding how it relates to all the others. What counts as a virtuous action depends on how different virtues relate to each other in different situations.

This paper explores economic theories of Gerald Odonis (d. 1348) and John Buridan (d. ca. 1360), focusing on their views on economic value, money, and usury in their commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Both philosophers critically engage with Aristotle’s ideas, reshaping economic thought during a transformative era marked by intense socio-economic changes and crises. Odonis, influenced by Franciscan traditions, argues that money is a social construct established by legal and political authority. He defines value primarily in terms of human need and societal necessity, suggesting a dynamic, skill-based valuation of labour rather than value of intrinsic worth. On usury, Odonis shifts from a liberal attitude in his earlier works towards moral condemnation, highlighting its injustice and harmful social consequences. Buridan further refines these ideas, emphasising the necessity of stable currency as essential to just economic exchange. He critiques arbitrary political interventions and advocates for currency grounded in precious metals to ensure economic stability. Addressing objections concerning economic value, Buridan argues that value is based on communal rather than personal need. Drawing from Aristotle and Seneca, he differentiates between necessary and apparent needs, highlighting that both the impoverished and wealthy experience poverty due to persistent desire. Ultimately, economic value, according to Buridan, is determined by apparent rather than necessary need. Futher, Buridan permits interest charges under genuine loss or risk-sharing conditions, reflecting a practical approach to late medieval economic morality.

John Buridan’s (c. 1300–1361) influential discussion on the possibility of knowledge concludes that divine deception does not undermine human knowledge. He holds that natural and moral knowledge need not be absolutely evident, but rather evident in a qualified sense. Buridan’s response to this skeptical challenge is widely regarded as a milestone in the history of skeptical thought. While Buridan’s account of how natural knowledge is possible has attracted considerable scholarly attention, his consideration of how moral knowledge is possible has largely been neglected. In this paper, I argue that Buridan’s innovative approach suggests that correct moral decisions can be reached on the basis of practical wisdom, even under conditions of false or limited information.

Daniel Russell has argued that virtue ethics requires a criterion for enumerating the virtues and suggests that reasons for action distinguish them (2009). This paper explores and defends Thomas Aquinas’s (ca. 1225–1274) view that virtues are distinguished by what makes us good in overcoming the difficulties we face. Aquinas’s account explains why agents can seemingly perform different virtuous actions for the same reasons while still satisfying the demands set by Russell for a theory of enumeration.

Question 11 in Book 2 of John Buridan’s Questions on the Ten Books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, concerns whether the good can be well divided into the honorable, the useful, and the pleasurable. Aristotle, according to Buridan, claims that it can. But should we follow Aristotle in this respect? Buridan argues that we should not. In his view, it is rather the case that the good is extensionally equivalent with the honorable, as well as with the useful and with the pleasurable. According to Buridan, however, the relevant division is still important for our understanding of goodness. Several centuries before Franz Brentano, A. C. Ewing, and others, Buridan proposes a fitting attitude account of goodness. In its most general sense, he says, the good refers to the desirable, that is, to that which is (or would be) a fitting object of desire. However, we can distinguish between three different ways in which things may be desirable: in themselves (in which case they are honorable), as means to some other good (in which case they are useful) and for ourselves (in which case they are pleasurable). On the substantive level, these always coincide. But that does not follow from the more fundamental account of the nature of the good, according to Buridan. In this paper, we will critically examine both Buridan’s case for thinking that the good is extensionally equivalent with the honorable, the useful, and the pleasurable, as well as his fitting attitude account of goodness.

This dissertation is a study of Thomas Aquinas’s and Godfrey of Fontaines’s moral philosophies. In this study, I conduct a detailed analysis of two Aristotelian commitments concerning the character virtues, namely, The Plurality of the Character Virtues and The Connection of the Character Virtues. Both Aquinas and Godfrey think that there are many distinct character virtues, however, one cannot possess these character virtues in separation from each other. In Chapter I, it is established that Aquinas believes in the plurality of the character virtues not because of a specific account of the human soul, but because he is committed to a plurality in what he calls “the notion of goodness.” In Chapter II, it is argued that Aquinas’s account of virtuous action requires that there be a likeness between a person and their actions in terms of the notion of goodness explored in Chapter I. Chapters III through V lay out my account of how to reconstruct both Aquinas’s and Godfrey’s arguments for The Connection of the Character Virtues. The focus here lies on finding an interpretation that provides a valid argument for the connection of the character virtues. I argue that we ought to focus on a dependence between prudence and the character virtues. A central problem for this analysis is how to account for prudence as a unified virtue. On this issue, Godfrey provides an explicit argument that conceives of prudence as unified because prudence strikes a balance between the character virtues. Chapter VI investigates whether different groups, such as men and women, possess different types of character virtues. Godfrey offers a novel argument for the impossibility of male- and female-specific virtues. Finally, Chapter VII explores the question of how we should understand Godfrey’s account of prudence itself. I show that his discussion emphasizes the variable nature of ethics and that he endorses a view that has certain affinities with ethical particularism.

Thomas Aquinas situates virtues of character in the noncognitive appetite. He also claims that virtues of character provide the ends in practical matters. Since providing proper ends seems to be a cognitive act, it is unclear how virtues of character, qua perfections of the noncognitive appetite, provide ends. After criticizing three approaches to this interpretive challenge, we suggest that Aquinas provides us with a theory of practical identity. We argue that that on Aquinas's view a practical identity is constituted both by a virtuous disposition in the appetitive power and by a rational commitment to proximate ends, a rational commitment that results from acquiring the virtuous disposition. With this account of practical identity in mind, we explain how Aquinas can consistently claim that virtues, qua perfections of the appetite, provide ends.

A trait that is often associated with a good person is caring about the truth. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, describes a virtue that concerns truths (truthfulness). However, he limits the virtue to being truthful about who one is and what one's achievements are. This restriction seems almost arbitrary and exceedingly narrow. In this paper, I explore the motivation for Aquinas's restricted account and argue that his view is motivated by broader virtue theoretical commitments and that his approach to the role of truth for being a good person is distinct and worthwhile.