Christof Rapp

Ce texte traite de la définition aristotélicienne de la cité et des diverses constitutions, en Politique, I et III. On soutient ici (1) que la définition de la cité doit être extraite de deux passages du début du traité, (2) que la cité est définie par le but qui lui est propre et (3) que d’importants théorèmes politiques en Politique III se servent de cette définition initiale de la cité comme d’une prémisse. L’objectif ultime de cet article est de contribuer à l’évaluation du rôle que jouent les définitions dans la méthode qui est celle d’Aristote dans sa philosophie morale et politique.

The volumes of the Symposium Aristotelicum have become essential reference works for the study of Aristotle. In this twentieth volume, ten renowned scholars of ancient philosophy offer a running commentary on Aristotle's De motu animalium. It is in this text, one of his most intriguing works, that Aristotle sets out the general principles of animal locomotion. A philological and a philosophical introduction sketch the current state of research on this treatise, situating current thought in the context of three decades of scholarly debates. The nine contributed essays together comment on each chapter of the Aristotelian text, discussing in detail the philosophical issues that are raised across the different sections of the text. Comprehensive analyses of Aristotle's doctrines and arguments, as well as critical discussion of rival interpretations, make this volume a valuable resource for scholars of Aristotle. The present volume also includes a newly reconstructed Greek text with a facing English translation by Benjamin Morison.

Der im Deutschen überwiegend mit ›Substanz‹ übersetzte Begriff der ousia steht im Mittelpunkt von Aristoteles’ Metaphysik und Ontologie. Er steht in enger Verbindung mit der Analyse des Seins oder Seienden : Die ousia ist in den verschiedenen Verwendungen stets das, was vorrangig ›seiend‹ genannt werden kann und was den Bezugspunkt für alles andere Seiende darstellt. Das Verständnis des ousia-Begriffs bei Aristoteles gilt als schwierig, weil Aristoteles in verschiedenen Kontexten den Begriff unterschiedlich gebraucht und unterschiedliche Entitäten als ousia bezeichnet.

The program offered by Alasdair MacIntyre in answer to what he diagnoses as the moral crisis of the present, he understands to be Aristotelian. I will therefore attempt, by way of a consideration of MacIntyre’s approach and the Aristotle-interpretation entailed therein, to answer the question as to whether Aristotle’s practical philosophy itself in fact fulfills the requirements set by the communitarians or whether it can be drawn upon in a non-trivial way in the formulation of the communitarian standpoint.

This paper suggests that within Aristotle’s well-known contribution to the history of ontology two different levels should be kept apart, an analytic-critical and a constructive level. On the first level Aristotle mainly provides analytic-critical tools for overcoming the main problems of all dealings with the notions of being and to be, while the second level consists in Aristotle’s ambitious project of conducting first philosophy (i.e. the specific part of his philosophy that is meant to continue the old and time-honoured project of identifying what Aristotle calls ‘first principles and causes’) as ontology, i.e. as an inquiry into being qua being.

In den platonischen Werken scheint die historische Figur des Sokrates besonders im Frühwerk omnipräsent. Die Dialogfigur Sokrates führt bei Platon die Auseinandersetzung mit den Sophisten. Einzelne Figuren der Sophistik, darunter Protagoras von Abdera, Gorgias von Leontinoi und Prodikos von Keos spielen dabei eine besonders prominente Rolle. Hinzu kommen als Vertreter der Sophistik u. a. Kallikles, Thrasymachos, Hippias, Kritias, Antiphon. Vor allem die frühe platonische Ethik steht ganz im Zeichen der Auseinandersetzung mit dem sophistischen Angriff auf die konventionelle Moralvorstellung sowie mit dem Anspruch der Sophisten, Tugenden lehren zu können.

Although Aristotle’s name is regularly mentioned when it comes to the question of where the notion of the will historically derives from and although one of the most influential exponents of philosophical theories of the will, Thomas Aquinas, seems to think that he is just applying the Aristotelian theory, many historians of philosophy explicitly deny that Aristotle had a notion of the will. If we think that the notion of the will is among the notions that have been gradually developed in the history of philosophy, nothing is strange about saying that some philosophers prior to this development lacked this particular notion. However, Aristotle’s case is peculiar, because the same historians, who are reluctant to describe such a notion to Aristotle, admit that he played some role in the formation of the same notion. The line-up of more or less recent philosophers and scholars who are of the opinion that Aristotle had no notion of the will is a very remarkable one. This could almost be called a standard or default position, while the list of exponents of the opposed position, i.e. that Aristotle did have a notion or theory of the will, is much shorter.

Although he does not provide a general analysis of argumentation, Aristotle is a highly influential source of modern argumentation theory. In his treatises the Topics, the Sophistical Refutations and the Rhetoric, Aristotle presents complementary aspects of a theory of sound arguments that are seen as the most effective means of persuasion. Aristotle’s central notion of a deductive argument (sullogismos) does not include references to an addressee, the situative context or non-verbal aspects of communication, and thus differs from some modern views on argumentation. A deductive argument in the Aristotelian sense is a sequence of intellectual steps where the conclusion follows of necessity from the premises. Aristotle does not relativize or relax this notion but takes other factors into account by providing supplementary theoretical elements. For example, he reflects on acceptable premises (endoxa), the adjustment of rhetorical arguments to the horizon of the audience, methods of finding premises on the basis of argumentative schemes (topoi), the use of non-argumentative means of persuasion, and a framework of implicit discourse rules. Many of these themes are, albeit under a different name, still discussed in modern argumentation theory