-
408Neither Virtue Nor Vice: Akratic and Enkratic Values in and beyond the Eudemian EthicsIn Giulio Di Basilio (ed.), Investigating the Relationship Between Aristotle's Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics, Issues in Ancient Philosophy. pp. 137-155. 2022.
-
996Hate and Happiness in AristotleIn Noell Birondo (ed.), The Moral Psychology of Hate, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 2-21. 2022.Aristotle tells us that in order to develop virtue, one needs to come to love and hate the right sorts of things. However, his description of the virtuous person clearly privileges love to hate. It is love rather than hate that is the main driving force of a good life. It is because of her love of knowledge, truth and beauty that the virtuous person organizes her life in a certain way and pursues these rather than other things (such as pleasure). When hate comes into the picture, it is merely an…Read more
-
1098Aristotle and the Origins of EvilPhronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy 65 (2): 179-223. 2020.The paper addresses the following question: why do human beings, on Aristotle’s view, have an innate tendency to badness, that is, to developing desires that go beyond, and often against, their natural needs? Given Aristotle’s teleological assumptions (including the thesis that nature does nothing in vain), such tendency should not be present. I argue that the culprit is to be found in the workings of rationality. In particular, it is the presence of theoretical reason that necessitates the limi…Read more
-
3975Aristotle on Virtue of Character and the Authority of ReasonPhronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy 64 (1): 10-56. 2019.I argue that, for Aristotle, virtue of character is a state of the non-rational part of the soul that makes one prone to making and acting on decisions in virtue of that part’s standing in the right relation to (correct) reason, namely, a relation that qualifies the agent as a true self-lover. In effect, this central feature of virtue of character is nothing else than love of practical wisdom. As I argue, it not only explains how reason can hold direct authority over non-rational desires but als…Read more
-
54Technē in Aristotle’s Ethics: Crafting the Moral Life. By Tom Angier (review)Ancient Philosophy 33 (1): 213-217. 2013.
-
2437Practical and Productive Thinking in AristotlePhronesis 63 (2): 148-175. 2018.I argue that on Aristotle’s account practical thinking is thinking whose origin (archē) is a desire that has as its object the very thing that one reasons about how to promote. This feature distinguishes practical from productive reasoning since in the latter the desire that initiates it is not (unless incidentally) a desire for the object that one productively reasons about. The feature has several interesting consequences: (a) there is only a contingent relationship between the desire that one…Read more
-
1450The Politics of Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s RepublicIn Sharon Weisser & Naly Thaler (eds.), Strategies of Polemics in Greek and Roman Philosophy, Brill. pp. 93-112. 2016.In this paper, I concentrate on some of the more peculiar, perhaps even polemical, features of Aristotle’s discussions of Plato’s Republic in the second book of the Politics. These features include Aristotle’s several rather sharp or ironic remarks about Socrates and his project in the Republic, his use of rhetorical questions, or his tendency to bring out the most extreme consequences of Socrates’s theory (such as that it will destroy the polis and that it will lead to incestuous relationships)…Read more
-
1522What Aristotelian Decisions Cannot BeAncient Philosophy 36 (1): 173-195. 2016.I argue that Aristotelian decisions (προαιρέσεις) cannot be conceived of as based solely on wish (βούλησις) and deliberation (βούλευσις), as the standard picture (most influentially argued for in Anscombe's "Thought and Action in Aristotle", in R. Bambrough ed. New Essays on Plato and Aristotle. London: Routledge, 1965) suggests. Although some features of the standard view are correct (such as that decisions have essential connection to deliberation and that wish always plays a crucial role in t…Read more
-
1326Agency and Responsibility in Aristotle's Eudemian EthicsPhronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy 60 (2): 206-251. 2015.I defend two main theses. First, I argue that Aristotle’s account of voluntary action focuses on the conditions under which one is the cause of one’s actions in virtue of being (qua) the individual one is. Aristotle contrasts voluntary action not only with involuntary action but also with cases in which one acts (or does something) due to one’s nature (for example, in virtue of being a member of a certain species) rather than due to one’s own desires (i.e. qua individual). An action can be attri…Read more
-
490Aristotle on ViceBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (3): 459-477. 2015.In this paper, I argue that the widely held view that Aristotle's vicious agent is a principled follower of a wrong conception of the good whose soul, just like the soul of the virtuous agent, is marked by harmony between his reason and non-rational desires is an exegetical mistake. Rather, Aristotle holds – consistently and throughout the Nicomachean Ethics – that the vicious agent lacks any real principles of action and that his soul lacks unity and harmony even more than the soul of the uncon…Read more
-
1547Aristotle on Actions from Lack of ControlPhilosophers' Imprint 15. 2015.The paper defends three claims about Aristotle’s theory of uncontrolled actions (akrasia) in NE 7.3. First, I argue that the first part of NE 7.3 contains the description of the overall state of mind of the agent while she acts without control. Aristotle’s solution to the problem of uncontrolled action lies in the analogy between the uncontrolled agent and people who are drunk, mad, or asleep. This analogy is interpreted as meaning that the uncontrolled agent, while acting without control, is st…Read more
-
-
Universität HamburgProfessor
Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Aesthetics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
History of Western Philosophy |