Marguerite Deslauriers

For Aristotle, human beings are characterized by a range of rational activities, notably theoretical reflection, practical deliberation, and the training and refinement of emotion and appetite. These activities are less unique to the species than is often thought—while they distinguish human beings from nonhuman animals on the one hand and gods on the other, they also indicate our similarities with those other beings. What distinguishes human beings from other beings is primarily the capacity for a certain kind of practical rationality. But it is also true that this capacity is not found in every person, nor in the same form in all human beings. There are for Aristotle many different ways of participating in rationality, and therefore different ways of being human.

Lucrezia Marinella's (1571–1653) most important contributions to philosophy were two polemical treatises: The Nobility and excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men, and the Exhortations to Women and to Others if They Please. Marinella argues for the superiority of women over men in every respect: psychologically, physiologically, morally, and intellectually. She is particularly effective in using the resources of ancient philosophy to support her various arguments, in which she draws conclusions about the souls and the bodies of women, the nature and significance of women's beauty, the virtue of women and the liberty to which women as well as men are entitled. This Element showcases that her claim of superiority is intended ultimately to justify the possibility of political rule by women.

Afin d’examiner la définition du courage chez Aristote, cet article pose un certain nombre de questions de procédure. (i) Comment Aristote s’y prend-il pour construire la définition du courage dans sa philosophie morale et politique? Suit-il réellement la procédure de rassemblement et de division qu’il a héritée de Platon, mais qu’il a aussi révisée et continué à prôner dans ses développements théoriques sur la définition? (ii) La définition du courage que pose Aristote a-t-elle la structure qu’il recommande, sur laquelle il insiste même, dans ses écrits théoriques? Je soutiens que tel est bien le cas, en demandant dès lors (iii) pourquoi Aristote inclut, dans chacune de ses discussions sur le courage, une section qui porte sur la manière de distinguer les états moraux qui peuvent ressembler au courage – qui pourraient même être appelés courage par certaines personnes (malavisées) – du courage à proprement parler. Une question finale est ainsi suggérée: (iv) la manière dont Aristote procède démontre-t-elle qu’il s’assigne pour tâche, en définissant le courage, d’expliquer comment ses contemporains utilisaient le concept et le terme dans les faits? En d’autres termes, Aristote décrit-il simplement l’usage contemporain du terme (offrant ainsi, pourrait-on dire, une définition nominale), ou est-il en train de produire la justification d’un idéal normatif?

This is a response to the paper “The fruit of knowledge: To bite or not to bite? Isotta Nogarola on Eve’s sin and its scholastic sources,” by Marcela Borelli, Valeria A. Buffon, and Natalia G. Jakubecki. It has two aims. The first is to show the importance of discussions of Eve in the querelle des femmes, and so to emphasize the importance of Borelli, Buffon and Jakubecki’s analysis of Nogarola’s account of Eve. A second aim is to highlight the philosophical rigour of Nogarola’s discussion of the culpability of Eve as demonstrated by Borelli, Buffon and Jakubecki, by contrasting it with attempts to exculpate Eve from responsibility that were made in pro-woman works written between the composition of Nogarola’s work and its publication.

Early feminist or pro-woman works often combine the claim that the rational souls of men and women are the same with an argument for the superiority of women. This article considers two such works, Lucrezia Marinella's The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men (Venice, 1601 [1999]) and Marguerite Buffet's In Praise of Illustrious Learned Women, both Ancient and Modern (Paris, 1668), in order to show the continuities and distinctive features of feminist arguments for superiority, to emphasize the differences in the conceptions of reason and physiology that distinguish them, and to demonstrate that claims of superiority persisted even as those defending women's worth began to adopt egalitarian positions.

Aristotle's remarks about the differences between the sexes have become infamous for their implications for the social status of women. In his observations on female biology, Aristotle claims that "the female nature is, as it were, a deformity." In describing women's role in the public sphere, he claims that women are naturally subordinate because, while they possess a deliberative faculty, that capacity is "without authority." While both claims express the "inferiority" of female bodies/women relative to male bodies/men, it is not self-evident that the defects Aristotle identifies in female biology have cognitive or moral manifestations that would justify the rule of men over women in political life. Marguerite Deslauriers here aims to construct a coherent picture of Aristotle's views on sexual and gender-based difference from these remarks and to show the extent to which his views on female biology and women's role in politics are causally connected. Without exculpating Aristotle from charges of misogyny, Deslauriers contextualizes his explanations of the role and origin of female animals in his biology and the role of women in his political philosophy; she shows how Aristotle developed these views and the importance they hold for his wider philosophical commitments. She then explores how Aristotle might have seen the link between the physiology of sex and the bearing it has on political life. She ultimately argues that in Aristotle's conception of sexual difference in biology and politics, there is a tension between his view of the inferiority of female bodies and women and his commitment to the idea that females and women are valuable both for generation and for the political life characteristic of human beings. In this tension she finds a difference between Aristotle and his predecessors: while previous accounts associate sexual difference with affliction, Aristotle sees sexual difference as a benefit, both to a species and a political community. This volume will be of interest to philosophers and students interested in ancient philosophy, feminist philosophy, as well as those studying moral and political philosophy.

Marie de Gournay, in a central argument in the pamphlet Égalité des hommes et des femmes [The Equality of Women and Men], offers an interpretation of an argument for equality that she attributes to ‘the School.’ I argue that Gournay is drawing on Aristotle’s Metaphysics to formulate an argument for the equality of women; that she does not temper that argument with claims for the superiority of women, which makes her unique for some time; and that her alleged misrepresentation of her authorities – Aristotle in particular – is itself an interesting and suggestive phenomenon. Moreover, while some of her contemporaries would have agreed that the soul of a person has no sex, Gournay was unusual in arguing that the social implication of this was intellectual equality for women and men, just so long as education should be provided to women as well as men.

Aristotle begins the discussion of pleasure in Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics with the claim that pleasure “is thought to be most properly connected with our kind,”. In his positive account of pleasure in X 4, he suggests that we can somehow experience pleasure otherwise than “in time”. The aim of this article is to show how the claim that pleasure does not occur ‘in time’ might illuminate the claim that pleasure is most properly connected to our kind. The point, I will argue, is not only that pleasure is complete at every moment – that will be true of many activities – but also that pleasure has the same structure as the best activity available to us, and a structure different from the best activity available to other kinds. Several passages indicate that Aristotle believes that all living things act for the sake of immortality, understood as divine and eternal life, and connect the pursuit of eternal life with the activities that are natural to a species. These offer us a way to understand why the pleasure of contemplation is the best pleasure, and why pleasure is most intimately connected with our kind. I begin in section with an exploration of the pleasures proper to different activities which are in turn proper to different kinds. In subsequent sections I take a closer look at contemplation, particularly insofar as it is an activity that does not take place ‘in time’ but rather ‘in a moment’, and consider Aristotle’s reasons for describing such activities as wholes, or indivisible, or without parts ; and I turn to the relation between the activities and pleasures proper to different kinds and the possibilities available to those different kinds for approximating divine life. In the final section I return to question of pleasure and its intimate connection with our kind.

Aristotle claims that the citizens of the best city should be both intelligent and spirited at Politics VII.7 1327b19-38. While he treats intelligence as an unqualified good, thumos is valuable but problematic. This paper has two aims: to consider the political value of spirit in Aristotle’s Politics and in particular to identify the ways in which it is both essential to political excellence and yet insufficient for securing it, and to use this analysis of the role of spirit in the political realm to explain Aristotle’s exclusion of women from political authority, even in the context of the household. I analyze spirit as a physical phenomenon and as a type of desire, before considering its moral and affective aspects. I then return to the role of spirit in political life and examine its importance for the activity of ruling. In the last section I consider the implications of this analysis of spirit for the social and political roles Aristotle assigns to men and women.

The aim of this paper is to show that for Aristotle god is, and is not, virtuous. I consider first the arguments of the EN to show that the gods do not have virtue---beginning with an account of the divisions of the faculties of soul, and of the virtues that belong to those divisions. These arguments suggest that nous is a divine virtue, and so in the second section I consider nous, as a faculty of soul and as a virtue, and examine the differences between nous as a human virtue, and nous as a virtue which is also a substance, and with which the first divine principle is identified. In the third and final section I ask what kind of difference Aristotle takes the difference between human and divine nous to be---and in particular whether this is a difference in kind or in degree.

One of the most influential works in the history of political theory, Aristotle's Politics is a treatise in practical philosophy, intended to inform legislators and to create the conditions for virtuous and self-sufficient lives for the citizens of a state. In this Companion, distinguished scholars offer new perspectives on the work and its themes. After an opening exploration of the relation between Aristotle's ethics and his politics, the central chapters follow the sequence of the eight books of the Politics, taking up questions such as the role of reason in legitimizing rule, the common good, justice, slavery, private property, citizenship, democracy and deliberation, unity, conflict, law and authority, and education. The closing chapters discuss the interaction between Aristotle's political thought and contemporary democratic theory. The volume will provide a valuable resource for those studying ancient philosophy, classics, and the history of political thought.