Nevim Borçin

The discussion of friendship in Eudemian Ethics VII is often taken as evidence of Aristotle’s reliance on the dialectical method in the Eudemian Ethics. In this paper, I challenge that view. I argue that Aristotle’s treatment of friendship in Eudemian Ethics VII is best understood as non-dialectical—one ultimately consistent with the strategies and procedures of scientific inquiry. Although Aristotle employs some dialectical tools and strategies in this discussion, the resources of dialectic are ultimately inadequate for fully developing his account of friendship and resolving problems it raises. His approach is characterized by four key aspects: the logoi, i.e. arguments he employs are philosophical in nature, focusing on examining the subject’s nature and establishing the truth about it; the phainomena that should be acknowledged and respected in guiding and constraining arguments are facts that might involve both endoxic and non-endoxic propositions; aporetic tools are used to advance the investigation, though resolving puzzles requires the supplementation of substantial philosophical knowledge; and driven by epistemic optimism, this method seeks to preserve the true aspects of the existing beliefs and opinions. This contrasts sharply with dialectical arguments, which prioritize reasoning from the most endoxic premises without necessarily aiming to reach the most endoxic conclusions.

Aristotle’s conception of the natural slave remains a contentious issue. I challenge two common interpretations that misrepresent his account. The first holds that natural slaves share the same human nature as free men, with their deficiency arising from their actions and habituation. The second sees the natural slave as a subhuman, closer to animals, with an innate and ineliminable rational defect. I reject both views and argue that Aristotle sees the natural slave as a legitimate human being but with a rational deficiency. Furthermore, I contend that this deficiency is more severe than some scholars acknowledge, particularly those who take Aristotle as identifying non-Greeks with natural slaves and assess their cognitive abilities on the basis of the intellectual achievements of non-Greeks.

A continuous objection to virtue ethics has been its alleged inadequacy in providing a distinctive account of right action and determinate action guidance. The virtue ethical criterion “An action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically (i.e., acting in character) do in the circumstances,” has been claimed by some to give wrong results in some cases, and thus doomed to failure. However, I argue that the opponents who raise these objections overlook an important distinction between “action assessment” and “action guidance” in virtue ethics. Once this distinction which is alien to other dominant moral theories is taken into consideration, I show that virtue ethics can supply a distinctive theory of right action and sufficient action guidance. Moreover, I will demonstrate that this distinction allows us to see that virtue ethics has some structural advantages that enable it to provide multiple guidance strategies to different agents with differential cognitive and moral developmental levels. Finally, I will argue that while theories that tell moral agents what to do by providing exact answers might affect moral agency in negative ways by frustrating the development of an integrated moral character, virtue ethics also avoids this effect.