Patricio A. Fernandez

Good-willed or morally worthy action is one that is morally right non-accidentally: as she performs it the agent is, in some way, responsive to its rightness. Several recent accounts have analyzed good-willed action in terms of a composition of right action plus some requirements on the agent’s psychological condition, but tend to leave unexamined the direction of conceptual dependence between right action and good-willed action. This chapter argues that significant difficulties arise when right action is taken as primary and intelligible independently of good-willed action, often relying on the standard causalist picture of agency. Inspired by Aristotle’s notion of virtuous action and Kant’s treatment of action from duty, the chapter sketches an alternative view in which the idea of mere rightness is conceptually dependent on that of a good-willed self-conscious action done for reasons.

This chapter starts with an introduction to the notion of animal motion. Our actions are those of an animal, it states. It asks the following questions: are we the sort of animal that can think about what to do? What difference does that capability make when our actions are compared with those of the other animals that act? Aristotle has important things to teach us on these questions. The chapter starts its examination of these questions with a detailed description of what Aristotle had to say on this topic. The chapter argues that a unifying reading of Aristotle's employment of the practical syllogism is possible and philosophically attractive. Even if there might be independent reasons to prefer a non-unifying reading, the chapter submits, the relevant texts alone do not force it on us. Briefly stated, the chapter argues that Aristotle saw rational action as a specific kind of animal locomotion, and the account of rational action that makes essential reference to thought as the specific form that the general account of animal locomotion adopts when applied to the self-motion of a rational animal.

This volume brings together essays written by renowned authors from around the world addressing the wide range of A. G. Vigo’s philosophical interests: ancient philosophy and its reception, transcendental philosophy, and practical philosophy. In texts that engage with the honoree’s work, the contributors—hailing from Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Spain, the United States, and Mexico—highlight the significant influence of his scholarship on the study of practical philosophy, as well as the interpretation of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger. The diversity of languages and themes collected does justice to the breadth of professor Vigo’s impact.

In Nicomachean Ethics 2.4 Aristotle distinguishes between virtuous action and acting virtuously: a virtuous action counts as virtuously performed if done with knowledge, chosen for its own sake, and from a stable character. Since the ‘same’ action can be performed virtuously or non-virtuously, interpreters have concluded that these ‘agential conditions’ are indifferent incidental features with no bearing on the virtuous character of the action. I propose that they are instead ‘perfections,’ i.e., constitutive features of virtuous action as such, admitting of degrees. Unlike the alternative interpretation, my proposal fully harmonizes with three important Aristotelian doctrines: that action from virtue is prior to action merely in conformity with virtue; that character virtue is a perfection of human beings; and that practical life is not properly characterized in transitive, productive terms. My proposal still allows for a generic sense of ‘sameness’ in which the ‘same’ action may be virtuously or non-virtuously performed.

Good-willed or morally worthy action is one that is morally right non-accidentally: as she performs it the agent is, in some way, responsive to its rightness. Several recent accounts have analyzed good-willed action in terms of a composition of right action plus some requirements on the agent’s psychological condition, but tend to leave unexamined the direction of conceptual dependence between right action and good-willed action. I argue that significant difficulties arise when right action is taken as primary and intelligible independently of good-willed action, often relying on the standard causalist picture of agency. Inspired by Aristotle’s notion of virtuous action and Kant’s treatment of action from duty, I sketch an alternative view in which the idea of mere rightness is conceptually dependent on that of a good-willed self-conscious action done for reasons.

Aristotle famously distinguishes between merely doing a virtuous action and acting in the way in which a virtuous person would. Against an interpretation prominent in recent scholarship, I argue that ‘acting virtuously,’ in the sense of exercising a virtue actually possessed, is prior to ‘virtuous action,’ understood generically. I propose that the latter notion is best understood as a derivative abstraction from the former, building upon a reading of a neglected distinction between per se and coincidentally just action in Nicomachean Ethics 5, and thus shed light on the meaning and philosophical significance of the priority of acting from virtue.

Aristotle’s soul is a first principle (an ‘efficient cause’) of every vital change in an animal, in the way that a craft is a cause of its product’s coming-to-be. We argue that the soul’s causal efficacy cannot therefore be reduced to the formal constitution of vital phenomena, or to discrete interventions into independently constituted processes, but involves the exercise of vital powers. This reading does better justice to Aristotle’s conception of craft as a rational productive disposition; and it captures the soul’s continuous causal role as that which brings about all forms of vital change and underwrites their unity.

At least for those who uphold the rationality of morality, ethics and practical reason are not two distinct topics: an ethically sound agent is one whose practical reason functions as it should. Take, for instance, the greatest historical figures. Aristotle claimed that no virtue of character can exist without practical wisdom—the excellence of practical, deliberative reason. And Kant thought that the categorical imperative, the ultimate moral principle that governs a good will, was at the same time the fundamental principlof practical reasoning because the will simply ispractical reason. Even before any philosophical theory of the connection between acting well and the exercise of a rational power is in view, our moral practices strongly suggest that there is one. For we take it for granted that, in an important range of cases, when an agent fails to act as she should, something has gone awry with the agent and not just with her acts, and, furthermore, that the agent herself may be held responsible for this. In calling an agent who acts unethically "irrational," we are saying these two things.

Widespread conceptions of practical reasoning confront us with a choice between its practicality and its objectivity: between its efficacious, world-changing character and its accountability to objective rational standards. This choice becomes unnecessary, I argue, on an alternative view embodied by the thesis that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action. I lay bare and challenge the assumptions underlying the rejection of that thesis and outline a defense of its picture of practical reasoning against common objections. On such a picture, practical reasoning provides a principle not externally imposed upon an action but rather constitutive of it.

This paper provides an interpretation of Sein und Zeit §34, in the context of the existential analytic of Dasein. Dealing with the Rede – Sprache distinction, it tries to show how in Heidegger's conception, at least at the time of writing his main work, language is an existentially founded phenomenon that takes root in the prelinguistic opening of a space of meaning. In the light of this ontological structure of meaning and language it is possible to make sense of the analyzed text and to do justice to the systematic place of language in the broader philosophical project of Sein und Zeit. This particular place makes the heideggerian approach to language radically different from other contemporary approaches to the phenomenon.

Part One defends the thesis, first advanced by Aristotle, that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, and argues for its philosophical significance. Opposition to the thesis rests on a contestable way of distinguishing between acts and contents of reasoning and on a picture of normative principles as external to the actions that fall under them. The resulting view forces us to choose between the efficacious, world-changing character of practical thought and its subjection to objective rational standards. This is a false choice. Aristotle's own understanding of the thesis points the way to an alternative conception of practical reason on which it is at once a power to effect changes in the world and to get things right. Practical reasoning endows the action performed on its basis with a principle that is not imposed on it from outside: instead, it makes the action what it is. Properly understood in terms of the relevant acts of a rational subject, the thesis is defensible and philosophically attractive. Furthermore, it helps us understand the continuity and discontinuity that exists between the motions of human beings and those of other animals, as Aristotle showed