PHIL2400 Week Two

What a day!  Tired is the only word I have for it right now.  Two hours on trains and buses to Uni and two hours on trains and buses back.  I'm spending more time in transit than in class.  Anyhow, classes this week were great.

The lecture was very engaging, and being on Aristotle, I really enjoyed it (see Lecture notes below).  It's really nice to be in a 'real' class, one where the students are in my physical presence rather than in a projected reality mediated via my personal mimetic device: the computer. 

The tutorial, too, was great.  We met our T.A., Paul Formosa, a recent PhD recipient who completed his thesis on evil.  My tutorial paper went quite well too.  I was a little unsure what to expect, both in the writing and the delivery, as this was my first time in a classroom for a decade.  We had a great discussion on Aristotle focusing mainly on concepts such as Virtue, Practical Wisdom and Eudaimonia.  50 minutes, though, is a little short for a tutorial in my opinion.  I'll post my tutorial paper in the 'Uni Papers' section of this site tomorrow (6/3/08).

LECTURE NOTES

The passions and virtue ethics

Aristotle, (384-322 BCE)

The Nichomachean Ethics (c325 BCE)

Getting the passions right.

Are passions central to the good or ethical life? ‘What kind of a person should I be?’ ‘What character traits make one a good person?’ How should I feel?

‘Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.’ (1094a1-3)

What is happiness? (eudaimonia) ‘Happiness, then, is something complete and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.’ (1097b20)

There are three kinds of goods: external, of the soul, or of the body

Happiness and the complete life:

The soul: vegetative, appetitive (which may be obedient), and the fully rational.

Excellence/ virtue: intellectual and moral.

What is virtue?

Moral virtues are developed by practice and forming habits.

Virtues and excess or deficiency:

Pleasure and pain indicate how virtuous we have become:

A person has to be in a certain condition or state to make their actions right:

1. They must have knowledge of what they are doing.

2. They must choose the acts and choose them for their own sake.

3. Acts must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character. (1105a31-33)

Passions, Faculties, States/dispositions.

‘By passions I mean appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure and pain; by faculties the things in virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, e.g. of becoming angry or pained or feeling pity; by states (dispositions) the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions, e.g. with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to other passions.’ (1105b21 -28)

Doctrine of the mean:

‘both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, toward the right people, with the right aim, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of excellence.’ (1106b18-23)

Evil actions and feelings:

Examples of the mean: ‘Hence also it is no easy task to be good.’ (1109a24)

Three practical rules for good conduct:

1. Keep away from that extreme which is more contrary to the mean.

2. We must notice the errors into which we are liable to fall and force ourselves in the contrary direction.

3. We must guard especially against pleasure and pleasant things because we are not impartial judges of pleasure.

Choice: ‘The same thing is deliberated upon and is chosen, except that the object of choice is already determinate, since it is that which has been decided upon as a result of deliberation that is the object of choice.’(1113a3-5)

Courage:

Pride/magnanimity/greatness of soul:

Anger:

Shame: Akrasia or incontinence vs. enkrateia – continence or mastery.

Pleasure and the life of happiness: