Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Aristotle believes that the development of the soul, the form or essence of man is the natural end of every person. One can understand human nature by examining the soul of a nature adult. In describing the psychology of human behavior Aristotle discusses especially the appetite and intellective parts of the soul. These two parts partake in reason which Aristotle believes is man's most characteristically human quality. [TRUNCATED] / 2031-01-01

This thesis is an exploratory study of the relationship between Foucault's conception of disciplinary power and the philosophical ideas of ancient Greece as exemplified by Aristotle. Foucault claims that disciplinary power arose only in the 17th and 18th centuries. This thesis demonstrates that there are similarities and parallels between certain facets of Aristotle's ethical and political theory and Foucault's idea of disciplinary power--parallels and similarities sufficiently strong to weaken, if not contradict, Foucault's description of the historical origin of disciplinary power. / Master of Arts

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<p>The concept of matter is discussed by Aristotle in the context of investigations dealing with the issues of causality, substance, and change. The following inquiry focusses (sic) on the discussion of matter in the context of change by analysing the two accounts of change that Aristotle gives in the first book of the Physics and the ninth book of the Metaphysics, respectively. The two schemas of change are outlined and the development of the concept of matter is followed from the hypokeimenon of accidental change, to the primary matter of elemental change, to the matter that underlies substantial change and finally to the potential of the second model of change. </p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This thesis examines the scope of Aristotelian teleology. It challenges a narrowly intrinsic interpretation which rests on a dichotomous conception that only admits of two kinds of goal-directed movements, namely the actualization of one's own nature, or the artificial and arbitrary use of another substance. The thesis aims at overcoming this dichotomy by highlighting the fact that there are intermediary cases according to Aristotle, i.e. that the relation between agent and patient is not always strictly intrinsic or extrinsic. The first chapter examines instrumental relations in crafts and the second chapter examines instrumental relations in nature, both of which are shown to have their place within Aristotle's intrinsic view of teleology. Simply, the thesis argues that the self-actualization of natural substances should be viewed as the focal point rather than the exclusive subject of teleological accounts.

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In Book III, Chapter 5 of his De Anima, in the midst of his account of the faculty of thought, Aristotle concludes that there are, in some sense, two minds required for thinking, one which 'becomes all things', and another which 'makes all things'. The second of these --commonly called the "active intellect" has always been a source of puzzlement for interpreters, on two fronts: (1) How does this entity 'make' things, i.e. what does it do, in relation to the potential or "passive" intellect, by way of producing the ideas in the latter?; and (2) What is the metaphysical status of the active intellect? In particular, can Aristotle's description of this mind as "eternal and immortal" be reconciled with his accounts, elsewhere, of the nature and function of eternal beings? In this dissertation, with the help of related passages in other works, I unravel the details and implications of Aristotle's remarkably terse and economical discussion of the active intellect. Further, I show how we can, and why we must, re-interpret the most important aspect of Aristotle's metaphysics --his theory of the divine beings, the "unmoved movers" in light of what we learn from De Anima III.5. Aristotle is seen to have solved an essential epistemological problem, namely how we initially form the ideas or 'concepts' about which we think, in a manner which brings his psychology into direct contact with his theory of being. In the process, he implies a view of the power of human reason that is both ennobling and humbling. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In his ethical treatises Aristotle offers a rich account of those conditions that render people’s behaviour involuntary, and defines voluntariness on the basis of the absence of these conditions. This dissertation has two aims. One is to offer an account of the significance of the notions of involuntariness and voluntariness for Aristotle’s ethical project that satisfactorily explains why he deems it necessary to discuss these notions in his Ethics. My own account of the significance of these notions for Aristotle’s Ethics emerges from my arguments against the two most influential views concerning this significance: I argue that Aristotle’s concern with voluntariness in his Ethics is not (primarily) shaped by a concern with accountability, i.e. with those conditions under which fully mature and healthy rational agents are held accountable or answerable for their actions; nor is it (primarily) shaped by a concern with the conditioning of pain-responsive agents for the sake of socially useful ends that are not, intrinsically, their own. Rather, his concern is with reason-responsive agents (which are not morally accountable agents, nor merely pain-responsive agents) and the conditions for attributing ethically significant behaviour to them. This is what I call ‘ethical ascription’. The second aim of this dissertation is to provide a comprehensive account of those conditions that defeat the ascription of ethically significant pieces of behaviour to reason-responsive agents, and to show the distinctiveness of Aristotle’s views on the nature of these conditions. The conclusions I arrive at in this respect are shaped by the notion of ethical ascription that I develop as a way of reaching the first aim.