This dissertation is an examination of Aristotle’s political science. The first part begins by comparing the Aristotelian conception of the human being as a political animal with subsequent conceptions, notably in the political thought of Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. This comparative analysis shows that human nature is increasingly conceived as apolitical, a major consequence of which is a rejection of the Aristotelian conception of logos (speech, reason) as a natural capacity for reasoning about justice and injustice. It is then demonstrated that modern political science rejects Aristotle’s argument that there is a good for human beings as such which is constitutive of their end (telos), in the same way that modern science abandoned Aristotelian natural teleology. While contemporary currents of political thought, including neo-Aristotelianism, republicanism and communitarianism, make use of certain elements of Aristotle’s thought, they largely fail to recover the critical notions of action and nature. Having cleared major obstacles that bar our access to Aristotle’s political science, the dissertation moves, in the second part, to a textual analysis of the Politics, which, it is argued, constitutes not a work fractured between its “realistic” and “idealistic” parts, but a unified inquiry into both defective political regimes and the best regime, the guiding question of which is: how to render human beings good. The analysis begins by a consideration of the naturalness of the city and examines the various ways in which the notion of “nature” is used by Aristotle. It is then argued that, according to Aristotle’s presentation, political life is the fulfillment of human nature insofar as it represents the possibility of an ethical and moral life. Accordingly, political science, and legislative or “architectonic” science in particular, is to be devoted to moral education. Aristotle is critical of an education that neglects the virtues necessary for leisure in favour of military virtues alone, while acknowledging that cities must be prepared for war. Through an examination of the legislative science and political prudence, it is shown that Aristotle’s political science is capable of providing action with a moral orientation, without having recourse to metaphysical cosmology.

This dissertation is an examination of Aristotle’s political science. The first part begins by comparing the Aristotelian conception of the human being as a political animal with subsequent conceptions, notably in the political thought of Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. This comparative analysis shows that human nature is increasingly conceived as apolitical, a major consequence of which is a rejection of the Aristotelian conception of logos (speech, reason) as a natural capacity for reasoning about justice and injustice. It is then demonstrated that modern political science rejects Aristotle’s argument that there is a good for human beings as such which is constitutive of their end (telos), in the same way that modern science abandoned Aristotelian natural teleology. While contemporary currents of political thought, including neo-Aristotelianism, republicanism and communitarianism, make use of certain elements of Aristotle’s thought, they largely fail to recover the critical notions of action and nature. Having cleared major obstacles that bar our access to Aristotle’s political science, the dissertation moves, in the second part, to a textual analysis of the Politics, which, it is argued, constitutes not a work fractured between its “realistic” and “idealistic” parts, but a unified inquiry into both defective political regimes and the best regime, the guiding question of which is: how to render human beings good. The analysis begins by a consideration of the naturalness of the city and examines the various ways in which the notion of “nature” is used by Aristotle. It is then argued that, according to Aristotle’s presentation, political life is the fulfillment of human nature insofar as it represents the possibility of an ethical and moral life. Accordingly, political science, and legislative or “architectonic” science in particular, is to be devoted to moral education. Aristotle is critical of an education that neglects the virtues necessary for leisure in favour of military virtues alone, while acknowledging that cities must be prepared for war. Through an examination of the legislative science and political prudence, it is shown that Aristotle’s political science is capable of providing action with a moral orientation, without having recourse to metaphysical cosmology.

This thesis focuses on the issue of whether or not the government is ever justified in prohibiting the actions of an individual who is harming herself but not others. I first analyze some of the key historical figures in the paternalism debate and argue that these accounts fail to adequately meet the needs of a modern, pluralistic society. Then, I analyze and critique the nuanced, soft-paternalist strategy put forth by Joel Feinberg. Finally, I defend a version of hard paternalism, arguing that a balancing strategy that examines each action on a case-by-case basis shows all citizens equal, and adequate concern and respect.

In this thesis I distinguish between two conceptions of naturalism that have been offered as possible starting points for a virtue based ethics. The first version of naturalism is characterized by Philippa Foot’s project in Natural Goodness. The second version of naturalism can be found, in various forms, among the works of John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, and Rosalind Hursthouse. I argue that neither naturalistic approach is entirely successful on its own, but that we can fruitfully carve a path between both approaches that points the way to a positive ethical account. I then conclude with a brief sketch of what such a positive account of a virtue ethics may look like.

The metaphor has been among us since a very long time, but despite over 1.000 years of reflection it is still uncertain how one should understand the concept. There are few, if any, doubts how to understand the definition of metaphor, but is it possible to find a real distinction between the metaphorical and the non-metaphorical? In this essay I seek an answer to when a metaphor is a metaphor or when it is instead a generally accepted concept of how something actually is. I will use previous research on the topic from Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. These persons have given me a wide perspective and approach to the metaphor – and when a word should be considered as a metaphor or not. Through deep discussion on these theories I work out my own view on the issue: It is not the words themselves that are metaphors; it is we, in combination with the context, discourse and expressions that determines the metaphor and when it shall be considered as a metaphor. / Metaforen har funnits ibland oss under en lång tid, men trots över 1 000 år av begrundan är det fortfarande ovisst hur man bör förstå begreppet. Själva definitionen i sig råder det inga större tvivel om, men kan vi finna en riktig distinktion mellan det metaforiska och det ickemetaforiska? I uppsatsen undersöks när en metafor är en metafor eller när det istället är ett allmänt vedertaget begrepp om hur något faktiskt förhåller sig. Tidigare forskning kring ämnet som jag valt att använda mig av har jag hämtat från Aristoteles, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur och George Lakoff och Mark Johnson. Dessa personer har givit mig olika perspektiv och synsätt på metaforen – och när ett ord bör betraktas som metafor eller inte. Genom djupgående diskussion kring dessa teorier arbetar jag fram min egen uppfattning angående frågan: Det är inte orden i sig som är metaforer, det är vi, i kombination med sammanhang, diskurs och uttryckssätt som avgör metaforen och när den skall betraktas som just metafor.

At present two options are available that can lead to a determination of how moral education may be possible in practice. One takes its formulation from the work of Kant, the other stands in the tradition of Aristotle. Kant emphasizes the importance of duty mid obligation. In contrast, Aristotle attempts to construct a theory of moral life on the practice of virtue. Both theoretical perspectives have debilitating deficiencies. A spectrum of moral experience is presented that represents the wood opportunities available to the agent in life experience. The polarities of this spectrum pull most naturally towards either an Aristotelian or a Kantian perspective, although neither perspective is capable of addressing the requirements of the entire spectrum. The Aristotelian perspective is associated with the life of non-dilemmic virtue, undertaken in community, where relational realities and the contextual contingency of moral life is emphasized. The Kantian perspective is associated with dilemmic situations to be resolved by a process of moral The central problem of the dissertation acknowledges the antithetical nature of these perspectives, and the dichotomous nature of their philosophical roots. The central task of the dissertation is the establishment of a dialogic process that has the potential to reconcile this dichotomy, and to allow these perspectives to mutually inform and reinforce each other. This task is accomplished by providing responses to a central research question that is accompanied by a series of subsidiary questions. From an analysis of various theories of moral education, Kohlberg's theory of structural developmentalism is chosen for reformulation as it is informed by the exploration of the requirements of the dialogic process. To address the research questions, additional Spectra are offered to provide an epistemological and ontological basis for a five-step dialogic treatment that combines, through a developmental climacteric, the Magistral dialogue of Vvgotsky Socratic dialogue of Bakhtin. The five-step model is comprised of a recursive loop through the four steps of the Magistral dialogue prior to an entrance into a Socratic dialogue. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The purpose of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of our contemporary description of digital literacy using the perspective on knowledge from the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. I have chosen to deal with the problem using a hermeneutic approach. The method of inquiry is based on close reading of the selected literature. The selection itself has been made after a strategic selection regarding perspective on knowledge and digital literacy. It appears in the thesis that there are substantial differences but also similarities between our contemporary description of digital literacy from Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning and the perspective on knowledge from the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle.Still, the result has been possible to use for the purpose of the thesis since the problem has an answer and a deepened impression of the understandings of digital literacy.

This paper deals with the development of scientific geography during Antiquity from its mythical background before the seventh century BC to Claudius Ptolemy during the second century AD. The main focus is on questions concerning the shape of the earth, its place in the universe, size and mapping of the earth. Already before 400 BC, the idea of the earth as a globe was firmly estabished. During classical time, Aristotle used empirical and rational arguments to prove that the earth was a sphere and that it was situated motionless in the center of the universe. In the third century BC, the first reasonably correct measurements of the circumference of the earth was carried out by Eratosthenes. Later, a lower, incorrect measurement of the circumference of the earth was made by Poseidonius. His measurement was for some reason accepted by later geographers.The first map of the earth that we know of is on a clay tablet from Mesopotamia from c. 600 BC. The first useful maps were constructed during the Roman era.

<p>This dissertation argues that the 'realist' ontology implicit in Renaissance allegory is both Aristotelian and neoplatonic, stemming from the need to talk about transcendence in material terms in order to make it comprehensible to fallen human intelligence. At the same time dramatists at the turn of the seventeenth century undermine 'realism' altogether, contributing to the emergence of a new meaning of 'realism' as mimesis, and with it a materialism without immanent forms. My theoretical framework is provided by Aristotle's Metaphysics, Physics and Categories rather than his Poetics, because these provide a better way of translating the concerns of postmodern critics back into premodern terms. I thus avoid reducing the religious culture of premodernity to 'ideology' or 'power' and show how premodern religion can be taken seriously as a critique of secular modernity. My conclusion from readings of Aristotle, Augustine, Hooker, Perkins, Spenser, Shakespeare, Nashe, Jonson and Tourneur is that Hell is conflated with History during the transition to modernity, that sin is revalorized as individualism, and that the translatability of terms argues for the continuing need for a concept of 'substance' in this post-Aristotelian age. I end with a reading of The Cloud of Unknowing, an anonymous contemplative work from the fourteenth century that was still being read in the sixteenth century, which offers an alternative model of the sovereign individual, and helps me to argue against the view that philosophical idealism is inherently totalitarian.</p> / Dissertation

Virtue is the way to conduct oneself and is the develop guidance and the behavioral principle that lead the people of the past, present, and future to fulfill morals. Decency, well-being, and happiness are the ultimate goals that people seek and are the standards for people to discuss and define behaviors. Therefore, the reason that the becoming of moral people through fulfilling decency is that decency is itself the truth and the highest value among all existences. Decency itself is the concept for all concepts described by Plato, and is spiritual in the rational world. Mankind should avoid being blinded by physical or material values when pursuing values, and should position such pursuing within the spiritual life and metal happiness. Aristotle, however, believes that while a natural person transforms to a moral person, individual¡¦s utmost decency should be dominated by group¡¦s utmost decency. After modern liberalism has prevailed, Hobbes sees human ethics are based on jungle justice, and the evil among interpersonal relationship requires organizing a strong and powerful society to protect oneself and development. Organizing of such society shall break the traditional ethics to establish modern ethics. Despite Locke sees ethics and decency are social customs and compliance of laws, but social customs and laws are not the base, which should be interests and natural rights because interests and natural rights are the foundation, on which the developments of social customs and laws are based. These fundamental base for moral principles is established under free will, and because of mankind¡¦s freedom, ethical behaviors, social responsibilities, and public welfare are developed. Kant, however, believes that virtue comes from primarily good will and sets its position on utmost decency and all values are under utmost decency. Moral principles are, on the other side, unparalleled order, which is absolute, pervasive, and unconditional. Constant says that despite there is difference between freedom of the people of the past and the freedom of the people of present time, but the freedom of the people of the past may not be denied entirely or yearned for because the era now is an open society. Freedom of the past and freedom of present time are equally important. Miller believes that there is not just quantitative difference in happiness, but also qualitative difference. That is, spiritual happiness if far beyond physical happiness. Spiritual happiness is difficult to satisfy and physical happiness is easier to satisfy. Therefore, people who seek for spiritual happiness have stronger pride and do not wish for perish. Hayek says social order is a self-initiated and volunteer order, rather than constructed organized order. Therefore, every person should obey rules for common and righteous behaviors. Such system rules are formed naturally while people interact with each other. Rawls sees justice as the priority decency for social system and is the guiding principle for a society. If ethic does not match with truth, then it must be abandoned or revised. Principles of justice must be constructed from pure procedural justice. Thus it can be seen that the moral and decency of the philosophers listed herein can be concluded that there will be no moral if there is no freedom.