Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 58 pages / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: In this thesis I examine three models of justification for the epistemic authority of the principle of contradiction. Aristotle has deemed the principle "that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect" the most certain and most prior of all principles, both in the order of nature and in the order of knowledge, and as such it is indemonstrable. The principle of contradiction is involved in any act of rational discourse, and to deny it would be to reduce ourselves to a vegetative state, being incapable of uttering anything with meaning. The way we reach the principle of contradiction is by intuitive grasping (epagoge) from the experience of the particulars, by recognizing the universals in the particulars encountered, and it is different from simple induction, which, in Mill's view, is the process through which we construct a general statement on the basis of a limited sample of observed particulars. / ABSTRACT: Hence, the principle of contradiction, being a mere generalization from experience, through induction, loses its certainty and necessity. Even though it has a high degree of confirmation from experience, it is in principle possible to come across a counter-example which would refute it. Mill's account opens the path to the modern view of the principle of contradiction. In Principia Mathematica, Russell and Whitehead contend that the principle of contradiction is still a tautology, always true, but it is derived from other propositions, set forth as axioms. Its formulation, " (p & p)" is quite different from Aristotle's, and this is why we are faced with the bizarre situation of being able to derive the law of contradiction in a formal system which could not have been built without the very principle of which the law is an expression of. / ABSTRACT: This is perhaps because the principle of contradiction, as a principle, has a much larger range of application and is consequently more fundamental than what we call today the law of contradiction, with its formal function. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Texte remanié de : PhD Dissertation : Philosophie ancienne : Pisa, Scuola normale superiore : 2004. / Seule la deuxième partie de l'ouvrage constitue la version remaniée de la thèse de Gabriele Galluzzo. Table des matières. Bibliogr. p. [213]-230.

The goal of this thesis is to develop the foundation and structure for a virtue ethics theory grounded in a specific notion of care. While there has been a recent revival of interest in virtue ethics theory, the theory has its roots in Aristotle's work as well in the medieval writings of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas worked out many of Aristotle's ideas in much more detail. However, while Aquinas offers a very rich and compelling ethical theory, it is problematic because it is very tightly wrapped in his theology. A key component in Aquinas's theory is charity. Charity is one of Aquinas's theological virtues, which express the relationship between humans and God. Charity is the love of God and of neighbor and he construes it as the foundation for all the other virtues. My thesis explores the idea of replacing charity with the virtue of care. The virtue of care to be used in this essential role is primarily based on recent work on the ethics of care by Nel Nodding. The virtue of care, as I develop it, combines three interrelated parts: instinctive, maternal and relational care. By comparing and contrasting care and charity, I demonstrate that the virtue of care can fill the role of charity. In this capacity care can serve as a naturalistic foundation for a virtue ethics theory. Since the ethics of care is relatively new, it has yet to take shape. I propose building a care-based virtue ethics theory on the structure of Aquinas's theory. This new care-based virtue ethics theory also benefits from utilizing many of the components of Aristotle's theory which are found in Aquinas's work. My argument is that care can fulfill the role of charity in Aquinas's theory. Care-based virtue ethics theory is a completely naturalistic version of Aquinas's virtue ethics theory. My thesis contains both the foundation for this different kind of care-based virtue ethics theory and some direction for future work on revising Aquinas's theory using the virtue of care. The essence of this care-based virtue ethics theory is captured in the notion I outline of a virtuoso human.

In Mexico there is an increasing lack of engagement of the Mexican government and its citizens towards resolving violence. In the 20th century alone events such as the Revolution of 1910, La Guerra Cristera, La Guerra Sucia, and most recently Los Feminicidios and Calderon’s War on Drugs are representative of an ethos of violence withstood and inflicted by Mexicans towards women, men, youth, and marginalized groups. This dissertation examines Los Feminicidios in Ciudad Juarez and the cultural production surrounding them: chronicles, novels, documentaries and films. In it I draw on Aristotle’s influential Nicomachean Ethics, Victoria Camps’ El gobierno de las emociones (2011), María Pía Lara’s Narrating Evil (2007), Vittorio Gallese’s and other scientists’ research on neuroscience empathy and neurohumanism, and socio-political essays in order to theorize how a pathos-infused understanding of ethos might engage a reading and viewing public in what has become a discourse about violence determined by a sense of fatalism. Specifically, I argue that narrative and its interpretations play a significant role in people’s emotional engagement and subsequent cognitive processes. I stress the importance of creating an approach that considers both pathos and logos as a way of understanding this ethos of violence. I argue that by combining pathos and logos in the analysis of a cultural text, we can break through the theoretical impasse, which thus far has resulted in exceptionalisms and has been limited to categorizing as evil the social and political mechanisms that may cause this violence. / text

Conventional accounts of classical Athenian democracy represent the assembly as the primary democratic institution in the Athenian political system. This looks reasonable in the light of modern democracy, which has typically developed through the democratization of legislative assemblies. Yet it conflicts with the evidence at our disposal. Our ancient sources suggest that the most significant and distinctively democratic institution in Athens was the courts, where decisions were made by large panels of randomly selected ordinary citizens with no possibility of appeal. This dissertation reinterprets Athenian democracy as “dikastic democracy” (from the Greek dikastēs, “judge”), defined as a mode of government in which ordinary citizens rule principally through their control of the administration of justice. It begins by casting doubt on two major planks in the modern interpretation of Athenian democracy: first, that it rested on a conception of the “wisdom of the multitude” akin to that advanced by epistemic democrats today, and second that it was “deliberative,” meaning that mass discussion of political matters played a defining role. The first plank rests largely on an argument made by Aristotle in support of mass political participation, which I show has been comprehensively misunderstood. The second rests on the interpretation of the verb “bouleuomai” as indicating speech, but I suggest that it meant internal reflection in both the courts and the assembly. The third chapter begins the constructive part of the project by comparing the assembly and courts as instruments of democracy in Athens, and the fourth shows how a focus on the courts reveals the deep political dimensions of Plato’s work, which in turn suggests one reason why modern democratic ideology and practice have moved so far from the Athenians’ on this score. Throughout, the dissertation combines textual, philological and conceptual analysis with attention to institutional detail and the wider historical context. The resulting account makes a strong case for the relevance of classical Athens today, both as a source of potentially useful procedural mechanisms and as the point of origin of some of the philosophical presuppositions on which the modern conception of democracy and its limits depends. / Government

My dissertation develops and defends a contemporary Aristotelian form of political liberalism. I articulate an Aristotelian interpretation of individual autonomy as excellence in deliberating about ends, and develop a decision-theoretic model for representing this type of deliberation. I then provide a precise characterization of individual freedom, building on Amartya Sen’s neo-Aristotelian theory of freedom as capability. I argue that we should understand individual liberty, the guiding value of political liberalism, as a compound of autonomy and freedom as I have articulated these notions. I then argue that liberty in this sense is the proper focus of a liberal theory of distributive justice. I provide a teleological justification of the state’s authority to pursue a liberty-based program of distributive justice, and argue for a liberty-based interpretation of the harm principle as the appropriate limitation on state action. / text

Precipitated by important work in recent natural law political theory, this research revisits the relationship between political association and human flourishing. Does the political community itself realize some aspect of human sociability intrinsic to our full flourishing or is it simply an instrumental good? The inquiry begins with a thorough examination of the merits of John Finnis’s influential argument for an instrumental political common good, pointing to a significant lacuna in his inattention to the value of political activity, as opposed to the operation of government and law. In building an alternative positive account the argument relies upon both formal and substantive considerations, generally employing an Aristotelian methodology of understanding the whole via a consideration of its constitutive parts. First, drawing from Aquinas’s Aristotelian commentaries to unpack the basic structure of part/whole relationships within the “body politic,” I argue that political community is partially defined by the nature of its basic constitutive parts. The next chapter considers the substantive good of familial association, particularly in light of longstanding concerns with the family’s particularity and inequality. I argue that the intrinsically liberal and educative character of parental love rightly orients children to virtuous activity and invests familial association with an intrinsic rationality. The final two chapters bring direct focus onto the political common good: First, I argue that a normatively compelling account of the political common good must be both inclusivist, i.e., including within its purpose the irreducibly diverse goods of every individual and basic association within the community, and distinctive, i.e., including within the calculus of practical reason the good of the political association as such. Lastly, I argue that the political common good is intrinsically—though only partially—constitutive of the human social good. Aquinas makes a crucial shift away from Aristotle’s political primacy in his more pluralistic account of human sociability and emphasis on the extensiveness of the political good over the superiority of political activity per se. Nevertheless, there are essential human virtues—justice, love, generosity—that are uniquely, if not exclusively, fostered in political community and potentially realized in civic friendship. / text

Σκοπός της παρούσας εργασίας είναι να συναναγνώσει δύο κείμενα της αρχαιότητας, την Ποιητική του Αριστοτέλη και τη Nāṭyaśāstra του Bharata Muni, δύο κείμενα με αποκλίνοντα χρονικά και γεωγραφικά όρια, με διαφορετικό θεματικό ορίζοντα και διαφορετική σκοποθεσία, τα οποία εντούτοις μοιράζονται το εξής: πρόκειται για τις δύο αρχαιότερες σωζόμενες πραγματείες για την τέχνη του θεάτρου, η πρώτη από τη σκοπιά της Δύσης και η δεύτερη από αυτή της Ανατολής. / The purpose of this master thesis is to study comparatively two texts of antiquity, the Poetics of Aristotle and the Nāṭyaśāstra of Bharata Muni, two treatises with divergent time and geographical limits, with different thematic horizon and different target, which though share the following: these are the two oldest surviving documents on the art of theatre, the first coming from the West, the second from the East.

Η ερμηνεία του ελέου και του φόβου έχει απασχολήσει ευρέως τους μελετητές στην προσπάθειά τους να κατανοήσουν τον ορισμό της τραγωδίας και να ερμηνεύσουν την έννοια της κάθαρσης. Οι απόψεις είναι πολλές και η έρευνα ανά τους αιώνες δεν έχει καταλήξει σε κάποια κοινώς αποδεκτή θέση. Η ευρύτερη μελέτη άλλων έργων του φιλοσόφου, στα οποία υπάρχουν αναφορές στις δύο έννοιες, αλλά και γενικότερα στις απόψεις του περί παθῶν, είναι άκρως ενδιαφέρουσα, καθώς αποκτούμε ευρύτερη εποπτεία των συλλογισμών και της φιλοσοφικής του σκέψης. Υπό το πρίσμα αυτό στην παρούσα εργασία διερευνώνται και εξετάζονται συγκριτικά διάφορα έργα του Αριστοτέλη, στα οποία υπάρχουν εκτεταμένες ή συντομότερες αναφορές στους δύο όρους, από τη μελέτη των οποίων αντλούνται αρκετά στοιχεία σχετικά με το πώς ο φιλόσοφος αντιλαμβανόταν τις δύο έννοιες σε βιολογικό, κοινωνικό, ψυχολογικό και ηθικό επίπεδο, και προκύπτουν συμπεράσματα ιδιαίτερα χρήσιμα για την ερμηνεία των δύο όρων στην Ποιητική. Αναλυτικότερα η δομή της εργασίας είναι η ακόλουθη: I. Εισαγωγή: Προβληματισμοί και επιμέρους ζητήματα II. Ο έλεος και ο φόβος πριν από τον Αριστοτέλη III. Η πλατωνική κριτική και η αριστοτελική θέση IV. Ο έλεος και ο φόβος στην αριστοτελική Ποιητική V. Απόψεις και ερμηνείες των μελετητών περί ελέου και φόβου στην Ποιητική VI. Ευρύτερη εξέταση του ελέου στο έργο του Αριστοτέλη VII. Ευρύτερη εξέταση του φόβου στο έργο του Αριστοτέλη VIII. Αἰδώς - αἰσχύνη, κατάπληξις - ἔκπληξις: Ανάλυση και συσχετισμός τους με τον έλεο και το φόβο IX. Προσδιορισμός της σχέσης ελέου και φόβου μέσα από τη μελέτη του έργου του Αριστοτέλη X. Σχέση ελέου – φόβου και οἰκείας ἡδονῆς XI. Συμπεράσματα: Η ερμηνεία του ελέου και φόβου στην Ποιητική και η συμβολή σ’ αυτή των άλλων έργων του Αριστοτέλη / The interpetation of pity and fear has widely been a subject of questioning for commentators and critics in their effort to comprehend the definition of tragedy and interpret the meaning of katharsis. The existing opinions are many and various and the research throughout the centuries has not reached to a common acceptable position. The indagation of Aristotle’s works, in which there are references to the two terms, and generaly the study of his opinion about pathê, is extremly interesting as we are able to comprehend Aristotle’s syllogism and philosophical thought. In the light of that meaning, various Aristotle’s works, comparatively inquired and eximined in the present study, contain extensive or shorter references to these two meanings. Their study will hopefully help us to collect enough evidence on the way the philosopher has conceived the two meanings in biological, sociological, psychological and moral level, and result in conclusions particularly useful for the interpretation of pity and fear in Poetics. Specifically, the structure of this study is the following: I. Introducion: Consideration and particular isssues II. Pity and fear before Aristotle III. Platonic criticism and Aristotelian position IV. Pity and fear in Aristotle’s Poetics V. Interpreters’ opinions and explanations about pity and fear in Poetics VI. Wider examination of fear in Aristotle’s work VII. Wider examination of pity in Aristotle’s work VIII. Aidôs – aischunê, kataplêxis – ekplêxis: analysis and correlation with pity and fear IX. The relation between pity and fear through the study of Aristotle’s works X. The relation between the two emotions and oikeia hêdonê XI. Conclusions: The contribution of the other Aristotle’s works to the interpretation of pity and fear in Poetics

Cette thèse vise à suggérer l’existence d’un partage d’une théorie poétique commune entre l’école d’Aristote d’une part et le grammairien Aristarque de Samothrace d’autre part. À partir d’un examen des textes et des fragments de la critique littéraire hellénistique, deux aspects fondamentaux de la poétique péripatéticienne font l’objet d’une comparaison avec Aristarque, soit : 1) la prise de position interprétative qui tient compte de la nature fictionnelle du discours poétique et le soustrait aux critères de vérité traditionnellement imposés par les lecteurs anciens, notamment à l’intérieur de la tradition allégorique ; et 2) la reconnaissance de l’autonomie relative du contenu de l’œuvre poétique face à l’auteur, particulièrement dans le rapport qu’entretient ce dernier avec ses personnages. / This thesis sets out to examine two points of contact in the poetics of the Peripatetics and Aristarchus, namely : 1) the exegetical attitude that takes account of the fictionality of poetry, thus exempting it from the constraints of truthfulness that ancient readers traditionally imposed on it, especially within the allegorical tradition; 2) the perception of the content of a work of poetry as being autonomous from its author, especially with regard to the relation between the poet and his characters. / Thèse réalisée en cotutelle avec l'Université Paris IV-Sorbonne