The dissertation is an examination of obligation, which I argue is a mode of rational necessity that is proper to human agency. I begin from G. E. M. Anscombe’s celebrated attack against modern moral philosophy, and then sketch a positive theory of obligation as it figures in morality and in law, drawing upon the work of Aquinas and Aristotle. The first chapter explicates this idea of “practical necessity” and the second chapter shows that Aristotelian ethics, because it is not a theological law conception of ethics, has no place for a peculiarly moral conception of obligation. The third chapter examines Aquinas’s conception of moral law and argues that Aquinas vindicates Anscombe’s negative critique of the “moral ought.” The fourth chapter shows that the application of exceptionless moral norms (i.e. moral absolutes), which is one kind of obligation, requires attention to aspects of social practices. Attention to social practices allows the resolution of controverted problems about specifying intentions and applying the principle of double effect in a way that makes exceptionless moral norms workable. The fifth and final chapter defends the conception of intentional action assumed in the fourth chapter, and demonstrates that the scholastic ‘sub specie boni’ thesis is an integral part of action explanation, as well as Anscombe’s notion of “practical knowledge”. The upshot of the dissertation is an integrated investigation into how the ideas of good and necessity figure in ethics, law, and human action. / text

I examine the relation between the action of producing a change (kinêsis) in something else and the action of exercising one’s nature or craft (energeia). I call for the distinction between kinêsis and energeia by arguing that in Metaphysics IX.1-5 change should be construed as a transformational change that is still characterized in accordance with the categories, whereas in Met. IX.6-9 the action of exercising of one’s nature or craft should be construed as the presence of a state or an action that exhibits one’s nature or craft, which is meant to be a way of characterizing that-which-is (to on) that goes beyond the categories. Instead of the conventional patient-centered account of change, I argue that Phys. III.3 and V.4 suggest a non-patient-centered account of change and that the agent’s acting-upon (poiêsis) should also be construed as a non-self-contained change, just as the patient’s being-acted-upon (pathêsis), and therefore cannot be conflated with exercising one’s nature or craft. I also point out that a genuine Aristotelian event cannot be composed of the agent’s acting-upon and the patient’s being-acted-upon. I argue that Phys. VII.3 suggests a two-way relation between the action of producing a change in something else and the action of exhibiting one’s own nature, based on which I outline a hylomorphic proposal that a genuine Aristotelian event is composed of the action of producing a change in something else as the material part of the event and the action of exhibiting one’s own nature as the formal part of the event. While the former provides the material necessitation force from the bottom up to the occurrence of the event, the latter provides the formal constraint force from the top down to the occurrence of the event. / text

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Ce mémoire vise à mieux comprendre l'utilisation du concept d'autarcie à l'oeuvre dans les écrits d'Aristote et, ce faisant, à nous amener à une meilleure compréhension du lien entre l'éthique et la politique dans la pensée aristotélicienne. Pour ce faire, nous commençons tout d'abord par distinguer deux types d'autarcie, à savoir ce que nous appellerons dans la suite l'autarcie divine et l'autarcie humaine. L'autarcie divine doit être comprise comme le fait de se suffire pleinement à soi-même de la manière la plus rigoureuse qui soit et cette autarcie n'est, à proprement parler, attribuable qu'au divin. L'autarcie humaine, quant à elle, est celle qui est à l'oeuvre dans la définition que donne Aristote de la cité, à savoir qu'elle est un regroupement autarcique de personnes visant à vivre et à bien vivre. Par la suite, nous montrons que la pratique de la philosophie, qui est décrite comme une pratique autarcique en EN, X, est difficilement conciliable avec les activités de la cité et la constitution d'une communauté politique. En effet, comme c'est le besoin qui doit jouer le rôle de ciment de la cité, il est difficile de voir comment la philosophie peut s'insérer dans le cadre étatique de la cité, étant donné qu'elle n'est d'aucune utilité et qu'elle est recherchée pour elle-même. Toutefois, puisqu'Aristote ne présente jamais la cohabitation de la philosophie avec les autres activités de la cité comme problématique, nous tentons de voir comment il est possible de concilier la pratique de la philosophie avec la nécessité pour l'individu de vivre en cité. C'est en examinant la notion de loisir que nous en venons à conclure que la philosophie doit y être reléguée afin de pouvoir être pratiquée. C'est aussi en associant la philosophie au loisir et en étudiant le rôle que celui-ci doit jouer au sein de la cité que nous sommes en mesure de voir se dessiner le lien entre l'éthique et la politique. / This dissertation tries to gain a better understanding of the concept of autarkeia which is present in the writings of Aristotle. Doing this, we are also able to get a clearer idea of the link between ethics and politics in the aristotelian thought. In order to achieve this, we start by distinguishing two types of self-sufficiency : the divine self-sufficiency and the human self-sufficiency. The divine self-sufficiency is to be understood as the fact of being fully self-sufficient in the most rigorous way. Strictly speaking, it is only the divine that can be granted of such a self-sufficiency. On the other hand, the human self-sufficiency is the one effective in the aristotelian definition of the polis, which is the self-sufficient grouping of persons aiming at living and good living. After that, we show that the practice of philosophy, which is described as a self-sufficient activity in NE, X, is hardly possible as an activity of the polis and cannot participate in bringing a polis to life. This is founded in the fact that for Aristotle, it is the needs that keep people together, united in a polis, and considering that, it is difficult to see how philosophy could be part of this, because it is totally useless and searched for itself. However, we try to see how it would be possible to conciliate the practice of philosophy with the necessity for a human to live in a polis, because Aristotle never speaks of it as being problematic. The answer of this so-called problem is to be found in the notion of leisure, by relegating philosophy to this part of a human life in order for it to be practiced. It is also by associating philosophy and leisure that we can draw the link between ethics and politics.

The philosophical and scientific teaching in the universities of 17th century Scotland has frequently been dismissed as Aristotelian and reactionary. However, there must surely have been some development during the century for the universities to have achieved as much as they did in the 18th century. It is the purpose of this study to investigate the contant of the courses in philosophy and science given at the Scottish Universities in the 17th century with a view to answering the following quesions: Was Aristotle really taught so exclusively throughout the century? Or, given that the universities did concentrate on Aristotle to a great extent, was this Aristotleianism so monolithic and unifrom as is sometimes made out? Did Scottish university teachers make any acknowledgement of the philosophical and scientific revolutions which were taking place in the 17th century? How were the universities affected by the political and religeous struggles of the century? Was the teaching the same at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St. Andrews, or were some of the universities in advance of the others? The main sources for our knowledge of 17th century Scottish university teaching are student lecture notes or dictates and the graduate theses produced by the masters or regents for the students to defend at the annual laureation ceremony. the dictates and theses are supplemented by library lists, university and faculty minutes, and the reports of the numerous commissions appointed by church and state to visit the universities during the 17th century, together with papers relating to these commissions. Throughout the century the curriculum at all universities remained the same in outline, viz. 1st year: Greek; 2nd years: Logic/ metaphysics; 3rd year: Metaphysics/ Ethics; 4th year: physics. Until the 1660s the teaching in the 2nd, 3rd and fourth years consisted of commentaries on Aristotle, but the authorities cited by the regents show that they were acquainted with more 'modern' Aristotalians, e.g. Zabarella and the Coimbra commentators. Frequently the works of such authors were praised, and the library lists show that they were bought extensively. From the 1660s onwards Cartesianism entered the courses. At first the regents distrusted this new philosophy, and indeed as long as Descartes was taught in the Scottish Universities, many of the regents and visiting commissioners feared the atheistic implications of Cartesian mechanism. However, descartes was accorded warm praise in the theses and dictates for Edinburgh, St. Andrews and Aberdeen during the 1670s and 1680s. by the 1690s the enthusiasm for Descartes was beginning to decline, although some of the regents continued to teach Cartesianism into the 18th century. In Logic and Metaphysics the teaching of Locke was often adopted, and in Physics Newtonian ideas were expounded. The teaching was perhaps most conservative in Logic, where Aristotelian ideas continued to be taught by the scholastic method of debate until the beginning of the 18th century. Despite the praises of Descartes's method, and later Locke, the scheme for Logic teaching was probably based on scholastic textbooks such as those of Keckermann and Burgersdijk. In Metaphysics too scolasticism tended to predominate, but because of Scotland's religeous allegiance there are numerous quotations from and references to the works of Protestant theologians. Once commentaries on Aristotle ceased, metaphysics was divided into Metaphysics proper and Pneumatology, the two subjects frequently being separated and taught in different years of the course. the Scottis regents saw Ethics as a strictly practical science, aimed at teaching their students how to live as godly citizens. Accordingly in their Ethics teaching they tended to cite authorities less frequently than in their teaching of other subjects; instead they gave rules of conduct for their students. After the 1660s many of the regents based their teaching on Henry More, and Descartes's theory of the passions was widely accepted. Discussion of different types of justice and of natural law formed a great part of the Ethics dictates and theses, and Grotius, Cumberland and Puffendorf were all referred to. In Physics the experiments of many contempory or recent scientists were described. Robert Boyle and the Royal Society were universally praised by the regents. the work of English, French and Dutch scientists featured prominently in the lectures from the 1660s onwards, and were bought for the libraries. Cartesian physics and cosmology were taught in the last quarter of the 17th century, but by the beginning of the 18th century many of the regents had gone over to Newtonianism.the politicl and religeous upheavals in 17th century Scotland affected staff appointments in the universities. many of the regents lost their posts in 1638 and during the Civil Wars, at the Restoration, and at the revolutioanry Settlement in 1689. Unorthodoxy in their dictates and theses was frowned on, and sometimes led to dismissal. Various commissioners tried to regulate what was taught in the universities, and in the 1690s a project for a uniform course made considerable headway. however, despite this interference on part of state and church, the universities managed to preserve a fair degree of autonomy, and both their statements in answer to the commission's proposals in the 1690s and the actual content of their dictates and theses show a concern to uphold their academic integrity. The courses in the Scottish universities were sufficiently similar to enable one to talk of 17th century Scottish university education in general terms, but the universities did not always agree amongst themselves, as their comments on each other's contributions to the uniform course show. Edinburgh seems generally to have been the most advanced of the universities in its teaching, Glasgow the least. the conclusion of this survey is that university education in the 17th century was by no means as consistently uninspired as is sometimes proposed. It is true that neither the system of regenting nor the troubled stare of the country in the 17th century were conductive to a high educational standard. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of new ideas in the dictates and theses from 1600 to the 1660s, and after that date many of the regents showed themselves to be conversant with new devlopments in all fields of philosophy. By the beginning of the 18th century the way had been paved for the intellectual achievements of that century in the universities.

Eξέταση της χρήσης των λέξεων μῦθος, λόγος, ὅμοιος και ἐπιεικής στην Ποιητική του Αριστοτέλη. Παρουσίαση των τρόπων με τους οποίους ερμηνεύονται οι παραπάνω όροι και προσπάθεια επίλυσης των προβλημάτων που δημιουργεί η χρήση των όρων αυτών μέσα από τη διατύπωση σχετικών παρατηρήσεων. Μελέτη των σχέσεων μεταξύ των ουσιαστικών μῦθος και λόγος καθώς και προσπάθεια διευκρίνισης της σημασίας των επιθέτων ὅμοιος και ἐπιεικής στα κεφάλαια 2, 13 και 15 της Ποιητικής με βάση τη σύγκριση μεταξύ ζωγραφικής και ποίησης. / In the present study, we examine, to a greater or lesser extent, the terms mythos, logos, homoios and epieikēs as used in Aristotle’s Poetics. The aim of this short survey is primarily to present several interpretations of what Aristotle means by mythos, logos, homoios and epieikēs, proposed by some scholars, before attempting to solve the problems which the use of the aforementioned terms causes by making a few relevant remarks. Regarding the first two terms mentioned above, we inquire into the relationship between these terms as well as the relationship between the concepts which are signified by them, while, concerning the terms homoios and epieikēs, we mainly attempt to clarify the meaning of these particular adjectives in chapters 2, 13 and 15 of the Poetics, taking into account the comparison of poetry to painting, made in some interesting passages of the treatise. Our approach to the core of the problem is based, in any case, on the Aristotelian belief that, as regards the scientific thought, it is essential that one should perceive the similarities of things, which, however, differ much from each other.

O volume de literatura secundária sobre o conceito aristotélico de noûs produtivo é proporcional à brevidade e à obscuridade com que ele é apresentado no quinto capítulo do terceiro livro do \"De Anima\". Esta dissertação visa investigar as razões que fazem deste texto terreno fértil para as mais diversas interpretações. Para tanto, este estudo parte do comentário analítico de DA III 4-5, destacando as possibilidades interpretativas de cada passagem e as variantes textuais mais significativas. Procurou-se explorar outras passagens do corpus aristotélico que podem ser utilizadas para elucidar o conteúdo desses capítulos, considerando as opções adotadas pelos principais comentadores antigos. Após mostrar que o texto comporta igualmente as leituras mais díspares, buscou-se evidenciar como elementos extratextuais, tais como a filosofia e o método exegético predominante no tempo de cada interprete podem ser identificados nas opções adotadas. Para tanto, adotou-se a obra de Alexandre de Afrodísia como objeto de exposição e análise, uma vez que sua identificação do nous produtivo à Causa Primeira de Met. XII 7-9 é a mais influente e polêmica das exegeses deste conceito. Para tanto, foram apresentadas suas principais teses e contrastadas com a base textual aristotélica, de modo pôr em relevo as características do método do Exegeta. / The amount of secondary literature on the Aristotelian concept of productive nous is proportional to the briefness and obscurity of its presentation in the fifth chapter of the Book Three of the De Anima. This thesis aims to investigate the reasons why this text offers a fertile ground for the most varied interpretations. Therefore, this text begins with an analytical commentary on DA III 4-5, highlighting the interpretative possibilities and the most significant textual variants of each passage. We searched for other passages of the Aristotelian corpus that could help us elucidate the content of these chapters, considering the options adopted by the main ancient commentators. After showing how the text equally accepts the most disparate readings, we tried to evidence how extra-textual elements, such as the philosophy and exegetical method predominant in the time of each interpreter can are present in the adopted options. For this, the work of Alexander of Aphrodisias was adopted as object of exposition and analysis, since its identification of the productive nous to the First Cause of Met. XII 7-9 is the most influential and polemical exegesis of this concept. His main arguments were presented and contrasted with the Aristotelian textual background, to highlight the characteristics of the Exegete\'s methods.

In this paper, we discuss some possible readings of Physics IV 2, where Aristotle identifies the Platonic χώρα of the Timaeus with ὕλη, μεταληπτικόν and μεθεκτικόν. We will study common features that bring the receptacle of the Timaeus closer to Aristotelian matter and space, and that make it natural for Aristotle to identify χώρα with matter. However, we will try to show that, in spite of the similarities between the receptacle and what Aristotle understands for place and matter, the mechanics of appropriation of the Platonic text that the Stagirite operates, forcing an equivalence with his own technical terms, possibly implies a distortion that, in the end, does not do justice to the formulations of the teacher. / En el presente trabajo, discutiremos algunas lecturas posibles de Física IV 2, donde Aristóteles identifica la χώρα platónica del Timeo con ὕλη, μεταληπτικόν y μεθεκτικόν. Estudiaremos rasgos comunes que acercan el receptáculo del Timeo con la materia y el espacio aristotélicos, y que hacen que Aristóteles encuentre natural identificar la χώρα con la materia. Sin embargo, intentaremos mostrar que, a pesar de las semejanzas entre el receptáculo y lo que Aristóteles entiende por lugar y materia, la mecánica de apropiación del texto platónico que opera el Estagirita, forzando una equivalencia con sus propios términos técnicos, posiblemente implique una distorsión que no termina de hacer justicia a las formulaciones del maestro.

[pt] Este trabalho visa investigar se, em Aristóteles, e, sobretudo na Ethica Nicomachea (EN), é possível encontrar elementos para a fundamentação dos conceitos atribuídos posteriormente à ética e à moral. Embora a virtude ética seja descrita de uma única forma em grego - êthikê aretê -, buscaremos trazer indicações de que já havia na EN diferentes manifestações de sua aplicação prática. Uma primeira manifestação seria a ação em consonância às leis gerais e aos costumes, que poderíamos relacionar à atual moral. Já a êthikê, em uma segunda manifestação, seria identificada a casos particulares, em que a lei não se aplica facilmente, mas o homem virtuoso é capaz de agir conforme a justa medida (mesotes). Esta idéia se apóia na cidade almejada por Aristóteles, em que caberá à Política orquestrar esta complexa êthikê. / [en] This paper aims at investigating if it is possible to find in Aristotle s work, especially in the Ethica Nicomachea (EN), elements to substantiate the concepts that were later attributed to ethics and to moral. Although ethical virtue is uniquely described in Greek - êthikê aretê - we will seek to find evidence that different demonstrations of its practical application could already be found in the EN. The first demonstration would be acting in consonance with the general laws and customs, which could be related to today’s moral. In a second demonstration, êthikê would be found in particular cases where the law could not be easily applied, but in which the virtuous person is capable of acting accordingly to the mean state (mesotes). This idea is supported by the city envisioned by Aristotle, where Politics would be responsible for orchestrating this complex êthikê.

1 Abstract Meaning of numbers between Plato and Aristotle Antonín Šíma The dissertation titled "The Transformation of the Concept of Number between Plato and the Early Academy" deals with the problem of numbers in early Platonism between Aristotle and Plato. In Plato's dialogues, within professional mathematical disciplines of knowledge, numbers fulfil a function of propaedeutic procedure to the method of thinking − dialectic. Dialectic engages in the most general structures of thinking whose centre is the problem of being and good, which is only mentioned marginally in our thesis. The philosophy of dialogues is based on the ontological and epistemological dignity of unchanging and eternally existing ideas. In Metaphysics A Aristotle describes Plato's and the Platonic doctrines of the early Academy in whose centre there are principles expressed by numbers: one and indefinite two, which are assessed according to Aristotelian principles doctrine as form and matter. Aristotle mentions Platonic dialectical method which focuses on researching the general in speech. This method distinguishes Platonic thought from Pythagorean philosophy in Aristotle's precursors' philosophy overview. In the criticized doctrine, numbers have the same meaning as ideas or ideal numbers standing on the scale of ontological dignity...