Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason

Spectators, Legislators, Hopes, and Evils
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-0-367-76049-6
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 323 g

This book offers a new account of Aristotle’s practical philosophy. Pavlos Kontos argues that Aristotle does not restrict practical reason to its action-guiding and motivational role; rather, practical reason remains practical in the full sense of the term even when its exercise does not immediately concern the guidance of our present actions.

To elucidate why this wider scope of practical reason is important, Kontos brings into the foreground five protagonists that have long been overlooked: (a) spectators or judges who make non-motivational judgments about practical matters that do not interact with their present deliberations and actions; (b) legislators who exercise practical reason to establish constitutions and laws; (c) hopes as an active engagement with moral luck and its impact on our individual lives; (d) prayers as legislators’ way to deal with the moral luck hovering around the birth of constitutions and the prospect of a utopia; and (e) people who are outsiders or marginal cases of the responsibility community because they are totally deprived of practical reason. Building on a wide range of interpretations of Aristotle’s practical philosophy (from the ancient commentators to contemporary analytic and continental philosophers), Kontos offers new insights about Aristotle’s philosophical contribution to the current debates about radical evil, moral luck, hope, utopia, internalism and externalism, and the philosophy of law.

Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Aristotle’s ethics, ancient philosophy, and the history of practical philosophy.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kontos, Pavlos

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Antike Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

1. Fully Virtuous Spectators Without Practical Wisdom

2. Straddling Borders: The Legislator’s Enigmatic Activity

3. Hopes, Prayers, and Moral Luck

4. Radical Evil

Denouement: Aristotle’s Sailors

Über Autor(innen)

Pavlos Kontos is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Patras, Greece. Publications: Aristotle’s Moral Realism Reconsidered (2011), L’action morale chez Aristote (2002). Co-editor: Evil in Aristotle (2018), Phenomenology and the Primacy of the Political (2017), Gadamer et les Grecs (2005).