Pleasure in Aristotle's ethics / Michael Weinman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weinman, Michael.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aristotle.

Ethics.

Pleasure.

Physical Description:

157 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Continuum, [2007]

Summary:

Pleasure in Aristotle's Ethics provides an innovative and crucially important account of the role of pleasure and desire in Aristotle's ethics. Michael Weinman seeks to overcome common impasses in the mainstream interpretation of Aristotle's ethical philosophy through the careful study of Aristotle's account of pleasure in the human, but not merely human, good, thus presenting a new way in which we can improve our understanding of Aristotle.

Weinman asserts that we should read Aristotle's ethical arguments in the light of his views on the cosmos (the living whole we call nature) and the never-changing principles informing that living whole. Weinman shows that what, above all else, emerges from this new re-reading of the ethical writings is a new understanding of human desire as the natural stretching of ourselves toward pleasure, which is the good, and which is the good by nature. These lessons will demonstrate why we must understand the virtues as unified, why the good described in Nicomachean Ethics is both a human and greater-than-human good, and why the reasoning and desiring parts of the soul must be understood as companions. The necessary but as yet unrealized account of pleasure this book advances is integral to improving our understanding of Aristotle's ethics. This fascinating book will be of interest to anyone who wants to find out more about Aristotle's ethical theory and in particular his Nicomachean Ethics.

Contents:

Introduction: The Cosmological Character of Aristotle's Ethics 1

1 The Three Central Impasses in Understanding Aristotle's Ethics 1

2 A "Thumbnail Sketch" of Aristotle's Understanding of Ultimate Being 8

Part I Pleasure and the Good in the Physical Writings 13

1 The Natural Unity of Pleasure and Desire 16

2 The Natural Unity of Pleasure and the Human Good 20

3 The Natural Unity of Pleasure and the Cosmological Good 28

4 Thinking, Perceiving, and Embodiment 34

5 The Universality of the Cosmological Good 43

6 The Unity of the Human and Cosmological Good 58

Part II Pleasure and the Good in the Ethical Writings 69

7 Deliberate Desire: Knowledge, Choice, and the Inculcation of Virtue 71

8 Intellectual Virtue and the Unity of Thinking and Desire 87

9 The Limit Case: [Characters not reproducible] and the Apparent Conflict of Thinking and Desire 95

10 Plural Pleasures, Just One Good: How Can They Go Together? 100

11 Pleasure as a Good, the Good, or No Good: Surveying Extant Positions 111

12 The Wholeness of Pleasure and/as the Good 121

Conclusion: The Wholeness of Pleasure and Solving the Impasses 134.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [151]-155) and index.

ISBN:

9780826496041

0826496040

OCLC:

74649004