Aristotle on How Pleasure Perfects Activity (Nicomachean Ethics x.5 1175a29-b14): The Optimising-View
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David Machek
Abstract
This article offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s ambiguous and much-discussed claim that pleasure perfects activity (NE x.4). This interpretation provides an alternative to the two main competing readings of this claim in the scholarship: the addition-view, which envisages the perfection conferred by pleasure as an extra perfection beyond the perfection of activity itself; and the identity-view, according to which pleasure just is the perfect activity itself. The proposed interpretation departs from both these views in rejecting their assumption that pleasure cannot perfect the activity itself, and argues that pleasure makes activity perfect by optimising the exercise of one’s capacities for that activity. Those who build or play music with pleasure do so better than those who do not delight in these activities. The basis of this interpretation is Aristotle’s little-read remarks from the following chapter, i. e. NE x.5, about how pleasure “increases” the activity.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- The Learner’s Motivation and the Structure of Habituation in Aristotle
- Aristotle on How Pleasure Perfects Activity (Nicomachean Ethics x.5 1175a29-b14): The Optimising-View
- Ethics as Medicine: Moral Therapy, Expertise, and Practical Reasoning in al-Ghazālī’s Ethics
- Der kosmologische Gottesbeweis des Ralph von Battle. Rekonstruktion, Kritik und Einordnung
- “A Notion of the True System of the World”: Berkeley and his Use of Plato in Siris
- Leibniz on the Grounds of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
- Book Reviews
- Reydams-Schils, Gretchen, Calcidius on Plato’s Timaeus – Greek Philosophy, Latin Reception and Christian Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, ix + 243 pp.
- Specht, Rainer (ed.), Christian Wolff: Disquisitio philosophica de loquela. Philosophische Untersuchung über die Sprache. Lateinisch-Deutsch. Übersetzung und Kommentar. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 2019. xliii + 388 pp. (Philosophische Bibliothek 727).
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- The Learner’s Motivation and the Structure of Habituation in Aristotle
- Aristotle on How Pleasure Perfects Activity (Nicomachean Ethics x.5 1175a29-b14): The Optimising-View
- Ethics as Medicine: Moral Therapy, Expertise, and Practical Reasoning in al-Ghazālī’s Ethics
- Der kosmologische Gottesbeweis des Ralph von Battle. Rekonstruktion, Kritik und Einordnung
- “A Notion of the True System of the World”: Berkeley and his Use of Plato in Siris
- Leibniz on the Grounds of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
- Book Reviews
- Reydams-Schils, Gretchen, Calcidius on Plato’s Timaeus – Greek Philosophy, Latin Reception and Christian Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, ix + 243 pp.
- Specht, Rainer (ed.), Christian Wolff: Disquisitio philosophica de loquela. Philosophische Untersuchung über die Sprache. Lateinisch-Deutsch. Übersetzung und Kommentar. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 2019. xliii + 388 pp. (Philosophische Bibliothek 727).
