Aristotle on the Truth About Practical Ends
-
Christiana Megan Meyvis Olfert
Abstract
Aristotle holds that rational agents can think true thoughts about their practical ends. Specifically, we can think true thoughts about whether our ends are good and able to be brought about in action. But what makes these thoughts true? What sort of thing is a practical end, such that it both is good, and also may be brought about in the future? These questions are difficult to answer. They are metaphysical questions about Aristotle’s practical philosophy: they ask what practical ends are, such that they can make true certain parts of our practical thinking. What is more, key claims in Aristotle’s account of rational agency seem to make it impossible for thoughts about our practical ends to ever, in fact, be true. Given the ways in which we think about our ends, there seems to be nothing in the world to which these thoughts truthfully correspond. In this paper, I identify and solve two puzzles for Aristotle’s claim that we can think true thoughts about our practical ends. These puzzles have not been discussed in recent literature, but they have potentially wide-reaching consequences for Aristotle’s account of rational agency and motivation. My solution offers a novel account of the metaphysics of practical ends, which explains how these ends can be truth-makers for our thoughts about them. I argue that we should understand practical ends on the model of first actualities, which are also second potentialities. The idea that some actualities are also potentialities is a complicated one, but as I hope to show, it yields a straightforward and illuminating conception of practical ends. It also adds a crucial metaphysical component to Aristotle’s account of rational agency, one which shows how this account is internally consistent.
References
Ackrill, J.L. 1963. Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/actrade/9780198720867.book.1Suche in Google Scholar
Barnes, J., ed. 1995. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Beere, J. 2009. Doing and Being. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199206704.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Boyle, M., and D. Lavin. 2010. “Goodness and Desire.” In Desire, Practical Reason and the Good, edited by S. Tenenbaum. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195382440.003.0008Suche in Google Scholar
Bradie, M., and F.D. Miller, Jr. 1984. “Teleology and Natural Necessity in Aristotle.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 1 (2):133–146.Suche in Google Scholar
Broadie, S. 1991. Ethics With Aristotle. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Broadie, S., and C. Rowe (eds). 2002. Nicomachean Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Burnyeat, M. 2002. “‘De Anima’ II.5.” Phronesis 47 (1):28–90.10.1163/156852802760075693Suche in Google Scholar
Bywater, L., ed. 1979. Ethica Nicomacea. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Cameron, R. 2002. “The Ontology of Aristotle’s Final Cause.” Apeiron 35 (2): 153–179.10.1515/APEIRON.2002.35.2.153Suche in Google Scholar
Charles, D. 1991. “Teleological Causation in the Physics.” In Aristotle’s Physics: A Collection of Essays, edited by L. Judson, 101–128. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Coope, U. 2005. Time for Aristotle: Physics IV.10–14. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/0199247900.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Cooper, J. 2004. “Aristotle on Natural Teleology.” In Knowledge, Nature, and the Good, 107–129. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Crivelli, P. 2004. Aristotle on Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511482496Suche in Google Scholar
Fine, G. 1984. “Truth and Necessity in De Interpretatione 9.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 1:23–47.Suche in Google Scholar
Gotthelf, A. 1976. “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality: With Postscript 1986.” In Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, edited by A. Gotthelf and J.B. Lennox, 204–242. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511552564.013Suche in Google Scholar
Gotthelf, A. 1988. “The Place of the Good in Aristotle’s Natural Teleology.” In Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, edited by J.J. Cleary and D.C. Shartin, 113–139. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.10.1163/2213441788X00091Suche in Google Scholar
Heinaman, R. 1996. “Activity and Praxis in Aristotle.” In Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, edited by J. J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler, S.J. Boston: University Press of America.10.1163/2213441796X00074Suche in Google Scholar
Heinaman, R. 2007. “Potentiality and Actuality in De Anima II.5.” Phronesis 52 (2):139–187.10.1163/156852807X180063Suche in Google Scholar
Irwin, T. 1988. Aristotle’s First Principles. New York: Clarendon Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Johnson, M.R. 2005. Aristotle on Teleology. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/0199285306.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Jones, R.E. 2010. “Truth and Contradiction in Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 6–9.” Phronesis 55:26–67.10.1163/003188610X12589452898804Suche in Google Scholar
Kosman, A. 2013. The Activity of Being. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.10.4159/harvard.9780674075023Suche in Google Scholar
Leunissen, M. 2010. Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511762499Suche in Google Scholar
Lorenz, H. 2006. The Brute Within. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/0199290636.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Moss, J. 2010. “Aristotle’s Non-Trivial, Non-Insane View that Everyone Always Desires Things under the Guise of the Good.” In Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good, edited by S. Tenenbaum. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Moss, J. 2012. Aristotle on the Apparent Good: Perception, Phantasia, Thought, & Desire. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656349.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M. 1978. “Aristotle on Teleological Explanation.” In Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Olfert, C. M. M. 2017. Aristotle on Practical Truth. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780190281007.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Richardson, H. 2003. “Desire and the Good in De Anima.” In Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, edited by M. Nussbaum and A.O. Rorty. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Segvic, H. 2009. “The Varieties of Goodness.” In From Protagoras to Aristotle: Essays in Ancient Moral Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400835553Suche in Google Scholar
Sherman, N. 1991. The Fabric of Character. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/0198239173.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Whitaker, C.W.A. 1996. Aristotle’s De Interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Witt, C. 2003. Ways of Being: Potentiality and Actuality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.10.7591/9781501711503Suche in Google Scholar
Woods, M. 1992. Aristotle: Eudemian Ethics Books I, II, and VIII. New York: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Socratic Euporia and Aporia in the Lysis
- Internalization and the Philosophers’ Best Interest in Plato’s Republic
- The Argument against the Friends of the Forms Revisited: Sophist 248a4–249d5
- Empty Negations and Existential Import in Aristotle
- Aristotle on the Truth About Practical Ends
- An Overlooked Fragment of Parmenides in Proclus?
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Socratic Euporia and Aporia in the Lysis
- Internalization and the Philosophers’ Best Interest in Plato’s Republic
- The Argument against the Friends of the Forms Revisited: Sophist 248a4–249d5
- Empty Negations and Existential Import in Aristotle
- Aristotle on the Truth About Practical Ends
- An Overlooked Fragment of Parmenides in Proclus?
