display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
9 ideas
| 22528 | The nature of all animate things is to have one part which rules it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is composed of a number of things, and becomes one communal thing, a ruler and a ruled are always seen, and this is present in animate things on the basis of their entire nature. | |
| From: Aristotle (Politics [c.332 BCE], 1254a28) | |
| A reaction: I'm assuming he is referring to animals, rather than plants. I'm not sure if this is a universal truth (e.g. in the case of slime moulds), but it is how I see human beings. The organism could not possibly function (esp. navigate) without central control. |
| 571 | Is Socrates the same person when standing and when seated? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Who, except the philosopher, is going to ask whether Socrates and Socrates seated is the same thing? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1004b01) |
| 5266 | It would seem that the thinking part is the individual self [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It would seem that the thinking part is, or most nearly is, the individual self. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1166a25) | |
| A reaction: It seems that where Socrates identifies the self with the whole of the psuché (and hence is interested in its immortality, in 'Phaedo'), Aristotle considers the self to be merely the thinking and rational part of the psuché. |
| 8007 | Aristotle never discusses free will [Aristotle, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle never gets involved in the riddles of later philosophers about free will. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: Note that this is a very great philosopher who was intensely interested in the well-springs of human action. 'Free will' never crossed his mind. This is because free will is nonsense. Owen Flanagan is best on this subject (Ideas 5345 and 5332). |
| 12961 | For an action to be 'free', it must be deliberate as well as unconstrained [Aristotle, by Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle has rightly noted that we are not prepared to call an action 'free' unless as well as being unconstrained it is also deliberate. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1111b06) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 2.21 | |
| A reaction: This is quite an important message for David Hume. I love the respect which Leibniz accords Aristotle, at a time when he was becoming thoroughly unfashionable. This is the nearest Aristotle gets to discussing so-called 'free will'. |
| 4118 | A human being fathers his own actions as he fathers his children [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A human being fathers his own actions as he fathers his children. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1113b18) | |
| A reaction: Ultimately Aristotle believes that free will is an absolute fact, once influences are stripped away. He should have questioned more deeply. |
| 22506 | A man is the cause of what is within his power, and what he causes is in his power [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All those things that are in man's power either to do or not to do he himself is the cause of, and all those things that he is the cause of are in his own power. | |
| From: Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics [c.333 BCE], 1223a08) | |
| A reaction: This is the step which allows us to abandon free will, and replace it with the question of whether a person is the 'cause' of an action. Aristotle carefully delineates the criteria for when an action is within a person's power. Includes failures to act? |
| 22504 | Only a human being can be a starting point for an action [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A human being is a starting point of some actions, and he alone of animals; for of nothing else should we say that it acted. | |
| From: Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics [c.333 BCE], 1222b19) | |
| A reaction: It is a standard dogma that the idea of free will does not occur in Plato or Aristotle, but this looks awfully like it. I don't agree about animals. You watch them judging whether they can make a leap, and then doing it. |
| 20192 | Aristotle assesses whether people are responsible, and if they are it was voluntary [Aristotle, by Zagzebski] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle makes the concept of moral responsibility more fundamental than the concept of the voluntary, the reverse of the typical contemporary approach. Given that we hold persons responsible, such acts must be voluntary. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1110-ish) by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski - Virtues of the Mind 4.2 | |
| A reaction: Good for Aristotle. Whether we hold people responsible or not is widely understood, but whether they are 'free' to act is obscure, and may even be incoherent. We should look at praise and blame, and (above all) excuses. |