Aristotelian Ethics

This essay argues that the goal of corporate entrepreneurship is to create value. This is to be understood according to three distinct meanings: economic, productive and social value. Together, the three dimensions of value constitute the identity of the corporation, whoch is paramount to its success.

N.B This is a significantly revised version of my earlier “Addiction within a Thomistic Philosophical Anthropology: A Conceptual Analysis.” When I wrote it I had only started thinking about addiction and my ideas have developed considerably as I have studied more neuroscience, psychology, and philosophical anthropology. Since I posted it in 2011 I have received many emails with questions, comments, suggestions and objections, all of which have been very helpful to me. We are all trying to understand what addiction is, and how we can help those who suffer from addiction. It is astonishing how difficult it is to find good philosophical literature on addiction, and many people are rightly interested in the problem. Given the amount of feedback I have received on the earlier version of this paper, that it has been cited in two MA theses that I know of, and that I do not know when I shall have time to complete the research required to make this paper worth publishing, I have decided to update the prior draft with this version. Some of the same ideas are treated briefly in one published paper of mine.1 This paper has since changed its title in order to reflect a more broadly Aristotelian approach. I decided that there is no reason for me to restrict my approach to Thomistic thought, and I think this general Aristotelian approach makes the paper’s appeal much broader. Some of the “Thomist” material, but not all of it, has been omitted from this draft. I will be happy to receive any correspondence concerning the account of addiction presented in this paper, but I might always be able to respond right away.

This paper focuses on one of the major criticisms made to Aristotle's virtue ethics, namely that it lacks explicit moral action guidance. The same criticism has been addressed to later developments of virtue ethics. There have been several attempts to overcome this objection and to demonstrate that modern theories of virtue ethics do provide principles of right action. In this paper, I discuss mainly two such major attempts: the exemplarist approach and the virtue rules approach. My aim is to examine whether, if applied to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, these two approaches can provide a convincing answer to the criticism that Aristotle’s ethics does not offer explicit moral action guidance .

What is the relationship between friendship and human flourishing? This is a central topic in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and one to which Maimonides also returned throughout his career. Despite the relative neglect of this topic in recent scholarship, I argue that friendship (philia) was an important link between moral and intellectual perfection for Maimonides. He identified Aristotle’s virtue friendship with the love between students and teachers and also interpreted many of the divine commandments as efforts to promote both family and virtue friendship among the Jewish people. Friendship was aligned thematically in Maimonides’ writings with topics like kinship and sexuality, circumcision, and the ethics of speech, all of which point in different ways to the unresolved tension between rational and sensual aspects of our human condition. This article therefore contributes to the investigation of the relationship between Maimonides’ legal and philosophical writing on social themes. While Aristotle clearly influenced his reading of biblical and rabbinic texts for example, I will also argue that Maimonides’ religious and communal commitments helped to push his reading of Aristotle in a broadly inclusive direction— both with respect to the range of different goods that are appropriate to an ideal human life as well as the potential accessibility of those goods to different classes of persons. I offer this article as a corrective to the exaggerated focus on seclusion and solitary contemplation that has characterized academic scholarship on Maimonides.

Foot argues that there are certain things that all human beings - perhaps all rational agents - need.  This gives a sense in which certain values and disvalues can be called 'objective'.  I suggest that, with certain relatively minor adjustments, her argument can be made cogent but that it cannot be used to show that there are objective answers to questions about what one should do when values conflict.  If Foot's own virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or any other first-order moral system were to be established as objectively valid, this would require some completely different form of argumentation. 


Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

Many scholars have argued that the Protestant Reformation generally departed from virtue ethics, and this claim is often accepted by Protestant ethicists. This essay argues against such discontinuity by demonstrating John Calvin’s reception of ethical concepts from Augustine and Aristotle. Calvin drew on Augustine’s concept of eudaimonia and many aspects of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics , including concepts of choice, habit, virtue as a mean, and the specific virtues of justice and prudence. Calvin also evaluated the problem of pagan virtue in light of traditional Augustinian texts discussed in the medieval period. He interpreted the Decalogue as teaching virtue, including the cardinal virtues of justice and temperance. Calvin was not the harbinger of an entirely new ethical paradigm, but rather a participant in the mainstream of Christian thinkers who maintained a dual interest in Aristotelian and Augustinian eudaimonist virtue ethics.

I explore the role of manners in the life of virtue, particularly with regard to their role in cultivating and then expressing virtue. The topic of manners is largely neglected among moral philosophers and when manners are discussed they are often seen as a separate domain from morality and as arbitrary social conventions that involve a significant degree of dishonesty. I seek to demonstrate how manners have an integral role to play in the moral life and how the concerns about arbitrariness and dishonesty can be overcome. Discussions about manners typically focus on their role in the social life of adults. However, to properly appreciate the integral role of manners in the moral life we need to focus, first of all, on how teaching good manners to children is one of the key ways that we initiate them into the life of virtue. The approach developed here is strongly Aristotelian-cum-Confucian in character, whereas recent philosophical discussions of manners that have seen moral value in them have tended to adopt a Kantian approach. Teaching good manners can be understood as a form of habituation into virtue as manners are patterns of behavior, often informed by culture and tradition. I discuss three crucial functions of good manners: (1) they help social life to go well; (2) they involve ways of showing respect or reverence for that which is respect-worthy or reverence-worthy; and (3) they elevate (or ennoble) our animal nature via an acquired second nature.

Dieser Aufsatz, der sich den Interpretationen u. a. von Robert Bernasconi, Jacques Taminiaux und Franco Volpi anschließt, betrachtet Heideggers „Wiederholung“ der praktischen Philosophie des Aristoteles als eine Radikalisierung des aristotelischen Begriffs des Handelns (praxis). Die moderne „Not des Wohnens“ erweist sich als ein Ergebnis der Unterordnung der Endlichkeit und Zeitlichkeit des menschlichen Handelns in der abendländischen philosophischen Tradition unter die metaphysischen und theologischen Ideale, die aus dem anfänglichen Verständnis der Seiendheit als beständiger Anwesenheit (ousia) hervorgehen. Die Grundform dieser Unterordnung ist die aristotelische Auslegung der reinen praxis als eine „übermenschlich“ selbstgenügsame Betrachtung ohne äußere Zwecke. Die Behandlung der praktischen „Besinnung“ (phronesis) in der Nikomachischen Ethik bietet jedoch eine Einsicht in die endliche und situationsbedingte Verfassung der eigentlich menschlichen Selbstverwirklichung. Die Lektüre der Nikomachischen Ethik in Heideggers Marburger Vorlesung über Platons Sophistes kann als der Ausgangspunkt für die Geschichte des tätigen Lebens in Hannah Arendts Vita activa angesehen werden. Gleichwohl gliedert Arendt die geschichtliche Entwicklung der praxis ausdrücklicher als Heidegger auf und bedenkt auch, was bei Heidegger weitgehend ungedacht bleibt: den politischen Charakter der ursprünglichen praxis und das apolitische Wesen der Philosophie.

I discuss the second of the three theses advanced by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. The focus is the nature of entities to which – if Anscombe's diagnosis is correct – ought and cognate modals are assumed by modern moral philosophers to refer. I reconstruct the alternative account offered by Anscombe of viable and justified 'Aristotelian' modals – as contrasted with mysterious and unjustified 'Kantian' modals; I discuss the nature and status of 'Aristotelian necessity' to which such legitimate modals refer to. I conclude with the claims that Anscombe's account of modern moral philosophy is viciously parochial, reducing it to Oxford philosophy from the Thirties and Forties and its immediate antecedents; that her historical reconstruction is vitiated by lack of awareness of the existence of law-views of morality preceding Christian theology, artful anticipation of secularization in order to fit her picture of modern moral philosophy as the 'day after' of Christianity; that Aquinas's and her own view of natural morality as made of rational moral judgments laws is incompatible with both her predilection for 'divine law' instead of plain down-to-earth 'natural law'; that her strained reconstruction of a Christian-Jewish-Stoic view of morality as law promulgated by God has little to share with any reconstruction of the Biblical moral traditions meeting academic standard and in more detail there is no possible translation of Torah as Law; and that her criticism hits just targets from the old little British world she was familiar with, while leaving Kantian ethics unaffected.

Aristotle Stagirite was the precursor of Aquinas on how he is remarkably known with articulation of arguments to provide rational justification for the reality of any claimed judgement and knowledge. In the context of ethics, the moral theory that Aristotle defined and established in his two books: Nicomachean and Eudemean ethics serves as the eye-opener and foundational stones on which Aquinas built his scholastic ethics. He values the ethical arguments of Aristotle very well but underscores his own innovation into morality to set him apart from his mentor. The metaphysical foundation of Aquinas’ scholastic ethics rests squarely on four ontological realities. The first one is centred on the fact that human nature is uniquely created by God. The second indisputable reality is the fact that ethical life of man is not a mere fulfilment of rationality but also a life of union with God. Again, the third foundation is ingrained in the necessity of moral education and character formation as a pathway to the union with God. The last crucial element of Aquinas’ ethical theory is deeply rooted in the belief that humans are created in the image and likeness of God. Hence, human attempt to be like God in a manner appropriate to human nature serves as the source of human authentic fulfilment, happiness and moral well-being.

This study is an attempt to make the strongest possible case for the Meinecke-Diels hypothesis that there was a doxographer named “Arius Didymus,” who compiled the three ethical doxographies in Stobaeus 2.7, and also a physical doxography. It offers an analysis of the historiographical, exegetical and logical issues undergirding the Meinecke-Diels hypothesis. For the current state of the question 25 years later and a critical evaluation of the hypothesis and its components see D. E. Hahm, “The Quest for an Author” in W. W. Fortenbaugh, ed., Arius Didymus On Peripatetic Ethics, Household Management and Politics, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities vol. 20  (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2017) 69-74.

Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

The article re-examines the Aristotelian backdrop of Arendt’s notion of action. On the one hand, Backman takes up Arendt’s critique of the hierarchy of human activities in Aristotle, according to which Aristotle subordinates action (praxis) to production (poiesis) and contemplation (theoria). Backman argues that this is not the case since Aristotle conceives theoria as the most perfect form of praxis. On the other hand, Backman stresses that Arendt’s notion of action is in fact very different from Aristotle’s praxis, to the extent that Arendt thinks of action as an external to the means-ends scheme, whereas Aristotle ultimately remains caught in this scheme proper to poiesis in thinking of praxis as its own end. According to Backman, Arendt’s concept of action can therefore be understood as a critique, rather than as a rehabilitation, of Aristotelian praxis.

This paper concerns both Aristotle's notion of right feelings and Husserl's account of intentional feelings and emotions as developed in their ethical writings and it discusses these approaches in relation to each other. It addresses the question of motivation and justifcation or evidence for moral feelings and actions. In particular, it focuses on the emotional states of philia and love as well as the inherent relationship between afectivity and reason. The paper concludes with some refections on the requirements for the constitution of a moral self.

Die aristotelische Bestimmung des Menschen ist ein Rätsel. Daher soll sie im Folgenden auch als ein Rätsel behandelt werden. Ziel ist es, hier nicht das bei Aristoteles finden zu wollen, was wir heute ohnehin schon über den Menschen als ein Lebewesen wissen oder zu wissen glauben, sondern es gilt im Folgenden von Aristoteles ahnen zu lernen, was wir noch nicht wissen, wofür wir heute, in unserer technisierten, wissenschaftsorientierten und digitalisierten Blickbahn vielleicht noch gar nicht gerüstet sind.

It is obvious that the notion of moral responsibility is fundamental and indispensable in any credible system of ethics in a given society. There are many diverse theories of moral responsibility among philosophers of different epochs and schools but freedom of will is generally identified as the source of moral responsibility. The justification for this common claim is that the source of human actions are self-generated and located in the willing and desirable power of the moral agent and not instinctually based or traceable to any external force. Aristotle tries to improve on Platonic view of moral responsibility by giving rational justification for philosophical variations of the circumstances in which moral responsibility is attributed to a moral agent and when he is morally exonerated. He underlined direct volitional control of a moral agent over his action, his sufficient knowledge of what is good and evil and the awareness of the consequences of his action as the epic centre of moral responsibility.

John Burnet’s thesis about the dialectical character of Aristotelian ethics seems nowadays to have become a common view, held by most if not all interpreters. In addition, the dialectical method is now considered Aristotle’s primary method of philosophical investigation: not only his ethics, but also his physics and its branches, and even his theology are taken to be fundamentally dialectical. The sole exceptions recognized are mathematics and logic. This expansion has been made at times with certain restrictions on the sort of dialectic considered, but it has at other times been adopted without restriction. I think that there are good reasons to resist such an expansion, particularly regarding physics, although in the present study I want to examine the dialectical thesis at its core, that is to say, in ethics. My thesis is that Aristotelian ethics was initially dialectical in its method: EE systematically held that dialectic is the appropriate means of proof for morals. However, Aristotle himself abandoned such a view, and in NE the kind of proof required was no longer dialectical. This does not mean that, once abandoned in ethics, dialectic could not still find a place in other domains, such as physics, even if I think that unlikely. Nevertheless, I intend to show here only what happened with the method in ethics, from EE to NE, without regarding what might have happened in other domains.

The current meaning of the term " justice " is basically twofold: first, it refers to the administration of the law, taking into account the human rights of all citizens. In the second place, it refers to the interpersonal relations of reciprocal fairness and equity.

L'Etica Nicomachea  di  Aristotele è  il primo trattato di filosofia morale della storia del pensiero greco. La sistematizzazione aristotelica dei suoi concetti chiave, come quelli di virtù, responsabilità, giustizia, amicizia, felicità, non ha mai cessato nei secoli di costituire il punto di riferimento fondamentale e sempre attuale di ogni riflessione e dibattito etico.
Questo volume in omaggio a Carlo Natali, uno dei  più grandi studiosi del pensiero etico aristotelico, raccoglie i contributi sull'Etica Nicomachea dei maggiori specialisti di Aristotele e della tradizione aristotelica  con  lo scopo di  offrire una presentazione completa e originale  di questa opera e della sua fortuna alla luce delle ultime tendenze interpretative. Il volume si compone di tre parti:  la prima è dedicata al trattato nel suo insieme e a ciascuno dei dieci libri che lo compongono nella loro specificità;  la seconda ai commenti antichi di Aspasio, Alessandro  e Al-Fārābī; la terza alla fortuna dell'Etica Nicomachea nella storia della filosofia, dall'epoca ellenistica al Rinascimento

The objective of this paper is to offer a mathematical and philosophical solution to the geometrical theorem that was put forward by Aristotle in the Fifth Book of the Nicomachean Ethics in relation with the search for the medium term of Distributive Justice. According to this interpretation, in fact, the just distribution of economical and political rights and duties among citizens must be a mean proportional (golden section) between the three distributive criteria: virtue (aristocracy), liberty (democracy), and wealth (oligarchy). As a matter of fact, in the application of the solution of the theorem (in the paradigm of the golden triangle) in Politics, it becomes scientifically apparent that for Aristotle the best political constitution is the Aristocratic Republic. Finally, in this paper not only is the metaphysical foundation of Aristotelian Ethics and Politics underlined (doctrine of the four causes and doctrine of the medium term) but also the mediating function of mathematical sciences in Aristotelian epistemology and ontology.

The Summa Alexandrinorum is an epitome of the Nicomachean Ethics, probably composed in the philosophical context of the Late Antiquity, translated into Arabic and then in Latin by Hermannus Alemannus (XIIIth century). Considering the results of the studies dedicated to this text the first part of the article reconstructs its history and its circulation in the Arabic and Latin world. The second part develops an analysis of the philosophical grounds of the Summa in which are clear the influences of peripatetic and Neoplatonic philosophy. An appendix offers an edition of a significant part of the Summa, the so-called “seventh book”, based on the most important manuscripts.

This study adds to the existing literature on meaningful work by offering a cross-cultural perspective. Since work shapes the kind of person that we are and plays an important role in our well-being, some theorists have adopted a virtue theory approach to meaningful work using  Aristotelian-MacIntyrean framework. For lack of a better term, I will call this a Western virtue theory. This paper presents a contemporary virtue-focused Buddhist perspective on the topic. While a virtue-ethics interpretation of Buddhism is now widely accepted and has been applied to several issues, not much has been written about meaningful work using a Buddhist-Aristotelian comparative framework. Buddhism is an important cultural component not only of countries that are predominantly Buddhist, but of other societies that have come in contact with it. To develop a Buddhist framework, I draw heavily from the works of Buddhist scholars, particularly in the West who use a virtue framework in interpreting Buddhism. The aims of my essay are dual. The first is to articulate a straightforward application of Buddhism on the contemporary ethical discussion of meaningful work. The second is to discuss the similarities, clarify the differences, and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses relative to each other of the Buddhist and the Western virtue theory. In my analysis, I  argue that consideration of Buddhist perspective  enables us to construct a cross-cultural, inclusive, and pluralistic conceptual model for the deliberation of meaningful work that complements the Western virtue theory.

When one deliberates one has reasons both for and against doing something.  Could the reasons for OBJECTIVELY outweigh the reasons against, in the sense that someone who thought otherwise would simply be wrong?  (This is not the same question as that of whether any of the competing reasons could be objectively valid in itself.)  Three seemingly relevant kinds of ethical theory are examined: virtue ethics, utilitarianism and moral absolutism.  It is suggested that the proponents of these have all so far failed to show that they can give compelling objective reasons for acting on certain reasons rather than others.  We so far lack any conception of what sort of second-order considerations could adjudicate between competing reasons.  This is not so much an ‘error theory’ in J. L. Mackie’s sense as an admission of ignorance.

Paper presented in the 2009 IVR Beijing Congress, Beijing, China, 2009. Co-authored with GONTIJO, Lucas de Alvarenga.
The purpose of the present text is to analyze the juridical phenomenon through the perspective of its rhetorical practice and to discuss whether such posture is by itself censorable from the ethical point of view. In order to achieve our purpose in this text, we have chosen to study, within the broad oeuvre of Aristotle, parts of the Organon collection, namely: Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations, and also Rhetoric and Poetics, with an emphasis on the Art of Rhetoric. The aim that governs this entire demarche is to understand the Aristotelian proposals to a theory of rationality, which is to be investigated through the discursive practices applied to the juridical phenomenon. The utility of rhetoric is thus emphasized to what concerns it as a technique of discourse analysis, not its power to dominate minds. The function of rhetoric is not only to persuade, but also to find the persuasion means that fit better each case, to recognize what seems to convince and what convinces indeed. Even though it may be dishonestly used, that does not diminish its value. Aristotle has freed rhetoric from the burden of moral. It is necessary to be capable of defending the pro as well as the contra, not to make them equivalent, but in order to understand the adversary mechanism of argumentation and, thus, refute it. Aristotle believes that the true and the just are by nature stronger than their contraries. This is also how juridical praxis works.

Advertimos que não temos como propósito a releitura de algum ponto específico de alguma parte da obra de Aristóteles ou uma nova interpretação acerca de alguma passagem, conceito ou ‘doutrina’ do corpus. Pretendemos tão somente estabelecer certo percurso de análise de um dos importantes conceitos da sua filosofia, a saber, o lógos, a partir da investigação de outro conceito de fundamental importância nos seus textos, a potência, percurso esse que conduz a um aparente paradoxo (o qual constituir-se-á no objeto norteador da nossa pesquisa), qual seja, por um lado, de uma perspectiva física, o lógos confere potencialidade para o homem não ficar totalmente sujeito à necessidade do mundo sublunar, permitindo-lhe agir na contingência que este comporta; por outro, de um ponto de vista prático, esse mesmo lógos tende a encerrar o homem em certa necessidade.

Questo saggio  ha come oggetto l’analisi specifica della mancanza di controllo del desiderio impulsivo (thumos) che Aristotele introduce in VII 7 per completare la dottrina dell’akrasia. Dagli argomenti di Aristotele  emergono due importanti elementi del «materiale di costruzione» dell’etica aristotelica: la componente giuridica e il complesso rapporto di continuità edi distacco con Platone.