"Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will " was
first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital
technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible,
and are published unaltered from the original University of
Minnesota Press editions.
One of the central problems in recent moral philosophy is the
apparent tension between the "practical" or "action-guiding" side
of moral judgments and their objectivity. That tension would not
exist if practical reason existed (if reason played a substantial
role in producing motivation) and if recognition of obligation were
one of the areas in which practical reason operated. In "Practical
Reason, Aristotle, and the Weakness of the Will," Norman Dahl
argies that, despite widespread opinion to the contrary, Aristotle
held a position on practical reason that both provides an objective
basis for ethics and satisfies an important criterion of
adequacy--that it acknowledges genuine cases of weakness of the
will. In arguing for this, Dahl distinguishes Aristotle's position
from that of David Hume, who denied the existence of practical
reason. An important part of his argument is an account of the role
that Aristotle allowed the faculty "nous "to play in the
acquisition of general ends. Relying both on this argument and on
an examination of passages from Aristotle's ethics and psychology,
Dahl argues that Aristotle recognized that a genuine conflict of
motives can occur in weakness of the will. This provides him with
the basis for an interpretation that finds Aristotle acknowledging
genuine cases of weakness of the will.
Dahl's arguments have both a philosophical and a historical
point. He argues that Aristotle's position on practical reason
deserves to be taken seriously, a conclusion he reinforces by
comparing that position with more recent attempts, by Kant, Nagel,
and Rawls, to base ethics on practical reason.
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