Aristotle's notion of evil is highly elaborate and attractive, yet has been largely overlooked by philosophers. While most recent studies of evil focus on modern understandings of the concept, this volume shows that Aristotle's theory is an invaluable resource for our contemporary understanding of it. Twelve leading scholars reconstruct the account of evil latent in Aristotle's metaphysics, biology, psychology, ethics, and politics, and detect Aristotelian patterns of thought that operate at certain landmark moments in the history of philosophy from ancient thought to modern day debates. The book pays particular attention to Aristotle's understanding of 'radical evil', an important and much disputed topic. Original and systematic, this study is the first to provide a full exploration of evil in Aristotle's work, shedding light on its content, potential, and influence. The volume will appeal to scholars of ancient Greek philosophy as well as to moral philosophers and to historians of philosophy.

This book offers a new account of Aristotle's practical philosophy. Pavlos Kontos argues that Aristotle does not restrict practical reason to its action-guiding and motivational role; rather, practical reason remains practical in the full sense of the term even when its exercise does not immediately concern the guidance of our present actions. To elucidate why this wider scope of practical reason is important, Kontos brings into the foreground five protagonists that have long been overlooked: (a) spectators or judges who make non-motivational judgments about practical matters that do not interact with their present deliberations and actions; (b) legislators who exercise practical reason to establish constitutions and laws; (c) hopes as an active engagement with moral luck and its impact on our individual lives; (d) prayers as legislators' way to deal with the moral luck hovering around the birth of constitutions and the prospect of a utopia; and (e) people who are outsiders or marginal cases of the responsibility community because they are totally deprived of practical reason. Building on a wide range of interpretations of Aristotle's practical philosophy (from the ancient commentators to contemporary analytic and continental philosophers), Kontos offers new insights about Aristotle's philosophical contribution to the current debates about radical evil, moral luck, hope, utopia, internalism and externalism, and the philosophy of law. Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Aristotle's ethics, ancient philosophy, and the history of practical philosophy.

This book elaborates a moral realism of phenomenological inspiration by introducing the idea that moral experience, primordially, constitutes a perceptual grasp of actions and of their solid traces in the world. The main thesis is that, before any reference to values or to criteria about good and evil-that is, before any reference to specific ethical outlooks-one should explain the very materiality of what necessarily constitutes the 'moral world'. These claims are substantiated by means of a text- centered interpretation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in dialogue with contemporary moral realism. The book concludes with a critique of Heidegger's, Gadamer's and Arendt's approaches to Aristotle's ethics.

This book elaborates a moral realism of phenomenological inspiration by introducing the idea that moral experience, primordially, constitutes a perceptual grasp of actions and of their solid traces in the world. The main thesis is that, before any reference to values or to criteria about good and evil?that is, before any reference to specific ethical outlooks?one should explain the very materiality of what necessarily constitutes the ?moral world?. These claims are substantiated by means of a text- centered interpretation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in dialogue with contemporary moral realism. The book concludes with a critique of Heidegger?s, Gadamer's and Arendt's approaches to Aristotle's ethics.

Ce travail ambitionne inaugurer la thA(c)matisation d'une phA(c)nomA(c)nologie de la perception chez Heidegger. En prenant le contre-pied de bien des interprA(c)tations rA(c)centes concernant de questions cruciales de l'ontologie heideggerienne, notamment celles de l'articulation temporelle du prA(c)sent et de la distinction entre Zuhandenheit et Vorhandenheit, il dA(c)fend la thA]se inattendue que la temporalitA(c) de la perception sert de fil conducteur de l'ontologie heideggerienne du temps, dans la mesure oA elle impose la scission de la temporalitA(c) en modes authentiques et modes inauthentiques. Notre commentaire serrA(c) sur les textes de l'A(c)poque de Marbourg fera apparaA(R)tre que l'opposition entre la temporalitA(c) authentique de la perception naturelle', identifiA(c)e positivement A la circonspection, et la temporalitA(c) inauthentique de la perception thA(c)orique' ne rA(c)sume pas simplement la critique heideggerienne de Husserl, mais contribue, avant tout, A ouvrir un espace critique dans la problA(c)matique phA(c)nomA(c)nologique de la perception dans son A(c)volution de Husserl jusqu'A Merleau-Ponty. This book claims to inaugurate the thematization of a phenomenology of perception in Heidegger. Running counter to many recent interpretations concerning crucial questions of Heideggerian ontology (particularly the temporal articulation of present and the distinction between Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit), it defends the unexpected thesis that the temporality of perception serves as a conductor of the Heideggerian ontology of time, by splitting temporality into authentic and unauthentic modes. Concise commentary on the texts of the Marburg period show that theopposition between the authentic temporality of natural' perception (positively identified as circumspection) and the unauthentic temporality of theoretical' perception does not merely summarize the entire Heideggerian critique of Husserl but, above all, helps to open a decisive path in the phenomenological account of perception in its evolution from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty.

Aristotle's notion of evil is highly elaborate and attractive, yet has been largely overlooked by philosophers. While most recent studies of evil focus on modern understandings of the concept, this volume shows that Aristotle's theory is an invaluable resource for our contemporary understanding of it. Twelve leading scholars reconstruct the account of evil latent in Aristotle's metaphysics, biology, psychology, ethics, and politics, and detect Aristotelian patterns of thought that operate at certain landmark moments in the history of philosophy from ancient thought to modern day debates. The book pays particular attention to Aristotle's understanding of 'radical evil', an important and much disputed topic. Original and systematic, this study is the first to provide a full exploration of evil in Aristotle's work, shedding light on its content, potential, and influence. The volume will appeal to scholars of ancient Greek philosophy as well as to moral philosophers and to historians of philosophy.