Sunday 15 October 2017

Kathi Beier presents a working paper on "Human virtue—the measure of all virtue?"

In his ethical writings, Aristotle establishes a strong link between a substance's peculiar work or "function" (ergon) and its virtue (arete). But what does ergon mean exactly? And how are we to understand, in turn, the concept of virtue? The aim of the paper is to offer some evidence to suggest that Aristotle, unlike Plato, does not maintain a functionlist conception of virtue. Rather, he defines virtue psychologically and he argues in anthropocentric terms. This means that there is reason to believe Aristotle defines virtue with respect to human virtue, and that he takes other kinds of virtue, for example, the virtues of the horse, to be virtues by analogy. Therefore, the paper (i) rejects the functionalist reading of Aristotelian virtue and, thereby, (ii) naturalistic and culturalistic approaches to modern virtue ethics that read Aristotle in functional terms, and (iii) reflects on the question whether, for Aristotle, human virtue is the measure of all virtue.

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