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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