Pavlos Kontos - Böcker

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 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.

The roots of evil are often held to be Biblical, but philosophers in ancient China and Greece were thoroughly conversant with both the phenomena and the languages of evil. This volume provides a comparative examination of patterns of evil in ancient Chinese and Greek philosophy.With no genealogical connections to rely on, the comparativist must establish a framework to connect these traditions. This volume utilizes the notion of "patterns" to address worries of methodological and ethical incommensurability, and to show what this means for the practice of comparative philosophy. In the case of evil, this methodology requires diving deep into the linguistic and political murk where evil lurks, with its deep roots in human dispositions for experience and action. The nine chapters are arranged in two parts. Those of Part I are written by scholars with a strong background in comparative philosophy and offer a substantial analysis of how both traditions respond to a specific aspect of the phenomenology of evil. Those of Part II are “twinned” chapters, that is, chapters that discuss similar topics in close dialogue with one another, but each does it from within either of these traditions. The volume is concluded with a reflection on the varieties of comparative strategies employed in the nine chapters.Patterns of Evil in Ancient Chinese and Greek Philosophy will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in comparative philosophy, ancient Greek philosophy, early Chinese philosophy, and the problem of evil quite generally.

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.

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.

Aristotle: Complete Works is a monumental achievement, the first new English-language translations of the Aristotelian corpus since 1954. Edited by C. D. C. Reeve and Pavlos Kontos, this beautifully produced two-volume cloth-bound set with smyth-sewn bindings aims for consistent translation of key terms across the works and includes a general Introduction by Christof Rapp, Catalogs of Aristotle’s Writings, an Annotated Index of People and Places, and an extensive Annotated Glossary of Terms. Available as either a boxed or unboxed set, the box set version offers a rigid, matte slipcase made of durable 88-point boards and covered in thick 80-pound, full-color paper.

The Art of Assemblage: Studies on Plato and Aristotle is a collection of twelve essays—six on Plato and six on Aristotle—written by an international group of eminent scholars. In recognition of the work of author, translator, and distinguished professor of philosophy C. D. C. Reeve, the essays address a wide range of topics—ethics and politics, poetics and rhetoric, and metaphysics—reflecting the breadth of Reeve's own scholarship. They exemplify how the "art of assemblage"—that is, the art of interpreting ancient Greek texts—can address some of the most intriguing questions posed by Plato and Aristotle. Together, they reveal continuities between Platonic and Aristotelian thought.

This book provides a balanced and accessible introduction to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. It carefully and comprehensively follows the thread of Aristotle’s argument and sheds light on topics that all too often receive little attention or are entirely ignored in the existing textbooks (such as self-control, legislative science and the legislator, the life of the money-maker, craft-knowledge, comprehension, and beastliness).Its objective is not only to offer an academically reliable presentation of Aristotle’s Ethics but to also defend Aristotle’s main tenets—or, at least, to present them in their most defensible form.It places the Nicomachean Ethics within the study of ethics generally; students are invited to understand Aristotle’s claims in the light of, or in contrast to, other ethical theories or their own intuitions about ethical matters.It follows the reader of the Nicomachean Ethicsin action, registering questions, expectations and progress within an insightful exegesis of Aristotle's philosophical argument. It is replete with pedagogical tools including examples from our concrete everyday experience, paintings, films, and literature, end of chapter summaries, internet resources, suggestions for further reading, study questions, and essay questions.

This volume is a Festschrift in honor of Jacques Taminiaux and examines the primacy of the political within phenomenology. These objectives support each other, in that Taminiaux's own intellectual itinerary brought him increasingly to an affirmation of the importance of the political. Divided into four sections, the essays contained in this volume engage with different aspects of the political dimension of phenomenology: its dialogue with classic texts of political philosophy, the political facets of phenomenological praxis, phenomenology’s contribution to actual political debates, and the impact of Taminiaux’s work in the shaping of phenomenology’s notion of politics. The phrase “the primacy of the political” echoes the “primacy of perception” as it was famously defined by Merleau-Ponty. This book emphasizes, however, the inescapability of the political rather than its “foundational” character, i.e. the fact that various itineraries of thought, explored in different fields ofphenomenological research, give rise to politically relevant reflections. It points out and elucidates political connotations that haunt phenomenological concepts, such as ‘world’, ‘self’, ‘nature’, ‘intersubjectivity, or ‘language’, and traces them to a broad range of approaches, concepts, and methods. In its explorations, the book discusses a broad range of thinkers, including, but not limited to, Aristotle and Kant, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Arendt.