Aristotelian Challenges to Contemporary Philosophy—Nature, Knowledge, and the Good

Introduction: Aristotelian Challenges to Contemporary Philosophy—Nature, Knowledge, and the Good The collection of articles presented in this book explores Aristotelianism and its critics from three distinct viewpoints in three historical periods: first, from the point of view of the philosophy of science and epistemology in Antiquity, secondly, from the perspective of the notion of individual rights in medieval philosophy; and, finally, against the background of 20th-century ethical discussions that offer alternatives to what can be taken as standard modern ethical theories (such as those developed by Sidgwick, for example). The main moti- vation of the selection is the general observation that, with respect to these specific themes, the influence and critical impact of Aristotelianism have not yet been sufficiently studied. When it comes to assessing central questions of the philosophy of science and epistemology and their relation to Aristotelianism, we argue that there is a danger of making simplified generalisations and attacking Aristotle as a straw man representing tendencies that derive from inaccurate or modernising interpretations. The contributions in Part i focus on clearing up some such modernising misunderstandings pertaining to Aristotle’s theory of science. Secondly, with respect to the history and development of modern ethics with its notion of individual rights, Part ii of the collection addresses the question whether, in the late Middle Ages, there was a radical change in the analysis of rights. The contributors offer contrasting views on this, arguing first that ancient authors lacked neither terms nor concepts for individual rights. Others oppose this suggestion by claiming that the profundity of late medieval conceptual change entails that any resembling notions that one might find in antiquity can only be superficially similar to the modern ones. Thirdly, the continuing ethical influence of Aristotelianism has been much discussed and disputed in the context of modern virtue ethics—a theme that forms the subject matter of Hallvard Fossheim’s chapter. However, it is important to note that other modern ethical theories also bear a resemblance to Aristotle’s approach in ways that have not been recognised in the extant literature. This is largely because contemporary phenomenology is typically not studied in con- nection with more strictly historical readings of Aristotle. However, as John Drummond and Sara Heinämaa show in Part iii of this volume, some central assumptions in Husserl’s ethics resemble Aristotelian ethics and differ from modern ethics in its more standard form: particularly important is Husserl’s © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�8�58�_00� 2 Introduction focus on the whole person as opposed to single actions and his assumption of a special form of rationality peculiar to ethics. In philosophy of science and epistemology, modernising misinterpreta- tions of Aristotle are most conspicuous in discussions concerning teleology or Aristotelian biology more generally but can also be found in some treatments of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge. The main argument arising from the contributions of Part i is that the modern epistemological categories of empiricism versus rationalism on the one hand, and normative versus descriptive epistemology on the other, are not as such accurate means for categorising Aristotle’s views. Rather, Aristotle offers an alternative perspective to central questions concerning knowledge precisely because his approach differs both from normative and descriptive theories. The same is true of empiricism and rationalism, and thus it is misleading to pin down the essentials of Aristotle’s view by these dichotomies alone. Furthermore, with respect to teleology, Aristotle’s form of teleology is, for example, often misunderstood as general purposeful- ness in nature. A more accurate reading relates it to models of explanation that prioritise function over constitution, and such a mode of explanation is by no means obsolete in modern biology. Finally, Sabine Föllinger argues that Aristotle’s style of imparting and transmitting the results of his research is dia- logical rather than dogmatic, and this raises the following questions: To what extent did Aristotle consider his findings in biology to be conclusive? And to what extent did he see them as parts of an ongoing research project? The second cluster of contributions concerns the notion of subjective individual rights central to many variants of modern ethics. For those who want to argue that there is a continuous tradition of Aristotelianism in Western ethics, there are basically two main options: either to show that something sufficiently similar to such rights can be found in Aristotle, or else to find a form of modern ethics that gives the notion of subjective individual rights only a marginal or minimal role. Only by establishing either of these claims can one plausibly argue that possible differences pertaining to the notion of rights do not imply any radical difference in the way in which ethical questions are framed. Part ii of this collection therefore studies the notion of subjective individual rights and discusses its possible ‘anti-Aristotelian’ nature. Fred Miller argues that ancient philosophers had conceptual and linguistic tools for formulating the notion of subjective individual rights, whereas Roberto Lambertini and Virpi Mäkinen in their respective chapters oppose this suggestion. They claim that Aristotle’s use of the relevant terms implies an essentially different concept of right not capable of accommodating the assumption that all human beings possess a certain feature by virtue of which they have a special moral status. Lambertini and Mäkinen argue that it is only in the late medieval Franciscan .

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