Category Archives: aristotle

A Note on the Term “Essence”

I use the term “essence” a lot, and I sorta regret/sorta don’t regret doing that because it does over­sim­plify issues. It also pro­vides a good-enough intro­duc­tion to think­ing with­out get­ting lost in too much jar­gon or too many dis­tinc­tions. I throw plenty of those at you. Nonethe­less, I should have posted this ear­lier, from Joe Sachs’ …

April 14, 2009 – 9:32 am | By ashok | Posted in aristotle, philosophy | Comments (2)

Creating Statesmen, Part 1: Aristotlean Natural Right

All mate­r­ial quoted below is from Leo Strauss’ Nat­ural Right and His­tory, “Clas­sic Nat­ural Right,” pp. 156–164 1. We begin by dis­tin­guish­ing between nature (Gk. physis) and con­ven­tion (Gk. nomos). Con­ven­tion we are all famil­iar with — men make words and laws; proper prac­tice estab­lishes some­thing as a con­ven­tion. Money is the ulti­mate exten­sion of …

September 3, 2008 – 9:41 am | By ashok | Posted in aristotle, philosophy, politics | Tagged | Comments (3)

Do Money and Material Gain Taint Thought, or Validity of Opinion? On Aristotle’s Ethics, Bk. 2 Chp. 7

As always, any Aris­to­tle quoted or cited comes from Joe Sachs’ ver­sion of the Ethics. If you are inter­ested in other things I’ve writ­ten on Aris­to­tle, or the dis­cus­sions pre­ced­ing this one, see the index above. Josh asked very directly, and very nicely, if money taints opin­ion. It would seem “sell­ing out” is bad because it …

May 16, 2007 – 9:37 pm | By ashok | Posted in aristotle, philosophy | Tagged , | Comments (1)

How do Knowledge and Virtue Relate? On Aristotle’s Ethics, Bk. 2 Chp. 4

The trans­la­tion of the Ethics used below is Joe Sachs’. The quotes are from Bk. 2, Chap­ter 4 (1105 a17 — 1105 b18) The issue is locat­ing the key prob­lem in the open­ing para­graph of Aristotle’s chap­ter. We will begin with a part of it and skip ahead in the chap­ter to shed light on it: One …

April 30, 2007 – 4:10 pm | By ashok | Posted in aristotle, philosophy | Tagged | Comments (0)

On the Good: Comment on Aristotle’s Ethics, Bk. 1 Chp. 6

Trans­la­tions of quoted mate­r­ial below and cita­tions are from/of Joe Sachs’ trans­la­tion, pub­lished by Focus, 2002. The essay is as dif­fi­cult as it gets and is highly, highly spec­u­la­tive. 1. Back­ground: The Audi­ence of the Ethics Aris­to­tle begins by say­ing he wants to “exam­ine the uni­ver­sal good and go through the dif­fi­cul­ties in the way …

April 20, 2007 – 9:30 am | By ashok | Posted in aristotle, philosophy, plato | Tagged | Comments (0)