Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the revised edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Luck and ethics
- Part I Tragedy: fragility and ambition
- Part II Plato: goodness without fragility?
- Part III Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life
- Introduction
- Chapter 8 Saving Aristotle's appearances
- Chapter 9 Rational animals and the explanation of action
- Chapter 10 Non-scientific deliberation
- Chapter 11 The vulnerability of the good human life: activity and disaster
- Chapter 12 The vulnerability of the good human life: relational goods
- Appendix to Part III Human and divine
- Interlude 2 Luck and the tragic emotions
- Epilogue: Tragedy
- Chapter 13 The betrayal of convention: a reading of Euripides' Hecuba
- Notes
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of passages
Appendix to Part III Human and divine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the revised edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Luck and ethics
- Part I Tragedy: fragility and ambition
- Part II Plato: goodness without fragility?
- Part III Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life
- Introduction
- Chapter 8 Saving Aristotle's appearances
- Chapter 9 Rational animals and the explanation of action
- Chapter 10 Non-scientific deliberation
- Chapter 11 The vulnerability of the good human life: activity and disaster
- Chapter 12 The vulnerability of the good human life: relational goods
- Appendix to Part III Human and divine
- Interlude 2 Luck and the tragic emotions
- Epilogue: Tragedy
- Chapter 13 The betrayal of convention: a reading of Euripides' Hecuba
- Notes
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of passages
Summary
Some philosophers (or whatever you like to call them) suffer from what may be called ‘loss of problems’. Then everything seems quite simple to them, no deep problems seem to exist any more, the world becomes broad and flat and loses all depth, and what they write becomes immeasurably shallow and trivial…
…quia plus loquitur inquisitio quam inventio… (Augustinus).
Wittgenstein, Zettel, 456–7Up until this point, we have presented a picture of Aristotle that sets him in strong contrast to the Plato of the middle dialogues. This is an Aristotle whom one can find almost throughout the corpus, speaking in a consistent and recognizable voice. But we have stressed throughout this book the depth and complexity of these ethical problems, the likelihood that any thinker of depth will not only feel their depth but will also feel the force of both the Platonic and the Aristotelian positions. We have also stressed Aristotle's fundamental commitment to investigate the major accounts of a problem presented him by his philosophical tradition, assessing them sympathetically and responding to their depth. It therefore seems appropriate to pause here and assess the evidence that Aristotle himself was drawn to Platonic intellectualism in ethics. We cannot by any means give a full account of all the passages in question or deal with all the arguments that have been advanced on all sides of these questions. This would be a book in itself. But we will be fairer to our question, and to Aristotle, if we schematically set out the main lines of the issue and sketch a position towards it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Fragility of GoodnessLuck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, pp. 373 - 377Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001