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Character and Explanation in Aristotle's Ethics and Poetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Marguerite Deslauriers
Marguerite Deslauriers
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

Aristotle discusses character in four contexts: ethics, poetic theory, the study of rhetoric and zoology. What he means by character is different in each of these cases, but not radically different. He always uses it as a device to explain actions or behavioural patterns: in animals, in people, and in fictional people. The similarities between the character exhibited by different species, moral character, and tragic character have gone unexamined. As a result, the notion of character as explanatory, and the possibilities and limitations of explanation by means of character are still undetermined.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 29 , Issue 1: Aristotle , Winter 1990 , pp. 79 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1990

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References

Notes

1 Hutchinson, D. S., The Virtues of Aristotle (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 76.Google Scholar

2 Nussbaum, Martha Craven,Aristotle' de Motu Animalium: Text with Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 38.Google Scholar

3 Halliwell, Stephen, Aristotle's Poetics (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1986), p. 150.Google Scholar

4 This is the account of the practical syllogism found in Nussbaum's commentary on the De Motu Animalium.