from Part III - Aristotle’s Moral Anthropology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 May 2019
An important question regarding Aristotle’s moral anthropology is whether or not human beings can become perfectly good. Should we consider Aristotle’s paradigmatically virtuous agent (who appears under the different names of spoudaios, phronimos, agathos, epainetos, epieikēs, or kalos kagathos) as an ideal figure, i.e. as someone who permanently and infallibly executes morally correct actions? Is his character irreversibly transformed into a state of perfection? Might we describe his inner condition as that of perfect psychic harmony? Or is it true, as some interpreters claimed, notably Shane Drefcinski and Howard Curzer,1 that the virtuous man (Aristotle never mentions female candidates) can act badly? Does he perform, at least to some extent or from time to time, slightly suboptimal actions, or perhaps even more: evil deeds? If Aristotle’s moral anthropology allowed for some imperfection or even considered imperfection as an unavoidable part of the human condition, it would be close to the view of the philosophos held by Plato. If, on the other hand, Aristotle defended an ideal of absolute perfection, he would be somewhere contiguous to the Stoic concept of the sage (sophos).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.