From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Sat Nov 02 2002 - 07:53:44 GMT
Hi Peter,
As I said, I'm not really competent to justify a particular reading of
Aristotle. But I'll quote Nussbaum on that passage in section X.
With regard to the idea that intellectual contemplation is the highest good
(ie the middle Platonist position, before the Phaedrus, interestingly
enough), she writes: "It is not surprising, then, that this further step
towards Platonism is in fact taken somewhere by Aristotle. It is taken, I
believe, only once, in a passage that does not fit with its context and that
is in flat contradiction with several important positions and arguments of
the [N. Ethics] taken as a whole." After going through 8 areas where this
position contradicts other parts of what Aristotle is arguing for, she
writes "We should, then, view the fragment X.6-8 as a serious working out of
elements of a position to which Aristotle is in some ways deeply attracted,
though he rejects it in the bulk of his mature ethical and political
writing."
So basically Nussbaum is arguing that this passage is an anomaly. She
doesn't deny that Aristotle wrote it (although she says we can't rule out
forgery) she just doesn't think it's his 'mature' position.
I'm not sure I would agree that Aristotle is trying to encapsulate the good.
He leaves too much room for individual discernment. However, whether
Aristotle is right or wrong is irrelevant to whether _I'm_ right or wrong...
:-)
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
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