Research

Aristotle's Politics

Aristotle's Greece is a long way from modern Western political circumstances but Aristotelian political theory and virtue ethics has been undergoing a revival of late. This is because of the similarities to our own times, rather than the differences. Among the most important similarities are the following: Aristotle's ethics does without a god; Aristotle's ethics goes well beyond feeling good in its conception of happiness; Aristotle's politics combines community and liberty in a way that many of us long for. In short, some of the dimensions of material and intellectual culture shaping Aristotle's political thought are those that shape ours, descriptively or normatively. After a long history, when it comes to happiness we find ourselves, unnervingly, focused more on feeling good than being good, becoming economic rather than political, narrow in our knowledge rather than broad. Aristotle offers a vision that seems to combine dependence with independence, thinking with action, individual with community, locality with transcendence. I have been trying to understand the contours of Aristotle's political theory, and in particular the minimal qualities that individuals need in order to be good citizens. I say 'minimal' because Aristotle's descriptions of the excellent human being and of the best regime(s) of kingship and aristocracy are both beyond us and, in some ways, repugnant to us. Thus I have been focusing on the regime of polity, a regime of ordinary people.

The differences, however, are substantial. Among the main differences are the following: Aristotle's different weighting of communal values vs. individual liberty; the less-than-categorical rejection of accidental slavery; the denigration of women; the denigration of material interdependence. The latter is important because Aristotelian liberty involves almost complete freedom from activities that are not an exercise of intellect: the flourishing person is one who is active in politics -- where he considers the common good -- and/or science -- where he considers the underlying nature of the world. Aristotle grants that it is possible, in addition, to be a landowner or even a farmer, adding work to political activity. But Aristotle is not allowing just any work, but the work of an independent person. So it looks like the vast majority of us -- folks working for other folks -- are screwed. Why could Aristotle not conceive of a community that was inter-dependent not only politically but materially? Why did he think that material inter-dependence (and even dependence) was objectionable but political inter-dependence was not? Why must we share rule, but not share production? Then, if we decided that he was wrong about this, we should try to understand why.

"The King Alone: Law And The Limits Of Virtue In Aristotle's Politics", Reason, 43.1 (2023)

"Aristotle's Many Multitudes And Their Powers", Journal of Ancient Philosophy, 11.1 (2017)

"The Limits Of Citizenship In Aristotle's Politics", History of Political Thought, 35.3 (2014)

Plato's Republic

The central moment of Plato's Republic is the so-called "return to the cave". The return to the cave is an allegory for the commitment of the scientists and philosophers to the community. Why not just spend one's time doing science and philosophy, instead of messing with a community of messy human beings? This return to the city is itself an analogy for the role of reason within the soul of the individual. The challenge to Socrates given by Glaukon and Adeimantos in book 2 was to show what effect justice has in the soul of the person who is just; by contrast, it is popularly believed that people are self-interested and only act justly in order to benefit from the consequences of doing so and that a person who has some advantage over others (by virtue of his strength or cleverness, for example) but who does not take advantage of it because of his internally just character, is a pitiful fool.

In response, Socrates argues that there are three parts to the soul and that these must co-operate in order for the whole to do well. But what about the well-being of the parts? Do they also fare well by participating in the whole? Or would they do better by trying to take advantage of one another? This temptation applies to reason in particular, since it is supposed to be the leader of the other two parts. Why should it care what happens to them? There are various lines in Republic that suggest that reason, (and in the city, the philosophers,) must sacrifice their well-being by being just and taking care of the others. In response, it has been suggested that reason/philosophers are motivated by a different kind of motivation than the obvious candidate, doing science and philosophy. Rather, they are lovers of order, whether in the city, or in the soul, or both.

I have two papers on the subject, in which I argue for a very straightforward approach (which makes others unnecessary, but does not preclude them). I argue that the philosophers are motivated by philosophy and that they make no sacrifice in this by returning to the city and ruling. The first concerns the motivation of the philosophers; the second concerns their well-being. Both appeared in the Journal of Ancient Philosophy and are freely available on-line:

The Last Temptation of the Philosopher-Rulers (2009) and

As Happy As Can Be: How Republic's Philosophers Fare Best By Ruling (2010)

See also: review of JDG Evans' A Plato Primer, in BMCR

Critical Reasoning

I have a three-part text-book for Critical Reasoning, Intro Symbolic Logic, and Scientific Reasoning courses, collectively titled An Introduction To Reasoning.

Research for the book led me to the problem of diagramming reasoning. In particular, I am interested in how the reasoning of multiple speakers can be diagrammed, as they make objections and respond to those objections. My paper Diagramming Objections To Independent Premises is freely available at Informal Logic. (Presented in an earlier version at the 2012 AAPT.) I advance the thinking of this paper a little in a presentation to OSSA 2013.

Related to psychology and CR, see my review of Keith Stanovich's Rationality & The Reflective Mind. See also a Central APA presentation on Dual System thinking and Critical Reasoning (Feb. 2013).