Dissertation: "Building the Soul: Aristotle's Constitutive View of Virtue" (See dissertation summary here) Committee: Wolfgang Mann (co-chair), Katja Vogt (co-chair), Patricia Kitcher One of the central ideas in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is that human excellence is the complete performance of characteristically human activities. Performing these activities to completion, in turn, unifies the different motivational and practical capacities in our souls. The human virtues, then, seem to be very special traits – ones that constitute complete human agency. I call this Aristotle’s Constitutive View of Virtue. In my dissertation, I argue that the Constitutive View arises from Aristotle’s particular brand of motivational pluralism, and that it extends to many famous parts of his theory. I contend that only excellent agents act from firm and unchanging dispositions; only excellent agents fully make use of practical reason’s ability to discover truths; and only they truly and fully experience pleasure. For these reasons, we should not conclude, as some commentators have, that vicious agents are the evil doppelgängers of virtuous agents, or that they are just ‘playing different games.’ Instead, to use Aristotle’s own analogy, non-excellent agents are like the ethically illiterate: they simply lack the agential abilities required to be excellent. Papers and Presentations: "What does it mean to act from a firm and unchanging disposition?" (Presented at Aristotle, Ethics and Science Conference, St. Joseph's University, October 2008; also at the Canadian Philosophical Association annual meetings, Carleton University, May 2009) "Single Minded Decision-Making" (This paper is an improved version of one presented at the Colloquium of the Classics Department, Columbia University, March 2009; also at the Dissertation Presentation Seminar, Philosophy Department, Columbia University, April 2009) "Practical Truth" (This paper is an improved version of one presented at a meeting of the Scepticism Reading Group, Columbia University, March 2009) "Dispelling the Illusion: Aristotle on Pleasure" (To be presented at the Dissertation Presentation Seminar, Philosophy Department, Columbia University, December 2009) |