Posts tagged ‘Aristotle’

Jul 9

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On Humans, Non-Humans and the Unity of Nature: Aristotle and Latour

I wrote most of this post in Nafplio, living close to nature.  The photograph is of the abandoned robin’s nest found in our hanging ivy planter.

There’s been a resurgence of conversation in philosophy about the role of the nonhuman in recent years.  I’ll be honest, I haven’t given it that much thought.  But I came to this ah-hah moment the other day in conversation with my lovely husband about sacrifice as the production of the distinction between gods and beasts and the subsequent production of the space in between: the site of the mortal.  How sacrifice does that is complicated (see Vernant, Girard, Burkart and Agamben), but the implication of this account is that the line between the beast and the human (and the god) needs to be produced.   Read more

Jun 25

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Neapoli, Pt. II: Local Guides, Byzantine Towns, and the Southernmost Point in Europe

In my last post I was singing the praises of the local host and guide over a guidebook.  Fittingly, I suppose, I spent the rest of the day working on the debate Aristotle stages in the Politics between those who support the rule of law and those who would advocate the rule of human beings.   Read more

May 21

Hellas Yes!

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. Melville, Moby Dick

On Monday, I get to sea.  I am traveling to Greece for five weeks.  First, a week in Athens and then south to Nafplio where most of June will be spent.  Brief forays to Delphi, Corinth, Mycenae and Sparta will interrupt writing work all thanks to funds from the Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professorship that I hold at Wabash College. Read more

May 14

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Thinking, Action and Civic Engagement

I spent the last two days attending the Faculty Workshop on Democracy and Civic Engagement at Wabash that was organized and facilitated mostly by members of the Rhetoric Department at Wabash.  It’s been glorious to slow down and take some time to think about the teaching we spend so much time doing, so I’m feeling rejuvenated and enthusiastic about planning for civic engagement components in the classroom.  One issue that kept recurring for me was the tension between, or at least, the question of whether there is a tension between, thinking and acting.  Plato and Aristotle both distinguish between actions you do for themselves and actions you do for some end outside of themselves, and they argue that actions that you do for themselves are better than actions you do for some product or goal beyond the action. I found myself concerned that measuring the success of a course in terms of some action that might come of it beyond the thinking that takes place within it privileges action and makes thinking instrumental to action.  This dispute reaches back to the ancients.  In Politics VII.3, Aristotle remarks that some people think that politics is a better life than philosophy because they think that politics is action but philosophy is not.  Aristotle accepts the view that a life of action is better than a life of inaction, but he rejects the idea that philosophy is not action in itself. Read more

May 1

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Rousseau and Aristotle

I’m working on a paper on politeuma, a Greek word sometimes translated as government and sometimes translated as constitution, in Aristotle.  Some ancient scholars argue that sometimes Aristotle means government by the term and sometimes he means constitution by the term.  I think that drawing that distinction is a uniquely modern way of thinking about the relation and we might be well-served to consider the dual meaning of the term without trying to distinguish those meanings.

I’m also teaching a class on Rousseau this semester where we’ve been reading Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality as well as On Social Contract.  I began to make an argument as a sidenote in the paper on Aristotle distinguishing Rousseau from Aristotle when I drew up short and realized that their positions might be so very close together that the differences between them might shed some light on the relationship between government and constitution in Aristotle and Rousseau.  In the spirit of public philosophy, I’m presenting that argument here.  I’m keen to hear your thoughts. Read more

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  I'm Chair and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. I work on ancient Greek--mainly Plato and Aristotle--and contemporary European philosophy inflected by social and political concerns. I'm particularly interested in the concept of nature and how historically nature, understood in relation to its apparent opposite of reason, nature, and artifice, has led to conceptions of community that require a founding exclusion. My first book argues that Aristotle's Politicsdraws on a conception of nature that is not opposed to these things and thus not exclusive. My second book considers Aristotle's conception of nature in his account of generation to show the ways that form and matter seem interdependent in the model of a Möbius strip.

  I am serious about running. I care about justice, feminism, opposing racism and resisting neoliberalism. I think Socrates was on to something when he suggested thinking was a practice of living. I teach students to think--and to live. I delight in the pleasures of doing the difficult thing.

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• Aristotle on the Nature of Community

  

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