Reflections on Reading Plato and Aristotle at Lancaster

Aristotle and Plato on Character

Little about Aristotle's chapter on the voluntariness of character (NE iii 5) is uncontroversial.l Some arguments Aristotle deploys are on their face formally invalid; the position he appears to defend has seemed so absufd that commentators have felt obliged to rescue him from it. Thus we find Susan Sauvd Meyer, Randall Curren, and Jean Roberts, amon&others, arguing that despite appearances Ari...

The Birth of Belief

Did Plato and Aristotle have anything to say about belief? The answer to this question might seem blindingly obvious: of course they did. Plato distinguishes belief from knowledge in the Meno, Republic, and Theaetetus, and Aristotle does so in the Posterior Analytics. Plato distinguishes belief from perception in the Theaetetus, and Aristotle does so in the de Anima. They talk about the distinc...

A. W. Price, Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle by Price, A. W. Review by: Susan Sauvé Meyer

Plato, like in most areas of philosophy, is the leading founder of the representational theory of the philosophy of art

representational theory of the philosophy of art. Though Plato builds the foundation of the mimetic theory of art, he does not finish the structure of his theory. His student Aristotle was one of the first to expand on Plato's foundation and refining his initial theory. While Plato largely dismisses artistic mimesis and the imitative arts, Aristotle is more supportive of them. This is because w...

Aristotle ’ s De spiritu as a Critique of the Doctrine of pneuma in Plato and His Predecessors

Th e treatise De spiritu of the Corpus Aristotelicum deserves better treatment than it has received since W. Jaeger in his 1913 article rejected its authenticity and dated it one hundred years after Aristotle. In this paper the authors argue that De spiritu defends purely Aristotelian viewpoints against persons like Plato and Empedocles, who held respiration to be the most important vital proce...