It is better to reject the time in which Aristotle lived and focus on what he did say about care and the profound desire for the well-being of another person. Aristotle's concept of care was the Greek term philesis or philein which translates today into "love" or "friendly affection" and he uses it in the same way that Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings use "care" in ethics of care (Curzer 2007)
Why? Because politics is in part an elaborate defense against the tug of the private, against the lure of the familial, against evocations of female power. The question…is not just what politics is for but what politics has served to defend against (Elshtain; Okin 312)
" This interpretation of Aristotelian hierarchy stands in stark contrast to a literal interpretation of Aristotle's view of the man/wife dichotomy where there is no evaluation, the woman is mostly subservient to her husband. Instead, Groenhout claims, when people are denied a place in a hierarchy because of their gender, or race, it is not Aristotle's hierarchy that is objectionable, it is the criteria which gives the positions to certain individuals (Freeland p
Many women who work outside the home and have children would probably insist that they have two full time jobs, yet how many working fathers would say that? Somewhere in history, perhaps started by Aristotle or continued by him, it was decided that being a caretaker, a mother or a nurturer was somehow undesirable and unworthy. It cannot be ignored that Aristotle goes so far as to insist that women will never be as good of mothers as men will be as good of fathers, because women are just overall inferior to men (Hirshman 165)
Many women who work outside the home and have children would probably insist that they have two full time jobs, yet how many working fathers would say that? Somewhere in history, perhaps started by Aristotle or continued by him, it was decided that being a caretaker, a mother or a nurturer was somehow undesirable and unworthy. It cannot be ignored that Aristotle goes so far as to insist that women will never be as good of mothers as men will be as good of fathers, because women are just overall inferior to men (Hirshman 165)
While women now strive to hold important positions that only men once held, it does not make them men, and women still long to be mothers and wives, but the problem is that the women's personal lives somehow seem political. Some socialist feminists insist that the "personal is political has raised the possibility of liberating women through a total transformation of social relations" (Jaggar p
Aristotle sought out knowledge of the way the world is and, most importantly, sought to explain why the world is the way it is. Hegel's definition of philosophy was that it is "its own time apprehended in thoughts" (Okin 73)
Because of his insatiable desire for knowledge, Aristotle "poured himself into research with gargantuan passion and energy across an almost incredibly wide range. He mapped out for the first time many of the basic fields of enquiry" (Magee 33-34)
Everything that exists is the outcome of a process; and therefore, he thought, understanding in any broad area of reality always involves understanding a process of change" (Magee 159). Hegel was known to be among the most systematic of the philosophers in the period of "German idealism" and "attempted, throughout his published writings as well as in his lectures, to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic ontology from a 'logical' starting point" (Redding 1)
In this point, Cicero is in agreement with Aristotle who said that "it is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences." What this means is that it takes a like mind speaking to be appreciated and understood by the audience - our ability to reason is predicated upon our ability to comprehend the speech that is being constructed and delivered for our benefit (Erickson, 102)
In this form of rhetoric, there is a speaker and a listener and no interaction between the two. This is the most common form of political speech and what makes Cicero's particular variant of it so effective was that he absolutely believed in the inherent good that rhetoric can achieve, and an absolute belief that only those of good intention and moral character would be able to wield rhetoric in a believable and effective manner (Steel 24)
Aristotle does not limit the content of political speech to rational truth claims. Neither does he argue that deliberation in the public sphere would lead to a rational consensus," (Triadafilopoulos 741)
his purposes are good. His emotions, his thoughts, even his errors, have an ardent generosity" (Bastow, p
The Prologue gives us Oedipus, ruler over Thebes, who is asked for help by his people to rid them off a plague. It is this initial tragedy and because of Oedipus' commitment to the cause that his gradual awakening begins (Gill, About
And, as Aristotle suggested in Poetics, that the punishment in a tragedy should be much more severe than actually deserved in order to touch on the audience's emotions and feelings of pity, Oedipus atones for his actions by violently blinding himself and choosing self exile from Thebes and alienation from his daughters. As Ian Johnston stated, Oedipus is a paradox because he initiates his fatally downfall through self assertion (Johnston Lecture)
But he is eventually found and adopted by the Corinthian King, childless himself, thus fate being restored to its initial target. Already born noble of the King and Queen of Thebes, Oedipus "attains a second kind of nobility, albeit a false one" (Struck n
Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, gives a much different definition of virtue -- which is not to say that his definition is free of subjectivity; for it is very much rooted in his own time, just as Aristotle's is rooted in Ancient Greece. But while Aristotle recommends a standard of objectivity by which virtue may be subjectively judged, Hobbes recommends a subjective standard and objectively judges it as the standard for virtue: "Virtue generally, in all sorts of subjects, is somewhat that is valued for eminence; and consists in comparison" (Hobbes, p
This is why they contracted together to form governments, so that their own lives and property would be protected by the state. According to Robert Bellah, "we Americans take it for granted that "democracy is a good thing, indeed, politically, the best thing, and whatever opposes it is a very bad thing," but this was definitely not the view of Hobbes, Plato, Aristotle or Machiavelli (Bellah vii)
It does not come from money, appearance or good fortune, but from training citizens to become "good people who do fine actions" (Aristotle 12). Hobbes had a purely skeptical attitude toward individual virtue and morality, which were purely subjective so that "whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good" (Hobbes, p
Neither was motivated by traditional Christian morality or any type of moral principles, but by pragmatic considerations of power and self-interest and they also assumed that leaders of states would be similarly motivated. Even so, Machiavelli believed that republic were more difficult for monarchs to control since they had "greater vitality, more hatred, and a stronger desire for revenge" than princely states (Machiavelli 19)