Papers
Manuscripts available upon request.
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There is debate over whether Aristotle’s vicious person has internal harmony or is internally conflicted. The position one takes depends on how one resolves an apparent inconsistency which centers on vicious regret: in NE VII Aristotle claims that the intemperate person doesn’t regret; in NE IX.4 he claims that the vicious person does regret. I argue that, contrary to prominent interpretations, NE IX.4 suggests an unnoticed resolution. Aristotle’s account allows for two types of vicious person with different psychological states: one experiences regret and the other does not. This possibility follows from the way vicious people evaluate their own characters. (Under review)
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Interpreters of Aristotle’s account of prime matter face a tension generated by two of his commitments. First, everything that exists must have some qualities. Second, an underlying substratum must persist through every change. Prime matter is introduced as that which underlies the changes of the most fundamental tangible bodies: the elements. But the most fundamental matter can’t itself have further distinct matter. This suggests that it is quality-less. But then, if as has been thought by some commentators, prime matter is quality-less, it follows that prime matter cannot exist, and elemental change is left unexplained. This paper proposes a novel approach to this tension. I first develop a new interpretation of Aristotle’s account of elemental change in De Generatione et Corruptione. I argue that every element can change directly into every other element. Second, I argue that this interpretation introduces three criteria for any adequate account of prime matter. These three criteria undermine several prominent accounts of prime matter and suggest ways in which other accounts must be amended. (Under review)
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Classical Extensional Mereology’s (CEM) Axiom of Unrestricted Composition (AUC) is problematic if: (1) CEM, which includes AUC, is taken to provide an ontology, (2) an ontology should accommodate intuitions, and (3) CEM, understood to provide an ontology, can’t accommodate intuitions. Current debate focuses on whether to accept or deny (2). I argue on behalf of a third strategy which denies (3). I support this strategy by introducing a way to organize those fusions accepted by AUC: Unification. According to Unification, every fusion is unified to some degree by the relations between its parts. Unification relies on a gradable account of unity. I develop such an account on which a fusion is unified to the extent that the members of that fusion are resistant to division or exist contemporaneously. (Under review)
Dissertation: Vice in Aristotle
There is significant disagreement among scholars of Aristotle’s ethics regarding how best to interpret his account of the vicious person. Some support an interpretation on which the vicious person, like the virtuous person, has an internal harmony and acts in a principled way. Others hold that the vicious person is internally conflicted, full of regret, and lacks real principles for action. This disagreement is the result of an apparent inconsistency between several provocative claims Aristotle makes about the vicious person. The inconsistency arises from two passages in which Aristotle mentions the experiences vicious people have of regret. On the one hand, in NE VII.8. he claims that the intemperate person, a type of vicious person, is not prone to experience regret. On the other hand, in NE IX.4, he claims that the vicious person does experience regret. All present scholarship attempts to resolve this apparent inconsistency by explaining how the claims Aristotle makes about the vicious person can be reduced to those he makes in either NE IX.4 or NE VII.8. All of these attempts share the assumption that Aristotle can provide only a single account of the vicious person: only one of these accounts, or some combination of them, can be correct. My dissertation rescues both accounts by arguing that this assumption is false: Aristotle’s account of vice allows both for an internally harmonized and regretless vicious person and an internally discordant and regretful vicious person.
I argue for two theses which, jointly, resolve this debate and uncover the philosophical sophistication of Aristotle’s theory of vice. First, Aristotle is a pluralist about vice: his theory of vice and his moral psychology allow for there to exist vicious people with fundamentally different motivational structures. Second, this pluralism about vice importantly allows for the existence of both vicious people who have an internal harmony and act in principled ways and vicious people who are internally conflicted, full of regret, and lacking in real principles for action.