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Chapter 6 - Aristotle on pleasure and activation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

David Wolfsdorf
Affiliation:
Temple University, Philadelphia
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Summary

As in Plato’s corpus so in Aristotle’s, the topic of pleasure arises in numerous passages. By far the most important of these occur in Aristotle’s ethical writings, specifically in Eudemian Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics, more precisely still in Eudemian Ethics, Book 6, sections 4–5 and sections 11–14; and in Nicomachean Ethics, Book 3, section 10; Book 7, section 4–5 and sections 11–14; and Book 10, sections 1–5.

An ethical treatise transmitted in the Aristotelian corpus and entitled Magna Moralia also contains an important discussion of pleasure (precisely, at Magna Moralia 2.7). There has been a long-standing debate over the authenticity of this work.

One further substantial treatment of pleasure occurs in Aristotle’s rhetorical treatise Rhetoric 1.11. Here again the treatment is closely related to ethics. At least, one of the central concerns of Aristotelian ethics is the cultivation of emotional dispositions, and one of the central concerns of rhetoric is manipulation of emotions.

There are also numerous, more cursory treatments or mentions of pleasure scattered throughout Aristotle’s corpus, for example, in the following logical, metaphysical, physical, biological, and psychological works: Posterior Analytics, Topics, Categories, Physics, On the Generation of Animals, On the Soul, and On Sense-Perception and Sensibles. Finally, pleasure plays an important role in a number of the surviving fragments of Aristotle’s Protrepticus, a work whose title translates as “Exhortation” and which, in contrast to all of the other works mentioned, was intended for a relatively broad and public audience as opposed to committed students of philosophy and specifically those of Aristotle’s school, alternately known as the Lyceum or Peripatos.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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References

Gosling, Justin and Taylor, Christopher, The Greeks on Pleasure, Clarendon Press, 1982, 198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Robin, “The Relationship of Aristotle’s Two Analytics,”Classical Quarterly 32 (1982) 327–335CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorabji, Richard, “Body and Soul in Aristotle,”Philosophy 49 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caston, Victor, “The Spirit and the Letter: Aristotle on Perception,” in Salles, R., ed., Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics, Oxford University Press, 2005, 245–320.Google Scholar
Hadreas, Peter, “Aristotle’s Simile of Pleasure at EN 1174b33,”Ancient Philosophy 17 (1997) 371–374CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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