Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Kelvin Knight (talk | contribs) at 06:22, 11 November 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. Sometimes contrasted by critics with the rationalism and idealism (because itself empiricist and scientific) of Plato, Aristotelianism is understood by its proponents as critically developing Plato’s theories. Most particularly, Aristotelianism brings Plato’s ideals down to Earth as goals and goods internal to natural species that are realized in activity. This is the charateristically Aristotelian idea of teleology.

Elaborated by ancient commentators upon Aristotle’s work, Aristotelianism began its modern history with its reception by Islamic, Jewish and Christian scholars. The most famous of these scholars is Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas argued that the truth in Aristotle’s philosophy is complemented and completed by the truth revealed in the Christian tradition. The Roman Catholic Church has reasserted a Thomistic Aristotelianism since the 1870s.

After retreating under criticism from modern natural philosophers, the idea of teleology was transmitted through Christian Wolff and Kant to Hegel, who applied it to history as a totality. Although this project was criticized by Trendelenburg and Brentano as unAristotelian, Hegel’s influence is now often said to be resposible for an important Aristotelian influence upon Marx. Postmodernists, in contrast, reject Aristotelianism’s claim to reveal important theoretical truths. In this, they follow Heidegger’s critique of Aristotle as the greatest source of the entire tradition of Western philosophy. Recent Aristotelian ethical and ‘practical’ philosophy, such as that of Gadamer, is often premissed upon a rejection of Aristotelianism’s traditional metaphysical or theoretical philosophy. From this viewpoint, the early modern tradition of political republicanism, which views the public sphere or state as constituted by its citizens’ virtuous activity, can appear thoroughly Aristotelian.

The most famous contemporary Aristotelian philosopher is Alasdair MacIntyre. He opposes Aristotelianism to the philosophies of Nietzsche and Hume and to the managerial institutions of capitalism and its state. Famous for helping to revive virtue ethics, MacIntyre identifies Aristotelianism with the claim that the highest temporal goods are internal to human beings and are actualized through participation in social practices. He opposes Aristotelianism to rival traditions that reject the idea of essentially human goods and virtues. Aristotelianism, on MacIntyre’s account, is not identical with Western philosophy as a whole; rather, it is ‘the best theory so far’.

Further reading

Ferrarin, Alfredo, Hegel and Aristotle, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy (trans. P. Christopher Smith), Yale University Press, 1986.

Gerson, Lloyd P., Aristotle and Other Platonists, Cornell University Press, 2005.

Heidegger, Martin, Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, Indiana University Press, 2001.

Lobkowicz, Nicholas, Theory and Practice: History of a Concept from Aristotle to Marx, University of Notre Dame Press, 1967.

Lutz, Christopher Stephen, Tradition in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre: Relativism, Thomism, and Philosophy, Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.

McCarthy, George E. (ed.), Marx and Aristotle: Nineteenth-Century German Social Theory and Classical Antiquity, Rowman and Littlefield, 1992.

MacIntyre, Alasdair, Marxism and Christianity, Duckworth, 1995 (2nd edn.).

MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, University of Notre Dame Press, 1984; Duckworth, 1985 (2nd edn.).

MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, University of Notre Dame Press / Duckworth, 1988.

MacIntyre, Alasdair, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition, University of Notre Dame Press / Duckworth, 1990.

MacIntyre, Alasdair, ‘The Theses on Feuerbach: A Road Not Taken’, in Kelvin Knight (ed.), The MacIntyre Reader, University of Notre Dame Press / Polity Press, 1998.

MacIntyre, Alasdair, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, Open Court / Duckworth, 1999.

MacIntyre, Alasdair, ‘Natural Law as Subversive: The Case of Aquinas’ and ‘Rival Aristotles: 1. Aristotle Against Some Renaissance Aristotelians; 2. Aristotle Against Some Modern Aristotelians’, in MacIntyre, Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Riedel, Manfred (ed.), Rehabilitierung der praktischen Philosophie, Rombach, volume 1, 1972; volume 2, 1974.

Ritter, Joachim, Metaphysik und Politik: Studien zu Aristoteles und Hegel, Suhrkamp, 1977.

Stocks, John Leofric. 1925. Aristotelianism, Harrap.

• Philosophy
• Schools