Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword to the English Edition
- Foreword to the First Edition
- Translator's Acknowledgments
- Translator's Note
- Translator's Introduction
- Introduction
- Part I Abstract Thinking versus Concrete Sensation: The Opposition between Culture and Nature in Modernity
- Part II “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 3 The Interpretation of “Antiquity” from the Perspective of Modern Rationality
- Chapter 4 The Epistemological Foundations of a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 5 Abstract Consciousness versus Concrete Thought: Overcoming the Opposition between Feeling and Reason in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 6 The Soul in a Philosophy of Consciousness and in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 7 The Different Forms of Volition and Their Dependence upon Cognition
- Chapter 8 The Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Significance of a Culture of Feelings in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 9 Theory and Practice: Plato's and Aristotle's Grounding of Political Theory in a Theory of Man
- Chapter 10 Evolutionary and Biological Conditions for Self-Preservation and Rational Conditions for Man's Self-Realization: An Appeal for a New Evaluation of Rationality
- Conclusion: A Comparison of Two Fundamental Forms of European Rationality
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 8 - The Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Significance of a Culture of Feelings in Plato and Aristotle
from Part II - “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword to the English Edition
- Foreword to the First Edition
- Translator's Acknowledgments
- Translator's Note
- Translator's Introduction
- Introduction
- Part I Abstract Thinking versus Concrete Sensation: The Opposition between Culture and Nature in Modernity
- Part II “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 3 The Interpretation of “Antiquity” from the Perspective of Modern Rationality
- Chapter 4 The Epistemological Foundations of a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 5 Abstract Consciousness versus Concrete Thought: Overcoming the Opposition between Feeling and Reason in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 6 The Soul in a Philosophy of Consciousness and in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 7 The Different Forms of Volition and Their Dependence upon Cognition
- Chapter 8 The Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Significance of a Culture of Feelings in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 9 Theory and Practice: Plato's and Aristotle's Grounding of Political Theory in a Theory of Man
- Chapter 10 Evolutionary and Biological Conditions for Self-Preservation and Rational Conditions for Man's Self-Realization: An Appeal for a New Evaluation of Rationality
- Conclusion: A Comparison of Two Fundamental Forms of European Rationality
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Does Aristotle Reduce Feelings to Abstract Experiences of Pleasure?
One would have to consider significantly more aspects than those discussed so far, for an accurate presentation of the Platonic-Aristotelian analysis of what in contemporary language is called feeling or emotion. However, a basic evaluation of the individual aspects that have been discussed thus far has already become possible; one that, I hope, will also be able to counter the objection that a rational analysis such as that proposed by Plato and Aristotle can never do justice to the richness of the world of feeling.
If one approaches the Aristotelian arguments as he presents them (for example in the central chapters devoted to pleasure in book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics) from the perspective that a feeling is an essentially non-rational, psychic complex (and one could proceed analogously for Plato), it seems as though Aristotle only had a very limited concept of feeling. He appears to consider feelings only under the aspect of whether arbitrary activities are experienced as pleasurable or without pleasure, as agreeable or disagreeable. It thus seems as though the entire complexity, internal disparity, and, especially, the quite concrete “intelligence” of feelings has been left out of consideration.
However, against this objection, we may note that it is not Aristotle who robs feelings of their nuances and their intelligence. Rather, this is merely the impression that arises, if, while reading his texts, one accepts as self-evident the presupposition that feelings have a fundamentally unique mode of existence, one that is independent of conscious rationality.
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- Modernity and PlatoTwo Paradigms of Rationality, pp. 333 - 371Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012