Aristotelian Essays

  • Macbeth as the Aristotelian Tragic Hero

    1104 Words  | 3 Pages

    Macbeth as the Aristotelian Tragic Hero The first criterion that a tragic hero must comply to is that they must be above average.  They must be Khrestos.  Macbeth is khrestos.  He is described as "valour's minion" 1-2 19.  Valour's minion means bravery's favourite.  Also he is spoken of as "brave" and "Bellona's bridegroom".  Bellona was the goddess of war.  Duncan, the king, describes Macbeth as "noble".  And also uses a familiar term for Macbeth, as if he is in the kings family.  "o' valiant

  • Aristotelian Perspectives on Social Ethics

    4408 Words  | 9 Pages

    Aristotelian Perspectives on Social Ethics I examine the philosophical perspectives of Aristotle on issues of medical ethics and on his social ethics in general, including the moral issues of abortion, euthanasia, and other issues of social ethics such as the issue of cloning. I have chosen the domain of applied ethics as viewed from the Aristotelian point of view precisely because certain issues have been virtually unexamined by scholars. I shall direct attention to certain treatises of the Aristotelian

  • Hamlet As An Aristotelian Tragedy

    583 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the Aristotelian view of tragedy, a tragic hero must fall through his or her own error. This is typically called the "tragic flaw", and can be applied to any characteristic that causes the downfall the hero. Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark can be seen as an Aristotelian tragedy and Hamlet as it's tragic hero. Hamlet's flaw, which in accordance with Aristotle's principles of tragedy causes his demise, is his inability to act. This defect of Hamlet's character is displayed throughout

  • Shakespeare's Macbeth - Aristotelian Tragedy

    1814 Words  | 4 Pages

    Macbeth: Aristotelian Tragedy The  definition of tragedy in an excerpt from Aristotle's "Poetics" is the re-creation, complete within itself, of an important moral action.  The relevance of Aristotle's Poetics to Shakespeare's play Macbeth defines the making of a dramatic tragedy and presents the general principles of the construction of this genre. Aristotle's attention throughout most of his Poetics is directed towards the requirements and expectations of the plot.  Plot, 'the soul

  • Ancient Greek Health Theories: Understanding the Melancholic Mean in Aristotelian Problema XXX.1

    5206 Words  | 11 Pages

    Ancient Greek Health Theories: Understanding the Melancholic Mean in Aristotelian Problema XXX.1 ABSTRACT: In ancient Greek theories of health, it was the equal balance or mixing of the humors or elements (i.e., the isonomic mean) that comprised the ideal healthy state. In the Aristotelian Problema XXX.1, however, there is a description of a form of melancholic constitution that is both 1) itself characterized as a mean, and 2) thought to lead to intellectual outstandingness. This is theoretically

  • The Metaphor of Light

    4284 Words  | 9 Pages

    that may be found in it, and (3) analyse the concept of entelecheia as the process by which the active intellect actualizes intelligibles in the sense of the final cause. One of the classic problems, and one of the most difficult to solve in Aristotelian philosophy, is that there is no text in which Aristotle explicitly states how the intellect manages to make 'intelligibles in actuality', that is, ideas. What he says in the fifth chapter of the third book of De Anima, instead of clarifying how

  • Free Hamlet Essays: The Perspective of Aristotle on Hamlet

    1960 Words  | 4 Pages

    character, plot and setting to create a mood of disgust and a theme of proper revenge, as opposed to fear and pity, hence Aristotle would have disapproved of Hamlet. It is the above mentioned elements; character, plot and setting, used in a non- Aristotelian way, that makes Hamlet work as a one of the English language's most renown tragedies. By proper revenge we refer to the Elizabethan view that revenge must be sought in certain cases, for the world to continue properly. This is the main plot of

  • Analysis of Ronald Reagan's Sppech, The Challenger Disaster

    1739 Words  | 4 Pages

    While seated in the Oval Office of the White house, January 28, 1986 President Ronald Reagan delivers his speech The Challenger Disaster; hours after the space shuttle The Challenger explodes while in take off. Thousands witnessed this horrifying event live in person and on television. This mission was very unique allowing the first civilian to ever be allowed in space during a mission. She was aboard The Challenger as an observer in the NASA Teacher in Space Program. Ironically, nineteen years before

  • Ptolemaic Theory vs Copernican Theory

    1908 Words  | 4 Pages

    to when he wrote his letter to Foscarini in 1615 was due to the inability of anyone to prove the superiority of either the Copernican or Ptolemaic/Aristotelian theory to the other. Both theories of the universe, although “saving the appearances” made by astronomers over the years, offered a different explanation of celestial mechanics. The Aristotelian theory held that the earth is motionless at the center of the universe, and that the sun, planets, and stars revolve daily around it. It was the most

  • Oedipus the King: Does Oedipus Satisfy the Definition of a Good Man?

    1412 Words  | 3 Pages

    inadvertently fulfills the prophecy. Unknowingly, Oedipus kills his father and enters the bed of his mother.  Was Oedipus was a good man who happened to suffer an unfortunate fate, or was he a truly bad person, whose fate was only just?  If we accept the Aristotelian views of good and bad, as expressed in The Good, Oedipus was indeed a good man by saving the city, ruling justly and searching for the truth although his anger could be seen as a flaw. In his first dealings with the city of Thebes, Oedipus

  • Heidegger and the Logic of Categorical Syllogisms

    1178 Words  | 3 Pages

    propositions) or an entire class of essents (the universal A and E propositions), the subject or subject-class, relates in some way (belongs or does not belong) to a class of essents designated by the predicate of the proposition. The traditional, or Aristotelian, standpoint for evaluating the truth or falsity of these propositions assumes that each class designated by a term in the subject and predicate actually exists. This allows certain conclusions to be drawn regarding the relationship between the

  • Ethics and Community in Aristotle

    5410 Words  | 11 Pages

    into being and values, we are not free to reject them, nor can we have any discourse or claim to reality or good. I show how permutating the combination of these topics allows for subsequent ‘sub-communities’ which are common to some. I offer an Aristotelian explanation for the origin of these topics and conclude that ethics is determined by communities, which in turn are determined by education. Aristotle's ethics is determined by his notion of communities which are determined by hundreds of topics

  • Presuppositions Of The Game Theory

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    Presuppositions of The Game Theory Soloman believes that as the game theory gets more sophisticated, we tend to lose sight of the problem rather than solve it. He sees the problem as how to get people to think about business and about themselves in an Aristotelian rather than a neo-Hobbesian (or even a Rawlsian) way, which the game theoretical models simply presuppose. Soloman discusses seven presuppositions in the first section of his "Ethics & Excellence" book. They are: rationality and prudence; motivation

  • Justice in Ancient and Modern Literature

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    have a notion of. However we differ in our implementation of it, we all know when it’s been violated. Many of the seeds of our modern idea of justice have existed for millennia. Those seeds comprise two basic forms based on Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian thought – Should justice be rooted on a higher ideal or is justice primarily something established by us in the here and now? For one justice my involve taking the life of another as just recompense for previous crimes while another my feel that

  • Aristotle's Perspective of Friendship in Homer's Iliad

    2390 Words  | 5 Pages

    An Aristotelian Examination of Friendship in Homer's Iliad It is strange to label any friendship a success or a failure; it is stranger still to call the friendship between Achilleus and Patroklos a failure, especially when it has long been celebrated as one of the greatest friendships in antiquity. After all, friendship is called a success when friends remain just that, and a failure when they part ways with diffidence. How else could we possibly judge friendship? I suggest, however, that the

  • Aristotle's Logical Foundation of Physiognomics

    1906 Words  | 4 Pages

    physiognomical first approach to each other is as old as humankind, and, though it has never been able to be proved a proper science, in everyday life we all believe in and use physioculture. The earliest extant written work on the subject is the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Physiognomonica. The author of its first part, in discussing the methodology of the art, refers to Aristotle, who develops the logical foundation of physiognomical inference: as an enthymeme, a syllogism from signs. Yet, concentrating

  • Art and Republicanism

    3136 Words  | 7 Pages

    Republicanism ABSTRACT: Republicanism is contrasted with liberalism with special reference to the notions of presence, absence and representation. The contrast is more conspicuous in the Platonic tradition of republicanism than it is in the Aristotelian tradition, the former being more likely to degenerate into some form of totalitarianism. Examples thereof are given in accordance with the distinction between a strong and a soft iconoclasm, as it is found both in Antiquity and in Eastern and Western

  • St Thomas Aquinas

    900 Words  | 2 Pages

    also a highly successful lecturer, and travelled widely across Europe, particularly on the business of his order and the church. In his short and active life, Thomas produced a prodigious amount of writing: commentaries on biblical books and Aristotelian work, short essays on philosophical problems, and a lengthy compendium of Christian apoletices, the Summa Centra Gentiles, which, as Chambers et. al. writes was probably intended for Dominican missionaries working to convert heretics and infidels

  • Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is A Modern Tragedy

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    deviate somewhat from the basic tenets of Aristotelian tragedy and, in doing so, began to create plays more recognizable to the common people and, thereby, less traditional. Even so, upon examination, the basic plot structure of some modern tragedies actually differs very little from that of the ancient classics. In spite of its modernity, Arthur Miller's great twentieth-century tragedy, Death of a Salesman, can be successfully compared to the Aristotelian description of traditional tragedy. According

  • Aristotelian Tragedy

    587 Words  | 2 Pages

    Aristotelian Tragedy One may argue that the Greek playwright, Sophocles modeled his play Oedipus Rex on Aristotle's definition and analysis of tragedy. Since according to Aristotle's definition, a tragedy is an imitation of action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished artistic ornaments, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not narrative with incidents that evokes pity and fear of a persons emotions. Also