Aristotle on the Apparent Good

亚里士多德论表面的善

• 批准号: AH/I001247/1
• 负责人: Jessica Moss
• 金额: $ 3.56万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2011 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FI001247%2F1
• 关键词: Aristotle; Apparent; Good

Talk of the 'apparent good' is pervasive in a philosophical tradition which stretches from Plato to the present, a tradition which holds that we desire things insofar as they appear good to us. It is particularly prominent in the works of Aristotle. In his psychological works the apparent good surfaces as the goal of all appetite-driven actions, human and animal. In the ethical works it plays a major role in the explanations both of human motivation and of moral error: we all strive for what appears good to us, but only to the virtuous person does what is truly good appear so. In fact, as I aim to demonstrate, the apparent good is a notion absolutely central to Aristotle's accounts of desire, motivation, emotions, deliberation, weakness of will, and the wish for happiness - in short, both to his philosophy of action and to his ethical theory.But what is it for something to appear good? What is the relation between such appearances and ordinary perceptual appearances? How and why are such appearances often false? Why does pleasure in particular appear good, as Aristotle claims (and as many would agree)? And how do appearances of goodness motivate desire and action? No sustained scholarly investigation has addressed these questions, or even recognized them as worth asking. This is doubtless in part because for many philosophers, talk of the apparent good is loose or metaphorical: to say that something appears good to someone is simply to say that she thinks it good, or that its appeal is particularly vivid. I want to show that Aristotle's case is different. Aristotle holds that things appear good to us, just as things might appear small or round or blue, in virtue of a psychological faculty responsible for quasi-perceptual phenomena like dreams, memories, visualization and optical illusions: 'imagination' (phantasia). If this is correct, then we can reach a better understanding of the notion of apparent goodness by applying the account Aristotle gives of phantasia and its role in motivation - an account we find in the psychological works - to the notion of the apparent good as it figures in his moral theory. My project in the book is to do just that. I argue that while no theory of the apparent good is explicit in the ethical works, these works assume a theory of the apparent good which we can derive from the psychological works. An appearance of goodness is a pleasurable, essentially motivating quasi-perceptual appearance, derived through phantasia from previous pleasurable perceptions.The result is a new interpretation of Aristotle's moral psychology which will be controversial in two important, and related, ways. First, it gives an absolutely central role to pleasure in human motivation and thereby in human virtue: not only our emotions and appetites, but also our thoughts about value, and thereby even our distinctively rational desires, are based on appearances of goodness, and therefore ultimately on pleasurable perceptions. Second, it greatly restricts the role of rational, intellectual thought in Aristotle's ethics: phantasia - non-rational cognition, i.e. a form of awareness that we share with lower animals, and that belongs to a non-rational part of the human soul - can identify particular objects and even general goals as good, a role that most interpreters of Aristotle have thought can only be played by intellect.I aim through the book to show that Aristotle's ethical views cannot be fully understood without attention to the connections between those views and his psychological theories of cognition and desire, as detailed in works like On the Soul and On Dreams. I also aim to show that Aristotle has important contributions to make to contemporary philosophical debates in some central areas where this has not yet been recognized: e.g. on the role of value-judgments in motivatingactions, the relation between value-judgements and desire, and the nature of the emotions.

从柏拉图到现在的哲学传统中，关于“表面上的善”的讨论是普遍存在的，这个传统认为，我们渴望的东西，只要它们对我们来说是好的。这在亚里士多德的著作中尤为突出。在他的心理学作品中，表面上的善是所有欲望驱动的行为的目标，无论是人类还是动物。在伦理学著作中，它在解释人类动机和道德错误方面发挥了重要作用：我们都在努力追求对我们来说似乎是好的东西，但只有对有美德的人来说，真正的好才是如此。事实上，正如我想要证明的那样，表面上的善是亚里士多德对欲望、动机、情感、深思熟虑、意志薄弱和幸福愿望的解释中绝对核心的概念--简而言之，是他的行动哲学和伦理学理论中的核心概念。这种现象和普通的知觉现象之间的关系是什么？这种外表如何以及为什么常常是错误的？为什么像亚里士多德所说的那样（许多人也会同意），快乐特别显得是好的？善良的外表是如何激发欲望和行动的？没有持续的学术研究已经解决了这些问题，甚至承认他们值得一问。毫无疑问，这部分是因为对许多哲学家来说，谈论表面上的善是松散的或隐喻性的：说某人认为某件事是好的，只是说她认为它是好的，或者它的吸引力特别生动。我想说明亚里士多德的情况是不同的。亚里士多德认为，事物在我们看来是好的，就像事物可能看起来小、圆或蓝一样，这是由于一种心理能力，这种心理能力负责准感知现象，如梦、记忆、可视化和视错觉：“想象力”（phantasia）。如果这是正确的，那么我们可以通过将亚里士多德对幻想及其在动机中的作用的描述--我们在心理学著作中发现的一种描述--应用于他的道德理论中的表观善的概念，来更好地理解表观善的概念。我在这本书中的计划就是这样做的。我认为，虽然没有明显的好的理论是明确的伦理作品，这些作品假设一个理论的明显的好，我们可以从心理学的作品。善的表象是一种令人愉悦的、本质上激励人的准知觉表象，它是从先前令人愉悦的知觉中通过幻想而衍生出来的。其结果是对亚里士多德道德心理学的一种新的解释，这种解释将在两个重要的、相关的方面引起争议。首先，它赋予了快乐在人类动机中的绝对核心地位，从而也赋予了它在人类美德中的绝对核心地位：不仅我们的情感和欲望，而且我们关于价值的思想，甚至我们独特的理性欲望，都是基于善的表象，因此最终也是基于快乐的感知。其次，它极大地限制了理性的、理智的思想在亚里士多德伦理学中的作用：幻想-非理性认知，即我们与低等动物共享的意识形式，属于人类灵魂的非理性部分-可以将特定对象甚至一般目标识别为好，亚里士多德的大多数解释者认为，只有智力才能发挥作用。我的目的是通过这本书表明，如果不注意这些之间的联系，亚里士多德的伦理观点就无法完全理解。观点和他的认知和欲望的心理学理论，如在《灵魂论》和《梦论》等作品中详细描述的那样。我还旨在表明，亚里士多德有重要的贡献，使当代哲学辩论在一些核心领域，这还没有得到承认：例如，价值判断的作用，在motivatingactions，价值判断和欲望之间的关系，和性质的情绪。

项目成果

Aristotle on the Apparent Good: Perception, Phantasia, Thought, and Desire

• DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656349.001.0001
• 发表时间: 2012-09
• 作者: Jessica Moss