Home > Catalogo > Philosophica > Le varietà del naturalismo > Fear as a Destructive Pain
cover
cover

Fear as a Destructive Pain

Human Nature and Violent Affections in the Eudemian Ethics of Aristotle

Gaia Bagnati    Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia    

VIEW PDF DOWNLOAD PDF

abstract

In the discussion on bravery in Eth. Eud., III, 1 Aristotle determines the objects that are absolutely dreadful by means of an explicit reference to ‘human nature’. This reference has not received much consideration from scholars in the field. The present paper argues that the reference under discussion entails a notion of ‘human nature’ that corresponds to a human being’s psychological disposition to endure fearful emotions – that is to say, painful emotions that imply the representation of a pain capable of destroying a human being – up to a certain degree of intensity. Furthermore, this article claims that the same notion of ‘human nature’ is implied in Eth. Eud., II, 8 in the discussion of involuntariness concerning the cases of mixed actions where Aristotle refers to the ‘nature’ of the agent as a criterion to determine the involuntariness of an action.

Pubblicato
27 Luglio 2019
Accettato
25 Febbraio 2019
Presentato
05 Febbraio 2019
Lingua
EN
ISBN (PRINT)
978-88-6969-326-7
ISBN (EBOOK)
978-88-6969-325-0

Keywords: DispositionFearAristotleHuman natureSouPhysical painsSensible affections

Copyright: © 2019 Gaia Bagnati. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.