EUDAIMONIA IN ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS

• Grant number: 16/15726-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: January 01, 2017
• End date: April 30, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Maciel Gazoni
• Grantee: Fernando Maciel Gazoni
• Host Investigator: Benjamin Morison
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Princeton University, United States

Abstract

Frege, in "About Sense and Reference", asserts that finality is a kind of thinking (Gedanke), i.e., finalities are intensional. This fact, however, has never been fully accounted in ethical Aristotelian studies, an Ethics which is deeply teleological. For a long time, then, it has been affirmed that the argument that opens Book I, Chapter 2 of Nicomachean Ethics (1094 a18-22) is an example of the Quantifier-Shift Fallacy, the same fallacy that is present in the following reasoning: as every boy loves a girl, there is a girl (Rachel, for instance) that is loved by every boy. In its Aristotelian version, the reasoning is: as every action has an end, there is an end (eudaimonia) that every action has. Nonetheless, if a non-extensional concept like finality is introduced, the reasoning is reshaped: if every boy loves a girl and has as his goal to win over the beloved girl, there is a single objective that every boy has, namely, to win over his beloved girl. This research project aims at analyzing the concept of eudaimonia taking into account its non-extensional character and at offering a new interpretation for it, which may imply a reconfiguration of the debate between the dominant and inclusivist versions of eudaimonia.