Challenges of men between appearances: reflections about virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics

• Grant number: 19/11990-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2019
• End date: September 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marisa da Silva Lopes
• Grantee: Giácomo Fioritti Leandro
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In Nicomachean Ethics, III, 4, 1113a 15, Aristotle presents a problem that consists in knowing if the object of human desire is the good (tagathón) or the apparent good (tó phainómenon agathón). Aristotle's solution, according to Aubenque, would make the moral norm coincide with the valorous man, viz., the spoudaios. Now, from the notion of apparent good and from this aristotelian conception of "incarnate norm", in Aubenque's expression, we can see the difficulty of the possibility of thinking of a passage from vice to virtue within the philosophy of the Estagirite. After all, we understand that there is a problem that is even previous to the one thought by Aubenque. The latter wondered what would be the recipe for putting into practice what is recognized in the other, that is, how men could apply the virtue they saw in the spoudaios. But we question: how could men who are corrupted by the apparent good even recognize the spoudaios as a norm to be followed? We understand, therefore, that the problem of the development of virtue must deal with the difficulty of appearances, and we take it as our research objective to provide an answer about the reversibility of the apparent good.