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Episode 147: Aristotle on Wisdom and Incontinence

September 19, 2016 by Mark Linsenmayer 8 Comments

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/partiallyexaminedlife/PEL_ep_147_8-9-16.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:59:27 — 109.4MB)

Aristotle by Olle HalvarsOn the Nichomachean Ethics (ca. 350 BCE), books 6–7.

Is intelligence just one thing? Aristotle picks out a number of distinct faculties, some of which are relevant to ethics, and he uses these to explain Plato's puzzle of how someone can clearly see what the good for him is, and yet fail to pursue it due to weakness of the will.

This episode continues our discussion from way back in ep. 5, and was commissioned in honor of the wedding of Matthew Decker and Amanda Schloss.

This time around Mark, Wes, and Dylan talk a lot about the Greek terminology. For a cheat sheet on that, see this page, esp. part D., which goes through the different faculties (hexeis). The only one you should really remember in this context is phronesis, or practical wisdom, which involves both having the right goals and having the know-how re: what to do to pursue those goals. (By contrast, see Ana's post here on deinotes, or cleverness, which leaves out the having the right goals part.)

Buy the W.D. Ross translation that Mark used or read it online. Dylan refers to the Joe Sachs translation but read the Terence Irwin translation this time. Wes read this online translation by F.H. Peters.

End song: "I Die Desire" from The MayTricks (1992). Listen to the whole album free.

Aristotle picture by Olle Halvars.

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Filed Under: Podcast Episodes Tagged With: akrasia, Ancient Greek philosophy, Aristotle, Ethics, philosophy podcast, phronesis

Comments

  1. Luke T says

    September 25, 2016 at 11:00 am

    Great episode, guys! I want to clarify an important term, please. You guys dived into a lot of ancient Greek words/concepts here, but – so far as I could tell – never once mentioned akrasia, which has been mentioned in a lot of past episodes concerning the Classics. When we use the English word ‘incontinence,’ we are talking about what Aristotle would call akrasia, no? If there is either a subtle or major difference in the understanding of these terms, please kindly disabuse me. Thanks.

    Reply
  2. Tim says

    January 10, 2017 at 11:58 pm

    Check out the app Documents or PDF Expert for iOS, it has better tools for annotating than iBooks. Also if eye-fatigue is an issue, you can invert the screen via the accessibility menu (triple-click home shortcut) in settings.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Episode 148: Aristotle on Friendship and Happiness (Part One) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    October 3, 2016 at 7:01 am

    […] the other hand, the number one virtue (according to our last episode on this book) is reason, and the good life is the contemplative one, which doesn't sound all that social, so how […]

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  2. Episode 147: Aristotle on Wisdom and Incontinence (Part Two) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    February 4, 2017 at 12:02 pm

    […] to part 1 first, or better yet, get the Citizen edition that keeps the whole discussion intact, with no […]

    Reply
  3. Episode 158: Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy (Part One) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    February 13, 2017 at 9:14 am

    […] that can be taken away can't be of central importance; you can't lose your virtue in this way), Aristotelian (all things tend toward the good, and the best thing for a person is achieving his or her innate […]

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  4. Episode 166: Spinoza on Politics and Religion (Part One) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    June 26, 2017 at 1:09 am

    […] patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife), we saw that Spinoza does have a very Aristotelian notion (see ep. 147) of the relation between reason and virtue: To the extent that we are reasonable, we understand […]

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  5. Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XII: Michael Allen Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 30, 2017 at 7:00 am

    […] of contact came a loss of knowledge about the classics of philosophy, such as the work of Plato and Aristotle. These had, after all, been originally written in Greek, and since fluency in Greek and knowledge […]

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  6. The Philosophy of Aristotle: A Collection of Online Resources and Key Quotes | The Daily Idea says:
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