Ethics Assignment

In lieu of turning in the study questions for The Nichomachean Ethics, which I encourage you to work through also, here is a link to a grid which asks you to evaluate "The Insincere Man" and "The Show-Off" according to Aristotle's sense of excellence. Please print out and fill in.
https://eee.uci.edu/07f/29033/home/Theophrastus+1+.doc

(The document is on the class website. If this link doesn't work, go to the website https://eee.uci.edu/07f/29033 and then click to this, which is labeled "Theophrastus."

Where is the Soul?

Focus passages for discussion:

• actualizing/potential--page 165 lines 17-22, 166: 27-28, 169: 21 (and surrounding)
• paradigms of the soul: wax, ax, eye ... sailor?--pages 166-167
• the intellect, as unmixed?!--page 195 lines 18-28
• 4 causes and faculties of the soul--pages 171-172 lines 9-12

original manuscript, Sappho, poems.

Grimm Causes

coal, bean, thread, stream, plate, fire, tailer, lady, seamed bean, village, straw, bridge, broth/soup, needle, bean exploding, coal hissing, coal burning straw, straw laying down, tailor sewing, woman cooking, escaping/running away of the three, bridge breaks, bean laughs, coal falls in river, etc...

On the Soul

With Aristotle's essay, "On the Soul," we are presented with a new dimension of his thinking--that of what it means to be alive. We are asked to think through the analogy: soul:body <=> aristotle-shape:bronze, which pulls the physics and the discussion of form and matter into the question of the soul. What is the Soul? What problems and challenges does it present to you as a reader and as a thinker?

Aristotle Questions (ii)

What are the four causes? exampes?

Aristotle Questions (i)

from Physics:

What is the role of the underlying in change? Could there be change only from opposite to opposite without an underlying? exampes?

Aristotle/Bacon Questions

Here are a few remaining from homework:

1. What is a negative thesis? a positive thesis? What is Bacon's positive thesis?
2. What are the conditions for a rhetorically sound enthymeme?
3. What is the general form of a paradigm?

The Powers of Condensation

One of the points we did not touch on Wednesday is why enthymemes are more powerful when condensed. Professor Schwab mentions this in reference to an example of an enthymeme from Bacon; he says that it is just as Aristotle had predicted in I.2.13. Condensation does not just produce a "better" enthymeme, however, it is also one of the requirements listed for a rhetorically adequate enthymeme. Why?

Week One: Aristotle

Image: Aristotle and Phyllis, Oscar Kokoschka. Original lithograph, 1914. The image depicts the philosopher Aristotle saddled and ridden by Phyllis, a young woman whom he had previously told Alexander to avoid, because rulers needed to rule their passions. After Aristotle himself fell in love with her, she punished him by showing him that men are indeed the slaves of their lusts. A favorite theme in the art of the early German Renaissance, Kokoschka is here reviving it in recognition of his own enslavement to his desires for Alma Mahler.

After thinking about thinking more broadly in the first class, we will focus on Aristotle's concepts of logos (involving enthememes and paradigms), ethos, and pathos, and we will be analyzing the rhetoric of Bacon's preamble (titled "Francis of Verulam") to The Great Instauration of Francis of Verulam. This is the topic of the first essay (which is due on Wednesday of Week 3). Please find the link to the prompt for Essay One below and read it through as soon as possible; we will begin discussing the prompt in more detail on Wednesday, but in the meantime, please feel free to ask me questions about it (or other things) or to send me an email.

Now you can post questions below, and comments! There has been a lot of room for confusion in this first week, so please comment below if you have questions, problems, concerns, etc,...