Plato's Ghost: Consequences of Aristotelian Dialectic
C. Wesley DeMarco
In Sim, ed., The Crossroads of Norm and Nature. Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.

"Aristotle's dialectic method puts out of play the theoretical extremes that assert that all is substance or that there is no substance (1060b6), just as it eschews the extremes that say that all is changing or nothing is changing, everything is true or nothing is true, everything or nothing is intelligible, and so on. Further, since the desire lurking in the heart of philosophical dialectic is that which is unitary and independent, a definite something that is definable, final and said in virtue of itself, options that do not exhibit these characteristics must be derivative if they be at all." (DEMARCO, p. 153) [PSA: This might also apply in ethics, i.e., with respect to the mean.]

"Dialectic is Aristotle's way to first principles. It moves from what is first for us to what is first in itself, from what is compound and relational to what is separate and simple, from what is multiple to what is one, from what is said in virtue of something else to what is said in virtue of itself; it passes from what is dependent to what is independent, from what is indefinite to what is definite; it transits from what is incomplete to what is complete. These moves set the criteria of autarchy or independence, definiteness and definability, completeness and finality so pivotal in the selection and transformation and placement of rival views." (DEMARCO, p. 154) [PSA: these same factors likely apply to ethics, e.g. in the criteria for eudaimonia.]

"[T]he philosophical act - and our act of interpretation - consists in making those qualifications that articulate the various ways things are said, the relative places of the rectified claimants, and the kinds of priorities and criteria invoked in their mutual adjustments. No viable candidate is excluded, but none is left untransformed. Each is reshaped under the intense pressure of Aristotelian thinking, and dialectic is the transformer. It is Aristotle philosophical dialectic that lets the candidates be included, and that prescribes how and how far they are included." (DEMARCO, p. 154)

"For Aristotle, even the difference between the road from Athens to Thebes and the road from Thebes to Athens is a difference in being (see 433b22-25 and 1066a30-34). This is not at all an unfamiliar move in Aristotelian writing. In the Nicomachean Ethics, for instance, Aristotle claims that 'politics and phronesis are the same habit, though they differ in being' (1141b23-24). And at 1130a13-14, he claims that 'virtue is the same as justice, but what it is to be virtue is not the same as what it is to be justice.' Such aspectual qualifications yield differences in *being*." (DEMARCO, p. 157)

"[I]n the Nicomachean Ethics ... each of us is said to be nous, or to be it [most] of all (1166a23, 1169a [sic], 1170a18, 1170a20, 1170a34ff, 1178a3, 1178a7). Hence all that we do is for our theoretical part; that is, if we are to be well and to be a true friend to ourselves (1166a17). Nous is the principal part of our form (1177a15, 1178a3). It is the best thing and supreme element in us (1177a5, 1177a13, 1177a21, 1178a3), and if we are to be true to ourselves we must indulge and obey this authoritative part in everything (1168a32). On the other hand, we are plainly composite beings. It may seem odd that Aristotle should, when writing of a human being, add 'insofar as he is a human being' (1178b5) or 'as a human being' (1178b34) - what else could one be? But these verbal qualifications are needed precisely because human being is qualified being. We are neither composite wholes simply, nor forms simply, nor bodies simply. And if we cannot straightforwardly identify our being with one or the other, much less can we so identify our activities (1178a10) or our excellences (1178a21, 1178a14 [sic]). If we say with Aristotle that the virtues of the composite whole (1178a21-22) are excellences of action and emotion, and if we say that theoretical excellence is the perfection of the formal part, then since we are neither entirely one nor the other, we cannot entirely identify our happiness with one or the other." (DEMARCO, p. 158)

"The forms of philia correspond to the several bioi posed as candidates for the happy life. Once dialectically articulated, the several candidates are all shown to count as forms of philia, but, like the bioi, are found to have a telos that the 'incomplete' forms approach to a greater or lesser extent. The incomplete and dependent forms are and are called friendship just to the extent that they approach the final form (1157a32, 1158b8). Moreover, the best draws the others up into itself and perfects them: the finality of friendship, philosophical friendship, is *also* the most pleasant." (DEMARCO, p. 160, citing 1158a23 and 1157a1)

"[T]he same articulation of differences is found in the types of friendship as in types of good and the forms of life. These ethical topics are articulated in the same way as the metaphysical topics described above. For this reason, we can relate the goods of the Nicomachean Ethics to the nose analogy of the Metaphysics. Utility corresponds to 'flesh,' and pleasure and health (bodily) to 'nose.' Moral virtue perfects the whole, which is aligned with 'snub.' Phronesis perfects the species form that is analogous to 'snubness.' Sophia perfects the formal part (the principal part of the rational part of the soul that is part of our being as a whole) that corresponds to 'concavity.' This finality is achieved by awakening our best part (with which we are, with qualification, identical) in its best condition to its best object, the first cause of all being." (DEMARCO, p. 160)

"Moral and intellectual excellence on the one hand stand to material and external goods on the other hand as essence to its accidents, while within the essence, moral virtue stands to phronesis as form informing matter to pure form, and phronesis stands to theoria as form to the principal part of the form. And what is the relation of these goods? The good of the whole is to the good of the form as the order in an army to that of its general: the good is in both, but most especially in the latter, since it is the cause of the former. This is the dual meaning of teleion." (DEMARCO, p. 161) [PSA: this might be helpful w.r.t. completeness.]

"Aristotelian phronesis, distinct from the virtues of character, is an intellectual excellence and hence teachable. It is a knowledge of the truth in action (1140b4, 1140b23) and how to apply it reasonably. To possess this intellectual virtue is ipso facto to possess all the moral virtues. Phronesis has no means/extreme structure, admits of no contraries (1140b22), and cannot ever be misused. How this is possible is the real problem of 'intellectualism' in Aristotle's ethics. And he distinguishes his view from that of the Platonic Socrates, in the end, by recourse to a qualification, by a little prepositional operator 'with.' The most pivotal phrase in the Ethics is, on this score, 'hemeis de meta logou' (1144b30)." (DEMARCO, p. 162) [PSA: This seems slightly exaggerated. It ignores the contraries of phronesis mentioned in EE II.3, artificially separates phronesis from virtue when Aristotle explicitly says that they cannot be separated, and belittles the significance of 'meta logou' as something like "unified with" or "suffused with" reason; see also BURNYEAT-1981 on the ability to give an account.]

END