Through a Keyhole or an Open Door? Rhetoric and Pedagogy in Aristotle’s Ethics

• In Event: Reason, Rhetoric, and Narrative in the Formation of Community

Abstract

The paper explores a key aspect of what I take to be the political crux of the Ethics: the henomenon of admiration. As Aristotle indicates early in the Ethics, we come to admire things not when we are ignorant of them simply, but rather when we become aware of our ignorance over those things (1095a25). The ability to admire allows Aristotle to link two things within the text that scholars often regard as forced or disparate—on the one hand, the centrality of honor; on the other hand, the primacy of philosophy. By looking carefully at this notion of admiration, I argue that a more comprehensive, synoptic understanding of politics emerges from the text, within which the moral and intellectual virtues are not only connected, but are also mutually dependent upon man’s inherently political nature. To that end, I begin with Aristotle’s critique in Book I of the various ways of life that contend for the rank of highest or happiest, noting the importance of the very competition that gives rise to the question in the first place, as well as the suggestive nuances within Aristotle’s dramatic presentation.

Author

• Jeremy J. Mhire, Louisiana Tech University