Teaching the Questions

Aristotle's Philosophical Pedagogy in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6402102
AutoresStephen Salkever, Stephen G Salkever (autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen69
Número2
Páginas192-214
Fecha de publicación2007-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670507000514
OpenAlexW2097786102
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16

It is widely acknowledged that the style of Plato's political philosophizing is radically different from the systems and doctrines approach established by Hobbes and confirmed and redirected by Kant. But what about Aristotle? Does he intend to produce systematic political theory in sharp contrast to Plato's question-centered dialectics? This essay argues that Aristotle's political science is equally as dialogical as Plato's. Taken together, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics form a single set of lectures, craftily organized to lead its immediate Greek audience (the equivalent of Socrates' interlocutors in Plato) deeply into the questions and problems that are Aristotle's theoretical basis for the paradigmatically human activities of practical reason (phronêsis) and thoughtful choice (prohairesis). He accomplishes this goal by allowing none of the answers he or his audience might propose to stand unchallenged, thus acting as another, albeit soberer, Socrates to his politically concerned audience then and, potentially, now

Art · Dialectic · Dialogical self · Epistemology · Literature · Political science · Politics · SOCRATES · Style (visual arts · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought