Evil in Aristotle

Description

Aristotle's notion of evil is highly elaborate and attractive, yet has been largely overlooked by philosophers. While most recent studies of evil focus on modern understandings of the concept, this volume shows that Aristotle's theory is an invaluable resource for our contemporary understanding of it. Twelve leading scholars reconstruct the account of evil latent in Aristotle's metaphysics, biology, psychology, ethics, and politics, and detect Aristotelian patterns of thought that operate at certain landmark moments in the history of philosophy from ancient thought to modern day debates. The book pays particular attention to Aristotle's understanding of 'radical evil', an important and much disputed topic. Original and systematic, this study is the first to provide a full exploration of evil in Aristotle's work, shedding light on its content, potential, and influence. The volume will appeal to scholars of ancient Greek philosophy as well as to moral philosophers and to historians of philosophy.

Pavlos Kontos is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Patras, and has published extensively on Aristotle's ethics and on phenomenology. He is the author of Aristotle's Moral Realism Reconsidered (2013) and L'action morale chez Aristote (2002).

'Altogether, the essays provide a comprehensive and ample taxonomy of the types of evil in Aristotle's philosophy.' M. Latzer, Choice 'This is the first volume devoted to Aristotle's thoughts on evil or badness (to kakon). The work calls attention to several relatively neglected areas of scholarship, and the contributions give any reader grounds for thinking that Aristotle has thoughts about to kakon that are sophisticated and worthy of deep philosophical engagement.' Samuel Baker, Journal of the History of Philosophy