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Having argued in Chapter 1 that for Ambrose the divisive tension between the soul and the body is not the proper relationship as God intended it in creation, but is the result of the fall, this chapter examines Ambrose’s understanding of the proper relationship between soul and body. It is argued that Ambrose subscribes to a hylomorphic anthropology akin to that of both Aristotle and Plotinus. Yet given his commitment to the immortality of the soul, Ambrose’s view is closer to Plotinus than Aristotle. This hylomorphic anthropology provides a model for understanding Ambrose’s view of human emotions or passions.

This chapter explores Socrates argument for the proper activity of eros: philosophical activity. Since eudaimonia is the aim of all eros and its proper end (telos), our choice of good must be one that will satisfy this desire: it must be a good whose possession no longer requires us to ask of the agent what she wants in pursuing it, something desired for its own sake, a final good. It is argued that the issue that structures the division of the productive activities of different desiring agents into the lower and higher mysteries is what we might term a division of ends. The desiring agents of the lower mysteries pursue things that are chosen for the sake of something higher, whilst the desiring agent of the higher mysteries pursues that which is chosen for its own sake. The chapter goes on to give some content to this idea, and argues that contemplation of a supremely valuable object — the Form of beauty — satisfies the criterion for being a final good. Contemplative activity is not desired for anything beyond itself, and it is a secure good in the sense that it is true, and a state of the agent's own soul, not dependent on external events for its possession. It is also the fulfilment of our nature and godlike.

There are two discussions of Aristotle that can be taken as bookends in the Derridean corpus: ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’ (1972) and Politics of Friendship (1994). This article argues that Derrida's departure from and return to Aristotle follows the narrative logic of an Odyssean nostos whose Indo‐European, ‘white mythological’, provenance is precisely the solar myth of the dying and reborn sun and whose root nes‐* (‘return to light and life’) also lies behind the noun nous. Derrida resists the safe nostos of a philosophical nous that seeks only an unerring return voyage to its point of origin. Derrida's nostos, although it is charted between Occident (Greek) and Orient (Jew), embraces the errancy of a voyage with neither a fixed origin nor a final destination.

This chapter examines the role of the practical intellect in Aristotle's ethics, arguing that it is not confined to deliberation about means, but that it includes the achievement of the right conception of ends. Close examination of the texts indicates that the achievement of that conception requires rational thought, trained perception of individual cases, and critical examination of generally accepted beliefs, but Aristotle does not spell out a single explicit account. Some texts suggest that the role of the practical intellect is simply to make determinate, via trained moral perception, the indeterminate conception of the life of virtue, others that it has in addition the task of establishing a more determinate conception, specifically the life of theoretical thought, as the highest good.

As a backdrop for considering Gregory’s understanding of faith, we discuss how Gregory views the mind itself. How the mind is affected by the passions.Discusses the dispersed mind, the grasping mind, the mind and the intelligible, the mind’s ascent, the mind, and grace.

In designating a non-discursive faculty of apophatic union, Gregory is doing nothing new. This chapter explores parallels in Middle and Neoplatonism: Celsus, The Chaldaean Oracles, Plotinus. Gregory ascribes to faith many of the same qualities as others did to faculties of union, yet Gregory differs markedly in the dynamic, exegetical, and sacramental character he accords faith as an apophatic faculty.

The image of the Alsatian woman continues to be used as a cultural emblem, yet her historical and political significance, whether real or invented, has largely been forgotten. Moreover, Alsatian memory and the French memory of Alsace have become almost exclusively masculine. This masculinization is especially apparent in the way Alsatians remember the period of Nazi re-annexation. The representatives of Nazi oppression are the tragic Malgré-nous, Alsatians and Mosellans drafted by force into the Wehrmacht, while women's experiences and collective identity fall outside the realm of national memory and commemoration. Marianne or Germania concludes by questioning this continued exclusion. As the book has demonstrated, by taking a gendered approach to Alsace's fascinating history, in which both men and women have played a variety of roles, we gain further insight into the complexities of German and French nation-building, and the processes of national identity formation.

This chapter reassesses Anaxagoras' relation to Parmenides in light of the modal interpretation of Parmenides developed in Chapters 2 to 4. After an initial orientation to the fundamental tenets of Anaxagoras' physical theory, the chapter critiques the conventional view that Anaxagorean elemental stuffs are intended to be a plurality of Parmenidean entities. It then demonstrates how Anaxagoras' theory of material composition responds effectively instead to certain of Zeno's antinomies. If anything in Anaxagoras' system can be regarded as the analogue of Parmenidean Being, it is Mind or Nous and not his elemental stuffs, which are instead the functional analogues of the principles of Parmenides' cosmology, light and night. Acknowledging the true structural correspondence between their two systems, and abandoning the presumption that Anaxagorean stuffs are meant to be a plurality of Parmenidean beings, opens the way to a better understanding of Anaxagoras' physical theory and its sophisticated compositional hierarchy.

A central thesis of Aristotelian virtue ethics is that practical wisdom cannot be captured in a tractable set of general principles. This raises the question how virtue might be learned and how we could ever fully articulate or assess our ethical convictions. The task of this chapter is to retrieve a recognizably Aristotelian view that is capable of clarifying these puzzles. On this view, we learn to be good by engaging in relationships sustained by continuously deepening approval by each participant of the other participant's evaluative outlook considered in itself. Healthy parent‐child relationships and good friendships are both relationships of this sort. The seeds of this view can be found in Aristotle's discussion of friendship (philia). This chapter develops a recognizably Aristotelian idea of philia and shows that it both fosters, and requires for its flourishing, an uncodifiable evaluative outlook whose verdicts are affirmable from all relevant social perspectives. This recognizably moral achievement emerges not as a limit on self‐interested pursuits but as a concomitant of a kind of human relationship that is essential to individual flourishing. The connection between virtue and philia lends support to Aristotle's otherwise counterintuitive claim that certain recognizably moral virtues are necessary conditions for happiness.

Plato remarked that Anaxagoras made no use of his nous. But the concept is undeniably important, and equally undeniably complex. Indeed, it is misleading to speak as though there were a single such concept at all. Nous in Anaxagoras is not the same as nous in Plato; while Aristotle's various treatments of the subject differ both from those of his predecessors and also, apparently, from one another. It is tempting to conclude that nous is at best a very general umbrella under whose capacious awning a variety of quite distinct ideas may shelter, at worst perhaps that it is simply and irremediably homonymous. Such a view has been adopted by, among others, Jonathan Barnes, the dedicatee of this volume. This chapter, however, shows how some at least of Aristotle's apparently divergent usages of the term in fact conceal an important measure of underlying unity, and in particular to integrate a problematic case in Nicomachean Ethics VI 11 with some of the more central ones.

In antiquity conceptions of the soul-what plus a body makes a person- varied greatly. Most included some kind of immortality. Pythagoras initiated the theory of a soul migrating between bodies of different animals and even vegetables. Anaxagoras made Mind (Nous), the faculty of discerning and imposing order on things, into the cosmic force. However, Aristotle rightly transferred soul from the category of Substance (Thing) to those of Action and Passion (Functions). The soul is the Form of the Body The Atomists postulated special soul atoms, lighter and more mobile than others. At death the combinations disperse. Alone among ancient soul theories, Aristotle's, being based on observations (low beliefs), and getting the ontology right (action-passion), may claim scientific status. It was Plato's, however, which survived into Christian thought, being the principal Greek contribution to Christian theology.

Charles was patently different from his father in temperament and in his approach to the task of kingship. James showed more political nous and judgment when dealing with Parliament; he exercised a more sensitive control of the art. Unlike James though, Charles had moved away from Calvinism and was committed to an Arminian position. Charles’s first demand in Wales for men and money to meet the challenge of the Catholic powers was readily met. Throughout the years of personal rule, it had been essential for Charles to avoid the danger of warfare. At the first sign of any major emergency necessitating the summons of Parliament, much of the latent opposition to him was bound to burst into the open.