The Ethics of Ontology

Rethinking an Aristotelian Legacy

By Christopher P. Long

Subjects: History Of Philosophy, Ethics, Continental Philosophy, Aristotle
Series: SUNY series in Ancient Greek Philosophy
Hardcover : 9780791461198, 234 pages, August 2004

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Table of contents

Preface

1. The Legacy of Ousia

2. Foundational Thinking and the Categories

3. Kinetic Principles and the Hegemony of Form

4. Prelude to a Safe Passage—Two Aporiae

5. Toward a Dynamic Ontology

6. The Dynamic Economy of Principles

7. Knowledge in Actuality and the Ethical Turn

8. Contingent Knowledge: Phronesis in the Ethics

9. The Ethics of Ontology

Notes

References

Index

A novel rereading of the relationship between ethics and ontology in Aristotle.

Description

Concerned with the meaning and function of principles in an era that appears to have given up on their possibility altogether, Christopher P. Long traces the paths of Aristotle's thinking concerning finite being from the Categories, through the Physics, to the Metaphysics, and ultimately into the Nicomachean Ethics. Long argues that a dynamic and open conception of principles emerges in these works that challenges the traditional tendency to seek security in permanent and eternal absolutes. He rethinks the meaning of Aristotle's notion of principle (arche) and spans the divide of analytic and continental methodological approaches to ancient Greek philosophy, while connecting Aristotle's thinking to that of Levinas, Gadamer, and Heidegger.

Christopher P. Long is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.