Hi RS:

I did not do the Introduction, but went directly into the BA. If you had a particular sample question or topic, perhaps someone could provide a BA-level answer and example (there is some overlap). --Ron

Hi Casey:

Whoa!

I'm sorry to have not replied sooner, but at one point I could not login to Alejandra's UoL forum (this thing right here) and gave up on it. The host company seemed to be asking for money, and I thought we were toast. There has been some activity on the official Student Cafe, but we've sort of forgotten about this forum. I think we haven't seen you on the Student Cafe at UoL, because you might not be a regular, registered student there.

Anyway, I'm delighted to find out that you are still with us and connected. Somehow. Actually a family friend of ours has a son with the Marines in Kandahar Province, and I am always waiting and wondering if he's going to be the next low-probability statistic in this war. An IED got a local kid just a few days ago.

Lou F. has dropped the UoL International Programme, because she got accepted into Kings College London. That was definitely the right choice, IMHO. I think Manuel finished up this year, so we might not hear from him. I don't think he posted too much here anyway.

I will try to get some of the other UoL students that have finished the BA to come over here. Maybe we can revive this forum. It's really a lot easier to use than the London website. We have been circulating home/private emails, since UoL seems to cut off anyone that isn't paying pounds to register formally. Mine is ronallen@pacbell.net or wavelets@pacbell.net. I read those almost daily. Feel free. For any reason.

I am leaning toward taking Methodology myself next year (exam in 2014), so let's keep in touch if that's still your plan as well. (I got accepted into a local MA program, so that's my main emphasis for the long-term.)

Other than that, apologies again for neglecting this forum. I only came back and tried to remember my password, failing with several tries, because some of the 4th year UoL students were wondering how to keep in touch. Then I saw your posts.

Thanks! --Ron (waveletter)

Hi Fadi:

Oh my goodness, excellent point! I was thinking in terms of the Old Programme.

It looks like UoL is diluting the content of the Epistemology course and leaving the content of the Mod Phil course as it was. I can't really confirm this, to tell the truth, because I don't have access to the study guides for these courses. I only have access to the study guide for Metaphysics, which exam I already sat in May 2012, a couple of months ago.

I mean, epistemology is a fairly intuitive course. That's for sure. But where the content took me, when I was studying this module, was pretty far and pretty deep into the 20th century. I thought that I could not appreciate modern issues without having a background in what Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Reid said about these things. (In never have cared for Berkeley.) Anyway, maybe now that has changed with UoL's New Programme. It could be that they are going to concentrate on issues related to Gettier cases, foundationalism, coherence, knowledge through social transmission, and so forth--which can be approached in a fairly basic way--without presupposing a lot of the historical intellectual clutter of the last 3 or 4 centuries.

Frankly, without having seen any of the new course guides, I would say, unless you have a strong reason to proceed otherwise (like I myself might have), go with a lower level course first. I change my advice. London is probably composing the course work so that this makes good sense.

(I've been taking philosophy courses on the side, at a local state university here in the US. They have a strong historical, descriptive, and comparative emphasis--not just Anglo-American vs. Continental philosophy, but these compared with Asian and African high culture as well. It could well be that my opinions are polluted by their slant on philosophy. In other words, UoL is more argumentative than descriptive in what they want. Hence, my previous stance, that the historical course should precede the dialectical course, is wrong for London.)

In any case, let us know how you work this out. It's a help to all of us trying to figure what road to take next. Thanks! --Ron

Hi Lou and all:

Unless you are keenly interested in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and in particular with its concept of justice as a mean, then stop reading this post now. OK, let's see how the web page formatting works on that one.

I say this because I'm launching into a reading of commentary on Book V of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics that is old and Greek and difficult. And, to boot, I'm neither an expert on ethics (to say the least) nor on Aristotle (to say something or other, I'm not sure what). I'm talking about the notes in J.A. Stewart, Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892.

[Oh, aside, I got this book (and vol. II too) from Stanford University's Green Library. It didn't even have a US Library of Congress index--instead it was located among quite old books, way upstairs, in a scrunched wing of the library called the Bing Wing, in a corner in fact, one that only had only texts on ancient philosophy, those with Dewey Decimal System numbers. Pretty cool. I once bumped into a guy yanking books from the shelves up there and making notes. I said, "What are you doing?" (He was pulling out old books and writing down their Dewey Decimal numbers.) He basically said, "I'm finding things that we might be able to upload onto Google Books." I thanked him (Jeremy) and told him that I often used their web-based services for Byzantine lexicography. So that's how it happens.]

Concerning Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 1133b32ff. On p. 472 (vol. I, op. cit.) old Stewart notes that (an anonymous paraphrasis, through Heliodorus) commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics says (my translation from the Greek; sorry) that "...but implementing justice is a mean not of a type according to the earlier virtues; for, indeed, of the others, each of the virtues is a mean of two vices, according to making a deficit and to making an excess" (Stewart, p. 472).

This is a point that I think we've already seen. Stewart goes on to remark that "Mich. Eph. has a note to the same effect--viz. that every one of the other virtues has two vices contrary to it, but justice has only one vice (adikia)...." [this would be Michael of Ephesus (11-12th century CE, who wrote a commentary on Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics].

A little later Stewart remarks that "According to this view, then, of the passage before us [1133b32ff], the point is in the words 'he de adikia ton akron': 'justice is not a mesotes in quite the same way as the other virtues are 'mesotetes', because, although it does indeed observe a mean, "both the extremes fall under the single vice of injustice."' Is it this alone that constitutes the difference? I think not."

Stewart thinks that the difference is

(1) marked by the words 'hoti mesou estin', which we've remarked upon before, and yet
(2) a merely minor difference is signaled by the fact that both extremes fall under the single vice of injustice.

Thus, Stewart inspires Guthrie's comments on Aristotle here, and Stewart tends to dismiss the slant on this passage taken by the later commentators. Thanks! --Ron


   

Hello again LouFederer & all:

I want to add a few notes on how one might salvage Aristotle's thesis that Justice is a mean. In earlier posts on the thread Louise criticized Aristotle's viewpoint with particular force, and I noted that none other that Sir David Ross also held that "The attempt to exhibit justice as a mean breaks down" [Ross, Aristotle, London: Methuen, 1923, p. 214].

It seems that Guthrie [A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. VI (Aristotle: An Encounter), Cambridge: CUP, 1981, p. 371n] is not so ready to endorse Ross's position. He writes in a footnote about Ross's statement (above): "This was denied in a long and careful note by Stewart...as later by Hardie...." Guthrie (pp. 371-2) then quotes Aristotle [1133b30]: "Just dealing is a mean between wrongdoing and being wronged, i.e. having too much or too little. Justice is a kind of mean, not in the same way as the other virtues but because it is of a mean, whereas injustice is of the extremes."

Guthrie points out that Aristotle's Greek text is "hoti mesou estin", which G. translates as "because it is of a mean" (his italics above), whereas Ross amplifies this quite a bit into "relates to an intermediate amount". The Greek words for 'the mean' are "to meson"--like the elementary particles, or as in the term Meso-America, or Mesopotamia (in the middle of the rivers)--so Aristotle is using the genitive, and it could also be translated as "from a mean". Guthrie's translation (and mine too) serves to separate the notion of justice from the kind of mean it comes from, whereas Ross tends to push justice towards that mean. Anyway, this is just a little grammatical point that shows how sometimes a knowledge of the Attic Greek is useful in exegesis.

Guthrie goes on (p. 372): "Aristotle sees at once that his first attempt at a definition in terms of the mean will not do. Just action is a mean between apportioning (whether in one's personal relations or as a judge between others) more or less than what is fair and appropriate." If Guthrie is right about this, and I'm thinking that he has a good point here, Aristotle is being quite flexible in what he considers to be a mean and how some virtue relates to the mean from which it comes. If I go back and look at Ross's further comments (see my previous post where I numbered the points; see point #11), it now appears to me that Ross is being quite unfair to Aristotle.

Here is how Hardie [Aristotle's Ethical Theory, Oxford: Clarendon, 1968, p. 182] approaches the question: "His analysis of various kinds or spheres of justice leads him to the conclusion at the end of chapter 5 [of N.E. Book V] that 'justice is a kind of mean, but not in the same way as the other virtues, but because it relates to an intermediate amount, while injustice relates to the extremes' (1133b32-1134a1). Thus Aristotle does not assert, but denies, that the application of the Mean to justice is the same as its application to other virtues. But we should not be in a hurry to decide that the doctrine here breaks down or is a failure [here Hardie notes Ross's text as I quoted above]. If Aristotle's treatment of justice as a mean is in some respects confusing and complicated, so also are both the facts to be surveyed and our ways of talking about the facts whether in Greek or in English."

I'd better stop here. I'll try to summarize later the points that Stewart makes, but his notes are rather difficult, quote a number of late 19th century authors, and are strewn with Greek. I think that the innocent-sounding sample question that Lou selected for a trial essay is really quite difficult to answer. Just look at the arguments among Aristotelian scholars! Thanks! --Ron

Hello everyone:

Well, I was able to login again to the UoL VLE this afternoon, and, by chance, I decided to check the My Account tab on the main UoL page. They had my marks for the exams this last spring--despite the red banner message saying that no 2011-12 results would appear there.

I got a 72 in Metaphysics and a 64 in Aristotle. Well, I finally broke through the 70-glass ceiling, in one place, but I can't figure out why, because I was sure that I did better on Aristotle than on Metaphysics. What do they want? and what am I doing right? and what am I doing wrong? Well, I have nary a clue.

I thought right after the exams that I presented a too-historical account of personal identity on the Metaphysics exam paper. Too much thrashing over Locke. It just seemed right at the time and given the question, but, again, as the Examiners say, "this is not a historical paper". So, I thought, driving home from the testing site, that I totally botched that one. Then the result. My best so far. That just freaking figures. Happy. Sad. Perplexed. Slap me: Hemingway.

Don't look gift horses in the mouth. But, looking back, I did make some great strides in understanding Aristotle, though. Just no gold stars for it. OK, gottit: Thank You, Fate. What would I do without You? Not sure what I'm going to do this next year. New/old programme, lack of variety, quickie exams, and all that. I might just slink back into the New Programme and take some easy courses. --Ron

Thanks for the update, Plato. Based on your experience, I think I'll just wait and not worry too much about VLE. I wonder if UoL's webmaster and java script slinger are taking time off to watch the London Olympics? --Ron

Hi Lou:

Thanks for the compliment, and I did go through the Aristotle module just last year, but I still would not be inclined to assert that I'm very well-informed about Aristotle. It's just too deep. I've been trying. The Aristotle module mostly concerns ontology, epistemology, physics, soul, and metaphysics...more my intellectual strengths, but, alas, there's nothing there on ethics, which topic seems to be relegated to the Historical Ethics module. Or: Here we are.

I have to be kind of brief, because I just got back into town. I took a brainless weekend in the mountains.

There are some counterpoints that have been raised vis-a-vis the interpretation of justice as a mean, proffered by Aristotle, and critiqued by LouFederer and Ross. In particular, Hongkonger (Tim) in another post seems to find some way to defend Justice as a Mean. It's not now clear to me whether that follows along with Aristotle, but it's a valid point of departure for discussion. Also, it seems to me that Guthrie himself seems to reflect kindly on interpretations of the EN that see some way to defend Aristotle on this point. These are of two kinds (maybe; don't hold me to this--I'm still puzzling over the problematics; also, I'm no good with ethics): first, pointing out that Aristotle makes an exception to his doctrine of the mean as regards Justice (this may be pertinent to Tim's point elsewhere), and, second, that the doctrine of the mean was not itself promulgated by The Philosopher in so narrow a sense as he does with, say, Courage.

So, I think that with your practice essay, and with Tim's (Hongkonger's) reply, we have posed before us a real question of how to read the Nich Eth: as axiomatic, with Courage as an axiom; or discursive, with Courage as an example (and Justice as a deviant development). I'm working on this. Thanks! --Ron