Abstract
Representatives of ethical neo-Aristotelian naturalism (henceforth: Aristotelian naturalism) consider themselves naturalists. The term “naturalism” is notoriously vague, however. We can try to compensate for this vagueness by remarking that Aristotelian naturalism is in favour of biological naturalism rather than physical naturalism. Relying on physics as a reference science to demonstrate that certain human capacities (such as language, thought or morals) are natural and scientifically respectable is quite different from relying on biology. The nature of certain activities becomes fully apparent only if we consider humans as biological beings and not as physical objects. This is one of the fundamental aims of Aristotelian naturalism, and it suggests that Aristotelian naturalism should also be, somehow, biological.
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Notes
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I would like to thank Muriel Leuenberger, Michael O’Leary, Matthieu Queloz, Rebekka Hufendiek, Samuel Tscharner (Basel) as well as the editor of this contribution for the valuable comments they offered. Special thanks to Cosetta Veronese for the English translation of the text.
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The evaluative-conceptual structure is sometimes introduced by referring to the so-called “Aristotelian Categorical Judgments“ (Aristotelian Categoricals) (Thompson 2008; Foot 2001; Hursthouse 2013). They are generic judgments of the form “S is / has / does F”, where “S” stands for a biological species and “F” for a trait of the species. These judgments do not have to apply to all members of the species, but they offer a standard norm (a natural norm) for how a member of S should be in order to represent a strong, healthy, good speciman of S. The problem with Aristotelian categorical judgments is that they are considered judgments, which are specific for organisms, and which, therefore, should offer their constitutive logical form for the representation of organisms. This is obviously not the case. For example, a judgment about first editions of James Joyce’s Ulysses could be that “S has x pages”. Yet, there may very well be a copy, in which 5 pages are missing; that would represent a defective copy. A copy without missing pages (and without other defects) would be a good copy; an unopened copy would even represent an outstanding copy.
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“Virtues play a necessary part in the life of human beings as do stings in the life of bees.” (Foot 2001, 35).
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On the other hand, one could also argue that the function of certain biological traits is inaccessible without knowledge of their history. For example, wisdom teeth.
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Alasdair MacIntyre is the only one to draw extensively on literature about behavioral biology on dolphins in “Dependent Rational Animals“ (MacIntyre 1999, 21–28).
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Wild, M. (2020). What Is Biological About Aristotelian Naturalism?. In: Hähnel, M. (eds) Aristotelian Naturalism. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37576-8_7
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