References
- R-A. Gauthier and J-Y. Jolif(eds.), Aristote. L'Ethique à Nicomaque (Louvain and Paris: Nauwelaerts, 1970, p. 265. I refer to this text below as: Gauthier-Jolif.
- P. Aubenque, La prudence chez Aristote (Paris: PUF, 1963), p. 64.
- Beyond Metaphysics Δ, 20, which I will return to, the essential passages are: 1) Categories, 8, which evokes what we are saying in relation to ousia from the point of view of ‘quality’ (poiotès), namely dunamis (power, capacity), ‘diathèsis’ (transitory disposition), pathos (affection, affective quality), eidos (or schèma, morphè, in the sense of figure and aspect) and finally hexis; 2) Categories, 15 and Metaphysics Δ, 23, which both examine the category of ‘having’ (ekhein), but as this is etymologically attested to, and as Aristotle echoes, hexis is a form derived from ekhein.
- See Metaphysics Δ, 20, 1022 b 4: Hexis de legatai hena men tropon…; b 10: allon de tropon hexis legetai…; b 13: Eti hexis legetai…
- See also Nicomachean Ethics, II, 2, 1004 b 27–28; 3, 1105 a 14–16 (on the role of the hôs).
- Ho ti men oun esti tôi genei hè arêtè, eirètai (1106 a 12–13). Subsequently moral virtue will be specifically determined as a stable disposition of the subject, and this in relation to itself. The goal of the “golden mean” is thus neither purely subjective nor purely objective; it presents, according to the phrase of Pierre Aubenque to which we have already referred, a “double face”.
- In the Topics, epistèmè is explicitly determined as a “relative” (pros ti). See Topics VI, 6, 145 a 15–18; and R. Bodéüs, Le philosophe et la cité. Recherches sur les rapports entre morale et politique chez Aristote (Paris: Les Belles-Lettres, 1982), p. 47 (with note no. 4). The same commentator notes, in a later work, Politique et philosophie chez Aristote (Namur, 1991) that the apodeixis relating to knowledge derives, in the Greek language, from the verb deik-numi, that is, from “the imperative indication of what it is necessary to do, emanating from political activity […], deik-numi has the same root as dikè“ (p. 18). The architectonic relation between theoretical and political knowledge could well be inverted, as this illuminating study goes on to show.
- This definition is taken up again at 1140 a 21. For an extended commentary, see Gauthier-Jolif, II-2, pp. 460–462.
- Gauthier-Jolif translate this by “habitual reasoned state of possession of the truth that guides production (état habituel raisonné de possession du vrai qui dirige la production)”, while J. Tricot translates it by “disposition to produce accompanied by a true rule (disposition à produire accompagnée de règle vraie)”. It is necessary to remark that alethous here does not qualify hexis itself (while in b 21 alèthè will qualify the specific hexis that is “prudence”; on this point, see Gauthier-Jolif, op. cit., II-2, p. 461).
- Nicomachean Ethics VI, 5, 1140 b 20–21.
- “It will be noted that truth is to intellectual virtue what the golden mean is for moral virtue”, as Gauthier-Jolif note judiciously (II-2, p. 449).
- Categories 8, 8 b 29. The context explicitly bears on the difference between hexis and diathèsis (“transitory disposition”), both of which fall under the category of “quality” (poiotès). Within this rather static approach the hexis-state is a more stable quality than diathèsis.
- Metaphysics Δ, 20m 1022 b 4–5.
- The claim that Aristotle's categories of thought are rooted in the categories of the Greek language has been defended by E. Benveniste in a famous study of 1958, today reprinted in Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. I (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 63–74. See also Derrida's uncompromising response in ‘Le supplément de copule. La philosophie devant la linguistique’, Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Seuil, 1972), pp. 209–46; trans. A. Bass, ‘The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy Before Linguistics’ in Margins of Philosophy (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982), pp. 175–205.
- See. E. Benveniste, ‘‘Etre’ et ‘avoir’ dans leurs fonctions linguistiques’ (1960) in Problèmes de linguistique générale, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 187–207.
- Ibid., pp. 194–195 and 197. Thus one says, in ancient Greek, Esti toi khrusos (with an attributive dative whose literal sense is: ‘To you is the gold’), instead of saying, following the form of both French and English, ‘You have (or: you possess) some gold’.
- Categories 4, 2 a 3.
- It is well known that the perfect tense names the present result of a past, completed action, and that the middle-voice implies that the subject is ‘interested’ in the transitive action that he effects. Hence the specific value of the perfect middle.
- E. Benveniste, op. cit., p. 200.
- R. A. Gauthier, La morale d'Aristote (Paris: PUF, 1958), p. 74. For Gauthier, there is no doubt that the desire of the Aristotelian virtuous person is characterised by the faultless stability of its absolute submission to reason (see p. 73). This is the basis of the quasi-‘proprietorial’ interpretation of hexis offered by this commentator.
- On the essential question of the duality of the sense of power and entelechy, see above all Physics VIII, 4, 255 a 30–b5; De Anima II, 5, 417 a21–b2; Metaphysics θ, 6, 1048 a 32–b4; and also the sound commentaries of J. Moreau, Aristote et son école (Paris: PUF, 1962), p, 117 and p. 169, and of L. Couloubaritsis, Aux origines de la philosophie européenne (Brussels: De Boeck, 1992), pp. 428–30.
- This sense is found again, as J. Burnet has shown, in Philebus 11 d, where eudaimonia is understood, apparently for the first time, as an active hexis of the soul. See J. Burnet, The Ethics of Aristotle (London: publisher?, 1900), p. 3, n. 3; A.-J. Festugière, Contemplation et vie contemplative selon Platon (Paris: Vrin, 1975), p. 292, n. 8: “The hexis in Philebus supposes a khresis [i.e. an effective use]; it is equivalent to Aristotle's energeia“; Gauthier Jolif, op. cit., II-1, p. 66; R.-A. Gauthier, La morale d'Aristote, op. cit., pp. 70–71.
- J. Moreau, op. cit., p. 212.
- See I. Schüssler, ‘La question de l'eudaimonia dans L'Ethique à Nicomaque d'Aristote’, Etudes phénoménologiques, 16–17 (1992–1993), pp. 79–102 and 3–26.
- Nicomachean Ethics I, 9, 1098 b 31 sq.
- See A.-J. Festugière, op. cit., p. 292; Gauthier Jolif, op. cit., II-1, p. 66; H.-H. Joachim, Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics (Clarendon Press: Oxford) 1951, p. 81f.
- The role of ethos, of habit, in the constitution of the ‘habitual state’ should not be overstated: ethos certainly plays a role in moral hexis, just as study (mathesis) has a role in intellectual hexis, but merely passive repetition forms character (l'ethos) no more than prattling develops the mind.
- See, in particular, in the Hippocratic Collection, the treatise On Diet, I. 32, 1. The medical paradigm is present in the whole of the discourse attributed to Protagoras (up to 167 d).
- La morale d'Aristote, op. cit., p. 72.
- See J.-L. Marion, L'ontologie grise de Descartes. Science cartésienne et savoir aristotélicien dans les Regulae (Paris: Vrin, 1975), p. 25 for the passage cited.
- See Rule 1, in fine: “If someone seriously wants to search after truth, he should not choose a particular science: they are all united in themselves and dependent on each other. He should think only of increasing the natural light of his reason, not in order to resolve any particular scholastic difficulty, but so that, in every circumstance of his life, his understanding shows to his will what to choose.” It is necessary, of course, to understand that these ‘circumstances of life’ have become inessential for the direction of the ingenium.