Daniel Arioli

This paper is an attempt to work out the understanding of truth implicit in Aristotle’s discussion of the intellectual virtues in book six of the Nicomachean Ethics. The basic thesis is that Aristotle is working from a fundamentally Socratic conception of wisdom, namely, that the fundamental wisdom is knowledge of ignorance. The paper takes its interpretational bearings from Heidegger and Strauss, and seeks to make sense of Aristotle’s statement that art, science, prudence, wisdom, and intellect are all modes of “attaining truth,” whether scientific (that is, pertaining to what does not admit of being otherwise) or calculative (namely, pertaining to what does admit of being otherwise). In this pursuit, the various ambiguities of Aristotle’s account of these five modes of attaining truth are explored and subjected to critical examination. This critical examination culminates in an analysis of the distinction—or lack of distinction—between “making” and “doing” so central to Aristotle’s thought; it is argued that this distinction ultimately breaks down, and that this breakdown comes to the fore in Aristotle’s discussion of prudence.

Hegel is a thinker more often caricatured than understood. Both his supporters and his detractors have been among the ranks of those who accuse Hegel of self-divinization, of constructing an all-encompassing historical framework and imagining himself to have achieved something like omniscience. Not only is this interpretation of Hegel incorrect, but it stands in stark opposition to Hegel’s own self-understanding as a philosopher. This paper, a defense of the Hegelian project, attempts to debunk the myth that Hegel saw his own accomplishments as an “end” of history, in anything like the ordinary sense of that word. The systematicity of historical development, for Hegel, makes comprehensible the conditions under which freedom and rationality can develop; it is patently not an attempt to interpret the past or the future deterministically. Hegel’s “historicism” is deserving of a critical, but charitable, re-evaluation.