10 15 13 Humanities Professor Dardis Aristotle I Telos end A Teleology 1 Looking at its function in order to explain what it is 2 Social role as function of human a Human flourishing reasoning 1 Normative a value of standard implies that there is a standard against which to measure people 2 Directly opposed to the concept of neutrality a If there is some concept of a human performing acts of evil then there can be no concept of a social role or a person which is entirely neutral If there is any sense of evil there must be a scale of relativity to compare people 3 Aristotle s idea is not just relative a There is one human ideal and all deviations are lesser II Modern view A Mechanical 1 Breaking something down into smaller parts to explain function III Disagree w Aristole fundamentally A Aristotle separates humans from nature reverses order of causation 1 Order of causation as I understand generation form function a Reason doesn t enter because nature has no intentions 2 A person raised in the wild isolated from society devoid of language and action social constructs a Inability to contribute to society and human flourishing but still potentially able to experience full range of human experience b Problem is that Aristotle superposes responsibilities of role in society onto the function of a human IV In society A people wish to fulfill different roles and fulfill themselves in different ways 1 Sociability 2 Wealth 3 Family B Indirect particularity we can t judge people s function who is to judge How do we judge V What is good about human nature and what is bad about human nature A Sociopaths schizophrenics murderers Have they lost their purpose b c they can t fulfill their function or b c they disrupt society and subtract from human flourishing 1 Are they human do they perform their function in order to be defined as human 2 Exceptions to rules seem vast and infinite too many holes a Murder vs Killing in war 1 Change in language change in definition of the role of these things b Still arbitrary to the point that there are too many holes B All humans are subjective can t observe objectively