Aristotle says that true assertions in practical philosophy are true “for the most part.” I argue an assertion is true “for the most part” if it refers to the hypothetical realization of a substance’s essential capacities under some set of impediments. The removal of impediments to the full realization of...
This dissertation reorients political theory to the concepts of use and utility for a more critical and emancipatory perspective on contemporary communal life. The reorientation entails a recovery of Aristotle’s and Marx’s overlapping approaches to use, whose contemporary reception indexes the surprising alignment of critical political theory with economics. That...
This dissertation offers a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s notion of teaching (didaskalia). In Part I, I defend my claim that we can find in Aristotle’s works a conception of teaching, which is a crucial yet under-explored part of his theory of education. In Part II, I use this interpretation to...
Plato's readers struggle to reconcile his combination of conceptual argument and mimetic fiction. In this dissertation, I suggest we can understand this discomfiting combination if we understand the dialogues as "the mimesis of people in speech." Because speech is both referential and performative, speech is a hybrid of thought and...
In the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, I find that Aristotle endorses two distinct forms of political activity. The first form, which I term statesman activity, is intrinsically valuable. Aristotle thinks that we should value this kind of political activity because it is constitutive of human well-being. The second form, which...
In this thesis, I argue that life and soul as analyzed in De Anima are examples of what Aristotle calls a "pros hen legomena" structure, a structure in which various things are said to be living in relation to one thing, which is the central meaning of life. The various...
