Pleasure, desire, and the good: Aristotle on ethics and embodiment

This work aims to provide an account of the role of pleasure and desire in Aristotle's account of the human, but not merely human, good. Such an account is both lacking, despite the recent volume of work on Aristotle's ethics, and crucially important, insofar as it is a necessary condition for getting past what I am here calling the "three central , ap ori&d12;ai " in the current mainstream interpretation of Aristotle's ethical philosophy, and insofar as overcoming these impasses is a necessary condition for improving our understanding of Aristotle's ethics. These three central impasses are: (1) Does Aristotle argue for the unity of the virtues, or does he place sofi&d12;a "above the fray" as the single and greatest of virtues? (2) Is the t3&d12;lov identified as the "greatest of all realizable goods" a human good, the human good, or some greater-than-human good? (3) Does Aristotle hold that the relationship between the reasoning ( logiko&d12; n ) and desiring ( , al ogiko&d12;n ) parts of the soul is one of correction, competition or companionship?; Resolving these impasses and achieving a better understanding of Aristotle is possible only after we learn the two central lessons of this dissertation. First, that we must read Aristotle's ethical arguments in the light of his views on the cosmos (the living whole we call nature) and the never-changing principles informing that living whole. Second, that what, above all else, emerges from this new re-reading of the ethical writings is a new understanding of human desire as the natural stretching ourselves out toward pleasure, which is the good, and which is the good by nature. These lessons will demonstrate why we must understand the virtues as unified, why the good described in Nicomachean Ethics is both a human and greater-than-human good, and why the reasoning and desiring parts of the soul must be understood as companions.