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Cycles

Aristotle and Tragic Temporality

By Sean D. Kirkland

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£24.99

About this book

A radical new approach to Aristotle on time, which foregrounds the Poetics and Ethics

  • A phenomenological interpretation of Aristotelian philosophical method
  • A radically new interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of tragedy
  • Presents Aristotle’s ethics as fundamentally tragic
  • A broad study of the history of the philosophy of time, contrasting ancient and modern approaches

Aristotle and Tragic Temporality treats a theme that has drawn scholarly attention for millennia: Aristotle on time and our experience of it. It does so, however, in a wholly unprecedented way, grounding its interpretation in his Poetics and Ethics, rather than the natural philosophy of the Physics. Sean D. Kirkland first takes up Aristotle's discussion of our tragic temporal situatedness—our having to act, think, and live always between a determining past we can never fully master and a projected future we can never fully anticipate. It is this condition that comes powerfully to light for Aristotle on stage in the performance of a tragic drama. The familiar Aristotelian ‘virtue ethics’ then becomes something radically new in the transforming light of the Poetics’ temporality - an outline of how humans can inhabit that irremediably tragic condition, never overcoming or suspending it, and arrive nonetheless at something like happiness and excellence.

Reviews

The value of Kirkland’s study is in drawing out implications in Aristotle’s philosophy that can elude modern predilections, and that exceed the typically measured style of Aristotle’s writings. In other words, Kirkland’s account is true to Aristotle’s thought but distinctive in finding a vitality subliminal in the texts themselves and missed by much standard commentary.
The philosophical core of Aristotle and Tragic Temporality is provocative and as duly questionable as all real questioning must be.

The book deftly bridges classical philosophy and post-Heideggerian thought, making it both a contribution to Aristotle studies and a work of contemporary philosophical reflection. Kirkland's prose is dense but deliberate, demanding close attention. His analysis of phronesis as temporally situated judgment is especially valuable for rethinking virtue ethics in our uncertain world.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

In Aristotle and Tragic Temporality, Sean D. Kirkland offers a fresh interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics following an unexpected but fruitful path through his Poetics and Physics. Taking aim at those who would too readily impute a metaphysics of presence and a modern division of subject and object to Aristotle, this book upsets now-canonical truisms of Aristotelian philosophy-- the reduced status of dialectic, time as objective or subjective, the separation of epistemological and metaphysical principles—and affirms the fundamental importance of appearance for how we initially engage and understand the world. It is a book for scholars of Aristotle and it is a book for humans concerned to live and act in the face of an uncertain future.
Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Aristotle Texts Cited

Introduction: An Ancient Metaphysics of Non-Presence

Chapter I. Modern and Postmodern Philosophies of Time and Temporality
1. Modern Time as Either Objective or Subjective: Descartes, Newton, Kant, Husserl
2. Modern Time Imposed on the Aristotelian Text
3. Post-Modern Temporality: Husserl, Bergson, Heidegger

Chapter II. Aristotle’s Dialectic as Proto-Phenomenological Method
1. Endoxa, Phenomenality, and the Dialectical Path in the Topics
2. Aristotle’s Criticisms of ‘Dialectic’
3. Dialectic and the Natural Path in the Physics
4. Phainomena and Legomena as Starting Points for Dialectic

Chapter III. Staging Tragic Temporality in the Poetics
1. Seeing the Telos at the Moment of Genesis
2. The Birth of Tragedy
3. Tragic Theôria, Between Cognitivist and Non-Cognitivist Approaches
4. Mimêsis, Manthanein, and Human Nature
5. The Mimesis of Praxis as Complete, Whole, and of Some Magnitude
Conclusion

Chapter IV. Living with Tragic Temporality in the Ethics
1. The Rational Foundation of Morality for Kant
2. Pierre Hadot and Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life
3. Living Between the Past and Future Good
4. On the Intellectualism of Ethics in Plato’s Dialogues
5. The Temporality of Phronêsis
6. Past and Future as Sources of Ethical Judgment

Conclusion: The Phenomenology of Chronos in Physics, Book IV.10-14

Bibliography
Index

About the author

Sean D. Kirkland

Sean D. Kirkland is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University and serves as the Co-Director of DePaul's Institute for Nature and Culture. He specializes in ancient Greek philosophy, as well as 19th and 20th century continental philosophy. He is the author of Heidegger and the Destruction of Aristotle (Northwestern, 2023) and The Ontology of Socratic Questioning (SUNY, 2012), as well as co-editor of A Companion to Ancient Philosophy (Northwestern, 2018) and The Returns of Antigone (SUNY, 2014).

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