Title: The vulnerability of the good human life: relational goods
Abstract: Each of the human excellences requires some external resources and necessary conditions. Each also requires, more intimately, external objects that will receive the excellent activity. Generosity involves giving to others, who must be there to receive; moderation involves the appropriate relation, in action, to objects (food, drink, sexual partners) who can fail to be present, either altogether or in the appropriate way. Even intellectual contemplation requires the presence of suitable objects for thought. But this condition, as Plato saw, would rarely, if ever, fail to be met on account of contingencies of circumstance. For something can be an object of thought whether it is physically present or not; as long as there is a universe there will be many things to contemplate everywhere; and, finally, as Aristotle adds, thought can be its own object.
Publication Year: 2001
Publication Date: 2001-01-15
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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