Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.
Aither 28/2022 (International issue no. 10):4-29 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2022.008
This article contributes to the debate on the relation between Aristotle’s practical and theoretical philosophy. It argues that his practical philosophy depends to a considerable extent on his teleological conception of nature. This thesis is primarily directed against scholars who maintain that Aristotle does not derive political and human relations from natural or cosmic conditions. The paper defends David Sedley’s anthropocentric interpretation of Aristotle’s natural teleology and shows how Aristotle applies teleological explanations to power relations among human beings – among men and women and among freemen and natural...
Aither 28/2022 (International issue no. 10):30-49 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2023.001
Aristotle’s analysis of the virtue of courage presents a number of interpretative difficulties. The initial thesis that courage consists in overcoming the fear of death in the context of war for a worthy or noble cause will be analysed against several other, seemingly inconsistent, definitions of this virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics. The normative aspect of the present study aims at making sense of what could qualify as a noble goal of a fearless action for the Aristotelian model, given that one’s personal eudaimonia cannot be the goal of a warrior willing to sacrifice his life in battle. Reference to the intended proper end of courageous...
Aither 28/2022 (International issue no. 10):50-81 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2023.004
This paper provides an interpretation of the Stoic notion of bodily beauty as the symmetry of parts with respect to one another and to the whole. Symmetry is caused by the structuring activity of the rational spirit in multiplicity, making the beautiful thing an ordered whole. This is true for particular bodies in the world and, even more so, for the cosmos as a particular world order. I follow some traces in Stoic texts suggesting that this is also (and a fortiori) true for the cosmos, in the sense of God in conflagration, which somehow represents symmetry in its purest state.
Aither 28/2022 (International issue no. 10):81-87 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2023.003