Evil in Aristotle ed. by Pavlos Kontos (review)

Through the care of their editor, the fine essays comprising Evil in Aristotle aspire to offer a comprehensive view of their topic. Although there are several respects in which the resulting volume falls short of its goal, the book is indeed worthwhile as a whole, and not just as a handy collection of essays.

The twelve essays are arranged in three groups, considering in turn Aristotle's theoretical philosophy, his practical philosophy, and his later influence in both areas. As a contribution to the whole volume the third group is weakest, although certainly not unhelpful: one of the two essays on Aristotle's theoretical influence in fact contains relatively little on Aristotle, while both essays on his ethical influence lack an adequate focus on evil, being really just about ethics.

The three topics covered in the first part are well chosen. C. D. C. Reeve opens with a compressed and difficult analysis of Aristotle's overall approach to evil, arguing that because Aristotle's theory of the good excludes the existence of a substantial, cosmic source of evil, Aristotle is able to treat ethical badness or evil as a "psycho-political" problem rather than an ontological one. It is not clear that Aristotle himself would have known what to do with this distinction, but Reeve's dense rumination is worth some thought. There follows a careful and enlightening analysis, by Jonathan Beere, of "Badness as Posteriority to Capacity in Metaphysics Theta 9." Stasinos Stavrianeas discusses the weaknesses of natural teleology in Aristotle's biology, distinguishing three types of biological "deformity": the monstrosity, the natural species that is inferior in some respect to others of its genus, and the female, which is deformed by comparison with the male but contributes to the best possible reproductive arrangement.

The selection of essays in the second part reflects the editor's particular interest in "radical evil." Kontos himself compares the radical or extreme evils identified by Aristotle in human individuals and communities respectively: beastliness (thēriotēs) in the one, complete breakdown of the rule of law in the other. He presents beastliness as differing from vice by involving not a false conception of the good, but the absence of any rational conception thereof. Howard Curzer offers an unfortunately superficial ranking of vices in Aristotle's ethics, neglecting the substantive ranking of virtues implicit in Aristotle's order of presentation and rooted in his distinction between the necessary and the noble (kalon). Giles Pearson, addressing "Aristotle on Psychopathology," complements Kontos with a nuanced account of the types of pathological or brutish (thēri ōdēs) behavior and of their respective prospects for healing. Marta Jiménez provides a brief respite from extremes, with a solid discussion of a tried-and-true topic: the relation between happiness and the evils of fortune. Finally, Richard Kraut offers a unsettling account of political evil, focusing on the corrosive effects of wealth and poverty and on the impulse toward tyranny that lurks in the human soul.

In the third part, Paul Kalligas and Kevin Flannery explore Aristotle's influence on later theoretical accounts of evil. Kalligas provides a lucid account of Plotinus on evil, distinguishing matter as the necessary condition of evil from the natural and moral evils that follow from matter. Brief but helpful comparisons with Aristotle loosely tie this essay to the rest of the volume. Only Flannery's discussion of Aquinas is really devoted to tracing Aristotle's influence on a later thinker; Flannery shows that Aquinas regularly draws on Aristotle in order to craft a philosophically coherent account of evil as he finds it presented in various Christian sources: scripture, Augustine, and especially Pseudo-Dionysius.

Stephen Engstrom and Daniel C. Russell, finally, bring Aristotle's ethics into conversation with Kant and contemporary virtue ethics. Engstrom argues that Aristotle and Kant ultimately agree concerning the psychic unity and disunity of virtuous and vicious persons respectively; this implies that Kant's ethics gives due importance to happiness, while Aristotle recognizes that the vicious are...