Determinismo e responsabilidade moral em Aristóteles.

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyse the conditions for moral responsibility to Aristotle and how these are configured regarding to usual attribution to Aristotle of determinism in human actions. In this sense, I seek to show that moral responsibility lies in the presence of alternative possibilities for the same action, expressed by the term up to us (ἐφ’ ἡμῖν). In the interpretation here advocated, the concept of ἐφ’ ἡμῖν is linked to the concept of voluntary (ἀκούσιον) through the concept of choice (αἵρεσις), a broader category than deliberated choice (προαίρεσις). From an analysis of the theory of action especially in Ethica Eudemia II 6-11 and Ethica Nicomachea III 1-8, this work aims to advocate that the concept of ἐφ’ ἡμῖν regards to a logical possibility, recognisable by both the moral agent and the moral judge, of act differently, and that, with the exception of the virtuous, namely the possessor of the prudence (φρόνησις), this possibility represents a real possibility of act differently. With the attachment of the concepts of ἐφ’ ἡμῖν in a broader concept of choice, αἵρεσις (and not a choice as outcome of a narrower intellectual procedure, πραίρεσις), I will try to minimise the requirements for full moral responsibility, reduced to voluntary action of the man who enjoys his rational capacity, and to show that it is compatible with some psychological determinism, but that the possibility of a universal causal determinism is excluded.