A New Framework for the Kalon in Aristotle

Although Aristotle gives no explicit account of the kalon, he invokes it regularly across his philosophical writigs. This dissertation examines his use of the kalon in order to theorize a new framework for understanding it. Chapter I begins the project by examining the importance of the kalon in Aristotle’s ethics, the use of the kalon in the entire corpus, and the challenges facing any account of the kalon. In Chapters II and III, I examine contemporary attempts to explain the kalon, as well as issues that face these accounts of the kalon, especially regarding explanation of Aristotle’s description of the completely virtuous person (kalokagathos) in Eudemian Ethics VIII.3. I start Chapter IV by arguing that we should take seriously the option that the kalon is homonymous. This argument is followed by an examination of the kinds of homonymy found in Aristotle, namely accidental and core-dependent homonymy. Chapters V and VI include my own framework and account of the kalon. I argue that the best way to explain Eudemian Ethics VIII.3 is by taking the kalon as a core-dependent homonym. I argue that the core homonym found in Eudemian Ethics VIII.3 is an ethical kalon that Aristotle uses throughout his works before identifying the other kinds of kalon used to explain how the natural goods are kalon for the kalokagathos. I then suggest that there are more homonyms of the kalon found elsewhere in the corpus, resulting in what I call nested core-dependent homonymy. The most important of these other homonyms is an evaluative property that Aristotle describes as “pleasant qua good” in Rhetoric I.9, which I take to be a core homonym on which the ethical kalon relies. Finally, I conclude the work by giving an example of how future research on the homonymy of the kalon can fit into the framework I have developed, suggesting the kalon as the prepon as one such example.