Sobre pasión y deseo: despejando una ambigüedad de la ética aristotélica

Abstract

One of the most relevant topics in the Aristotelian moral philosophy for contemporary ethics is the reflection about emotional motivation and the link established between emotions and moral virtue. The Aristotelian vocabulary, that said, is unfortunately quite unclear as to that respect. In this paper, we will try to outline a taxonomy of the emotional lexicon in order to set up the semantic borders between desire and passions. Having established these limits, we may advance some of the most relevant features without which we would not be able to interpret correctly the Aristotelian theory of action and his conception of virtue. In order to attain this goal we will examine the motivational role of passions, the epistemological implications of desire and the occasional relation of synonymy between these notions.