Natureza e política: Pierre Aubenque e Fred Miller sobre Aristóteles

Abstract

This article investigates the accounts of Aristotle’s concept of nature provided by Pierre Aubenque in The Concept of Prudence in Aristotle (1963) and Fred Miller in Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics (1995). The former outlines Aristotle’s understanding of nature ( Phúsis ) as a reality permeated by an “ontology of contingence” while the latter addresses Aristotle’s view on the topic at stake by scrutinizing the causal potencies of nature. On the one hand, Aubenque’s interpretation tends to favor the political view of Aristotle as a partisan of democracy understood as a system of government grounded on practices of deliberation. On the other hand, Miller sees Aristotle’s political thought as the forerunner of the modern theories of rights.