Elena Cagnoli Fiecconi's "Ethics for Rational Animals"

Elena Cagnoli Fiecconi is Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy at UCL Greek and Latin. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Oxford and two postdocs at Thumos in Geneva and at the Polonsky Academy in Jerusalem. She works especially on Aristotle's ethics and philosophy of mind, but she has broad interests in ancient and contemporary philosophy.

Cagnoli Fiecconi applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Ethics for Rational Animals: The Moral Psychology at the Basis of Aristotle's Ethics, and reported the following:

Page 99 of Ethics for Rational Animals is part of a chapter which focuses on why, for Aristotle, musical education is important for moral education. Even though, for us, the thesis that musical education has anything to do with moral education is outlandish, for Aristotle the two are interconnected. Page 99 explores this connection by arguing that musical education allows those who participate in the performances to recognise fine melodies. This ability, for Aristotle, is related to the ability to recognise fine (or morally good) actions, because fine actions and fine melodies are similar in structure. In addition, page 99 suggests that the training involved in musical education as an introduction to moral education is for the most part perceptual and non-rational. Therefore, it works only as a kind of preliminary training which should be followed up by more sophisticated reasoning.

This page is an accurate reflection of the method at the basis of the book. The aim of the book is to study Aristotle’s ethics in connection with his philosophy of mind and his psychology. On page 99, I employ this method by using Aristotle’s views on perceptual training to elucidate some aspects of his ethical theory. Even if the page captures an important methodological strategy at the basis of the book, it does not of course capture its main overall thesis. This is because page 99 focuses on perception and its role in moral training, while the main aim of the book is to explain why, for Aristotle, knowledge of the human good is sufficient to govern desires and action. I argue that this is the case because practical wisdom, or knowledge of the human good, is persuasive. By this I mean that its task is to engage with and control desires and action, and that practical wisdom is suited to be successful in its task. I then describe the features that make practical wisdom persuasive, and I argue that they explain why, for Aristotle, having bad desires or acting badly count as a form of ignorance.

Learn more about Ethics for Rational Animals at the Oxford University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue