An Energetic Approach to the Relationship Between Ethics and Metaphysics as a Path to the Philosophy of Freedom

Abstract

The author focuses on the key points of the energetic approach to understanding of the relations between ethical and metaphysical aspects of Aristotle’s doctrine, presented by A. Sanzhenakov and O. Zubets (with some reservations) and on the connections between the energetic approach and the essentialist one (presented by T. Irvin, E. Halper and D. Ahtenberg). The special features, advantages, and disadvantages of the essentialist model are revealed, as well as advantages of the energetic concept and its heuristic potential for the interpretation of interrelations between metaphysics and ethics in Aristotle’s teaching. The author comes to the conclusion that in accordance with Sanzhenakov’s approach, the essentialist interpretation can be considered as a special case of the energetic one on the basis of the identification of the following semantic levels of the concept “energeia” (as the realization of the ability and as an actualization of the nature of things). The third semantic level of the concept “energeia” (as a self-valuable activity) opens new way of understanding the connection between metaphysics and ethics, which provides grounds and prospects for an examination of lines of continuity between Aristotle’s eudemonic ethics and Kant’s rigorous ethics as essentially related moral systems. For both of them ethics is a study of voluntary activity of intrinsic value.