1. PHIL 219 Aristotle Pt. 1 Nichomachean Ethics

2. Aristotle (384-321 B.C.E.)  Unlike Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was not an Athenian.  He was born in Thrace (what is now northern Greece).  His father served as the court physician of Amyntas II of Macedon, the grandfather of Alexander the Great.  At the age of 17, Aristotle was sent to Athens to study with Plato at his Academy. He stayed there until Plato’s death.  Aristotle served as a tutor to Alexander until Alexander became King.  He eventually returned to Athens and set up his own school, called the Lyceum after the area of Athens in which it was located.

3. From Plato to Aristotle  Though Plato had a clear influence on Aristotle’s thinking, Aristotle comes to very different metaphysical conclusions than Plato.  For Aristotle, the fundamental level of reality is what he calls ‘substance’ (ousia), actually existing, particular things.  Substances are unities of form and matter, which can be thought independently but never are separate from each other.  Form is the ‘whatness’ of a thing; matter is what the thing is made of.  Example: Statue

4. Ethics = Ethos  The Nichomachean Ethics is one of Aristotle’s most influential works. It continues to influence discussions in ethics up to the present day.  A key to understanding the work is the recognition that the term ethics is derived from the Greek word “Ethos” which in this context is best translated as “character.”  The Nichomachean Ethics is a study of human character, the forms it takes, how it is influenced, and how it can be shaped.  It is also an explicitly political work, as the ultimate goal of social organization is human well-being, a goal that is necessarily informed by questions of human character.

5. Eudaimonia  Rather than begin by just asserting the desirable elements of human character, Aristotle opens the discussion in the Nichomachean Ethics with an analysis of what is good for human beings.  The answer that he arrives at is Eudaimonia: usually translated as happiness, it is defined by Aristotle more technically as a state of the soul that expresses virtue.  For Aristotle, “soul” is a way of pointing to those activities characteristic of a living thing.  The word translated as “virtue” (Arete) is perhaps more accurately translated as “excellence.” It refers to the highest functioning of a thing.  A soul expresses virtue when it exhibits its characteristic activity to the highest possible degree.

6. Virtue  Understanding human character then is ultimately about understanding the activities characteristic of human beings, in their highest functioning.  That’s why Aristotle devotes so much of the Nichomachean Ethics to the discussion of virtue.  As Aristotle analyzes it, virtue can be distinguished into two different types.  Intellectual virtues are excellences of the mind, and have their origin in teaching (exs. are wisdom and prudence).  Moral virtues are excellences of what we typically call moral character and have their origin in habituation/training (exs. are courage and temperance).  In either case, it’s important to recognize that we are not naturally virtuous, but can become so.

7. Becoming Virtuous  Focusing first on the moral virtues, Aristotle discusses how habituation to the virtues works.  The key point is that there has to be a process of activation– virtuous action produces virtue (the state)–have to do just things to become just.  This point leads Aristotle to an initial characterization of right action as it is a function of virtue. The key elements include:  Actions should express reason.  Moral Virtues are ruined by excess and deficiency.  Moral Virtues are tied up with pleasure and pain, both in the sense that pleasure and pain indicate the state of the agent (temperate or intemperate) and in the sense that they are the source of the development and ruin of the virtues.

8. Chicken or Egg?  There is an obvious possible objection to the claim that virtuous action produces virtue: How is the action possible without the state? (chicken/egg problem).  Aristotle’s answer is, as an accident. But an accidentally virtuous act is not yet virtue. To be virtuous need both virtuous actions and knowledge.  An agent is virtuous when some very specific conditions are met.  She must know she is doing a virtuous thing.  She must choose to do it.  She must choose to do it from a fixed character.

9. Towards a Definition  On the basis of these initial observations, Aristotle is ready to advance a definition of virtue.  It is a is a state, as opposed to a passion or faculty.  Passion: whatever implies pleasure or pain (sensation).  Faculty: sensitivity to a sensation (capacity to sense).  State: a way of being related to feeling.  Note how this resolves the chicken/egg problem.  What sort of state? A good one, one that enables us to function well.  Virtue (of a human): state that makes a human good and allows them to function well.

10. A Mean  One of the most influential elements of Aristotle’s account of virtue is his insistence that as a state, it has to be understood as an intermediate one (one that is neither superfluous nor deficient).  Virtue, in other words, is a mean, not in a mathematical sense but in the sense of a relative value, specific to the individual.  More determinately, it is a mean between two extremes (which Aristotle calls vices), one of excess and one of deficiency.

11. Some Examples  Courage, on this understanding, is the virtue specific to the feeling of fear and should be understood as a mean between the vice of deficiency that we call cowardice and the vice of excess we call rashness.  Temperance is the virtue specific to feelings of pleasure and pain and is understood as a mean between the vice of deficiency we can call insensibility and the vice of excess we can call self-indulgence.  See p. 152 for some additional examples.

12. Justice  Aristotle’s treatment of justice both clearly expands on and responds to Plato’s account offered in the Republic.  For Aristotle, justice is one of the moral virtues, but understanding its nature as a mean is more complex than in the other cases.  This becomes clear right away, when Aristotle tries to define justice.

13. A Complex Definition  Aristotle offers us a series of defining feature of justice.  Justice is “that kind of state of character which makes people disposed to do what is just" where doing what is just is explained as acting justly and desiring justice (153c1).  Justice is both "the lawful" and "the fair" (153c2).  Justice is whatever produces and maintains happiness and its parts for a political community (154c1).  Finally, justice is "complete virtue…in relation to our neighbor" ( or "the greatest of virtues”) (154c1).

14. From Plato to Aristotle (Redux)  This last sense is in particular of a piece with Plato’s account, but Aristotle thinks that its generality is too vague. We need an account of justice that is more specific.  We need such an account because sometimes we want to identify an act as unjust that is not specifically connected to any particular vice (for example, adultery).  A. suggests that the more specific sense of justice is of a piece with the more general sense. The issue thus becomes: what differentiates the one from the other?  Provisionally, he asserts that justice in the specific sense concerns itself with 'divisible goods' and thus with concern for profit (maximizing control of such goods).  A. then goes on to make a further distinction in the specific sense of justice between distributive justice and rectificatory justice (justice in exchange).  This latter category is further specified into justice when the exchange is voluntary and justice when it is involuntary.

15. Justice and Law  One of the important themes of the rest of the discussion of justice is Aristotle’s recognition of a gap between justice and law.  The important thing to recognize about the law is that it is a contingent and particular expression that can, but need not, express justice (it can also express custom, culture, prejudice, etc.).  This is obvious when we consider the closely related concepts of equity (fairness) and the equitable. These are concepts that serve an important corrective function when the law cannot adequately address the specific features of a situation. They help to make the law more just.

16. Intellectual Virtue  One of the problems that arises in connection to the definition of virtue as a mean are the difficulties attendant on hitting the mean.  Discussion of the intellectual virtues is necessary because it turns out that hitting the mean is a matter of bringing your acts in accordance with reason.  In Book III, Aristotle suggested that this accord is in someway reliant on a specific moral virtue: temperance.  Here, he begins by articulating a distinction between the rational and non-rational soul, and the further distinction in the rational soul between the contemplative and calculative parts.  The contemplative focuses on the necessary features of reality; the calculative on the contingent (non-necessary).  The principle point of distinction is that "calculation" aims at action. However, both the contemplative and calculative aspects of the soul ultimately aim at truth. The virtues of the rational soul are thus that which makes it possible for the soul to come to (be in) the truth. It becomes necessary then, to specify the "truth conditions" of each of the different rational capacities.

17. Practical Wisdom  Practical wisdom (Phronesis) is also known as “prudence:” the ability “to deliberate well about what is good and expedient” for oneself, “not in some particular respect…but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general” (157c2).  Practical wisdom is closely connected with prudence, inasmuch as the latter is necessary for the former.  Thus, “Practical wisdom, then, must be a reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to human goods” (158c1).  For Aristotle, it’s a kind of unifying virtue: the virtuous person is the Phronimos (the person of phronesis).

18. From Ethics to Politics  Practical wisdom, thus, is the bridge between the discussion of the states of human character Aristotle calls virtues and the questions of politics.  As concerned with human good, practical wisdom is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for “legislative wisdom,” the wisdom characteristic of politics.