Aristotle / Lecture 4
.docCORE11-120: Lectures Notes Week Four
Aristotle’s Guide to Successful Living
Aristotle (384-322BCE) was a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His work on ethics is best seen in the context of the Socratic and Platonic ethics which preceded him. Plato was an idealistic and utopian thinker, Aristotle was more realistic and pragmatic. Recall that Plato envisioned a perfectly just state – the Republic – and imagined what it is for an individual person to be perfectly just by analogy with it. Aristotle, on the other hand, tries to articulate what it is that people ultimately search for in life. He goes on to develop a rich philosophical account of this life and the obstacles we experience in trying to live it. Recall, also, that Socrates believed that virtue is knowledge: if you know what is good or right, you will automatically do what is good or right. Aristotle denies this automatic link between knowledge and virtue. To be virtuous is to have a good character, and there is more to this than knowing what is good. A virtuous person must have the right emotional temperament as well as knowledge and wisdom.
Two major works on Ethics by Aristotle survive: the Nichomachean Ethics – perhaps dictated to his son Nichomachus – and the Eudemian Ethics. The Nichomachean Ethics has been the more influential of the two, indeed it ranks as perhaps the most influential single text in the history of ethics, and it is this text that we examine in this lecture. Full versions of the text are readily available – an electronic version can be downloaded here.
Aristotle begins his treatise on ethics – the Nichomachean Ethics – with a deceptively simple statement.
Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good has been aptly described as that at which everything aims. (Ethics 1094a)
All actions aim at something. If you are doing something completely aimless, for example day-dreaming, this won’t count as an action for Aristotle. Actions are things we do for a purpose. Another way of putting this is to say that all actions aim at some end. Aristotle holds that the end or purpose of our actions is always to achieve some perceived good.
Aristotle then describes a hierarchy of ends: some ends are subordinate to others. Bridle-making has as its end making bridles. But the making of bridles is subordinate to horsemanship in general because we make bridles to facilitate the riding of horses; we do not ride horses in order to facilitate the making of bridles. And horsemanship is subordinate to military science, because we ride horses in order to achieve victory in battle (as the Greeks would have it), we do not seek victory in battle in order to have an excuse to ride horses. (See Ethics 1094a.) Aristotle takes this hierarchy of ends, and the sciences and arts that facilitate their attainment, to be pervasive: all human ends fit in the hierarchy somewhere. Aristotle also makes a commonsense distinction between ends that are valued instrumentally (for example, surgery) and ends that are also valued for their own sake.
Aristotle next argues that there must be an ultimate end or supreme good to which we aim. This is an end at the top of the hierarchy of ends. An ultimate end is one that is valued for its own sake and is not valued for the sake of anything else; it is something complete and sufficient, not lacking any good. Every other end is valued, ultimately, for the sake of this supreme good. Here is Aristotle’s argument:
So if what is done has some end that we want for its own sake, and everything else we want is for the sake of this end; and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (because this would lead to an infinite progression, making our desire fruitless and vain), then clearly this will be the good, indeed the chief good. (Ethics 1094a)
The key argument occurs in the middle of the sentence. Suppose we value one thing for the sake of another, and that for the sake of yet another, and that for the sake of yet another … and so on forever. Aristotle claims our desire would be fruitless and vain (i.e. empty). There must be one ultimate goal in our lives and if we achieve this goal, all our other endeavours won’t have been in vain. Aristotle can’t prove that there is only one such goal – his argument isn’t strong enough to show this. But he thinks there is only one such goal. That is, he thinks there is one common supreme good for human beings. He thinks this, probably, because he thinks human beings are fundamentally alike: we are all members of the one species. He also believes that he has a clear and obvious candidate for the one supreme good of human life.
Eudaimonia According to Aristotle, the one ultimate end of all rational human endeavours is happiness. More strictly, we should use the Greek work ‘eudaimonia’ to describe this ultimate end. ‘Happiness’ is close in meaning to ‘eudaimonia’, but the translation is not precise. The sense of the term ‘happiness’ that is closest to the meaning of ‘eudaimonia’ is that of a “happy life.” (This sense of ‘happiness’ is brought out when we say of a couple that they have a happy marriage.) Eudaimonia is not a temporary mental state, like pleasure, joy, bliss or tranquility. Eudaimonia is an overall-condition of a person’s life. Indeed, Aristotle thinks that we can’t be sure that a person has lived a Eudaimonic life until it is over, and even then the eudaimonic character of a life can be ruined by bad luck, for example if your children disgrace your family name.
Eudaimonia is the supreme good for human beings because: (1) it is the ultimate end for which we pursue anything; (2) it is unconditionally complete (we don’t seek our ultimate happiness for the sake of anything else); and (3) it is self-sufficient (we don’t say of a happy life that it lacks something – though of course we could always say of a life that it could be more happy).
Aristotle develops his own account of human happiness in terms of his account of human nature. Everything has a natural ‘ergon’, or characteristic activity. For example, the ergon of a lion seems to be to mate with other lions to produce future generations of lions, raise cubs to such and such an age (if female) and so on. Aristotle contends that human happiness is to be discovered by discovering the characteristic activity (ergon) of human beings.
But perhaps saying that happiness is the chief good sounds rather platitudinous, and one might want its nature to be specified still more clearly. It is possible that we might achieve that if we grasp the characteristic activity (ergon) of a human being. For just as the good – the doing well – of a flute-player, a sculptor or any practitioner of a skill, or generally whatever has some characteristic activity or action, is thought to lie in its characteristic activity, so the same would seem to be true of a human being, if indeed he has a characteristic activity. (Ethics 1097b)
The characteristic activity of human beings is to use reason. Our capacity to reason and everything that follows from it, including language, technology and culture, are what distinguishes us from all other species. It is what makes us special. Thus, thinks Aristotle, it is also the key to making us ultimately happy – in the eudaimonic sense. We live happily or well, only when we use reason with great skill. The use of reason with great skill is virtuous activity. Thus Aristotle holds that a happy life is one lived virtuously.
This sounds rather similar to Socrates’ and Plato’s views: virtue is its own ultimate reward. But there are a couple of caveats, which make Aristotle’s view more worldly than either Socratic or Platonic views. First virtuous activity is accompanied by pleasure.
It is also the case that the life of [virtuous] people is pleasurable in itself. For experiencing pleasure is an aspect of the soul, and each person finds pleasure in that of which he is said to be fond, as a horse-lover finds it in a horse, and someone who likes wonderful sights finds it in a wonderful sight. In the same way, a lover of justice finds it in the sphere of justice and in general a person with virtue finds pleasure in what accords with virtue. The pleasures of the masses, because they are not pleasant by nature, conflict with one another, but the pleasures of those who are fond of noble things are pleasant by nature. Actions in accordance with virtue are like this, so that they are pleasant to these people as well as in themselves. Their life therefore has no need of pleasure as some kind of lucky ornament, but contains its pleasure in itself, because, in addition to what we have already said, the person who does not enjoy noble actions is not good. For no one would call a person just if he did not enjoy acting justly, or generous if he did not enjoy generous actions; and the same goes for the other virtues. If this is so, it follows that actions in accordance with virtue are pleasant in themselves. (Ethics 1099a)
Secondly, happiness is not made identical to acting virtuously, come what may, even when acting virtuously is pleasant. It also requires external goods, such as health, beauty, good children, good birth:
Nevertheless, as we suggested, happiness obviously needs the presence of external goods as well, since it is impossible, or at least no easy matter, to perform noble actions without resources. For in many actions, we employ, as if they were instruments at our disposal, friends, wealth, and political power. Again, being deprived of some things – such as high birth, noble children, beauty – spoils our blessedness. For the person who is terribly ugly, of low birth, or solitary and childless is not really the sort to be happy, still less perhaps if he has children or friends who are thoroughly bad, or good but dead. As we have said, then, there seems to be an additional need for some sort of prosperity like this. For this reason, some identify happiness with good fortune, while others identify it with virtue. (Ethics 1099b)
Aristotle also claims that what happens after one’s death can affect one’s happiness, for instance, terrible disgrace brought about by one’s children. This demonstrates how far Aristotle is from identifying happiness with a kind of mental state, or indeed a function of mental states. (Ethics 1100b)
Virtues Aristotle’s account of the virtues is the most developed in Greek philosophy. He takes virtues to be states of character, states that issue in dispositions to behave in certain appropriate ways, experience appropriate emotions, perceive situations and think matters through in appropriate ways, etc. He divides virtues into virtues of character (sometimes called the ‘moral virtues’) and virtues of reason (sometimes called the ‘intellectual virtues’). Virtues of character involve mastering your emotions in accordance with reason. Virtues of reason involve excellences of reason.
Virtues of character include such things as courage, temperance, generosity, even-temperedness, magnanimity. Each is associated with a particular feeling or a particular type of action (courage – fear; temperance – pleasure and pain; magnanimity – giving of large donations or gifts). Aristotle’s primary account of them is given in terms of his doctrine of the golden mean (sometimes also known as the via media or ‘middle way’). According to the doctrine of the golden mean, virtues lie between excess and deficiency:
First, then, let us consider this – the fact that states like this are naturally corrupted by deficiency and excess, as we see in the cases of strength and health (we must use clear examples to illustrate the unclear); for both too much exercise and too little ruin one’s strength, and likewise too much food and drink and too little ruin one’s health, while the right amount produces, increase and preserves it. The same goes, then, for temperance, courage and the other virtues: the person who avoids and fears everything, never standing his ground, becomes cowardly, while he who fears nothing, but confronts every danger, becomes rash. In the same way, the person who enjoys every pleasure and never restrains himself becomes intemperate, while he who avoids all pleasure – as boors do – becomes, as it were, insensible. Temperance and courage, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, and preserved by the mean. (Ethics 1104a).
It is important to note that Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is not recommending moderation in all things. Virtue may require great feeling – anger or generosity, for instance. The mean is not an arithmetical measure, but varies from circumstance to circumstance; and agent to agent.
I am talking here about virtue of character, since it is this that is concerned with feelings and actions, and it is in these that we find excess, deficiency and the mean. For example, fear, confidence, appetite, anger, pity, and in general pleasure and pain can be experienced too much or too little, and in both ways not well. But to have them at the right time, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the mean and the best; and this is the business of virtue. (Ethics 1106b).
Recall that virtue requires pleasure. This is important for Aristotle (for he realises that a happy life is a pleasant one). A person truly acts from virtue when they do so willingly, knowingly and taking pleasure in the action. Thus a person does not truly exemplify the virtue of courage if they act bravely – and yet terrified, hating every moment of it. And a person does not exemplify generosity, if they give their money away resentfully.
How are virtues of character taught? By habituation. One develops a virtue by acting out the virtue (copying one’s betters); eventually coming to understand, and take pleasure in the exercise of virtue. Moral education is thus not even primarily an intellectual matter. Notice how far Aristotle has come from Socrates’ view that all you needed for virtue is the right knowledge.