Aristotle's Ethics
First published Tue May 1, 2001; substantive revision Mon Mar 29, 2010
Aristotle conceives of ethical theory as a field distinct from the
theoretical sciences. Its methodology must match its subject
matter—good action—and must respect the fact that in this
field many generalizations hold only for the most part. We study
ethics in order to improve our lives, and therefore its principal
concern is the nature of human well-being. Aristotle follows Socrates
and Plato in taking the virtues to be central to a well-lived
life. Like Plato, he regards the ethical virtues (justice, courage,
temperance and so on) as complex rational, emotional and social
skills. But he rejects Plato's idea that a training in the sciences
and metaphysics is a necessary prerequisite for a full understanding
of our good. What we need, in order to live well, is a proper
appreciation of the way in which such goods as friendship, pleasure,
virtue, honor and wealth fit together as a whole. In order to apply
that general understanding to particular cases, we must acquire,
through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to see, on each
occasion, which course of action is best supported by reasons.
Therefore practical wisdom, as he conceives it, cannot be acquired
solely by learning general rules. We must also acquire, through
practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable
us to put our general understanding of well-being into practice in
ways that are suitable to each occasion.
Aristotle wrote two ethical treatises: the Nicomachean Ethics
and the Eudemian Ethics. He does not himself use either of
these titles, although in the Politics (1295a36) he refers
back to one of them—probably the Eudemian
Ethics—as “ta êthika”—his
writings about character. The words “Eudemian”
and “Nicomachean” were added later, perhaps
because the former was edited by his friend, Eudemus, and the latter
by his son, Nicomachus. In any case, these two works cover more or
less the same ground: they begin with a discussion of
eudaimonia ( “happiness,”
“flourishing”), and turn to an examination of the nature
of aretê (“virtue,”
“excellence”) and the character traits that human beings
need in order to live life at its best. Both treatises examine the
conditions in which praise or blame are appropriate, and the nature of
pleasure and friendship; near the end of each work, we find a brief
discussion of the proper relationship between human beings and the
divine.
Though the general point of view expressed in each work is the same,
there are many subtle differences in organization and content as well.
Clearly, one is a re-working of the other, and although no single
piece of evidence shows conclusively what their order is, it is widely
assumed that the Nicomachean Ethics is a later and improved
version of the Eudemian Ethics. (Not all of the Eudemian
Ethics was revised: its Books IV, V, and VI re-appear as V, VI,
VII of the Nicomachean Ethics.) Perhaps the most telling
indication of this ordering is that in several instances the
Nicomachean Ethics develops a theme about which its
Eudemian cousin is silent. Only the Nicomachean
Ethics discusses the close relationship between ethical inquiry
and politics; only the Nicomachean Ethics critically examines Solon's
paradoxical dictum that no man should be counted happy until he is dead; and only
the Nicomachean Ethics gives a series of arguments for the
superiority of the philosophical life to the political life. The
remainder of this article will therefore focus on this work. [Note:
Page and line numbers shall henceforth refer to this treatise.]
Although Aristotle is deeply indebted to Plato's moral philosophy,
particularly Plato's central insight that moral thinking must be
integrated with our emotions and appetites, and that the preparation
for such unity of character should begin with childhood education, the
systematic character of Aristotle's discussion of these themes was a
remarkable innovation. No one had written ethical treatises before
Aristotle. Plato's Republic, for example, does not treat
ethics as a distinct subject matter; nor does it offer a systematic
examination of the nature of happiness, virtue, voluntariness,
pleasure, or friendship. To be sure, we can find in Plato's works
important discussions of these phenomena, but they are not brought
together and unified as they are in Aristotle's ethical writings.
The principal idea with which Aristotle begins is that there are
differences of opinion about what is best for human beings, and that
to profit from ethical inquiry we must resolve this disagreement. He
insists that ethics is not a theoretical discipline: we are asking
what the good for human beings is not simply because we want to have
knowledge, but because we will be better able to achieve our good if
we develop a fuller understanding of what it is to flourish. In
raising this question—what is the good?—Aristotle is not
looking for a list of items that are good. He assumes that such a list
can be compiled rather easily; most would agree, for example, that it
is good to have friends, to experience pleasure, to be healthy, to be
honored, and to have such virtues as courage at least to some
degree. The difficult and controversial question arises when we ask
whether certain of these goods are more desirable than
others. Aristotle's search for the good is a search for the
highest good, and he assumes that the highest good, whatever
it turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for
itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and all
other goods are desirable for its sake.
Aristotle thinks everyone will agree that the terms
“eudaimonia” (“happiness”) and
“eu zên” (“living well”)
designate such an end. The Greek term “eudaimon”
is composed of two parts: “eu” means
“well” and “daimon” means
“divinity” or “spirit.” To be
eudaimon is therefore to be living in a way that is
well-favored by a god. But Aristotle never calls attention to this
etymology, and it seems to have little influence on his thinking. He
regards “eudaimon” as a mere substitute for
eu zên (“living well”). These terms play an
evaluative role, and are not simply descriptions of someone's state of
mind.
No one tries to live well for the sake of some further goal; rather,
being eudaimon is the highest end, and all
subordinate goals—health, wealth, and other such
resources—are sought because they promote well-being, not
because they are what well-being consists in. But unless we can
determine which good or goods happiness consists in, it is of little
use to acknowledge that it is the highest end. To resolve this issue,
Aristotle asks what the ergon (“function,”
“task,” “work”) of a human being is, and
argues that it consists in activity of the rational part of the soul
in accordance with virtue (1097b22–1098a20). One important component
of this argument is expressed in terms of distinctions he makes in his
psychological and biological works. The soul is analyzed into a
connected series of capacities: the nutritive soul is responsible for
growth and reproduction, the locomotive soul for motion, the
perceptive soul for perception, and so on. The biological fact
Aristotle makes use of is that human beings are the only species that
has not only these lower capacities but a rational soul as well. The
good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and
what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to
live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using
reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be
more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what
happiness consists in. Doing anything well requires virtue or
excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities caused by
the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.
Aristotle's conclusion about the nature of happiness is in a sense
uniquely his own. No other writer or thinker had said precisely what
he says about what it is to live well. But at the same time his view
is not too distant from a common idea. As he himself points out, one
traditional conception of happiness identifies it with virtue
(1098b30–1). Aristotle's theory should be construed as a refinement of
this position. He says, not that happiness is virtue, but that it is
virtuous activity. Living well consists in doing something,
not just being in a certain state or condition. It consists in those
lifelong activities that actualize the virtues of the rational part of
the soul.
At the same time, Aristotle makes it clear that in order to be happy
one must possess others goods as well—such goods as friends,
wealth, and power. And one's happiness is endangered if one is
severely lacking in certain advantages—if, for example, one is
extremely ugly, or has lost children or good friends through death
(1099a31-b6). But why so? If one's ultimate end should simply be
virtuous activity, then why should it make any difference to one's
happiness whether one has or lacks these other types of good?
Aristotle's reply is that one's virtuous activity will be to some
extent diminished or defective, if one lacks an adequate supply of
other goods (1153b17–19). Someone who is friendless, childless,
powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many
opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, and
what little he can accomplish will not be of great merit. To some
extent, then, living well requires good fortune; happenstance can rob
even the most excellent human beings of happiness. Nonetheless,
Aristotle insists, the highest good, virtuous activity, is not
something that comes to us by chance. Although we must be fortunate
enough to have parents and fellow citizens who help us become
virtuous, we ourselves share much of the responsibility for acquiring
and exercising the virtues.
A common complaint about Aristotle's attempt to defend his conception
of happiness is that his argument is too general to show that it is in
one's interest to possess any of the particular virtues as they are
traditionally conceived. Suppose we grant, at least for the sake of
argument, that doing anything well, including living well, consists in
exercising certain skills; and let us call these skills, whatever they
turn out to be, virtues. Even so, that point does not by itself allow
us to infer that such qualities as temperance, justice, courage, as
they are normally understood, are virtues. They should be counted as
virtues only if it can be shown that actualizing precisely these
skills is what happiness consists in. What Aristotle owes us, then, is
an account of these traditional qualities that explains why they must
play a central role in any well-lived life.
But perhaps Aristotle disagrees, and refuses to accept this
argumentative burden. In one of several important methodological
remarks he makes near the beginning of the Nicomachean
Ethics, he says that in order to profit from the sort of study he
is undertaking, one must already have been brought up in good habits
(1095b4–6). The audience he is addressing, in other words, consists of
people who are already just, courageous, and generous; or, at any
rate, they are well on their way to possessing these virtues. Why such
a restricted audience? Why does he not address those who have serious
doubts about the value of these traditional qualities, and who
therefore have not yet decided to cultivate and embrace them?
Addressing the moral skeptic, after all, is the project Plato
undertook in the Republic: in Book I he rehearses an argument
to show that justice is not really a virtue, and the remainder of this
work is an attempt to rebut this thesis. Aristotle's project seems, at
least on the surface, to be quite different. He does not appear to be
addressing someone who has genuine doubts about the value of justice
or kindred qualities. Perhaps, then, he realizes how little can be
accomplished, in the study of ethics, to provide it with a rational
foundation. Perhaps he thinks that no reason can be given for being
just, generous, and courageous. These are qualities one learns to love
when one is a child, and having been properly habituated, one no
longer looks for or needs a reason to exercise them. One can show, as
a general point, that happiness consists in exercising some skills or
other, but that the moral skills of a virtuous person are what one
needs is not a proposition that can be established on the basis of
argument.
This is not the only way of reading the Ethics, however. For
surely we cannot expect Aristotle to show what it is about the
traditional virtues that makes them so worthwhile until he has fully
discussed the nature of those virtues. He himself warns us that his
initial statement of what happiness is should be treated as a rough
outline whose details are to be filled in later (1098a20–22). His
intention in Book I of the Ethics is to indicate in a general
way why the virtues are important; why particular
virtues—courage, justice, and the like—are components of
happiness is something we should be able to better understand only at
a later point.
In any case, Aristotle's assertion that his audience must already have
begun to cultivate the virtues need not be taken to mean that no
reasons can be found for being courageous, just, and generous. His
point, rather, may be that in ethics, as in any other study, we cannot
make progress towards understanding why things are as they are unless
we begin with certain assumptions about what is the case. Neither
theoretical nor practical inquiry starts from scratch. Someone who has
made no observations of astronomical or biological phenomena is not
yet equipped with sufficient data to develop an understanding of these
sciences. The parallel point in ethics is that to make progress in
this sphere we must already have come to enjoy doing what is just,
courageous, generous and the like. We must experience these activities
not as burdensome constraints, but as noble, worthwhile, and enjoyable
in themselves. Then, when we engage in ethical inquiry, we can ask
what it is about these activities that makes them worthwhile. We can
also compare these goods with other things that are desirable in
themselves—pleasure, friendship, honor, and so on—and ask
whether any of them is more desirable than the others. We approach
ethical theory with a disorganized bundle of likes and dislikes based
on habit and experience; such disorder is an inevitable feature of
childhood. But what is not inevitable is that our early experience
will be rich enough to provide an adequate basis for worthwhile
ethical reflection; that is why we need to have been brought up
well. Yet such an upbringing can take us only so far. We seek a deeper
understanding of the objects of our childhood enthusiasms, and we must
systematize our goals so that as adults we have a coherent plan of
life. We need to engage in ethical theory, and to reason well in this
field, if we are to move beyond the low-grade form of virtue we
acquired as children.
Read in this way, Aristotle is engaged in a project similar in some
respects to the one Plato carried out in the Republic. One of
Plato's central points is that it is a great advantage to establish a
hierarchical ordering of the elements in one's soul; and he shows how
the traditional virtues can be interpreted to foster or express the
proper relation between reason and less rational elements of the
psyche. Aristotle's approach is similar: his “function
argument” shows in a general way that our good lies in the
dominance of reason, and the detailed studies of the particular
virtues reveal how each of them involves the right kind of ordering of
the soul. Aristotle's goal is to arrive at conclusions like
Plato's, but without relying on the Platonic metaphysics that plays a
central role in the argument of the Republic. He rejects the
existence of Plato's forms in general and the form of the good in
particular; and he rejects the idea that in order to become fully
virtuous one must study mathematics and the sciences, and see all
branches of knowledge as a unified whole. Even though Aristotle's
ethical theory sometimes relies on philosophical distinctions that are
more fully developed in his other works, he never proposes that
students of ethics need to engage in a specialized study of the
natural world, or mathematics, or eternal and changing objects. His
project is to make ethics an autonomous field, and to show why a full
understanding of what is good does not require expertise in any other
field.
There is another contrast with Plato that should be emphasized: In
Book II of the Republic, we are told that the best type of
good is one that is desirable both in itself and for the sake of its
results (357d-358a). Plato argues that justice should be placed in
this category, but since it is generally agreed that it is desirable
for its consequences, he devotes most of his time to establishing his
more controversial point—that justice is to be sought for its
own sake. By contrast, Aristotle assumes that if A is
desirable for the sake of B, then B is better than
A (1094a14–16); therefore, the highest kind of good must be
one that is not desirable for the sake of anything else. To show that
A deserves to be our ultimate end, one must show that all
other goods are best thought of as instruments that promote A
in some way or other. Accordingly, it would not serve Aristotle's
purpose to consider virtuous activity in isolation from all other
goods. He needs to discuss honor, wealth, pleasure, and friendship in
order to show how these goods, properly understood, can be seen as
resources that serve the higher goal of virtuous activity. He
vindicates the centrality of virtue in a well-lived life by showing
that in the normal course of things a virtuous person will not live a
life devoid of friends, honor, wealth, pleasure, and the
like. Virtuous activity makes a life happy not by guaranteeing
happiness in all circumstances, but by serving as the goal for the
sake of which lesser goods are to be pursued. Aristotle's methodology
in ethics therefore pays more attention than does Plato's to the
connections that normally obtain between virtue and other goods. That
is why he stresses that in this sort of study one must be satisfied
with conclusions that hold only for the most part
(1094b11–22). Poverty, isolation, and dishonor are normally
impediments to the exercise of virtue and therefore to happiness,
although there may be special circumstances in which they are not. The
possibility of exceptions does not undermine the point that, as a
rule, to live well is to have sufficient resources for the pursuit of
virtue over the course of a lifetime.
Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of virtue (1103a1–10): those that
pertain to the part of the soul that engages in reasoning (virtues of
mind or intellect), and those that pertain to the part of the soul
that cannot itself reason but is nonetheless capable of following
reason (ethical virtues, virtues of character). Intellectual virtues
are in turn divided into two sorts: those that pertain to theoretical
reasoning, and those that pertain to practical thinking 1139a3–8). He
organizes his material by first studying ethical virtue in general,
then moving to a discussion of particular ethical virtues (temperance,
courage, and so on), and finally completing his survey by considering
the intellectual virtues (practical wisdom, theoretical wisdom,
etc.).
All free males are born with the potential to become ethically
virtuous and practically wise, but to achieve these goals they must go
through two stages: during their childhood, they must develop the
proper habits; and then, when their reason is fully developed, they
must acquire practical wisdom (phronêsis). This does
not mean that first we fully acquire the ethical virtues, and then, at
a later stage, add on practical wisdom. Ethical virtue is fully
developed only when it is combined with practical wisdom
(1144b14–17). A low-grade form of ethical virtue emerges in us during
childhood as we are repeatedly placed in situations that call for
appropriate actions and emotions; but as we rely less on others and
become capable of doing more of our own thinking, we learn to develop
a larger picture of human life, our deliberative skills improve, and
our emotional responses are perfected. Like anyone who has developed a
skill in performing a complex and difficult activity, the virtuous
person takes pleasure in exercising his intellectual
skills. Furthermore, when he has decided what to do, he does not have
to contend with internal pressures to act otherwise. He does not long
to do something that he regards as shameful; and he is not greatly
distressed at having to give up a pleasure that he realizes he should
forego.
Aristotle places those who suffer from such internal disorders into
one of three categories: (A) Some agents, having reached a decision
about what to do on a particular occasion, experience some
counter-pressure brought on by an appetite for pleasure, or anger, or
some other emotion; and this countervailing influence is not
completely under the control of reason. (1) Within this category, some
are typically better able to resist these counter-rational pressures
than is the average person. Such people are not virtuous, although
they generally do what a virtuous person does. Aristotle calls them
“continent” (enkratês). But (2) others are
less successful than the average person in resisting these
counter-pressures. They are “incontinent”
(akratês). (The explanation of akrasia is a
topic to which we will return in section 7.) In addition, (B) there is
a type of agent who refuses even to try to do what an ethically
virtuous agent would do, because he has become convinced that justice,
temperance, generosity and the like are of little or no value. Such
people Aristotle calls evil (kakos, phaulos). He
assumes that evil people are driven by desires for domination and
luxury, and although they are single-minded in their pursuit of these
goals, he portrays them as deeply divided, because their
pleonexia—their desire for more and more—leaves
them dissatisfied and full of self-hatred.
It should be noticed that all three of these
deficiencies—continence, incontinence, vice—involve some
lack of internal harmony. (Here Aristotle's debt to Plato is
particularly evident, for one of the central ideas of the
Republic is that the life of a good person is harmonious, and
all other lives deviate to some degree from this ideal.) The evil
person may wholeheartedly endorse some evil plan of action at a
particular moment, but over the course of time, Aristotle supposes, he
will regret his decision, because whatever he does will prove
inadequate for the achievement of his goals (1166b5–29). Aristotle
assumes that when someone systematically makes bad decisions about how
to live his life, his failures are caused by psychological forces that
are less than fully rational. His desires for pleasure, power or some
other external goal have become so strong that they make him care too
little or not at all about acting ethically. To keep such destructive
inner forces at bay, we need to develop the proper habits and
emotional responses when we are children, and to reflect intelligently
on our aims when we are adults. But some vulnerability to these
disruptive forces is present even in more-or-less virtuous people;
that is why even a good political community needs laws and the threat
of punishment. Clear thinking about the best goals of human life and
the proper way to put them into practice is a rare achievement,
because the human psyche is not a hospitable environment for the
development of these insights.
Aristotle describes ethical virtue as a “hexis”
(“state” “condition”
“disposition”)—a tendency or disposition, induced by
our habits, to have appropriate feelings (1105b25–6). Defective states
of character are hexeis (plural of hexis) as well,
but they are tendencies to have inappropriate feelings. The
significance of Aristotle's characterization of these states as
hexeis is his decisive rejection of the thesis, found
throughout Plato's early dialogues, that virtue is nothing but a kind
of knowledge and vice nothing but a lack of knowledge. Although
Aristotle frequently draws analogies between the crafts and the
virtues (and similarly between physical health and
eudaimonia), he insists that the virtues differ from the
crafts and all branches of knowledge in that the former involve
appropriate emotional responses and are not purely intellectual
conditions.
Furthermore, every ethical virtue is a condition intermediate between
two other states, one involving excess, and the other deficiency
(1106a26-b28). In this respect, Aristotle says, the virtues are no
different from technical skills: every skilled worker knows how to
avoid excess and deficiency, and is in a condition intermediate
between two extremes. The courageous person, for example, judges that
some dangers are worth facing and others not, and experiences fear to
a degree that is appropriate to his circumstances. He lies between the
coward, who flees every danger and experiences excessive fear, and the
rash person, who judges every danger worth facing and experiences
little or no fear. Aristotle holds that this same topography applies
to every ethical virtue: all are located on a map that places the
virtues between states of excess and deficiency. He is careful to add,
however, that the mean is to be determined in a way that takes into
account the particular circumstances of the individual
(1106a36-b7). The arithmetic mean between 10 and 2 is 6, and this is
so invariably, whatever is being counted. But the intermediate point
that is chosen by an expert in any of the crafts will vary from one
situation to another. There is no universal rule, for example, about
how much food an athlete should eat, and it would be absurd to infer
from the fact that 10 lbs. is too much and 2 lbs. too little for me
that I should eat 6 lbs. Finding the mean in any given situation is
not a mechanical or thoughtless procedure, but requires a full and
detailed acquaintance with the circumstances.
It should be evident that Aristotle's treatment of virtues as mean
states endorses the idea that we should sometimes have strong
feelings—when such feelings are called for by our
situation. Sometimes only a small degree of anger is appropriate; but
at other times, circumstances call for great anger. The right amount
is not some quantity between zero and the highest possible level, but
rather the amount, whatever it happens to be, that is proportionate to
the seriousness of the situation. Of course, Aristotle is committed to
saying that anger should never reach the point at which it undermines
reason; and this means that our passion should always fall short of
the extreme point at which we would lose control. But it is possible
to be very angry without going to this extreme, and Aristotle does not
intend to deny this.
The theory of the mean is open to several objections, but before
considering them, we should recognize that in fact there are two
distinct theses each of which might be called a doctrine of the mean.
First, there is the thesis that every virtue is a state that lies
between two vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency. Second,
there is the idea that whenever a virtuous person chooses to perform a
virtuous act, he can be described as aiming at an act that is in some
way or other intermediate between alternatives that he rejects. It is
this second thesis that is most likely to be found objectionable. A
critic might concede that in some cases virtuous acts can be described
in Aristotle's terms. If, for example, one is trying to decide how
much to spend on a wedding present, one is looking for an amount that
is neither excessive nor deficient. But surely many other problems
that confront a virtuous agent are not susceptible to this
quantitative analysis. If one must decide whether to attend a wedding
or respect a competing obligation instead, it would not be
illuminating to describe this as a search for a mean between
extremes—unless “aiming at the mean” simply becomes
another phrase for trying to make the right decision. The objection,
then, is that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, taken as a doctrine
about what the ethical agent does when he deliberates, is in many
cases inapplicable or unilluminating.
A defense of Aristotle would have to say that the virtuous person does
after all aim at a mean, if we allow for a broad enough notion of what
sort of aiming is involved. For example, consider a juror who must
determine whether a defendant is guilty as charged. He does not have
before his mind a quantitative question; he is trying to decide
whether the accused committed the crime, and is not looking for some
quantity of action intermediate between extremes. Nonetheless, an
excellent juror can be described as someone who, in trying to arrive
at the correct decision, seeks to express the right degree of concern
for all relevant considerations. He searches for the verdict that
results from a deliberative process that is neither overly credulous
or unduly skeptical. Similarly, in facing situations that arouse
anger, a virtuous agent must determine what action (if any) to take in
response to an insult, and although this is not itself a quantitative
question, his attempt to answer it properly requires him to have the
right degree of concern for his standing as a member of the
community. He aims at a mean in the sense that he looks for a response
that avoids too much or too little attention to factors that must be
taken into account in making a wise decision.
Perhaps a greater difficulty can be raised if we ask how Aristotle
determines which emotions are governed by the doctrine of the mean.
Consider someone who loves to wrestle, for example. Is this passion
something that must be felt by every human being at appropriate times
and to the right degree? Surely someone who never felt this emotion to
any degree could still live a perfectly happy life. Why then should we
not say the same about at least some of the emotions that Aristotle
builds into his analysis of the ethically virtuous agent? Why should
we experience anger at all, or fear, or the degree of concern for
wealth and honor that Aristotle commends? These are precisely the
questions that were asked in antiquity by the Stoics, and they came to
the conclusion that such common emotions as anger and fear are always
inappropriate. Aristotle assumes, on the contrary, not simply that
these common passions are sometimes appropriate, but that it is
essential that every human being learn how to master them and
experience them in the right way at the right times. A defense of his
position would have to show that the emotions that figure in his
account of the virtues are valuable components of any well-lived human
life, when they are experienced properly. Perhaps such a project could
be carried out, but Aristotle himself does not attempt to do so.
He often says, in the course of his discussion, that when the good
person chooses to act virtuously, he does so for the sake of the
“kalon”—a word that can mean
“beautiful,” “noble,” or “fine.”
(See for example 1120a23–4.) This term indicates that Aristotle sees
in ethical activity an attraction that is comparable to the beauty of
well-crafted artifacts, including such artifacts as poetry, music, and
drama. He draws this analogy in his discussion of the mean, when he
says that every craft tries to produce a work from which nothing
should be taken away and to which nothing further should be added
(1106b5–14). A craft product, when well designed and produced by a
good craftsman, is not merely useful, but also has such elements as
balance, proportion and harmony—for these are properties that
help make it useful. Similarly, Aristotle holds that a well-executed
project that expresses the ethical virtues will not merely be
advantageous but kalon as well—for the balance it
strikes is part of what makes it advantageous. The young person
learning to acquire the virtues must develop a love of doing what is
kalon and a strong aversion to its opposite—the
aischron, the shameful and ugly. Determining what is
kalon is difficult (1106b28–33, 1109a24–30), and the normal
human aversion to embracing difficulties helps account for the
scarcity of virtue (1104b10–11).
It should be clear that neither the thesis that virtues lie between
extremes nor the thesis that the good person aims at what is
intermediate is intended as a procedure for making decisions. These
doctrines of the mean help show what is attractive about the virtues,
and they also help systematize our understanding of which qualities
are virtues. Once we see that temperance, courage, and other generally
recognized characteristics are mean states, we are in a position to
generalize and to identify other mean states as virtues, even though
they are not qualities for which we have a name. Aristotle remarks,
for example, that the mean state with respect to anger has no name in
Greek (1125b26–7). Though he is guided to some degree by distinctions
captured by ordinary terms, his methodology allows him to recognize
states for which no names exist.
So far from offering a decision procedure, Aristotle insists that this
is something that no ethical theory can do. His theory elucidates the
nature of virtue, but what must be done on any particular occasion by
a virtuous agent depends on the circumstances, and these vary so much
from one occasion to another that there is no possibility of stating a
series of rules, however complicated, that collectively solve every
practical problem. This feature of ethical theory is not unique;
Aristotle thinks it applies to many crafts, such as medicine and
navigation (1104a7–10). He says that the virtuous person “sees
the truth in each case, being as it were a standard and measure of
them” (1113a32–3); but this appeal to the good person's vision
should not be taken to mean that he has an inarticulate and
incommunicable insight into the truth. Aristotle thinks of the good
person as someone who is good at deliberation, and he describes
deliberation as a process of rational inquiry. The intermediate point
that the good person tries to find is “determined by
logos (‘reason,’ ‘account’) and in
the way that the person of practical reason would determine it”
(1107a1–2). To say that such a person “sees” what to do
is simply a way of registering the point that the good person's
reasoning does succeed in discovering what is best in each
situation. He is “as it were a standard and measure” in
the sense that his views should be regarded as authoritative by other
members of the community. A standard or measure is something that
settles disputes; and because good people are so skilled at
discovering the mean in difficult cases, their advice must be sought
and heeded.
Although there is no possibility of writing a book of rules, however
long, that will serve as a complete guide to wise decision-making, it
would be a mistake to attribute to Aristotle the opposite position,
namely that every purported rule admits of exceptions, so that even a
small rule-book that applies to a limited number of situations is an
impossibility. He makes it clear that certain emotions (spite,
shamelessness, envy) and actions (adultery, theft, murder) are always
wrong, regardless of the circumstances (1107a8–12). Although he says
that the names of these emotions and actions convey their wrongness,
he should not be taken to mean that their wrongness derives from
linguistic usage. He defends the family as a social institution
against the criticisms of Plato (Politics II.3–4), and so
when he says that adultery is always wrong, he is prepared to argue
for his point by explaining why marriage is a valuable custom and why
extra-marital intercourse undermines the relationship between husband
and wife. He is not making the tautological claim that wrongful sexual
activity is wrong, but the more specific and contentious point that
marriages ought to be governed by a rule of strict
fidelity. Similarly, when he says that murder and theft are always
wrong, he does not mean that wrongful killing and taking are wrong,
but that the current system of laws regarding these matters ought to
be strictly enforced. So, although Aristotle holds that ethics cannot
be reduced to a system of rules, however complex, he insists that some
rules are inviolable.
We have seen that the decisions of a practically wise person are not
mere intuitions, but can be justified by a chain of reasoning. (This
is why Aristotle often talks in term of a practical syllogism, with a
major premise that identifies some good to be achieved, and a minor
premise that locates the good in some present-to-hand situation.) At
the same time, he is acutely aware of the fact that reasoning can
always be traced back to a starting point that is not itself justified
by further reasoning. Neither good theoretical reasoning nor good
practical reasoning moves in a circle; true thinking always
presupposes and progresses in linear fashion from proper starting
points. And that leads him to ask for an account of how the proper
starting points of reasoning are to be determined. Practical reasoning
always presupposes that one has some end, some goal one is trying to
achieve; and the task of reasoning is to determine how that goal is to be
accomplished. (This need not be means-end reasoning in the
conventional sense; if, for example, our goal is the just resolution
of a conflict, we must determine what constitutes justice in these
particular circumstances. Here we are engaged in ethical inquiry, and
are not asking a purely instrumental question.) But if practical
reasoning is correct only if it begins from a correct premise, what is
it that insures the correctness of its starting point?
Aristotle replies: “Virtue makes the goal right, practical
wisdom the things leading to it” (1144a7–8). By this he cannot
mean that there is no room for reasoning about our ultimate end. For
as we have seen, he gives a reasoned defense of his conception of
happiness as virtuous activity. What he must have in mind, when he
says that virtue makes the goal right, is that deliberation typically
proceeds from a goal that is far more specific than the goal of
attaining happiness by acting virtuously. To be sure, there may be
occasions when a good person approaches an ethical problem by
beginning with the premise that happiness consists in virtuous
activity. But more often what happens is that a concrete goal presents
itself as his starting point—helping a friend in need, or
supporting a worthwhile civic project. Which specific project we set
for ourselves is determined by our character. A good person starts
from worthwhile concrete ends because his habits and emotional
orientation have given him the ability to recognize that such goals
are within reach, here and now. Those who are defective in character
may have the rational skill needed to achieve their ends—the
skill Aristotle calls cleverness (1144a23–8)—but often the ends
they seek are worthless. The cause of this deficiency lies not in some
impairment in their capacity to reason—for we are assuming that
they are normal in this respect—but in the training of their
passions.
Since Aristotle often calls attention to the imprecision of ethical
theory (see e.g. 1104a1–7), it comes as a surprise to many readers of
the Ethics that he begins Book VI with the admission that his
earlier statements about the mean need supplementation because they
are not yet clear (saphes). In every practical discipline,
the expert aims at a mark and uses right reason to avoid the twin
extremes of excess and deficiency. But what is this right reason, and
by what standard (horos) is it to be determined? Aristotle
says that unless we answer that question, we will be none the
wiser—just as a student of medicine will have failed to master
his subject if he can only say that the right medicines to administer
are the ones that are prescribed by medical expertise, but has no
standard other than this (1138b18–34).
It is not easy to understand the point Aristotle is making here. Has
he not already told us that there can be no complete theoretical guide
to ethics, that the best one can hope for is that in particular
situations one's ethical habits and practical wisdom will help one to
determine what to do? Furthermore, Aristotle nowhere announces, in the
remainder of Book VI, that we have achieved the greater degree of
accuracy that he seems to be looking for. The rest of this Book is a
discussion of the various kinds of intellectual virtues: theoretical
wisdom, science (epistêmê), intuitive
understanding (nous), practical wisdom, and craft expertise.
Aristotle explains what each of these states of mind is, draws various
contrasts among them, and takes up various questions that can be
raised about their usefulness. At no point does he explicitly return
to the question he raised at the beginning of Book VI; he never says,
“and now we have the standard of right reason that we were
looking for.” Nor is it easy to see how his discussion of these
five intellectual virtues can bring greater precision to the doctrine
of the mean.
We can make some progress towards solving this problem if we remind
ourselves that at the beginning of the Ethics, Aristotle
describes his inquiry as an attempt to develop a better understanding
of what our ultimate aim should be. The sketchy answer he gives in
Book I is that happiness consists in virtuous activity. In Books II
through V, he describes the virtues of the part of the soul that is
rational in that it can be attentive to reason, even though it is not
capable of deliberating. But precisely because these virtues are
rational only in this derivative way, they are a less important
component of our ultimate end than is the intellectual
virtue—practical wisdom—with which they are integrated. If
what we know about virtue is only what is said in Books II through V,
then our grasp of our ultimate end is radically incomplete, because we
still have not studied the intellectual virtue that enables us to
reason well in any given situation. One of the things, at least,
towards which Aristotle is gesturing, as he begins Book VI, is
practical wisdom. This state of mind has not yet been analyzed, and
that is one reason why he complains that his account of our ultimate
end is not yet clear enough.
But is practical wisdom the only ingredient of our ultimate end that
has not yet been sufficiently discussed? Book VI discusses five
intellectual virtues, not just practical wisdom, but it is clear that
at least one of these—craft knowledge—is considered only
in order to provide a contrast with the others. Aristotle is not
recommending that his readers make this intellectual virtue part of
their ultimate aim. But what of the remaining three: science,
intuitive understanding, and the virtue that combines them,
theoretical wisdom? Are these present in Book VI only in order to
provide a contrast with practical wisdom, or is Aristotle saying that
these too must be components of our goal? He does not fully address
this issue, but it is evident from several of his remarks in Book VI
that he takes theoretical wisdom to be a more valuable state of mind
than practical wisdom. “It is strange if someone thinks that
politics or practical wisdom is the most excellent kind of knowledge,
unless man is the best thing in the cosmos” (1141a20–22). He
says that theoretical wisdom produces happiness by being a part of
virtue (1144a3–6), and that practical wisdom looks to the development
of theoretical wisdom, and issues commands for its sake
(1145a8–11). So it is clear that exercising theoretical wisdom is a
more important component of our ultimate goal than practical
wisdom.
Even so, it may still seem perplexing that these two intellectual
virtues, either separately or collectively, should somehow fill a gap
in the doctrine of the mean. Having read Book VI and completed our
study of what these two forms of wisdom are, how are we better able to
succeed in finding the mean in particular situations?
The answer to this question may be that Aristotle does not intend Book
VI to provide a full answer to that question, but rather to serve as a
prolegomenon to an answer. For it is only near the end of Book X that
he presents a full discussion of the relative merits of these two
kinds of intellectual virtue, and comments on the different degrees to
which each needs to be provided with resources. In X.7–8, he argues
that the happiest kind of life is that of a philosopher—someone
who exercises, over a long period of time, the virtue of theoretical
wisdom, and has sufficient resources for doing so. (We will discuss
these chapters more fully in section 10 below.) One of his reasons for
thinking that such a life is superior to the second-best kind of
life—that of a political leader, someone who devotes himself to
the exercise of practical rather than theoretical wisdom—is that
it requires less external equipment (1178a23-b7). Aristotle has
already made it clear in his discussion of the ethical virtues that
someone who is greatly honored by his community and commands large
financial resources is in a position to exercise a higher order of
ethical virtue than is someone who receives few honors and has little
property. The virtue of magnificence is superior to mere liberality,
and similarly greatness of soul is a higher excellence than the
ordinary virtue that has to do with honor. (These qualities are
discussed in IV.1–4.) The grandest expression of ethical virtue
requires great political power, because it is the political leader who
is in a position to do the greatest amount of good for the
community. The person who chooses to lead a political life, and who
aims at the fullest expression of practical wisdom, has a standard for
deciding what level of resources he needs: he should have friends,
property, and honors in sufficient quantities to allow his practical
wisdom to express itself without impediment. But if one chooses
instead the life of a philosopher, then one will look to a different
standard—the fullest expression of theoretical wisdom—and
one will need a smaller supply of these resources.
This enables us to see how Aristotle's treatment of the intellectual
virtues does give greater content and precision to the doctrine of the
mean. The best standard is the one adopted by the philosopher; the
second-best is the one adopted by the political leader. In either
case, it is the exercise of an intellectual virtue that provides a
guideline for making important quantitative decisions. This supplement
to the doctrine of the mean is fully compatible with Aristotle's
thesis that no set of rules, no matter how long and detailed, obviates
the need for deliberative and ethical virtue. If one chooses the life
of a philosopher, one should keep the level of one's resources high
enough to secure the leisure necessary for such a life, but not so
high that one's external equipment becomes a burden and a distraction
rather than an aid to living well. That gives one a firmer idea of how
to hit the mean, but it still leaves the details to be worked out. The
philosopher will need to determine, in particular situations, where
justice lies, how to spend wisely, when to meet or avoid
a danger, and so on. All of the normal difficulties of ethical life
remain, and they can be solved only by means of a detailed
understanding of the particulars of each situation. Having philosophy
as one's ultimate aim does not put an end to the need for developing
and exercising practical wisdom and the ethical virtues.
In VII.1–10 Aristotle investigates character traits—continence
and incontinence—that are not as blameworthy as the vices but
not as praiseworthy as the virtues. (We began our discussion of these
qualities in section 4.) The Greek terms are akrasia
(“incontinence”; literally: “lack of mastery”)
and enkrateia (“continence”; literally
“mastery”). An akratic person goes against reason as a
result of some pathos (“emotion,”
“feeling”). Like the akratic, an enkratic person
experiences a feeling that is contrary to reason; but unlike the
akratic, he acts in accordance with reason. His defect consists
solely in the fact that, more than most people, he experiences
passions that conflict with his rational choice. The akratic person
has not only this defect, but has the further flaw that he gives in to
feeling rather than reason more often than the average person.
Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of akrasia: impetuosity
(propeteia) and weakness (astheneia). The person who
is weak goes through a process of deliberation and makes a choice; but
rather than act in accordance with his reasoned choice, he acts under
the influence of a passion. By contrast, the impetuous person does not
go through a process of deliberation and does not make a reasoned
choice; he simply acts under the influence of a passion. At the time
of action, the impetuous person experiences no internal conflict. But
once his act has been completed, he regrets what he has done. One
could say that he deliberates, if deliberation were something that
post-dated rather than preceded action; but the thought process he
goes through after he acts comes too late to save him from error.
It is important to bear in mind that when Aristotle talks about
impetuosity and weakness, he is discussing chronic conditions. The
impetuous person is someone who acts emotionally and fails to
deliberate not just once or twice but with some frequency; he makes
this error more than most people do. Because of this pattern in his
actions, we would be justified in saying of the impetuous person that
had his passions not prevented him from doing so, he would have
deliberated and chosen an action different from the one he did
perform.
The two kinds of passions that Aristotle focuses on, in his treatment
of akrasia, are the appetite for pleasure and anger. Either
can lead to impetuosity and weakness. But Aristotle gives pride of
place to the appetite for pleasure as the passion that undermines
reason. He calls the kind of akrasia caused by an appetite
for pleasure “unqualified akrasia”—or, as
we might say, akrasia “full stop”;
akrasia caused by anger he considers a qualified form of
akrasia and calls it akrasia “with respect to
anger”. We thus have these four forms of akrasia: (A)
impetuosity caused by pleasure, (B) impetuosity caused by anger, (C)
weakness caused by pleasure (D) weakness caused by anger. It should be
noticed that Aristotle's treatment of akrasia is heavily
influenced by Plato's tripartite division of the soul in the
Republic. Plato holds that either the spirited part (which
houses anger, as well as other emotions) or the appetitive part (which
houses the desire for physical pleasures) can disrupt the dictates of
reason and result in action contrary to reason. The same threefold
division of the soul can be seen in Aristotle's approach to this
topic.
Although Aristotle characterizes akrasia and
enkrateia in terms of a conflict between reason and feeling,
his detailed analysis of these states of mind shows that what takes
place is best described in a more complicated way. For the feeling
that undermines reason contains some thought, which may be implicitly
general. As Aristotle says, anger “reasoning as it were that one
must fight against such a thing, is immediately provoked”
(1149a33–4). And although in the next sentence he denies that our
appetite for pleasure works in this way, he earlier had said that
there can be a syllogism that favors pursuing enjoyment:
“Everything sweet is pleasant, and this is sweet” leads to
the pursuit of a particular pleasure (1147a31–30). Perhaps what he
has in mind is that pleasure can operate in either way: it can prompt
action unmediated by a general premise, or it can prompt us to act on
such a syllogism. By contrast, anger always moves us by presenting
itself as a bit of general, although hasty, reasoning.
But of course Aristotle does not mean that a conflicted person has
more than one faculty of reason. Rather his idea seems to be that in
addition to our full-fledged reasoning capacity, we also have
psychological mechanisms that are capable of a limited range of
reasoning. When feeling conflicts with reason, what occurs is better
described as a fight between feeling-allied-with-limited-reasoning and
full-fledged reason. Part of us—reason—can remove itself
from the distorting influence of feeling and consider all relevant
factors, positive and negative. But another part of us—feeling
or emotion—has a more limited field of reasoning—and
sometimes it does not even make use of it.
Although “passion” is sometimes used as a translation of
Aristotle's word pathos (other alternatives are
“emotion” and “feeling”), it is important to
bear in mind that his term does not necessarily designate a strong
psychological force. Anger is a pathos whether it is weak or
strong; so too is the appetite for bodily pleasures. And he clearly
indicates that it is possible for an akratic person to be defeated by
a weak pathos—the kind that most people would easily be
able to control (1150a9-b16). So the general explanation for the
occurrence of akrasia cannot be that the strength of a
passion overwhelms reason. Aristotle should therefore be acquitted of
an accusation made against him by J.L. Austin in a well-known footnote
to his paper, “A Plea For Excuses.” Plato and Aristotle,
he says, collapsed all succumbing to temptation into losing control of
ourselves—a mistake illustrated by this example: “I am
very partial to ice cream, and a bombe is served divided into segments
corresponding one to one with the persons at High Table: I am tempted
to help myself to two segments and do so, thus succumbing to
temptation and even conceivably (but why necessarily?) going against
my principles. But do I lose control of myself? Do I raven, do I
snatch the morsels from the dish and wolf them down, impervious to the
consternation of my colleagues? Not a bit of it. We often succumb to
temptation with calm and even with finesse.” (Philosophical
Papers, 1961, p. 146.) With this, Aristotle can agree: the
pathos for the bombe can be a weak one, and in some people
that will be enough to get them to act in a way that is disapproved by
their reason at the very time of action.
What is most remarkable about Aristotle's discussion of
akrasia is that he defends a position close to that of
Socrates. When he first introduces the topic of akrasia, and
surveys some of the problems involved in understanding this
phenomenon, he says (1145b25–8) that Socrates held that there is no
akrasia, and he describes this as a thesis that clearly
conflicts with the appearances (phainomena). Since he says
that his goal is to preserve as many of the appearances as possible
(1145b2–7), it may come as a surprise that when he analyzes the
conflict between reason and feeling, he arrives at the conclusion that
in a way Socrates was right after all (1147b13–17). For, he says, the
person who acts against reason does not have what is thought to be
unqualified knowledge; in a way he has knowledge, but in a way does
not.
Aristotle explains what he has in mind by comparing akrasia
to the condition of other people who might be described as knowing in
a way, but not in an unqualified way. His examples are people who are
asleep, mad, or drunk; he also compares the akratic to a
student who has just begun to learn a subject, or an actor on the
stage (1147a10–24). All of these people, he says, can utter the very
words used by those who have knowledge; but their talk does not prove
that they really have knowledge, strictly speaking.
These analogies can be taken to mean that the form of akrasia
that Aristotle calls weakness rather than impetuosity always results
from some diminution of cognitive or intellectual acuity at the moment
of action. The akratic says, at the time of action, that he ought not
to indulge in this particular pleasure at this time. But does he know
or even believe that he should refrain? Aristotle might be taken to
reply: yes and no. He has some degree of recognition that he must not
do this now, but not full recognition. His feeling, even if it is
weak, has to some degree prevented him from completely grasping or
affirming the point that he should not do this. And so in a way
Socrates was right. When reason remains unimpaired and unclouded, its
dictates will carry us all the way to action, so long as we are able
to act.
But Aristotle's agreement with Socrates is only partial, because he
insists on the power of the emotions to rival, weaken or bypass
reason. Emotion challenges reason in all three of these ways. In both
the akratic and the enkratic, it competes with reason for control over
action; even when reason wins, it faces the difficult task of having
to struggle with an internal rival. Second, in the akratic, it
temporarily robs reason of its full acuity, thus handicapping it as a
competitor. It is not merely a rival force, in these cases; it is a
force that keeps reason from fully exercising its power. And third,
passion can make someone impetuous; here its victory over reason is so
powerful that the latter does not even enter into the arena of
conscious reflection until it is too late to influence action.
Supplementary Document: Alternate Readings of Aristotle on Akrasia
Aristotle frequently emphasizes the importance of pleasure to human
life and therefore to his study of how we should live (see for example
1099a7–20 and 1104b3–1105a16), but his full-scale examination of the
nature and value of pleasure is found in two places: VII.11–14 and
X.1–5. It is odd that pleasure receives two lengthy treatments; no
other topic in the Ethics is revisited in this way. Book VII
of the Nicomachean Ethics is identical to Book VI of the
Eudemian Ethics; for unknown reasons, the editor of the
former decided to include within it both the treatment of pleasure
that is unique to that work (X.1–5) and the study that is common to
both treatises (VII.11–14). The two accounts are broadly similar. They
agree about the value of pleasure, defend a theory about its nature,
and oppose competing theories. Aristotle holds that a happy life must
include pleasure, and he therefore opposes those who argue that
pleasure is by its nature bad. He insists that there are other
pleasures besides those of the senses, and that the best pleasures are
the ones experienced by virtuous people who have sufficient resources
for excellent activity.
Book VII offers a brief account of what pleasure is and is not. It is
not a process but an unimpeded activity of a natural state
(1153a7–17). Aristotle does not elaborate on what a natural state is,
but he obviously has in mind the healthy condition of the body,
especially its sense faculties, and the virtuous condition of the
soul. Little is said about what it is for an activity to be
unimpeded, but Aristotle does remind us that virtuous activity is
impeded by the absence of a sufficient supply of external goods
(1153b17–19). One might object that people who are sick or who have
moral deficiencies can experience pleasure, even though Aristotle does
not take them to be in a natural state. He has two strategies for
responding. First, when a sick person experiences some degree of
pleasure as he is being restored to health, the pleasure he is feeling
is caused by the fact that he is no longer completely ill. Some small
part of him is in a natural state and is acting without impediment
(1152b35–6). Second, Aristotle is willing to say that what seems
pleasant to some people may in fact not be pleasant (1152b31–2), just
as what tastes bitter to an unhealthy palate may not be bitter. To
call something a pleasure is not only to report a state of mind but
also to endorse it to others. Aristotle's analysis of the nature of
pleasure is not meant to apply to every case in which something seems
pleasant to someone, but only to activities that really are
pleasures. All of these are unimpeded activities of a natural
state.
It follows from this conception of pleasure that every instance of
pleasure must be good to some extent. For how could an unimpeded
activity of a natural state be bad or a matter of indifference? On the
other hand, Aristotle does not mean to imply that every pleasure
should be chosen. He briefly mentions the point that pleasures compete
with each other, so that the enjoyment of one kind of activity impedes
other activities that cannot be carried out at the same time
(1153a20–22). His point is simply that although some pleasures may be
good, they are not worth choosing when they interfere with other
activities that are far better. This point is developed more fully in
Ethics X.5.
Furthermore, Aristotle's analysis allows him to speak of certain
pleasures as “bad without qualification” (1152b26–33),
even though pleasure is the unimpeded activity of a natural state. To
call a pleasure “bad without qualification” is to insist
that it should be avoided, but allow that nonetheless it should be
chosen in constraining circumstances. The pleasure of recovering from
an illness, for example, is bad without qualification—meaning
that it is not one of the pleasures one would ideally choose, if one
could completely control one's circumstances. Although it really is a
pleasure and so something can be said in its favor, it is so inferior
to other goods that ideally one ought to forego it. Nonetheless, it is
a pleasure worth having—if one adds the qualification that it is
only worth having in undesirable circumstances. The pleasure of
recovering from an illness is good, because some small part of oneself
is in a natural state and is acting without impediment; but it can
also be called bad, if what one means by this is that one should avoid
getting into a situation in which one experiences that pleasure.
Aristotle indicates several times in VII.11–14 that merely to say that
pleasure is a good does not do it enough justice; he also
wants to say that the highest good is a pleasure. Here he is
influenced by an idea expressed in the opening line of the
Ethics: the good is that at which all things aim. In VII.13,
he hints at the idea that all living things imitate the contemplative
activity of god (1153b31–2). Plants and non-human animals seek to
reproduce themselves because that is their way of participating in an
unending series, and this is the closest they can come to the
ceaseless thinking of the unmoved mover. Aristotle makes this point in
several of his works (see for example De Anima 415a23-b7),
and in Ethics X.7–8 he gives a full defense of the idea that
the happiest human life resembles the life of a divine being. He
conceives of god as a being who continually enjoy a “single and
simple pleasure” (1154b26)—the pleasure of pure
thought—whereas human beings, because of their complexity, grow
weary of whatever they do. He will elaborate on these points in X.8;
in VII.11–14, he appeals to his conception of divine activity only in
order to defend the thesis that our highest good consists in a certain
kind of pleasure. Human happiness does not consist in every kind of
pleasure, but it does consist in one kind of pleasure—the
pleasure felt by a human being who engages in theoretical activity and
thereby imitates the pleasurable thinking of god.
Book X offers a much more elaborate account of what pleasure is and
what it is not. It is not a process, because processes go through
developmental stages: building a temple is a process because the
temple is not present all at once, but only comes into being through
stages that unfold over time. By contrast, pleasure, like seeing and
many other activities, is not something that comes into existence
through a developmental process. If I am enjoying a conversation, for
example, I do not need to wait until it is finished in order to feel
pleased; I take pleasure in the activity all along the way. The
defining nature of pleasure is that it is an activity that accompanies
other activities, and in some sense brings them to
completion. Pleasure occurs when something within us, having been
brought into good condition, is activated in relation to an external
object that is also in good condition. The pleasure of drawing, for
example, requires both the development of drawing ability and an
object of attention that is worth drawing.
The conception of pleasure that Aristotle develops in Book X is
obviously closely related to the analysis he gives in Book VII. But
the theory proposed in the later Book brings out a point that had
received too little attention earlier: pleasure is by its nature
something that accompanies something else. It is not enough to say
that it is what happens when we are in good condition and are active
in unimpeded circumstances; one must add to that point the further
idea that pleasure plays a certain role in complementing something
other than itself. Drawing well and the pleasure of drawing well
always occur together, and so they are easy to confuse, but
Aristotle's analysis in Book X emphasizes the importance of making
this distinction.
He says that pleasure completes the activity that it accompanies, but
then adds, mysteriously, that it completes the activity in the manner
of an end that is added on. In the translation of W.D. Ross, it
“supervenes as the bloom of youth does on those in the flower of
their age” (1174b33). It is unclear what thought is being
expressed here, but perhaps Aristotle is merely trying to avoid a
possible misunderstanding: when he says that pleasure completes an
activity, he does not mean that the activity it accompanies is in some
way defective, and that the pleasure improves the activity by removing
this defect. Aristotle's language is open to that misinterpretation
because the verb that is translated “complete”
(teleein) can also mean “perfect.” The latter
might be taken to mean that the activity accompanied by pleasure has
not yet reached a sufficiently high level of excellence, and that the
role of pleasure is to bring it to the point of perfection. Aristotle
does not deny that when we take pleasure in an activity we get better
at it, but when he says that pleasure completes an activity by
supervening on it, like the bloom that accompanies those who have
achieved the highest point of physical beauty, his point is that the
activity complemented by pleasure is already perfect, and the pleasure
that accompanies it is a bonus that serves no further purpose. Taking
pleasure in an activity does help us improve at it, but enjoyment does
not cease when perfection is achieved—on the contrary, that is
when pleasure is at its peak. That is when it reveals most fully what
it is: an added bonus that crowns our achievement.
It is clear, at any rate, that in Book X Aristotle gives a fuller
account of what pleasure is than he had in Book VII. We should take
note of a further difference between these two discussions: In Book X,
he makes the point that pleasure is a good but not
the good. He cites and endorses an argument given by Plato in
the Philebus: If we imagine a life filled with pleasure and
then mentally add wisdom to it, the result is made more desirable. But
the good is something that cannot be improved upon in this way.
Therefore pleasure is not the good (1172b23–35). By contrast, in Book
VII Aristotle strongly implies that the pleasure of contemplation
is the good, because in one way or another all living beings
aim at this sort of pleasure. Aristotle observes in Book X that what
all things aim at is good (1172b35–1173a1); significantly, he falls
short of endorsing the argument that since all aim at pleasure, it
must be the good.
Book VII makes the point that pleasures interfere with each other, and
so even if all kinds of pleasures are good, it does not follow that
all of them are worth choosing. One must make a selection among
pleasures by determining which are better. But how is one to make this
choice? Book VII does not say, but in Book X, Aristotle holds that the
selection of pleasures is not to be made with reference to pleasure
itself, but with reference to the activities they
accompany. “Since activities differ with respect to goodness and
badness, some being worth choosing, others worth avoiding, and others
neither, the same is true of pleasures as well”
(1175b24–6). Aristotle's statement implies that in order to determine
whether (for example) the pleasure of virtuous activity is more
desirable than that of eating, we are not to attend to the pleasures
themselves but to the activities with which we are pleased. A
pleasure's goodness derives from the goodness of its associated
activity. And surely the reason why pleasure is not the criterion to
which we should look in making these decisions is that it is not the
good. The standard we should use in making comparisons between rival
options is virtuous activity, because that has been shown to be
identical to happiness.
That is why Aristotle says that what is judged pleasant by a good man
really is pleasant, because the good man is the measure of things
(1176a15–19). He does not mean that the way to lead our lives is to
search for a good man and continually rely on him to tell us what is
pleasurable. Rather, his point is that there is no way of telling what
is genuinely pleasurable (and therefore what is most pleasurable)
unless we already have some other standard of value. Aristotle's
discussion of pleasure thus helps confirm his initial hypothesis that
to live our lives well we must focus on one sort of good above all
others: virtuous activity. It is the good in terms of which all other
goods must be understood. Aristotle's analysis of friendship supports
the same conclusion.
The topic of Books VIII and IX of the Ethics is friendship.
Although it is difficult to avoid the term “friendship” as
a translation of “philia,” and this is an
accurate term for the kind of relationship he is most interested in,
we should bear in mind that he is discussing a wider range of
phenomena than this translation might lead us to expect, for the
Greeks use the term, “philia,” to name the
relationship that holds among family members, and do not reserve it
for voluntary relationships. Although Aristotle is interested in
classifying the different forms that friendship takes, his main theme
in Books VIII and IX is to show the close relationship between
virtuous activity and friendship. He is vindicating his conception of
happiness as virtuous activity by showing how satisfying are the
relationships that a virtuous person can normally expect to have.
His taxonomy begins with the premise that there are three main reasons
why one person might like someone else. (The verb,
“philein,” which is cognate to the noun
“philia,” can sometimes be translated
“like” or even “love”—though in other
cases philia involves very little in the way of feeling.) One
might like someone because he is good, or because he is useful, or
because he is pleasant. And so there are three bases for friendships,
depending on which of these qualities binds friends together. When two
individuals recognize that the other person is someone of good
character, and they spend time with each other, engaged in activities
that exercise their virtues, then they form one kind of friendship. If
they are equally virtuous, their friendship is perfect. If, however,
there is a large gap in their moral development (as between a parent
and a small child, or between a husband and a wife), then although
their relationship may be based on the other person's good character,
it will be imperfect precisely because of their inequality.
The imperfect friendships that Aristotle focuses on, however, are not
unequal relationships based on good character. Rather, they are
relationships held together because each individual regards the other
as the source of some advantage to himself or some pleasure he
receives. When Aristotle calls these relationships
“imperfect,” he is tacitly relying on widely accepted
assumptions about what makes a relationship satisfying. These
friendships are defective, and have a smaller claim to be called
“friendships,” because the individuals involved have
little trust in each other, quarrel frequently, and are ready to break
off their association abruptly. Aristotle does not mean to suggest
that unequal relations based on the mutual recognition of good
character are defective in these same ways. Rather, when he says that
unequal relationships based on character are imperfect, his point is
that people are friends in the fullest sense when they gladly spend
their days together in shared activities, and this close and constant
interaction is less available to those who are not equal in their
moral development.
When Aristotle begins his discussion of friendship, he introduces a
notion that is central to his understanding of this phenomenon: a
genuine friend is someone who loves or likes another person for the
sake of that other person. Wanting what is good for the sake of
another he calls “good will” (eunoia), and
friendship is reciprocal good will, provided that each recognizes the
presence of this attitude in the other. Does such good will exist in
all three kinds of friendship, or is it confined to relationships
based on virtue? At first, Aristotle leaves open the first of these
two possibilities. He says: “it is necessary that friends bear
good will to each other and wish good things for each other, without
this escaping their notice, because of one of the reasons
mentioned” (1156a4–5). The reasons mentioned are goodness,
pleasure, and advantage; and so it seems that Aristotle is leaving
room for the idea that in all three kinds of friendships, even those
based on advantage and pleasure alone, the individuals wish each other
well for the sake of the other.
But in fact, as Aristotle continues to develop his taxonomy, he does
not choose to exploit this possibility. He speaks as though it is only
in friendships based on character that one finds a desire to benefit
the other person for the sake of the other person. “Those who
wish good things to their friends for the sake of the latter are
friends most of all, because they do so because of their friends
themselves, and not coincidentally” (1156b9–11). When one
benefits someone not because of the kind of person he is, but only
because of the advantages to oneself, then, Aristotle says, one is not
a friend towards the other person, but only towards the profit that
comes one's way (1157a15–16).
In such statements as these, Aristotle comes rather close to saying
that relationships based on profit or pleasure should not be called
friendships at all. But he decides to stay close to common parlance
and to use the term “friend” loosely. Friendships based on
character are the ones in which each person benefits the other for the
sake of other; and these are friendships most of all. Because each
party benefits the other, it is advantageous to form such
friendships. And since each enjoys the trust and companionship of the
other, there is considerable pleasure in these relationships as
well. Because these perfect friendships produce advantages and
pleasures for each of the parties, there is some basis for going along
with common usage and calling any relationship entered into for the
sake of just one of these goods a friendship. Friendships based on
advantage alone or pleasure alone deserve to be called friendships
because in full-fledged friendships these two properties, advantage
and pleasure, are present. It is striking that in the Ethics
Aristotle never thinks of saying that the uniting factor in all
friendships is the desire each friend has for the good of the
other.
Aristotle does not raise questions about what it is to desire good for
the sake of another person. He treats this as an easily understood
phenomenon, and has no doubts about its existence. But it is also
clear that he takes this motive to be compatible with a love of one's
own good and a desire for one's own happiness. Someone who has
practical wisdom will recognize that he needs friends and other
resources in order to exercise his virtues over a long period of
time. When he makes friends, and benefits friends he has made, he will
be aware of the fact that such a relationship is good for him. And yet
to have a friend is to want to benefit someone for that other person's
sake; it is not a merely self-interested strategy. Aristotle sees no
difficulty here, and rightly so. For there is no reason why acts of
friendship should not be undertaken partly for the good of one's
friend and partly for one's own good. Acting for the sake of another
does not in itself demand self-sacrifice. It requires caring about
someone other than oneself, but does not demand some loss of care for
oneself. For when we know how to benefit a friend for his sake, we
exercise the ethical virtues, and this is precisely what our happiness
consists in.
Aristotle makes it clear that the number of people with whom one can
sustain the kind of relationship he calls a perfect friendship is
quite small (IX.10). Even if one lived in a city populated entirely by
perfectly virtuous citizens, the number with whom one could carry on a
friendship of the perfect type would be at most a handful. For he
thinks that this kind of friendship can exist only when one spends a
great deal of time with the other person, participating in joint
activities and engaging in mutually beneficial behavior; and one
cannot cooperate on these close terms with every member of the
political community. One may well ask why this kind of close
friendship is necessary for happiness. If one lived in a community
filled with good people, and cooperated on an occasional basis with
each of them, in a spirit of good will and admiration, would that not
provide sufficient scope for virtuous activity and a well-lived life?
Admittedly, close friends are often in a better position to benefit
each other than are fellow citizens, who generally have little
knowledge of one's individual circumstances. But this only shows that
it is advantageous to be on the receiving end of a friend's help. The
more important question for Aristotle is why one needs to be on the
giving end of this relationship. And obviously the answer cannot be
that one needs to give in order to receive; that would turn active
love for one's friend into a mere means to the benefits received.
Aristotle attempts to answer this question in IX.11, but his treatment
is disappointing. His fullest argument depends crucially on the notion
that a friend is “another self,” someone, in other words,
with whom one has a relationship very similar to the relationship one
has with oneself. A virtuous person loves the recognition of himself
as virtuous; to have a close friend is to possess yet another person,
besides oneself, whose virtue one can recognize at extremely close
quarters; and so, it must be desirable to have someone very much like
oneself whose virtuous activity one can perceive. The argument is
unconvincing because it does not explain why the perception of
virtuous activity in fellow citizens would not be an adequate
substitute for the perception of virtue in one's friends.
Aristotle would be on stronger grounds if he could show that in the
absence of close friends one would be severely restricted in the kinds
of virtuous activities one could undertake. But he cannot present such
an argument, because he does not believe it. He says that it is
“finer and more godlike” to bring about the well being of
a whole city than to sustain the happiness of just one person
(1094b7–10). He refuses to regard private life—the realm of the
household and the small circle of one's friends—as the best or
most favorable location for the exercise of virtue. He is convinced
that the loss of this private sphere would greatly detract from a
well-lived life, but he is hard put to explain why. He might have done
better to focus on the benefits of being the object of a close
friend's solicitude. Just as property is ill cared for when it owned
by all, and just as a child would be poorly nurtured were he to
receive no special parental care—points Aristotle makes in
Politics II.2–5—so in the absence of friendship we
would lose a benefit that could not be replaced by the care of the
larger community. But Aristotle is not looking for a defense of this
sort, because he conceives of friendship as lying primarily in
activity rather than receptivity. It is difficult, within his
framework, to show that virtuous activity towards a friend is a
uniquely important good.
Since Aristotle thinks that the pursuit of one's own happiness,
properly understood, requires ethically virtuous activity and will
therefore be of great value not only to one's friends but to the
larger political community as well, he argues that self-love is an
entirely proper emotion—provided it is expressed in the love of
virtue (IX.8). Self-love is rightly condemned when it consists in the
pursuit of as large a share of external goods—particularly
wealth and power—as one can acquire, because such self-love
inevitably brings one into conflict with others and undermines the
stability of the political community. It may be tempting to cast
Aristotle's defense of self-love into modern terms by calling him an
egoist, and “egoism” is a broad enough term so that,
properly defined, it can be made to fit Aristotle's ethical
outlook. If egoism is the thesis that one will always act rightly if
one consults one's self-interest, properly understood, then nothing
would be amiss in identifying him as an egoist.
But egoism is sometimes understood in a stronger sense. Just as
consequentialism is the thesis that one should maximize the general
good, whatever the good turns out to be, so egoism can be defined as
the parallel thesis that one should maximize one's own good, whatever
the good turns out to be. Egoism, in other words, can be treated as a
purely formal thesis: it holds that whether the good is pleasure, or
virtue, or the satisfaction of desires, one should not attempt to
maximize the total amount of good in the world, but only one's own.
When egoism takes this abstract form, it is an expression of the idea
that the claims of others are never worth attending to, unless in some
way or other their good can be shown to serve one's own. The only
underived reason for action is self-interest; that an act helps
another does not by itself provide a reason for performing it, unless
some connection can be made between the good of that other and one's
own.
There is no reason to attribute this extreme form of egoism to
Aristotle. On the contrary, his defense of self-love makes it clear
that he is not willing to defend the bare idea that one ought to love
oneself alone or above others; he defends self-love only when this
emotion is tied to the correct theory of where one's good lies, for it
is only in this way that he can show that self-love need not be a
destructive passion. He takes it for granted that self-love is
properly condemned whenever it can be shown to be harmful to the
community. It is praiseworthy only if it can be shown that a
self-lover will be an admirable citizen. In making this assumption,
Aristotle reveals that he thinks that the claims of other members of
the community to proper treatment are intrinsically valid. This is
precisely what a strong form of egoism cannot accept.
We should also keep in mind Aristotle's statement in the
Politics that the political community is prior to the
individual citizen—just as the whole body is prior to any of its
parts (1253a18–29). Aristotle makes use of this claim when he proposes
that in the ideal community each child should receive the same
education, and that the responsibility for providing such an education
should be taken out of the hands of private individuals and made a
matter of common concern (1337a21–7). No citizen, he says, belongs to
himself; all belong to the city (1337a28–9). What he means is that
when it comes to such matters as education, which affect the good of
all, each individual should be guided by the collective decisions of
the whole community. An individual citizen does not belong to himself,
in the sense that it is not up to him alone to determine how he should
act; he should subordinate his individual decision-making powers to
those of the whole. The strong form of egoism we have been discussing
cannot accept Aristotle's doctrine of the priority of the city to the
individual. It tells the individual that the good of others has, in
itself, no valid claim on him, but that he should serve other members
of the community only to the extent that he can connect their
interests to his own. Such a doctrine leaves no room for the thought
that the individual citizen does not belong to himself but to the
whole.
In Book I Aristotle says that three kinds of lives are thought to be
especially attractive: one is devoted to pleasure, a second to
politics, and a third to knowledge and understanding (1095b17–19). In
X.6–9 Aristotle returns to these three alternatives, and explores them
more fully than he had in Book I. The life of pleasure is construed in
Book I as a life devoted to physical pleasure, and is quickly
dismissed because of its vulgarity. In X.6, Aristotle concedes that
physical pleasures, and more generally, amusements of all sorts, are
desirable in themselves, and therefore have some claim to be our
ultimate end. But his discussion of happiness in Book X does not
start from scratch; he builds on his thesis that pleasure cannot be
our ultimate target, because what counts as pleasant must be judged by
some standard other than pleasure itself, namely the judgment of the
virtuous person. Amusements will not be absent from a happy life,
since everyone needs relaxation, and amusements fill this need. But
they play a subordinate role, because we seek relaxation in order to
return to more important activities.
Aristotle turns therefore, in X.7–8, to the two remaining
alternatives—politics and philosophy—and presents a series
of arguments to show that the philosophical life, a life devoted to
theoria (contemplation, study), is best. Theoria is
not the process of learning that leads to understanding; that process
is not a candidate for our ultimate end, because it is undertaken for
the sake of a further goal. What Aristotle has in mind when he talks
about theoria is the activity of someone who has already
achieved theoretical wisdom. The happiest life is lived by someone who
has a full understanding of the basic causal principles that govern
the operation of the universe, and who has the resources needed for
living a life devoted to the exercise of that understanding. Evidently
Aristotle believes that his own life and that of his philosophical
friends was the best available to a human being. He compares it to the
life of a god: god thinks without interruption and endlessly, and a
philosopher enjoys something similar for a limited period of time.
It may seem odd that after devoting so much attention to the practical
virtues, Aristotle should conclude his treatise with the thesis that
the best activity of the best life is not ethical. In fact, some
scholars have held that X.7–8 are deeply at odds with the rest of the
Ethics; they take Aristotle to be saying that we should be
prepared to act unethically, if need be, in order to devote ourselves
as much as possible to contemplation. But it is difficult to believe
that he intends to reverse himself so abruptly, and there are many
indications that he intends the arguments of X.7–8 to be continuous
with the themes he emphasizes throughout the rest of the
Ethics. The best way to understand him is to take him to be
assuming that one will need the ethical virtues in order to live the
life of a philosopher, even though exercising those virtues is not the
philosopher's ultimate end. To be adequately equipped to live a life
of thought and discussion, one will need practical wisdom, temperance,
justice, and the other ethical virtues. To say that there is something
better even than ethical activity, and that ethical activity promotes
this higher goal, is entirely compatible with everything else that we
find in the Ethics.
Although Aristotle's principal goal in X.7–8 is to show the
superiority of philosophy to politics, he does not deny that a
political life is happy. Perfect happiness, he says, consists in
contemplation; but he indicates that the life devoted to practical
thought and ethical virtue is happy in a secondary way. He thinks of
this second-best life as that of a political leader, because he
assumes that the person who most fully exercises such qualities as
justice and greatness of soul is the man who has the large resources
needed to promote the common good of the city. The political life has
a major defect, despite the fact that it consists in fully exercising
the ethical virtues, because it is a life devoid of philosophical
understanding and activity. Were someone to combine both careers,
practicing politics at certain times and engaged in philosophical
discussion at other times (as Plato's philosopher-kings do), he would
lead a life better than that of Aristotle's politician, but worse than
that of Aristotle's philosopher.
But his complaint about the political life is not simply that it is
devoid of philosophical activity. The points he makes against it
reveal drawbacks inherent in ethical and political activity. Perhaps
the most telling of these defects is that the life of the political
leader is in a certain sense unleisurely (1177b4–15). What Aristotle
has in mind when he makes this complaint is that ethical activities
are remedial: they are needed when something has gone wrong, or
threatens to do so. Courage, for example, is exercised in war, and
war remedies an evil; it is not something we should wish
for. Aristotle implies that all other political activities have the
same feature, although perhaps to a smaller degree. Corrective justice
would provide him with further evidence for his thesis—but what
of justice in the distribution of goods? Perhaps Aristotle would reply
that in existing political communities a virtuous person must
accommodate himself to the least bad method of distribution, because,
human nature being what it is, a certain amount of injustice must be
tolerated. As the courageous person cannot be completely satisfied
with his courageous action, no matter how much self-mastery it shows,
because he is a peace-lover and not a killer, so the just person
living in the real world must experience some degree of
dissatisfaction with his attempts to give each person his due. The
pleasures of exercising the ethical virtues are, in normal
circumstances, mixed with pain. Unalloyed pleasure is available to us
only when we remove ourselves from the all-too-human world and
contemplate the rational order of the cosmos. No human life can
consist solely in these pure pleasures; and in certain circumstances
one may owe it to one's community to forego a philosophical life and
devote oneself to the good of the city. But the paradigms of human
happiness are those people who are lucky enough to devote much of
their time to the study of a world more orderly than the human world
we inhabit.
Although Aristotle argues for the superiority of the philosophical
life in X.7–8, he says in X.9, the final chapter of the
Ethics, that his project is not yet complete, because we can
make human beings virtuous, or good even to some small degree, only if
we undertake a study of the art of legislation. The final section of
the Ethics is therefore intended as a prolegomenon to
Aristotle's political writings. We must investigate the kinds of
political systems exhibited by existing Greek cities, the forces that
destroy or preserve cities, and the best sort of political order.
Although the study of virtue Aristotle has just completed is meant to
be helpful to all human beings who have been brought up
well—even those who have no intention of pursuing a political
career—it is also designed to serve a larger purpose. Human
beings cannot achieve happiness, or even something that approximates
happiness, unless they live in communities that foster good habits and
provide the basic equipment of a well-lived life.
The study of the human good has therefore led to two conclusions: The
best life is not to be found in the practice of politics. But the well
being of whole communities depends on the willingness of some to lead
a second-best life—a life devoted to the study and practice of
the art of politics, and to the expression of those qualities of
thought and passion that exhibit our rational self-mastery.
- appearances: phainomena
- beautiful: kalon
- clear: saphes
- complete (verb, also: to perfect): telein
- condition: hexis
- continence (literally: mastery): enkrateia
- continent: enkratês
- disposition: hexis
- emotion: pathos
- evil: kakos, phaulos
- excellence: aretê
- feeling: pathos
- fine: kalon
- flourishing: eudaimonia
- friendship: philia; philein (the verb cognate to
the noun “philia,” can sometimes be translated
“like” or even “love”)
- function: ergon
- good will: eunoia
- happiness: eudaimonia
- happy: eudaimon
- impetuosity: propeteia
- incontinence (literally: lack of mastery): akrasia
- incontinent: akratês
- intuitive understanding: nous
- live well: eu zên
- practical wisdom: phronêsis
- science: epistêmê
- standard: horos
- state: hexis
- task: ergon
- virtue: aretê
- weakness: astheneia
- work: ergon
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4. The Nature of Virtue and Accounts of Particular Virtues
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- Cooper, Neil. “Aristotle's Crowning Virtue.”
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Great Virtue: Aristotle's Treatment of ‘Greatness of
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- –––. “Aristotle's Account of the Virtue of
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Apeiron, 28 (1995), pp. 207–38.
- –––. “Aristotle's Account of the Virtue of
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- –––. “A Defense of Aristotle's Doctrine of
the Mean.” Ancient Philosophy, 16 (1996),
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- –––. “How Good People Do Bad Things:
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- Gardiner, Stephen M. “Aristotle's Basic and Non-Basic
Virtues.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 20 (Summer
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- Gottlieb, Paula. “Aristotle and Protagoras: The Good Human
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- –––. “Aristotle's ‘Nameless’
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Apeiron, 27 (1994), pp. 1–15.
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- Hardie, W.F.R. “Magnanimity in Aristotle's Ethics.”
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- Hursthouse, Rosalind. “Moral Habituation.” Oxford
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Press, 1989.
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5. Practical Reasoning, Moral Psychology, and Action
- Broadie, Sarah. “Interpreting Aristotle's Directions.”
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in Ancient Philosophy, 30 (Summer 2006), pp. 169–200.
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and Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.
- McDowell, John. ”Some Issues in Aristotle’s Moral
Psychology“. In Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge,
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- –––. ”Deliberation and Moral Development
in Aristotle's Ethics“. In The Engaged Intellect:
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2009, pp. 41–58.
- –––. ”Incontinence and Practical
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6. Pleasure
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Pleasure.“ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie,
75 (1993), pp. 31–46.
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pp. 107–120.
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Aristotle: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City, N.Y.:
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7. Friendship
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Altruism,“ Mind, 86 (1977), pp. 532–54.
- –––. The Morality of Happiness. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Chapter 12
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Mind, 90 (1981), pp. 20–40.
- Pakaluk, Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Books VIII and IX.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
- Pangle, Lorraine Smith. Aristotle and the Philosophy of
Friendship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- Price, A. W. Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Chapters xx.
- Schollmeier, Paul. Other Selves: Aristotle on Personal and
Political Friendship. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1994.
- Stern-Gillet, Suzanne. Aristotle's Philosophy of
Friendship. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
- Whiting, Jennifer. ”Impersonal Friends,“
Monist, 75 (1991), pp. 3–29.
8. Feminism and Aristotle
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Aristotle. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1998.
- Modrak, Deborah. ”Aristotle: Women, Deliberation, and
Nature.“ In Bat-Ami Bar On (ed.), Engendering Origins:
Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle.” Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1994, pp. 207–22.
- Ward, Julie K., ed. Feminism and Ancient Philosophy. New
York: Routledge, 1996.
9. Aristotle and Contemporary Ethics
- Broadie, Sarah. “Aristotle and Contemporary Ethics.”
In Aristotle and Beyond: Essays in Metaphysics and
Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 113–34.
- Chappell, Timothy (ed.). Values and Virtues: Aristotelianism
in Contemporary Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.
- Garver, Eugene. Confronting Aristotle's Ethics: Ancient and
Modern Morality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
2006.
- Gill, Christopher (ed.). Virtue, Norms, and Objectivity:
Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics. Oxford Clarendon Press,
2005
- MacIntyre, Alasdair. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human
Beings Need the Virtues. Chicago: Open Court, 1999.
- Stohr, Karen. “Minding Others' Business.” Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly, 90 (1) (2009), pp. 116–139
- –––. “Moral Cacophony: When Continence is
A Virtue.” Journal of Ethics, 7 (4) (2003), pp.
339–363.
- Wiggins, David, “What is the Order Among the Varieties of
Goodness?: A Question Posed by von Wright; and a Conjecture Made by
Aristotle”, Philosophy, 84 (2009), pp. 175–200.
- Lockwood, Thornton. “A Topical Bibliography of Scholarship
on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: 1880 to 2004.”
Journal of Philosophical Research, 30 (2005), pp. 1–116.
- Links to relevant works by Aristotle at Perseus:
- Athenian Constitution,
ed. Kenyon. (Greek)
- Athenian Constitution,
ed. H. Rackham. (English)
- Economics,
(Greek)
- Economics,
(English)
- Eudemian Ethics,
(Greek)
- Eudemian Ethics,
(English)
- Metaphysics,
(Greek)
- Metaphysics,
(English)
- Nicomachean Ethics,
ed. J. Bywater. (Greek)
- Nicomachean Ethics,
ed. H. Rackham. (English)
- Poetics,
(English)
- Politics,
(Greek)
- Politics,
(English)
- Rhetoric,
ed. W. D. Ross. (Greek)
- Rhetoric,
ed. J. H. Freese. (English)
- Virtues and Vices,
ed. I. Bekker. (Greek)
- Virtues and Vices,
ed. H. Rackham. (English)
- Nikomachische Ethik,
in German, at the Projekt Gutenberg-DE
Aristotle |
character, moral |
egoism |
ethics: virtue |
friendship |
Plato |
pleasure |
wisdom