Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics

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Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics
Clark Wolf Director of Bioethics Iowa State
University jwcwolf_at_iastate.edu
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Argument for Analysis

• People believe that theyll be made happy by
  gaining money or power. But they usually find,
  if they achieve these things, that having them
  doesnt make them happy! As a result, they are
  unhappy and their projects become pointless.
  They only keep themselves going with the hope
  that getting even more money or more power will
  do the trick. The reason for this is not just
  that people are mistaken about what will make
  them happy, they are also mistaken about what
  happiness is. In order to achieve a happy and
  successful life, we need to discover what
  happiness is, and what we need to do to achieve
  it.

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Argument for Analysis

• It doesnt make sense to care about something if
  you cant do anything about it. But the only
  things we can really control are our own
  attitudes and internal states. So we should only
  care about our internal states. Life, death,
  war, other peoples welfare, none of these are
  internal states. So we shouldnt care about any
  of these things.
• (After Epictetus)

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Argument for Analysis

• 1) It doesnt make sense to care about something
  if you cant do anything about it.
• 2) But the only things we can really control are
  our own attitudes and internal states.
• 3) Conclusion So we should only care about our
  internal states.
• 4) Life, death, war, other peoples welfare,
  none of these are internal states.
• 5) Conclusion So we shouldnt care about any of
  these things.
• (After Epictetus)

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Argument for Analysis

• We will either pull our troops out of
  Afghanistan, or we will keep our troops in
  Afghanistan. If we pull troops out of
  Afghanistan, the insurgents will take control and
  the nation will become an enemy to the United
  States. If we dont pull the troops out of
  Afghanistan, we will continue to spend US lives
  and money on an unwinnable war, and will earn the
  enmity of the Afghani people. If we earn the
  enmity of the Afghani people, the nation of
  Afgnahistan will become an enemy to the United
  States, and the insurgents will eventually gain
  control. So we can predict that Afghanistan is
  destined to become an enemy of the United States,
  and the insurgents will gain control.

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• Form of the Argument
• 1) a or Not-a.
• 2) If a then (b and the c)
• 3) If Not-a then d and e.
• 4) If e then (c and b)
• 5) Therefore c and b.
• Valid argument form.

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Argument for Analysis

• The human function must be associated with what
  is highest and best in human beings, and with the
  characteristics that distinguish human beings
  from non-human animals and other things. But it
  is our capacity for intelligent reasoning that
  distinguishes human beings it is our highest,
  best, and most important faculty, which
  distinguishes us from everything else. So
  whatever the human function is, it must
  essentially involve the exercise of our reasoning
  capacity.

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Argument for Analysis

• A person will be a good and happy person when he
  or she is doing well what people are
  characteristically supposed to do.

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Argument for Analysis

• A good knife is a knife that cuts well that is,
  it is sharp. This is because cutting is what
  knives are for its their function. And
  sharpness is the quality that good knives have
  to fulfill this function well.
• In the same way, a good person will be a person
  who fulfills the function of a person in an ideal
  way. So to find out what a good person is, we
  need to discover the function of a person the
  essential human function and we need to discover
  what qualities or virtues a person must possess
  in order to fulfill this function well.

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PLATO ON JUSTICE

• Connection to Happiness and Well-Being A person
  whose "soul" is out of harmony will be
  internally divided (see 351a-c This passage, and
  the analogy between individual and social
  divisions becomes clear now.) subject to
  inappropriate and unpleasant emotions motivated
  to do what she should not.

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• And justice was in truth, it appears, something
  like this. It does not lie in a mans external
  actions, but in the way he acts within himself,
  really concerned with himself and his inner
  parts. He does not allow each part of himself to
  perform the work of another, or the sections of
  his soul to meddle with one another. He orders
  well what are in the true sense of the word his
  own affairs he is master of himself, puts things
  in order, is his own friend, harmonizes the three
  parts like the limiting notes of a musical scale,
  the high, the low, the middls, and any others
  there may be in between. He binds them all
  together, and himself from a plurality becomes a
  unity. Being thus moderate and harmonious, he
  now performs some public actions or private
  contract. In all these fields he thinks the just
  and beautiful action, which he names as such, to
  be that which preserves this inner harmony, and
  indeed helps to achieve it, wisdom to be the
  knowledge which oversees this action, an unjust
  action to be that which always destroys it, and
  ignorance the belief which oversees that.
• -Republic, Book IV, 443d

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PLATO ON JUSTICE

• Platonic Vices and Virtues
• Courage- reason supports spiritCowardice-
  desire (to escape harm) and foresight (to see it
  coming) take too much precedence over
  spirit.Vainglory- spirit overcomes
  wisdomTemperance- desire is mediated by
  wisdomGluttony- desire takes overInsensibility-
  insufficient (desire and spirit) to care properly
  for virtue

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Aristotle NE, Book I Chapter 1

• Every craft and every line of inquiry, and
  likewise every action and decision, seems to seek
  some good that is why some people were right to
  describe the good as what everything seeks. But
  the ends that are sought appear to differ some
  are activities, and others are products apart
  from the activities. Wherever there are ends
  apart from the actions, the products are by
  nature better than the activities.

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Book I Chapter 1

• Since there are many actions, crafts, and
  sciences, the ends turn out to be many as well
  for health is the end of medicine, a boat of boat
  building, victory of generalship, and wealth of
  household management. But some of these pursuits
  are subordinate to some one capacity for
  instance, bridle making and every other science
  producing equipment for horses are subordinate to
  horsemanship, while this and every action of
  warfare are in turn subordinate to generalship,
  and in the same way other pursuits are
  subordinate to further ones. In all such cases,
  then, the ends of the ruling science are more
  choiceworthy than all the ends subordinate to
  them, since the lower ends are also pursued for
  the sake of the higher. Here it does not matter
  whether the ends of the actions are the
  activities themselves, or something apart from
  them , as in the sciences we have named.

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Book I Chapter 1

• Suppose, then, that the things achievable by
  action have some end that we wish for because of
  itself and because of which we wish for the other
  things and that we do not choose everything
  because of something else, for if we do it will
  go on without limit, so that desire will prove
  empty and futile. Clearly this end will be the
  good, that is to say, the best good.
• NE 1094a

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Aristotle on What Matters

• NE I.1 Heirarchy of Goods
• NE I.2 Existence of a Master Good
• NE I.3 How to judge an ethical theory
• NE I.4 Method discover what most people think
  about happiness, then improve it.
• NE I.5 Three conceptions of happiness
• NE I.6 Against Platos Forms
• NE I.7 Characteristics of the Good Complete,
  self-sufficient, final end. Souls activity
  expressing virtue.
• NE I.8

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What Matters?

• Money
• Security
• Happiness
• Fun
• Love
• Pleasure
• Power
• Achievement
• Knowledge
• Wisdom

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Aristotelian Teleology

• Telos- end or goal.
• To find out what something is, find out where
  its going,
• A things characteristic function is the
  function that makes it the kind of thing it is.
  (Ex Acorns function is to become an oak.)
• A good thing is a thing that fulfills its
  function well.

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Aristotle on the Master Good

• The master good Aristotle is looking for is a
  complete description of the human function.
• It will include within it all the things we want
  non-instrumentally, and its achievement will
  constitute our complete happiness.

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• Properties of Aristotle's Master Good
• 1) Complete
• 2) Self-Sufficient3) Final4) Attainable

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Contrast with Plato

• Aristotle recommends an Attainable good (proper
  to us).
• Platonic Good is beyond us, beyond our
  understanding or comprehension. We can only
  grope toward it.

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• Test for Completeness of a good For any good G,
  we ask "Is there some other good F that we could
  add to G to make G even better? If so, then G is
  not complete, and cannot be the "master good."

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Aristotle on What Matters

• Test for Completeness Consider something that
  might be the master good.
• Ask If I possessed that good, is there something
  I could have that would make things even better?
• If so, then the original good is not complete.
• No good that is incomplete can be the master
  good.
• Is there any such thing?

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The Function Argument

• 1) If something has a function, then its good
  will involve the exercise of that function.
• 2) A things function will be associated with
  whatever is highest and best in things of that
  type.
• 3) To find a things function, find out what its
  highest and best capacities are.

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The Function Argument

• Aristotle on the Soul (I,13)
• Non-rational Part (1102b) 1) Nutrition and
  Growth (In common with plants) 2) Appetites
  (including desires and passions)
• (Possessed in common with animals)
• Rational Part Two Aspects 1) Regulative
  -control appetite 2) Good for its own sake
  -philosophical contemplation.

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• ARISTOTLE The Function Argument
• 1) If anything has a function, its happiness (or
  good) will lie in performing that function well.
  2) If a human being has a function, its
  happiness (or good) will lie in performing that
  function well. 3) To determine what happiness is
  for a human being, we need to discover the human
  function. (look to the capacities of the human
  soul).

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• ARISTOTLE The Function Argument
• 4) Three Possible Functions Humans Might Have
• a) Nutritional and reproductive- these functions
  are common to all living things. Plants are said
  to be 'living' because they maintain themselves
  through nutrition and growth.
• b) Appetitive and perceptual function (use of
  perception and desire, or the animal soul).
  Animals have this function and are said to be
  'living' in that they perceive and act on desire.
  This part of the 'soul' includes the nonrational
  appetites, emotions, pleasure, pain, sense
  perception, imagination, and the power of
  movement.
• c) Rational Function- Humans and God have this
  function. Human beings, unlike plants and
  animals, have projects and plans. We make
  choices, deliberate, we can calculate and even
  select a way of life for ourselves.

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• ARISTOTLE The Function Argument
• 5) Aristotle argues that (c)rationality is what
  is peculiar to human life. We have a life in the
  sense that we have reason, so our function lies
  in reason.
• 6) Happiness therefore lies in using our
  reasoning capacity well.
• 7) Since the virtues are what enable a thing to
  perform its function well, the human virtues are
  what enable us to reason well. Happiness is a
  life of activities governed by reason rational
  activities that are performed well (that is,
  virtuously or excellently). Aristotle's theory of
  the virtues shows how they are qualities that
  enable us to live a life according to reason, and
  to do it well.

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Aristotelian Virtues The Human Function

• VIRTUES OF CHARACTER
• DF A (1) state involving decision, (2) lying in
  a mean, (3) a mean that is relative to us, (4) a
  mean defined by reason, and (5) by the reason by
  which the wise person would define it.
  (1106b36-1107a2)
• VIRTUES OF THOUGHT (For another time)

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• (1) a. Virtue is a state (hexis) not simply a
  capacity or feeling, though it involves both
  capacities and feelings. Possession of a virtue
  requires more than behavior-- it also reqires
  appropriate motivation and disposition for both
  behavior and motivation.
• b. Value of virtue is more than just a means to
  virtuous action. (Compare to Kant's "action in
  accordance with and for the sake of law...)
  Virtuous activity is not virtuous unless it is
  done for its own sake.
• c. State "involving decision (prohairesis)
  Certain pattern of desire and deliberation is
  characteristic of the virtuous person. Virtuous
  action is not just thoughtless "reflex," it
  involves intelligent decision making.
• (2-3) "Mean" does not merely mean 'moderation' in
  action or feeling. For example, achievement of
  'the mean relative to anger' does not mean that
  we will never be more than moderately angry. On
  the contrary, a virtuous person will be EXTREMELY
  angry on occasions when extreme anger is called
  for (Irwin). When Aristotle says that the mean is
  "relative to us," he does not mean to defend a
  narrow relativism. The "mean" is the middle place
  between vices of excess and vices of defficiency.
  
• (4-5) Mean (4) defined by reason and (5)
  determined by the wise (phronimos) person--
  refers to the intellectual virtue that is
  responsible for good deliberation. This connects
  the moral virtues with the intellectual virtues.

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Weakness of Will?

• Socratic Paradox1) All voluntary action aims
  at the achievement of some goal that the actor
  perceives, in some sense, as good or desirable.
  2) To say that an end is 'wicked' or 'bad' is to
  say that it is neither properly desirable nor
  good. 3) Actions that spring from ignorance are
  involuntary. 4) When actors would not pursue
  some end but for their false belief that the end
  in question is desirable or good, then their
  actions spring from ignorance. 5) When actions
  are aimed at bad or wicked ends, the actor must
  perceive or believe these ends to be good or
  desirable. 6) Such actors would not pursue these
  ends but for their false beliefs. 7) So such
  actions spring from ignorance. 8) So such
  actions are involuntary. 9) So all actions that
  aim at bad or wicked ends are involuntary.

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• Socratic/Platonic View Plato, The Laws.
  Athenian all wicked men are, in all respects,
  unwillingly wicked.This being so, my next
  argument necessarily follows. Cleinias What
  argument? Athenian That the unjust man is
  doubtless wicked but that the wicked man is in
  that state only against his will. However, to
  suppose that a voluntary act is performed
  involuntarily makes no sense. Therefore, in the
  eyes of someone who holds the view that injustice
  is involuntary, a man who acts unjustly would
  seem to be doing so against his will. Here and
  now, that is the position I have to accept I
  allow that no one acts unjustly except against
  his will. ...Well then, how am I to make my own
  arguments consistent? 860
• Aristotle's Response NE VII.ii, 1145b29. The
  Socratic view contradicts appearances. We need to
  look to the causes of faulty action.
• Plato, LawsSources of "faults" and wrong
  choices Our first kind is a painful one, and we
  call it anger and fear. ... The second kind
  consists in pleasures and desires. The third,
  which is a distinct category, consists of hopes
  and opinion- a mere shot at the truth about the
  supreme good. If we divide this category twice
  according to the various kinds of ignorance
  discussed earlier in the section we get three
  types and that makes, according to our present
  argument, a total of five in all. We must enact
  different laws for the five kinds...864

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Weakness of Will?

• Aristotle's View Incontinents make the right
  decision (1152a17) and then act against this
  decision (1148a13-17, 1151a5-7) Their failure to
  stick to their decision is the result of strong
  appetites. Aristotle's Example We recognize that
  we should avoid eating this sweet thing, but our
  recognition that it is sweet triggers our
  appetite for sweet things, which causes us to eat
  it after all.
• Proviso Aristotle agrees with Socrates, against
  common sense, in believing that an appeal to
  ignorance is an important part of the explanation
  of incontinence. Though he admits that
  incontinents have the right decision and act
  against it because of appetite, he believes that
  it is impossible to act against a correct
  decision that they fully accept at the very
  moment of their incontinent action. (1147b15-17)
  
• Explanation Incontinent people's appetite causes
  them to loose part of the reasoning that formed
  their correct decision. They retain the right
  general principles but fail to see (at the time
  of action) just how these principles apply in
  their present situation. So even though they say
  that they know that they are wrong to do what
  they are doing, they are just saying the words,
  without really meaning them (1147b9-12).
• To this extent, Aristotle thinks that Socrates is
  right to appeal to ignorance-- though he
  disagrees with Socrates about the kind of
  ignorance that is relevant.

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Aristotle and the Happy Life NE X6-8

• In the last book of the NE, Aristotle describes
  the best life as a life of study. Such a life,
  he argues, fulfills all the criteria of a best
  life, since the happiness involved is complete,
  final, and uniquely associated with the exercise
  of our highest function in its most
  characteristic employment. But

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• Worries about NE X.6-8
• Worry Is the view Aristotle defends in NE X.6-8
  over intellectualized? Is it a Platonic view,
  inconsistent with his earlier insistence that the
  human good must be achievable within the scope of
  a human life?

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The Evidence

• X.7
• The activity of philosophy seems to be presented
  as the final good!
• Thought is represented as superior to the human
  level (1177b25). (Is this Platonism??)

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• Terence Irwin
• "Though the evidence suggesting that Aristotle
  holds this purely contemplative conception of
  happiness is strong, it is not conclusive. He
  does not clearly claim that contemplation fully
  satisfies the criteriafor happiness, and
  therefore he does not infer that by itself it is
  sufficient for happiness. (1) If we were pure
  intellects with no other desires and no bodies,
  contemplation would be the whole of our Good (as
  it is for an immortal soul, as Plato conceives it
  in the Phaedo). Still, we are not in fact merely
  intellects (1178b3-7) and Aristotle recognizes
  that the good must be the good of the whole human
  being. In his considered view, contemplation is
  the highest and best part of our good, but not
  the whole of it. (2) Though contemplation is the
  single most self-sufficient activity, in so far
  as it is the single activity that comes closest
  to being self-sufficient, this degree of
  self-sufficiency does not justify the
  identification of contemplation with happiness.
  For Aristotle has argued that happiness must be
  complete, and for this reason he argues that
  neither virtue nor pleasure alone can be
  happiness. He should not, then, agree that
  contemplation is happiness just because it is
  invulnerable and self-contained. For
  contemplation is not the complete good we can
  think of other goods (e.g. virtue and honor) that
  could be added to it to make a better good than
  contemplation alone." "Aristotle," in Becker,
  ed. Encyclopedia of Ethics p59-60.

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• Martha Nussbaum Aristotle's other works show
  that "ethical Platonism of some sort exercised a
  hold over Aristotle's imagination in one or more
  periods of his career. We should, then, view the
  fragment x.6-8 as a serious working-out of
  elements of a position to which Aristotle is in
  some ways deeply attracted, though he rejects it
  in the bulk of his mature ethical and political
  writing. Surely this is not disappointing.
  Frequently Aristotle is rather quick and
  dismissive of Platonic positions. It seems far
  more worthy of him, and of his method, that he
  should seriously feel the force of this position
  and try to articulate the arguments for it.
  Perhaps we can say that, like anyone who has been
  seriously devoted to the scholarly or
  contemplative life, Aristotle wonders whether,
  thoroughly and properly followed, its demands are
  not such as to eclipse all other pursuits. (...)
  So he articulates the Platonist view, not
  attempting to harmonize it with the other view,
  but setting it side by side with that one, as the
  Symposium stands side by side with the Phaedrus.
  In a sense there is a decision for the mixed
  view but the other view remains, not fully
  dismissed, exerting its claim as a possibility.
  This seems to me to be a worthy way for a great
  philosopher to think about these hard questions
  and therefore worthy of Aristotle." The
  Fragility of Goodness, p. 377

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Upshot

• NE X.6-8 occur within a larger work that focuses
  on virtues of action and character, which cannot
  be exercised in a purely contemplative life.
• The argument of NE X.6-8 is not entirely
  consistent (?) with the view expressed in the
  rest of the book.
• The achievement of a complete good requires the
  exercise of all the virtues, not only the virtues
  of thought.
• This would have fit Aristotles experience of
  life, since Athenian citizens mostly did not have
  the option to retreat from public life.

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Non Aristotelian Conceptions of the Human Good

• 1) Hedonists and Cyrenaics Epicurus, Aristippus
  (Came after Aristotle)Argued that pleasure is
  the human good.
• Aristippus Instant Gratification View
• Epicurus Take the long view.
• Aristotle argues that a life of pleasure must be
  incomplete, since it allows no essential role to
  rational activity. Mere pleasure without rational
  activity is not the good for a rational agent.
  (1174a1-4). So A life of pleasure can be
  Improved upon.

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Non Aristotelian Conceptions of the Human Good

• 2) Socratic View Virtue is sufficient for
  happiness.
• Later accepted by the Stoics. Epictetus, Seneca
  Good for human beings is not happiness or
  pleasure, but discipline of the will by the use
  of reason. If we constrain our desires so that we
  want nothing that isn't entirely internal and
  within the control of our will, we will always be
  completely happy regardless of external
  circumstances. The virtuous stoic can be
  completely happy even while being tortured on the
  rack.
• Aristotle notes that external misfortunes may
  impede rational activity (1100b29-30) and take
  away happiness (1100a5-6). Virtue is insufficient
  for happiness-- one also needs "goods of
  fortune." While virtue may help to achieve these,
  it won't always work.

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Non Aristotelian Conceptions of the Human Good

• 3) Egoist view (Thrasymachus, Aristippus,
  Hobbes) We ltalways do/always shouldgt act in our
  own self interest.
• Aristotle believes that our "end" is not
  "protection of life and gaining power." This
  follows from the fact that a life that was secure
  and powerful might still be lacking in some
  important ways. Thrasymachian view places too
  little weight on reason and understanding, and so
  misses that portion of the good that is most
  important for beings like ourselves.
• BUT1) While virtue is insufficient for
  happiness, it is nonetheless its dominant
  component. That is, no matter what we have to
  lose as a result of being virtuous, we still have
  better reason to choose virtue than to choose any
  other combination of other goods that are
  incompatible with it. (1100b30-1101a8)
• 2) From the general conception of happiness,
  Aristotle infers the general features of a virtue
  of character (ˆthikˆ aretˆ moral virtue). Like
  Plato, he argues that the excellent and virtuous
  condition of the soul will be the one in which
  the non-rational elements are guided by reason.

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Non Aristotelian Conceptions of the Human Good

• On to Epicurus (Epicureanism) and Epictetus
  (Stoicism)