LECTURE 4: ANCIENT ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE
Next to The Republic, Nichomachean Ethics is the most read philosophy
book on ethics in the world. Aristotle is the greatest philosopher in
the world. But his books are rather more dull than Plato, because he
did not write like Plato in dialogues. Aristotle wrote his lectures at
the 2nd University, the Lyceum. Common sense.
METAPHYSICS
They agreed that reality was full of intelligible forms that could be known and
defined. But, Plato believed that their essences were changeless, and existed
in a separate dimension from the changing world. Aristotle said they were the
just the essences of changing things. Plato said you would find
justice in itself
apart from just actions, states etc. which just reflected some of the
real justice
in an imperfect way. Aristotle said there were no two realms, said, "The forms,
essences or ideas exist only in changing things, and in the minds of those who
know them." So we know things by seeing them in concrete things.
ANTHROPOLOGY
Plato sharply separates the body and soul (mind) but Aristotle says that
they are form and matter of the same substance. The soul is the form of
the body, and the body is the matter and content of the soul. Like the words
and meaning in a book. Aristotle found that we do not feel like a 'ghost in
a machine'.
EPISTEMOLOGY
How do you know? Plato separated soul and body, and so separated reason,
the soul's tool for KNOWING, from sense experience, the body's tool for
knowing. Plato knew that we all had an innate knowledge of the Platonic
ideals in the mind, and we 'called them up' thorough recollection. Aristotle
said we abstract knowledge of 'forms' by seeing them in concrete things.
So, 'justice' is found in just men, and you must experience seeing it in just
men. We abstract what justice is through our sense experience of seeing it.
ETHICS
So you must begin with experience, in Aristotle. Both in method and content,
they differ. Plato says "the Good life is the virtuous life, and
bodily Goods do not matter.' Aristotle said they did, but no, not as
much as the soul. So, A does
not agree with Socrates when he said that no evil could happen to a
Good man simply because he was simply his soul. A was not an ethical
relativist,
he was an ethical realist.
In method, Plato is looking for a perfect definition. Aristotle is
always looking at real life.
THE NICHOMATHEAN ETHICS
It is the 1st systematic study of ethics. It asks, "What is the Good?"
What is a Good man? What is a Good life? The question of the Good man
is the question of virtues: of Good habits of acting.
Neither P or A were legalists with lists of rules. Aristotle is more
about character than rules. A added 8 virtues to Plato's 4 cardinal
ones.
What is the best life? is the major question. What is the end, telos
or purpose of life? What is the greatest Good? The end of ends? The
most important question of all. Its answered in Book 1. The other 9
books flow from that.
Aristotle first defines the word Good. He looks at what people call
Good, the many many things, and then finds something common in all of
them, and THAT is the Good. "Every art and every enquiry, and every
action and every pursuit, is thought to aim at some Good. And for this
reason, the Good has been declared to be that at which all things
aim." So, the Good is something we are aiming for, the object of
aim... what we desire.
Wait! So, the Good is what we desire? But I desire healthy food and
you unhealthy food! No, our desiring it is not what makes it Good, but
its Goodness, or apparent Goodness, makes us desire it. Desire is to
Good what belief is to truth.
Desire has a structure. Some things we desire as a means to get
something else: money, tools, medicine. Other things we desire as an
end in itself: pleasure, beauty, truth. That narrows our investigation
as we are looking for the Good as the end. And even more specifically,
the final end, the end of ends. The end of ends question: what Good is
human life? What purpose does it have? Perhaps it has no purpose. The
sophists thought that the question of the meaning of life was not
meaningful. Because, life has no 'end', only means. So, Aristotle
first has to argue that there is some kind of telos, a final end, to
all things. If there is NOT a telos for human life, the whole attempt
to find it will come to nothing, like the search for the pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow. His argument: "If we choose everything for
the sake of something else, that process would go on for infinity, so
that our desire would be empty and vain." So, just as the principle of
cause and effect dictates that a first domino falls first, felling the
others, cause and effect works in reverse too... effect necessitates a
cause. There has to be a last end, a thing worth desiring for its own
sake, in order that we might desire all the means to that end. The end
is the final 1000 piece puzzle, the means are the individual pieces.
We have to want to put the puzzle together! Like me wanting to go to
Poland!
We wouldn't want a car if we didn't want to use it to go places. Life
is not a circutious merry-go-round, it must have a telos. If nothing
is worth having just for the sake of having it, life would be a merry
go round going nowhere. There must be some end, some goal that
motivates us as final. At least unconsciously. That's what we are
seeking summum bonum: the meaning of life.
Aristole calls this a very practical question. "Will not the knowledge
of it then have a great influence on life? Shall we not be like
archers aim better if we know where we want to hit? Krakow?'
Its not an easy question though. Some things have an objective truth,
a definable right answer: math and the physical sciences. Ethics is
not like that. On the other hand, at opposite extreme, matters of
taste fashion and human convension, the arts, these are subjective.
Does ethics belong here like the sophists and modern ethics peddlers
say? It may look like ethics belongs here. But Aristotle says there IS
a universally true Good, but it is not easy to find. "It is the mark
of an educated man to find as much clarity as the nature of the
subject permits. It is equally foolish to accept only probable
reasoning from a mathematician, or to demand demonstrative proofs from
a retoritician, Ethics is not either of these. Between the two. It is
not clear cut like math, but not manmade and artificial like rhetoric.
Its easy to put into words: it is happiness, yes. But with regard to
what happiness is, is difficult. Everyone seeks happiness, no one
wants to be unhappy. Everyone seeks it as an end, not a mean. The
means are different for people but the end is the same, The words
aristotle uses for happiness mean more than subjective contentment.
Macarios means 'blessed contentment' and is stronger than Eudynomia,
happy. Happy comes from happens: old english: hap, (luck). So, we
somehow think of happy like luck, as in "damn that happened to you,
you;re lucky and happy!" It has nothing to do with how Good you are,
it just happens, by chance. Eudynomia is not like that, its different.
Its not by chance, its by choice. It has everything to do with how
Good you are and is lasting.
Eu (Good) dymon (soul) ia (lasting state of nature): the real lasting
state of really having a Good soul. It has three major connotations
that the english word happiness does not. 1 you have to be Good to be
happy, 2 it is more in the soul, more than the body or outside
circumstances by Good luck. 3 its an objectively real state or nature.
In english we don't say "you think your happy but you aren't." The
objectivity of it means that you can be MISTAKEN when you say you have
it. In English it makes no sense to say that "you think you're
happy... but you aren't." Or, you don't think you're happy, but you
are." But in Greek it does make sense. Take suffering. Could suffering
possibly be part of happiness? In English no, in ancient greek, yes.
Aristotle and Aescyclus said "you cannot be truly happy unless you are
wise, and you cannot be wise unless you suffer. The man who has not
suffered... what could he possibly know anyway!
Closer to Eudymonia is the word blessed. You may think you are
blessed... if you inherit a big estate and it wipes you out in taxes.
Or you can think you are not blessed when you are... we tell people to
'count your blessings.' So, we are looking not for subjective
contentment (Aristotle would tell someone watching TV all the time or
making mud pies, and that person was contented, he would not classify
that person as happy). Much of what we think makes us happy is just
fancy mud pies. So what is the content of happiness- if not TV or mud
pies? We are looking for the Good, and we have identified it with the
final end, and the final end with happiness (there is a hidden
assumption: that happiness is essentially the same for everyone.
Because it comes from our deepest desire, which comes from our
essential nature, which is somehow the same in everyone. This is an
assumption not popular today. But why? Do we not think happiness is
the fulfillment of our deepest desire? Do we not think our deepest
desire comes from our very essence? Do we deny essential human
equality? Different strokes for different folks only goes so far- I
might like frozen yogurt and you ice cream, or I like the Devil Rays
and you like the Yankees. But we both like pleasure, health, beauty,
knowledge, friendship, freedom... everyone does.
Aristotle mentions different candidates for true happiness: Most men
love pleasure, a few love honor, and a very few love a mystical
experience human beings can have: a god like thing in life:
contemplation. This is the knowledge of eternal truths for its own
sake. Problem: only a few people are capable of it and only for short
periods of time.
WHAT THEN IS THE GOOD?
What about the Good being pleasure? No, it cannot be the highest Good,
because it is not human, its common to men and animals. Money and
wealth cannot be the ultimate Good, because it is a means, not an end.
What about Plato's idea of the Good? No, Aristotle says it is too
abstract and indefinite. Honor? Honor cannot be the HIGHEST Good
because it depends on those who bestow honor, not only those who
receive it. Whereas the Good is one's own possession and cannot be
taken by 'one who bestows' it upon them.' Also, because men pursue
honor not only for its own sake but in order to be assured of their
merit and mettle. They seek honor on the grounds of their virtue.
Well... so maybe it is Virtue, then! Ahh, virtue. It is compatible
with great suffering. Indeed, virtue is part of the definition of
Happiness, but not the whole of it, because great virtue comes often
and most poignantly from great suffering. Example, King Priam of Troy
suffered many misfortunes, like Job. Highly virtuous. And even though
Aristotle thinks human happiness is not mainly bodily and external,
bodily goods must count for something. You don't need a lot of
material goods to be happy, but you need some. And you can be happy
and yet suffer, but not if you suffer enormously. Aristotle is a
middle of the road: the materialist on one side, and spiritualist
(Plato) on the other. Plato who tried to prove in the Republic that
all you need is justice for happiness... like Socrates, who had no
material goods.
We still do not have a good definition of happiness! So, Aristotle
takes a new route. He gives us a better way to find it than the
abstractness of the popular answers. "Look at the natural function of
man. See that there is a natural telos of every occupation or work of
man. Carpenters, soldiers, farmers... Mustn't there be a natural telos
for human life itself? An analogy: every bodily organ has a telos, a
purpose; to do its job. What is the telos of man as a whole? If we can
find that telos, that end, we would find true happiness because we
would know how to seek and attain it. Being happy, being good and
being fully human... are 3 ways of saying the same thing. So what
could that be? What Good does happiness consist in? Not just pleasure
or physical life, or sense experience... its not distinctively human.
What distinguishes us is reason: mind. Using what separates us:
happiness is in the rational soul living according to reason. That
includes both intellectual virtues like wisdom and knowledge and moral
virtues. Here is Aristotle's definition of happiness (= the good for
man): An activity of the soul in accordance with virtue... in a
complete life, with enough material goods. There are some things the
lack of which take the luster out of happiness: the man who is ill
born, ugliness, solitary, childless (or have bad children), is not
likely to be completely happy. Is A thinking about Socrates? He was
born poor, not understood, had no possessions, bad children, and was
ugly. Yet, he WAS happy. Based on all this, how could Aristotle
explain why Socrates was happy? In Book 1 Ch. 10 Aristotle changes his
mind more than once, in print, over whether happiness requires these
things at all.
On the one hand: if activities are as we said what determines the
character of life, than no blessed man can ever become miserable,
because he will never do the acts that are hateful and mean. The man
who is truly good and wise will bear all the chances of life
becomingly, and always make the best of all circumstances, as a good
general makes the best use of an army at hand. One thinks of Robert E.
Lee. And if we were to follow his fortunes, we would call the same man
happy and again wretched, making the happy man out to be a cameleon.
The trials and tribulations of family life laid bare, reveals
throughout all times the man taking care of his family might live in a
mean state, but yes is full of joy.
On the other hand, no one could call poor Priam or Oedipus or Job
happy. At least until the end. Aristotle finally solves his dilemma
with a compromise: small pieces of good or bad fortune clearly do not
weigh down the scales of life one way or the other. But a multitude of
great events if they turn out well will make life blessed... or if
they turn out ill, will crush and maim blessedness. You cannot control
good luck, and if luck plays a role in happiness, then no matter how
good you are, your life could turn out like Priam. Aristotle has
trouble making up his mind about it. How important material good are?
Materialists are certainly wrong. Poor nations and individuals have
lower suicide rates than rich. That's a pretty spectacular index for
that. Material things do not make you happy. Yet, the Platonic
idealist who says the body is our prisonhouse is wrong too... the body
is part of our nature! So, good or bad can happen to us without our
control. Remember he don't agree with Socrates: who says that 'nothing
bad can happen to a Good man.' It can, because he has a body.
THE GOLDEN MEAN
This finding of a middle ground between two extremes is Aristotle's
most famous feature: the principle of the Golden Mean. Now, he didn't
call it the golden mean, like Christ did not call his principle the
Golden Rule. When it came to DEFINING EACH VIRTUE INDIVIDUALLY (cause
how the hell does one do that?), Aristotle sought to find the virtue
sandwiched between two vices, two defects: Virtues are chosen by
reason and the will, which impose the right form or structure on the
matter (or raw material) of material actions and passions (desires),
so we must steer down the middle of each road, both sides of the road
have ditches to fall into. For every virtue there are two opposite
vices!
Courage is the mean between cowardice and recklessness (too little fear)
Justice is the mean between getting or giving more or less than what is deserved
Temperance (Moderation) is a mean between being too sensitive or
insensitive to pleasure and pain
Modesty is between shamelessness and bashfulness
Wit is between boorishness and buffonery
Friendliness is between quarralsomeness and flattery
Righteous Indignation is between irascability and insensibility (too
short and too slow a fuse)
Pride is between vanity and false humility (arrogance and worminess)
(this pride is not one of the seven deadly sins: he means proper self
respect and self love (Jesus even said 'love others as thyself!') no,
it is more competitive (pride against God).
How to get an A on an assignment on 'A Logical Critique of Aristotle's
Golden Mean?' One sentence did it: "I think this is a good idea but
Aristotle carries it to an extreme."
It means: Isn't Aristotle a bit too moderate? Too controlled, too
rational? What about wildness, what about emotion, what about love!
Don't we need a little extremism sometimes? Well, when Thomas Aquinas
was asked if EVERY virtue was an Aristotelian mean between two
extremes, he said, "No, there are three that are not: Faith, Hope and
Love." Aquinas added another dimension to life that Aristotle did not
have: the vertical (supernatural) dimension. In that dimension there
is an infinite object-a being we call God- that is infinitely good and
lovable. One can love any finite good too much, but one cannot love
the infinite good too much. Aristotle did believe in a God, a Deistic
God, a first unmoved mover, but this was not a Mover that loved, or
loved us, or who even knew us (in fact, Aristotle never connected this
god to ethics at all). Aristotle does mention love, however, in fact,
he devoted two whole books to it! Only he calls it Friendship.
He ranks friendship as the fullest form of love. He says it transcends
justice. Eros is the word for love (desire) and storgay (natural
affection), common to man and animals. Agape was too vague, but this
was resurrected by the Christians to connote the specific sharp
concrete meaning: the love that God the Father has and is.
THREE KINDS OF FRIENDSHIP
based on mutual pleasure: because you are fun
utility: because I need you for something
respect: because I admire you and want to be like you in character, in
virtue (highest form)
He gets these three kinds from a broader context: from the three kinds of goods:
because they give us pleasure
because they are useful
because they are morally good
So, this is a hugely practical idea: there are only 3 good reasons for
doing anything, for loving anything: because it is morally good,
because its a practical necessity, or because it gives you joy. If it
give you none of these, get rid of it. Our lives are so cluttered, and
if we applied this criteria, we would be much freer. It would be a
spring cleaning. Only buy these things, read the things and do the
moral virtues on things, that find a place in these criteria.
Next: Thomas Aquinas on Happiness (a mere 10 pages out of the whole Summa!)
READING FOR THE NEXT LECTURE
