Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle All human activities aim at some end that we consider good. Most activities are a means to a higher end. The highest human good, then, is that activity that is an end in itself. That good is happiness. When we aim at happiness, we do so for its own sake, not because happiness helps us realize some other end. The goal of the Ethics is to determine how best to achieve happiness. This study is necessarily imprecise, since so much depends on particular circumstances. Happiness depends on living in accordance with appropriate virtues. Virtue is a disposition rather than an activity. That is, a virtuous person is naturally disposed to behave in the right ways and for the right reasons, and to feel pleasure in behaving rightly. Virtue is a mean state between the extremes of excess and deficiency. This mean varies from person to person, so there are no hard and fast rules as to how best to avoid vice. Only voluntary actions are praiseworthy or blameworthy. We can define voluntary action as any action that originates in the agent and not in some outside force like a push or a stumble. There are borderline cases, however, as when someone is compelled to behave dishonorably under severe threat. Voluntary action is characterized by rational deliberation and choice, where the agent determines the best course of action by reasoning how best to achieve desirable ends. One by one, Aristotle discusses the various moral virtues and their corresponding vices. Courage consists of confidence in the face of fear. Temperance consists of not giving in too easily to the pleasures of physical sensation. Liberality and magnificence consist of giving away varying amounts of money in appropriate and tasteful ways. Magnanimity and proper ambition consist of having the right disposition toward honor and knowing what is one’s due. Patience is the appropriate disposition toward anger, though it is sometimes appropriate to show some degree of anger. The three social virtues of amiability, sincerity, and wit make for pleasant and engaging interaction with others. Modesty is not properly a virtue, but an appropriate disposition toward shame, which is admirable in the young. Justice in a sense encompasses all the other virtues, since being just consists of exhibiting virtue generally. In human affairs, there are two primary forms of justice: distributive and rectificatory. Distributive justice deals with the distribution of wealth or honors among a group of people and should be given according to merit. Rectificatory justice deals with exchanges between two or more people and should always aim at restoring a sense of balance and equality between the people concerned. It is impossible to treat oneself unjustly or to suffer injustice willingly. While the laws are a good guideline, they do not cover every particular case. On occasion, agreed-upon equity must settle cases that the laws do not. While the moral virtues dispose us to behave in the correct manner, it is necessary also to have the right intellectual virtues in order to reason properly about how to behave. There are five intellectual virtues. Three of them—scientific knowledge, intuition, and wisdom—consist of contemplative reasoning, which is detached from human affairs. The other two—art or technical skill and prudence—consist of calculative reasoning, which helps us make our way in the world. Prudence is the intellectual virtue that helps us reason properly about ethical matters. Incontinence is a peculiar form of badness. Unlike vice, incontinence does not involve willing bad behavior. Rather, it consists of knowing what is good but lacking the self-control to do good. Incontinence is not as bad as vice, since it is partially involuntary. There are three kinds of friendship: friendship based on utility, friendship based on pleasure, and friendship based on goodness of character. The first two kinds of friendship are based on superficial qualities, so these sorts of friendship are not generally long lasting. Friendship based on goodness of character is the best kind of friendship, because these friends love one another for who they are and not for what they stand to gain from one another. Friendship generally exists between equals, though there are cases, like the father-son relationship, which rely on unequal exchanges. Political institutions rely on friendly feelings between citizens, so friendship and justice are closely connected. There are three forms of constitution based on different kinds of relationships. Of the three, monarchy is preferable to aristocracy or timocracy. Ideally, our feelings for our friends should reflect our feelings for ourselves. Self-love is more important than friendship, since only people who treat themselves with appropriate care and respect can achieve proper virtue and happiness. Though a happy person is theoretically self-sufficient, friendship is an important and essential aspect of the good life. Pleasure accompanies and perfects our activities. A good person will feel pleasure in doing good things. The highest good of all is rational contemplation. A life that consists exclusively of contemplation is obviously impossible, but we should aim to approximate this ideal as closely as possible. The practical sciences, then, help us find the right path toward this highest good and help us deal with the practical matters of everyday life that inevitably occupy a great deal of our time and attention. Virtue and Happiness The word happiness in the Ethics is a translation of the Greek term eudaimonia, which carries connotations of success and fulfillment. For Aristotle, this happiness is our highest goal. However, Aristotle does not say that we should aim at happiness, but rather that we do aim at happiness. His goal in the Ethics is not to tell us that we ought to live happy, successful lives, but to tell us what this life consists of. Most people think of happiness as physical pleasure or honor, but this is because they have an imperfect view of the good life. The conception people have of happiness frequently does not line up with true happiness because people are generally deficient in virtue. Virtue is a disposition to behave in the right manner, which is inculcated from a young age. A person with the virtue of courage, for instance, will not only show confidence in the face of fear, but will think of this courage as a good thing. Behaving courageously will make the virtuous person happy and will be one part of living a generally good life. By contrast, a person who has been poorly brought up and exhibits the vice of cowardice will find happiness in the avoidance of danger and thus will have an imperfect view of the good life. Moral Education A question of high importance in any investigation of ethics is how we can teach people to be good. Aristotle is quite clear that he does not think virtue can be taught in a classroom or by means of argument. His Ethics, then, is not designed to make people good, but rather to explain what is good, why it is good, and how we might set about building societies and institutions that might inculcate this goodness. According to Aristotle, virtue is something learned through constant practice that begins at a young age. We might understand his outlook better if we recognize the meaning of the word arete, which is rendered as “virtue” in most English translations. This term more generally means “excellence,” so a good horseman can exhibit arete in horsemanship without necessarily implying any sort of moral worth in the horseman. It should be obvious to anyone that excellence in horsemanship cannot be learned simply by reading about horsemanship and hearing reasoned arguments for how best to handle a horse. Becoming a good horseman requires steady practice: one learns to handle a horse by spending a lot of time riding horses. For Aristotle, there is no essential distinction between the kind of excellence that marks a good horseman and the kind of excellence that marks a good person generally. Both kinds of excellence require practice first and theoretical study second, so the teaching of virtue can be only of secondary importance after the actual practice of it. The Doctrine of the Mean One of the most famous aspects of the Ethics is Aristotle’s doctrine that virtue exists as a mean state between the vicious extremes of excess and deficiency. For example, the virtuous mean of courage stands between the vices of rashness and cowardice, which represent excess and deficiency respectively. For Aristotle, this is not a precise formulation. Saying that courage is a mean between rashness and cowardice does not mean that courage stands exactly in between these two extremes, nor does it mean that courage is the same for all people. Aristotle repeatedly reminds us in the Ethics that there are no general laws or exact formulations in the practical sciences. Rather, we need to approach matters case by case, informed by inculcated virtue and a fair dose of practical wisdom. Aristotle’s claim that virtue can be learned only through constant practice implies that there are no set rules we can learn and then obey. Instead, virtue consists of learning through experience what is the mean path, relative to ourselves, between the vices we may be liable to stumble into. The Unity of the Virtues For Aristotle, virtue is an all-or-nothing affair. We cannot pick and choose our virtues: we cannot decide that we will be courageous and temperate but choose not to be magnificent. Nor can we call people properly virtuous if they fail to exhibit all of the virtues. Though Aristotle lists a number of virtues, he sees them all as coming from the same source. A virtuous person is someone who is naturally disposed to exhibit all the virtues, and a naturally virtuous disposition exhibits all the virtues equally. Our word ethics descends from the Greek word ethos, which means more properly “character.” Aristotle’s concern in the Ethics, then, is what constitutes a good character. All the virtues spring from a unified character, so no good person can exhibit some virtues without exhibiting them all. The Importance of Friendship Aristotle devotes two of the ten books of the Ethics to discussing friendship in all its forms. This is hardly a digression from the main line of argument. Happiness, according to Aristotle, is a public affair, not a private one, so with whom we share this happiness is of great significance. The city-states of ancient Greece were tightly knit communities. In the Politics, Aristotle argues that we cannot fully realize our human nature outside the bounds of a Greek city-state. The bonds that tie citizens together are so important that it would be unthinkable to suggest that true happiness can be found in the life of a hermit. The Life of Contemplation In Book X, Aristotle ultimately concludes that contemplation is the highest human activity. This is largely a consequence of his teleological view of nature, according to which the telos, or goal, of human life is the exercise of our rational powers. In discussing the various intellectual virtues, Aristotle extols wisdom as the highest, since it deals only with unchanging, universal truths and rests on a synthesis of scientific investigation and the intuitive understanding of the first principles of nature. The activity of wisdom is contemplation, so contemplation must be the highest activity of human life.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 12:11:50 +0000
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