1
What moves the Intellect: Aristotle on the will
(work in progress;please do not quote)
Dr. Tolis Malakos
Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics(CASEP)
London Metropolitan University
The concept of the will in different guises has been central to modern
moral discourses whereas it is commonly considered to be absent from
Aristotle’s ethics. Aristotle is often said to have been unaware of the issue of
free will, and this despite his very nuanced and complex theorization of the
issues of deliberation, choice and responsibility and will(βούλησις) (in,
among other places, book 3 of the NE) as well as his seminal
conceptualization of human action in terms of a desiring nous(ορεκτικός
νούς) in book 6. Indeed in the light of his discussion of these issues, the
claim that he lacks a concept of the will seems paradoxical.
This is even more so if one reads the NE in conjunction with the
Metaphysics and the De Anima. In particular his discussion in Metaphysics
Θ2
and
5
of
‘rational
potencies’(δυνάμεις
μετά
λόγου)
and
their
characterization as “admitting equally of contrary results”1 that is, as being
able to bring about both the good they are by nature directed towards and
its opposite, seems quite significant and shows that for Aristotle the
distinguishing feature of rational beings is that they make a choice between
good and bad, i.e. that their actions are contingent. According to Aristotle,
whereas irrational, inanimate potencies(άλλογες δυνάμεις) are directed
toward their end(good) necessarily and only external forces can obstruct
their attaining this end, rational beings strive for their naturally defined
good in a contingent way: since they admit of contrary results and since it is
impossible to produce contrary effects(both good and bad) at the same time,
“there must be another deciding factor, by which I mean desire or conscious
choice(όρεξιν ή προαίρεσιν).For whichever of two things a rational being desires and
chooses, it will do» 2
1
Metaphysics,Θ2 1046b5-6.
2
Metaphysics Θ5 1048a10-12.
2
The use of ‘desire or choice’ in the first part of the sentence might be
an unfortunate use of words, because desire belongs to the non-rational part
of the soul and deliberative choice to the rational and the particular
expression does not help us in reaching a conclusion but in the second part
of the same sentence Aristotle seems to correct himself: desire and choice.
Besides desire and conscious choice, here as well as in the NE, Aristotle
uses the word βούλησις, a word which has notoriously admitted different
translations(wish, rational wish, rational desire), to signify in a lot of cases
not just a conscious choice, for which he uses prohairesis, or a desire, for
which he uses όρεξις(appetite) or επιθυμία(which is the word for wish), but a
deciding, rational will. The main claim of this paper though will bethat
Aristotle developed an adequate conceptualization of what we call will,
providing a highly innovative, complex and satisfactory account of voluntary
action by his novel conceptualization of prohairesis(deliberative choice).
Contra Plato he envisaged the rational part of the soul as operating
always in conjunction with the non-rational part. A rational being, according
to Aristotle in his definition of virtue in Book II of the NE, does not exercise
her practical rationality to ‘conquer’ and dominate passions, but to make
rational choices always in accordance with a properly educated character
which has learned to feel pleasure for the right things and pain for the wrong
things.What distinguishes humans according to Aristotle is not only the
rational part but also the formative non rational part of the soul which is not
by definition the dark, irascible ‘horse’ of Plato’s allegory, but can be trained
and learn to develop the virtues of character which enables her to experience
pleasure and pain in a way conducive to the good life.
If my reading is correct, according to Aristotle it is the whole ‘self’, the
partly divided but ultimately unitary soul, and not a mysterious third
faculty, which wills a course of action and chooses good or bad by feeling,
desiring, deliberating and thinking in conjunction, if not at the same time.
Although Aristotle recognizes the independence of these processes, in the
very strong sense that one cannot determine and ultimately direct the other,
and this is very important, he integrates them within his model of an active
soul, a desiring nous that wills to act (βούλεται ποιείν). 3 The ‘dominant’
rational part, according to Aristotle, is not a citadel against non-rational
3
Metaphysics Θ5 1048α22.
3
desires, it cannot eliminate passions, neither conquer nor reform a character
that has not learned to be a virtuous character. In other words, an ethically
bad character cannot be reformed even by the finest nous, as no
combination of ethical virtues or, to use a modern expression, no sheer will
power(meaning strength of character) can help a nous lacking the virtue of
practical reasoning to overcome this deficiency.
The conception of will that dominates moral modern discourses is
based on
a supposedly autonomous ‘faculty’ of volition which, in its non-
Kantian versions, is contrasted to the rational ‘faculty’ which operates on the
basis of reasons. Indeed the most significant characteristic of modern
conceptions of the will is that, contra Aristotle, they ascribe will either to the
rational or to the non-rational part of the soul, albeit by positing a distinct
faculty that wills, and in doing so they impoverish human experience which
according to Aristotle encompasses both. As A. MacIntyre has claimed both
for emotivist moral discourses and for Kierkegardian and Nietzshean
understandings of action,
“the terminus of justification is thus always … a not further to be justified
choice, a choice unguided by criteria.”4
MacIntyre sees modern moral agents as faced with
“a criterionless choice for which no rational justification can be given, as
they can be offered no reason for preferring one or the other…Even if reasons are
offered ..[the moral agent] still has to choose his first principles and just because
they are first principles…no more ultimate reasons can be adduced to support
them”5
MacIntyre talks about a ‘radical and ultimate choice’(p.40) and ‘a
reduction of morality to personal preference’ (p.20).. Whether representing a
distinct part of the soul or the whole self, this slightly mysterious but
certainly undecipherable in principle, voluntaristic and groundless center of
the ‘essence’ of the self, which is capable of leaps both to the dark and to
the sublime, is characterized by its ability to command and direct itself as
well as paradoxically at times to resist its own commands, if it so wills. We
are talking, of course, here about what Henry Frankfurt has called a second
order volition, namely a will to will rather than a will to something.
4
5
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p.20.
ibid, p.39-40.
4
In its Kantian guise, on the contrary, willing is equated to reasoning,
in the sense that when reasoning about action, an agent does not dwell on
her interests and desires, subjecting herself to what Kant calls ‘the causality
of nature’, but motivates herself on the basis of ‘subjective principles of
volition’(GMM,p.16) called maxims which totally exclude inclinations and
desires from the reckoning in a choice. Kant claims that any particular aim
or end cannot act upon the will in a way that will confer on it an
‘unconditioned’ and unconditional moral worth. It is only reason which
makes a will unconditionally good:
“Reason’s true vocation must therefore be not to produce volition as a means
to some other aim, but rather to produce a will good in itself.”6
Even reasoning that is in any way particular, in the sense that it
takes as its aim any particular end and is directed to the means for its
fulfillment, cannot serve as the ground of a good will according to Kant. It is
not reasoning as such but a certain type of ‘pure’ reasoning which makes
human willing unconditionally good, since Kant is interested from the start
for the unconditional good, good which is done not in conformity to
‘goodness’ but for goodness’ own sake. In the Groundwork for the
Metaphysics of Morals, although not in later works, Kant draws a very sharp
opposition between all human acts which take place for the sake of ends
which are considered parts of ‘happiness’ and are the effects of inclinations,
and good acts which are good for no other reason than goodness itself, and
are grounded on “the quality of the good will of being a law to itself”(p.63).
For the will to be unconditionally good, it cannot be determined by anything
else but its quality to legislate, to become a law unto itself but only if it
issues in “unchangeable laws”, which are the distinguishing mark, not of
natural causality in which everything is subject to change, but of what Kant
calls ‘rational causality’.
A rational agent is characterized by definition by the ability to not
obey alien causes but legislate onto herself according to maxims which, in
order
to
be
changeless
and
universalizable. Here the famous
therefore
unconditional,
have
to
be
Kantian principle ‘nothing for myself that
is not for others’ finds ample justification, since a rational, free being cannot
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Yale University
Press, New Haven and London,2002, p.12.
6
5
legislate something for herself unless she legislates the same as valid for all
others. Unconditionality has the meaning of unexceptionality for Kant and
therefore moral principles cannot be based on “certain alleged experiences of
human nature”(p.64),that is, cannot be a posteriori, nor be founded on any
particular, substantive law whatsoever, but on ‘lawfulness itself’, on the
formal principle of universalizability:
“the universal lawfulness of the action in general which alone is to serve the
will as its principle, i.e. never to conduct myself except so that I could also
will that my maxim become a universal law.”7
Despite the fact that Kant thinks of the will as a specific form of
rationality and equates it with practical rationality, a certain form of tension
between practical reason which legislates according to universalizable
principles and the autonomous will which is a law to itself remains. This is
because it is of the essence of free willing to will on a choice, to be open to
alternative outcomes and to be non-obligated to anything, even itself. But
since Kant equates practical rationality with the free will, only a good will is
possible, determined in its outcome by the objective principle of volition, the
practical law handed down to it by a formal, a priori type of reasoning whose
outcome is unexceptionable and cannot but be always good. As this
objective principle of volition is taken up by a will and transformed into a
maxim,i.e. a subjective principle of volition, it cannot fail itself but it can fail
only externally, because Kant recognizes that human beings are rational
beings that, alas, are subject to inclinations and desires.
By itself then a Kantian free will cannot be bad and cannot will
anything bad, which is never the result of willing but of the fallen human
nature. A bad human action cannot be the result of willing for Kant- there
can be no failings of the will- but of desiring. In a sense, the huge gulf that
Kant envisages between willing and desiring, makes the will as such almost
redundant, since what Kant wants to ground is the intersubjective and
therefore objective nature of moral discourse, simultaneously rejecting
Hume’s conception of morality as causally determined by human nature and
the latter’s founding of morality on the subjectivity of passions. By being
objective by definition, by being a rational will and a rational will only,
however, the will runs the risk of not being free, in the sense of having one
7
ibid p.18.
6
capacity only, to legislate and choose what reason dictates as good. A free
will is for Kant by definition a rational will and therefore an unconditionally
good will. For him there is no bad will as such, only bad desires and
inclinations, of course not in the sense of morally bad but in the sense of
humanly bad. Indeed it might be argued that at least in the Groundwork
there is no conception of ‘moral badness’, because it is our human nature
that sins and our rational will that does good. On the other hand as John
Hare among others has pointed out Kant in the later Religion Within the
Bounds of Reason Alone provides a richer and more nuanced account of the
will:
“ The fundamental moral battle as it is presented in Religion..is not between
respect for the moral law and respect for the inclinations. Rather it is between the
good maxim, which subordinates the inclinations to duty, and the evil maxim which
reverses this order of incentives. The good maxim tells us to pursue our own
happiness only in as far as this is consistent with our duty. The evil maxim makes
our happiness a condition of following the moral law.”8
Unlike the Groundwork in which only the good maxim resides in the
will, in this later work Kant insists that “both of these maxims reside in the
will, and a fundamental choice has to be made between them”9. But still the
evil maxim resides in the desiring part of the self and the good maxim in the
rational part. The latter should impose itself on the former. Nevertheless,
Kant makes such a conception of will central to his moral theory, even
though his argument might ultimately be failing on his radically dualist
conception of the human self, which is eternally torn and tortured between
rationality and desire.
In some respects the modern emphasis on the will, in all its guises,
builds upon the Augustinian conception of the will. As A. McIntyre claims in
Whose Justice? Which Rationality,
“For Augustine intellect itself needs to be moved to activity by will. It is will
which guides attention in one direction rather than the other.”10
8
J.E. Hare, Augustine, Kant and the Moral Gap in Gareth B. Mathews(ed.) The
Augustinian Tradition, University of California Press, Berkeley,1999, p.254
ibid.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice, Which Rationality, University of Notre
Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1988, p.156.
9
10
7
Augustine seems to claim that the root cause of any action which
provides the limit to any inquiry on the causal chain of action is the will
itself, i.e. willing is a sui generis, spontaneous capacity which causes itself
and functions as an ultimate arbitrator between possible courses of action.
In other words, the supposition is that acts of will have no efficient cause
other than the will itself,11 and that reasoning on an action is not leading to
action unless will consents to it. Up to this point though, Augustine’s
conception seems not much different from Aristotle’s conception. However,
Augustine conceives of the will as belonging to a distinct, independent
faculty that wills and belongs to the superior part of the soul.12 The will is
presented as the controlling faculty which when not initiating action, is
letting all actions happen since it does not prevent them.13 For Augustine
being alive means having a will:
“ I knew myself to have a will in the same way that I knew myself to be alive.
Therefore when I willed or did not will something I was utterly certain that none
other than myself was willing or not willing.”14
But for Augustine the human will is corrupted and not able to resist the
improper promptings of the lower inclinations effectively. Augustine
conceived passions as spontaneous motions of the lower part of the soul and
the will as consenting or dissenting from them. But given the corrupted
state of the human will, it is only divine grace that can restore its orientation
against evil inclinations:
“Can men do anything by the free determination of their own will? Far be it,
for it was by the evil use of his free will that man destroyed both it and himself.”15
Augustine thought that we do not sin when we have an evil desire,
but when our will consents to it. 16 Although somehow representing the
superior rational part of the soul, the will is conceived as an autonomous
faculty which wills itself. It seems that for Augustine the will is a phantom,
an unmoved mover, which motivates the agent by itself, introducing a ghost
Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.16.3.3.
c.f. Augustine, City of God,13.11.12.
13 c.f. Augustine, De spiritu et littera 31.53
14 c.f. Augustine, Confessions 7.3.5.
15 c.f. Augustine, Enchiridion 30.
16 C.f. Augustine, Ad Romanos, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 35:2066.
11
12
8
which haunts practical reasoning and contra Kant causes it to perennially
fail.
But Augustine was not the one who introduced the concept of free will
to Christian thought:
“The pre-Augustinian theological tradition is practically of one voice in
asserting the freedom of the human will.”17
To mention only one paradigmatic case here, Gregory of Nyssa
asserted that despite losing what he calls their ‘structural’ freedom of the
will at the fall, humans still retain their ‘functional’ freedom by whose proper
use they can regain even their lost ‘structural freedom”. It seems that by the
beginning of the 3rd century CE, the Stoic, secular concept of selfdetermination (αυτεξουσία) has been ‘translated’ and used in the Christian
theological discourse. The incorporation and reconceptualization of the
concept of the will seems to have become central to visions of man as a
suffering being as well as a homo peccator, a sinful being. Suffering had
become central for the Christian vision of the world from very early on. Not
only Tertullian’s testimony to the effect that «the blood of Christians is
seed»(Apologia 50) and that Christians are «a race ready for death»(Apologia
1.12) but also Justin’s «who joining us does not wish to suffer» as well as
Ignatius’ of Antiocheia, «if I suffer I shall be Jesus Christ’s freedman»(Ad
Romanos 4.3) can be mentioned here. Indeed,
«Christian texts of the late first and second centuries almost without
exception assidsuously project the message that to be a Christian was to suffer and
die.»18
The vision of the self as the sufferer was founded on an
understanding of suffering as
caused by the human will which did not
introduce but nevertheless consented and chose
evil. If God’s will was
essentially good, evil’s reality was admited albeit as the absence of goodness,
as a par-hypostasis dependent on the good, by the consent of the free
human will. In a double movement, the concept of will was utilized to
conceive both of God’s beneficence as unlimited and founded in His
absolutely good and omniscient will, and of human propensity to sinfulness
17
A. McGrath, Justitia Dei, p.20.
18
Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self,p.24
9
and justified suffering. Sin was founded on the human notorious weakness
of the will which was a basic Pauline conception(Romans,7).
Unlike modern and Christian conceptualizations of the will, according
to Albrecht Dihle’s, The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity, there was
no explicit conception of will in ancient philosophy. Dihle claims that
passions and emotions provided the only alternative to reasoning with
regard to the psychological mechanism of motivation for action, and that
consequently will and intention were never theorized in their own right but
treated instead as the results of reasoning or desire. Although it is correct
that Aristotle does not posit any other ‘faculty’ of the soul apart from the
desiring and the reasoning ones, it is of crucial importance that Aristotle
provides a very complex picture of the motivational mechanism which does
not conceive of these as alternatives but as complementing each other. It is,
however, incorrect to claim that, because of this complementarity, he did not
conceptually distinguish desiring and reasoning from moving to action and
willing. To Aristotle, neither desire nor reasoning are sufficient for moving to
action. One reason for the above misconception though might be that for
Aristotle, willing(βούλησις) and moving to action was considered the result
of a process of deciding which included desire, deliberation and deliberative
choice, all
performed by a desiring nous(ορεκτικός νούς), and not by a
distinct faculty. As J.L. Ackrill has stated,
“Aristotle shows that choosing is not simply a kind of thinking, and is not
simply a kind of desiring, but that it involves both.”19
In Aristotle’s own words,
“What we decide to do is whatever action, among those up to us, we
deliberate about and desire to do. Hence also decision will be deliberative desire to
do an action that is up to us.”20
Aristotle describes in the first 5 chapters of book 3 of the NE the
complex mechanism by which an agent moves herself to action and as J.O.
Urmson points out, being one of the exceptions among commentators,
“in so doing he is facing the set of problems collectively called the problem of
free will. Aristotle is often said to be unaware of this problem, and it is true that he
19
J.L.Ackrill, Aristotle, the philosopher, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981, p.143.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,1113a10-12, translated by Terence Irwin, Hackett,
Indianapolis and Cambridge,1999,.
20
10
does not approach it against the background either of theological predestination or
of scientific determinism, as is typically the case in later times. But to me it seems
obvious that he is concerned with the same obvious issues.”21
As elsewhere, where he explicitly states that human ethical activity
“does
not happen
of necessity(ουδέν
εξ’
ανάγκης,Rhetoric,1357a26),
Aristotle stresses here that «a human being is a principle(αρχή), begetting
actions(γεννητήν των πράξεων) as he begets children.”22 Having discussed
the difference between voluntary and involuntary actions in ch1, ascribing
the latter to force or ignorance,and having given a very nuanced account of
intention which includes prognosis, he concludes his discussion by showing
that virtuous and vicious actions, indeed virtue and vice are both voluntary
and up to us. Aristotle defines virtue as “the habit of choosing(έξις
προαιρετική)” 23 thus reiterating the more general point he made in the
Metaphysics about rational beings as being able both for the good and its
opposite. Here Aristotle differs from Kant for whom, as we have seen, a
rational will can be only good, and it is rather the desiring part of the soul
that is to blame if the agent misses the mark. Unlike Kant, for whom the
‘freedom’ of the autonomous will seems problematic since the outcome of its
exercise is a given, reasoning always to the good, for Aristotle it is not the
desiring part which is failing but the whole soul of a rational being which
can be both miss and hit the mark, making the outcome contingent on her
choice.
I would claim that by his account of practical action, Aristotle has
made at least three major contributions to ethics: his division of virtues into
ethical and intellectual ones, his distinction of practical from theoretical
truth and his conception of a human agent as a desiring nous that is
responsible for her choices for either the good or the bad.
The first
consists in two interrelated claims: first, virtues include
neither just intellectual, nor just ethical ‘habits’ but both:
“There are two kinds of virtue, ethical and dianoetic, since we praise not only
just people but also intelligent and wise men.”24
21
J.O.Urmson, Aristotle’s Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1988,p.59.
Aristotle, NE 1113b18-19.
NE 1107a1.
24 Eudemian Ethics, II,1220a5.
22
23
11
and also,
“Virtue, then, is of two sorts, virtue of thought and virtue of character. Virtue
of thought arises and grows mostly from teaching; that is why it needs experience
and time. Virtue of character results from habit; hence its name ethical.”25
Second, far from one dominating the other, the two kinds of virtue
should and do cooperate and strive to harmonize in the virtuous human
being:
“As assertion and desire are to thought, so pursuit and avoidance are to
desire.Now virtue of character is a state that decides; and decision is a deliberative
desire. If, then, the decision is excellent, the reason must be true and the desire
correct, so that.”26
In making these two interrelated claims, of course, Aristotle moves
decisively away from a Platonic conception of virtue which equates it with
truth. If this conceptualization of ethical activity as comprising not only
reasoning, cannot be emphasized enough, it is of crucial importance to
realize that at the same time that Aristotle insists on the independence of
the virtues of character, he also stresses that no character can be a virtuous
character unless she has developed the virtue of practical reasoning, which
belongs to the dianoetic part of the soul and therefore its aim, its ergon, its
function is the achievement of truth. Aristotle does not equate goodness with
practical rationality or truth but makes a certain conception of truth
necessary, albeit not sufficient, for goodness.
And this leads us to his second major contribution to ethics, his
theory of practical knowledge, and his conception of practical truth as
distinct from theoretical truth, as what Heidegger famously designated as
‘being in truth(In-der-Warheit-sein)’. Aristotle insists that “truth is the
function of whatever thinks”27 and therefore the function of both parts of the
rational soul is the achievement of truth, although each part seeks for truth
in a distinct way:
“Previously, then, we said that there are two parts of the soul, one that has
reason and one nonrational. Now we should divide in the same way the part that
has reason. Let us assume there are two parts that have reason: with one we study
NE 1103a15-18.
NE 1139a22-25.
27 NE 1139a29.
25
26
12
beings whose principles do not admit of being otherwise than they are and with the
other we study beings whose principles admit of being otherwise.” 28
Theoretical truth, f.e. geometry, according to Aristotle, is founded on
principles that are universal and necessary, that is they do not admit of
being otherwise. True conclusions reached on the basis of universals are
‘self-sufficient’, and ‘independent’ of any emotional participation of the
practitioner of this kind of truth, since they correspond to the end point of
thought. Practical truth, on the contrary, leads to the making of a choice
and to an action, is not self sufficient and involves some measure of
emotional participation of the agent, since the reaching of a conclusion is
not sufficient to lead to a choice because the nonrational, the desiring part of
the soul participates in the choice. As Carlo Natali states,
“For Aristotle, since the characteristic of practical knowledge is to have
action and good as its end, it is not sufficient for one who acts to know the
principles, as instead happens in geometry, where whoever knows the principles is
immediately a geometer. In practical knowledge one is good only if one knows the
principles and acts in accordance with them.” 29
It is for this reason that practical knowledge requires time, experience
and learning, unlike theoretical truth in which even a young person can
excel. But although universals are not sufficient for practical truth, Aristotle
insists that they are necessary as there can be no thinking without universal
concepts and axioms. In this way Kantian universalizable maxims, or say
something like the Golden Rule, unlike what is sometimes asserted, have a
very important place in Aristotelian ethics, since to think in a practical way
requires them, as any kind of thought does:
“Whereas young people become accomplished in geometry and mathematics,
and wise within these limits, prudent young people do not seem to be found. The
reason is that prudence is concerned with particulars as well as with universals,
and particulars become known from experience, but a young person lacks
experience..”30
Indeed universalizable maxims operate better within an Aristotelian
account of ethics since they operate only as ‘regulative’ principles of action
rather than as ‘constitutive’, coming closer to the Kant of the third critique
NE 1139a6-8.
Carlo Natali, The Wisdom of Aristotle, State University of New York Press, New
York, 2001, p.12.
30 NE 1142 a12-15.
28
29
13
rather than the second. Another way to express this is by claiming that
unlike Kant, for whom ‘schematism’ takes place only within the bounds of
theoretical reason but not in practical reason, for Aristotle the ‘schematism’
operates in practical reason as well taking its terminus a quo, its point of
departure, human finitude. Moreover, as Natali has observed for Aristotelian
practical reasoning minor premises are more important than major premises
regarding the concrete situation, in order “to reach an individual decision
here and now, rather than know[ing] only the principles in a universal and
abstract way.”
31
But practical truth, while combining universals and particulars,
and unlike theoretical truth, is not self-sufficient and requires some
participation of the emotional, nonrational part of the soul in order to reach
its conclusion which is action. This is the third major contribution that he
has made to ethics, his conception of a human being as a desiring nous, a
contribution unsurpassed in its novelty and its influence:
“Thought by itself moves nothing; what moves us is goal directed thought
concerned with action…decision is either understanding combined with desire or
desire combined with thought; and this is the sort of principle(αρχή) that a human
being is.”32
Although practical wisdom is an intellectual virtue, for Aristotle, it
cannot reach its aim which is ‘truthful’,i.e. good action(in his words truth
agreeing with correct desire33) unless it is complemented by desire and what
he calls prohairesis, that is, a decision or choice, reached by the cooperation
of character and the intellect. Thought as he says, moves nothing. But is
neither desire which leads to good action by itself according to Aristotle. It is
prohairesis, which he defines as a desiring nous and he states that this is
the principle a human being is. We need to be careful here because Aristotle
is clear that it is not desire itself which is the principle of action, the source
of motion, but prohairesis, and as we have seen, “the principle of prohairesis
is desire and goal directed reason”. It is the whole self therefore that makes
choices and decides about the goodness of a course of action and not desire
by itself. And it is this insistence on the agent as a whole which
distinguishes
Aristotle’s
Carlo Natali, op.cit., p.22.
NE, 1139a36-1139b5.
33 NE, 1139a30.
31
32
account
of
ethics
both
from
a
Platonist,
14
intellectualist account and from a voluntaristic conception is which desire or
inclinations or a fantom faculty of the will makes choices and wills in a
criterionless way.
Very importantly, though, if my reading is here correct, Aristotle
makes a strong claim against any voluntaristic account of human action.
For him desire might “be of the end(του τέλους εστί)”
and practical
reasoning “towards the end” (which has been very unfortunately translated
as end versus means), but desire by itself does not lead to a choice of action.
All ethical choices in other words are conscious, rational choices to a greater
or lesser, of course, degree, whether an agent recognizes it or not. In other
words, it is not only bare thought but also bare desire that do not lead to
action for Aristotle but is always the combination of the two and the
resultant choices that do34. In this I disagree with Natali and a host of other
scholars who take “desire to be the only proximate cause of human action.”35
As I have just argued, for Aristotle, it is rational choice(prohairesis) in accord
with desire that is the most proximate cause of human action and not desire
by itself.
In this reading of Aristotle then prohairesis, choice is the modern
equivalent of the will and is always a human will which combines both
rational and nonrational elements in its willing. One important challenge
that Aristotle seems to extend to his readers and interlocutors is to resist an
either intellectualist or voluntaristic account of ethical decision making.
Unlike Kant he stresses the contribution of desires and emotions to a good
will. But, interestingly, he shares with Kant a major insight into human
nature which was the major issue of contention in the famous 1929 Davos
debate between Cassirer and Heidegger. For Aristotle, as for Kant there is no
such thing as ‘bare’ existence, as ‘throwness into the world(geworvenheit)’,
as the ontic as such. Instead human existence is always, already ontological,
Dasein is never ontic, is only insofar as it is ontological and in this Aristotle
is in agreement with Heidegger who has learned this basic insight from Kant.
But as Cassirer was arguing against Heidegger the way that a human being
exists ontologically, its being-in-the-world, is always through symbols and
concepts:
See here NE, 1178a 15-16:”Prudence is inseparable from virtue of character,
and virtue of character from prudence.”
35 Carlo Natali,op.cit., p. 12.
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15
“I believe there is no other way from Dasein to Dasein than through this
world of forms. There is this factum. Should this not be so, then I would not know
how there could be something like self understanding. Knowing, too, is just a basic
instant of this assertion..” 36
In Aristotle’s insistence that any ethical, rational, choice links the world of
desire with the world of nous, we might be able to search for this
intermingling of finitude and infinitude that constitutes a finite human
being, not only in theoretical contemplation, but in practical activity also. A
being which as a finite, desiring creature is striving, even if always failing, to
use her desiring nous in ways transcending finitude. And in this aspiration,
ultimately Aristotle is not too far away from Kant, although for the former,
practical reason, in its tendency to transcend the limitations of finitude,
does not transcend desires and emotions but works with them.
Cited in Peter E. Gordon, The Continental Divide:Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2010, p.205.
36