Lecture on Aristotle's Nicomachaean Ethics
by Ian Johnston at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University)
Introduction
All lectures on Aristotle customarily begin by apologizing for the
difficulty in the prose, pointing out that this problem is, in large part,
due to the fact that Aristotle did not prepare the text for publication.
The existing text (it is assumed) is the result of editors dealing with
lecture notes, or, as one philosopher has put it, with notes pulled out
of the waste paper basket. Whatever the reason, reading Aristotle,
whose style in his finished pieces was admired in antiquity, is often
difficult because there appears to be much confusion with the
sequence of the argument, the digressions, many puzzling
contradictions and grammatical obscurities, and other rather obvious
questions left unexplored or dealt with very cryptically. So if you're
finding many passages in the Ethics a hard read, well, you're not alone.
The main problem, as Jonathan Barnes, a well-known modern
Aristotle scholar points out, is that reacting to Aristotle's views is
often difficult, since we first have to reconstruct them and establish
what we think he meant. And there is by no means secure agreement
about every detail of such a project. If it's any consolation, the Ethics is
widely regarded as one of the most accessible of all Aristotle's
philosophical writings. And, in a sense, if we pay careful attention to
what Aristotle is saying in Book I, the major points in the argument
are not too difficult to follow, and we can derive many useful and
coherent ideas from Aristotle's reflections. In fact, I want to make the
case that a good deal of what Aristotle is saying in this text answers to
our commonsense notions of how we should deal with ethical
questions and an education in moral awareness and right conduct.
What I propose to do in this lecture is to outline, as best I can,
Aristotle's central argument in the Ethics and to explore rather
tentatively why he holds up this particular view of human moral
conduct and what some of the consequences of this view might be. I
shall attempt to steer clear, as much as possible, of most of the
continuing philosophical arguments concerning the interpretation of
particularly difficult sections (which I am not really qualified to dissect
anyway). And I shall be largely skipping over some interesting and
important matters which arise from the main argument (e.g.,
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Aristotle's analysis of voluntary and involuntary action, the sections of
friendship).
My main contention here, as I have indicated briefly, is that Aristotle's
great value as a moral philosopher and the main reason for his lasting
importance in that field is that he offers us a workable and intelligible
framework for sorting out how we should think about living our
lives—a version that in many ways fits our commonsense notions and
is thus more closely in tune with our common experience than many
other alternative visions of how human beings ought to live.
Some Initial Observations
Aristotle's central concern in the Ethics is much the same as Plato's in
the Republic: What objective grounds do we have for arguing that there
is a way of evaluating moral life so as to counter the skepticism of the
sophists, including the view of Thrasymachus that justice is merely the
interest of the strong in society who create laws and moral systems to
provide a conventional justification for their own self-interest? Plato,
you will recall, offered at least three answers to that problem: first, that
people were naturally divided into different areas of excellence and
that there were thus some naturally gifted to rule on moral questions
(provided they received an appropriate education), second, that there
existed absolute moral truths, in the Forms, which were accessible to a
few people, and, thirdly, the Myth of Er, which provides a fictional
vision of the after life. Aristotle, as we shall see, rejects or ignores
these Platonic answers to the challenge of the sophists, in order to
create his own response. But it's important to recognize that his task is
similar: he wants to find sure grounds on which to base the moral life.
The similarity in purpose between Aristotle and Plato is worth
stressing. Many commentators will emphasize the differences between
the two thinkers (which are certainly significant), but, as we shall see,
in many key respects their concerns and their response to the ethical
problems of the time are very close indeed. Indeed, some have argued
that we can see Aristotle's Ethics as a continuation of Plato's Republic,
an attempt to resolve one basic problem left to us by that famous
dialogue: either one must find a transcendent, objective reality of pure
goodness (the Form of the Good) radically separated from the
imperfect sensible world, or one must concede moral enquiry to the
sophists and relativists. Aristotle is no more willing than Plato is to
surrender the argument, but he wants to put ethical evaluations and
enquiry into ethical matters on a different footing, one that does not
require the appeal to things like the theory of forms.
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Aristotle's Preliminary Moves in Book I
Before looking at the details of Aristotle's main argument, we must
pay careful attention to his opening assumptions, the introductory
remarks he makes in Book I about the nature of his enquiry. For
much of what follows comes clearly enough from these starting
points.
First, Aristotle stresses that a study of ethics, that is, a study of the
character of human beings (which is what the words Ta Ethika mean)
rests, as do all enquiries into how human beings are to behave, on a
particular understanding of what a human being is. In one of his most
oft-quoted remarks, the importance of which one cannot
overestimate, Aristotle gives the key point: "We do not mean a man
who lives his life in isolation, but a man who also lives with parents,
children, a wife, and friends and fellow citizens generally, since man is
by nature a social and political being" (1097b). Human beings, in other
words, derive their identity—their sense of self—and thus their moral
purposes from their participation in an existing community, the world
of parents, ancestors, friends, customs, institutions, and laws. In a
tradition that goes back at least as far as Homer, Aristotle has no
room for the notion that there is an individual existence prior to or
independent of the community. Thus, whatever ethical enquiry
involves, it must take into account the essential social and political
basis of human life.
Aristotle makes no attempt to argue this fundamental point; he simply
takes it as self-evident (as it would be for any one of his
contemporaries). Thus, the study of what makes a particular person
good is, as Aristotle repeatedly observes, really an introduction to and
inextricably a part of the more important discussion of what makes
the community, the polis, good. His moral theory is, to use
Oakeshott's phrase, firmly a morality of community (rather than, say,
seeing human life as a self-defining activity which goes on
independent or in defiance of the community). Aristotle's emphasis on
this point is clearly stronger than Plato's in the Republic, for the latter
suggests that in his view justice in the individual is independent of and
antecedent to justice in the polis (even though Plato assumes human
beings will, indeed must, live in communities).
To introduce an analogy to which I shall return from time to time, one
might say that Aristotle sees the individual as inevitably part of a
team—a large and complex but clearly identifiable group of team
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members of all sorts of capabilities, an environment which shapes the
purposes and value of that individual life in relation to other members
of the team community and to the team as an overall unity. And just
as a team player, in a sense, has no identity or purpose without a team
in which he or she can participate as a fully integrated member, so the
human being has no complete identity or purpose without the polis to
which he or she belongs.
Now, it's clear that if we are interested in having excellent teams, a
good place to start is with the question: How can the individual
become an excellent team player? In other words, we might start with
a study of the particular conduct of individuals, even though our
major goal is to achieve an understanding of the entire team. And so it
is for Aristotle. For him the study of ethics, how individuals can
become excellent or can evaluate excellence, is a necessary preliminary
to the study of politics. Note that the last sentence of the Ethics reads
as follows: "So let us begin our discussion" (1181b). In other words,
now that we have dealt with the necessary preliminary topic of ethics,
let us move to our major interest, politics.
It's important to notice, if we pursue this analogy, that wanting to
study excellence in team play does not mean that I have to deal with
teams which all play the same game or abide by the same rules.
Aristotle is quite aware of cultural differences. But he believes that, if
we examine carefully how these apparently different games proceed
and what constitutes excellence in the different games, we will be able
to come up with some general principles about team excellence itself.
In other words, by studying different manifestations of games as they
are played in the sensible world, we can discover some important
universal principles which govern excellence in all games.
It is vital to grasp this point. Aristotle does not deny the obvious point
that different communities live by different rules and have different
standards of ethical conduct. But he claims that if we study what
constitutes effective community membership (or, to use my analogy,
excellent team play) we can come to an understanding of moral
excellence in any community, no matter what its basic rules may be
(just as if we study what constitutes excellence in, say, hockey,
football, and rugby, we can come to an understanding of standards of
excellence which apply to them all, regardless of the different rules of
each game).
The second important opening observation Aristotle makes in Book I
is that in the study of human character (ethics) we must focus on the
world we know—the world around us, the traditions of our polis and
of others, the received opinions of earlier thinkers, especially those
famous for their wisdom—and on what we all observe about the
actual behaviour of people. We must begin with people as we find
them. The theories of human conduct we inherit we must explore by
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an examination of the facts around us, not with a view to revealing the
inadequacies in the theories so that we can dismiss them (although
that might be sometimes necessary) but rather to see what they may
have in common or the extent to which they may help to confirm our
own speculations about the best way to live.
He also stresses that such knowledge derived from observation of
what really goes on will be approximate, an outline, a general sketch, a
framework for thinking about ethical questions and a proper
education in moral matters. Ethics is not, in other words, an exact
science which is going to deliver certainty in all moral questions.
This emphasis on the world around us and on the inexact nature of
the enquiry accounts for two things that clearly distinguish Aristotle's
ethical writings from those of Plato in the Republic. Aristotle wants to
ground the study of ethics in empirical enquiry (that is, on the
observation of what really happens) and to deny that from the study
of moral questions we are going to achieve certainty. These points go
against the emphasis laid in the Republic on the deceptiveness of the
sensible world and on the quest for the certainty available once we can
get out of the cave (one possible interpretation of Plato's moral
thrust).
Aristotle is concerned to place the study of ethics on a more empirical
basis because, as he says, Plato's radical separation of the Form of the
Good (in the ideal reality) from the particular forms of human
conduct in the sensible world makes the moral knowledge necessary
for the good life inaccessible to almost everyone:
. . . assuming that there is some single good which different things
possess in common, or that there exists a good absolutely in itself and
by itself, it evidently is something which cannot be realized in action
or attained by man. But the good which we are now seeking must be
attainable. (1096b)
Thus, although a great deal of what Aristotle says about appropriate
conduct often sounds quite similar to what Plato is saying (for both
are presenting defenses of the traditional virtues), the basis of
Aristotle's moral theory is significantly different, with a much stronger
emphasis in tradition and experience, on the practical realities of daily
life and moral situations, than on intellectual wisdom of the sort
described in the Republic.
In rejecting the Platonic approach through an intelligible apprehension
of the ideal reality of the Forms, together with his emphasis on the
study of ethics as an inexact and rough study, the production of what
he calls "a general sketch" of moral principles which will hold "for the
most part" (rather than on acquiring moral knowledge which will
provide certainty in moral questions), Aristotle's aim is thoroughly
practical. Using such empirically derived principles, we will be able to
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construct and evaluate our own lives better. It seems that for Aristotle,
ethics is not a matter for theoretical, scientific, exact knowledge of
what is true, but of practical know how—in many respects associated
with the skill of artistic production (he makes the analogy repeatedly).
The basis for the good life we have to learn in the practical sensible
world around us, and providing a framework to assist us in this
endeavour is inexact. In what must be one his most historically ironic
remarks, Aristotle observes that this procedure is appropriate because
"anyone can fill in the gaps" (1098a).
One final introductory point. Aristotle indicates in Book I that his
approach is intended only for those who have already some sense of
virtue: "to be a competent student of what is right and just, and of
politics generally, one must first have received a proper upbringing in
moral conduct" (1095b). That is to say, an understanding of some of
the principles of moral conduct requires some existing sense of virtue
in the student, for "Ethical philosophy presupposes this shared
experience, and is therefore not a fit subject for the young and
inexperienced" (RN 38).
Here again the analogy of the team may be useful. If we want to offer
a series of lectures on the topic "How are we to understand the
principles which determine excellence in a team player," we would
almost certainly set as a prerequisite some team experience in the
students, some shared training in the social dynamics of team
behaviour, of the sort which comes from experience, so that the
students would bring to the lectures the appropriate state of awareness
of the issues and a desire to learn. Someone with very little or no
experience of team play and no desire to find out about it might have
great difficulties understanding the issues.
The Overall Structure of Aristotle's Argument (Simplified
Somewhat)
The main framework for the first part of Aristotle's argument, laid out
below for clarification, goes something like this (the page numbers
refer to the Ostwald edition):
1. Every science, investigation or action aims at some good. Such
goods exist in a hierarchy: the lesser goods are instrumental in seeking
the higher goods, but many things are good in and of themselves. (34)
2. The highest good will be the final goal of purposeful striving,
something good for its own sake (4). This final good for human
beings is eudaimonia (happiness), which is always an end in itself. (6; 15)
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3. The goodness (arete) of anything—including human beings—resides
in its proper function (ergon). (16)
4. The proper function of human beings, and therefore their moral
excellence (arete), resides in the "active life of the rational element"
(16).
5. Therefore, the good for human beings "is an activity of the soul in
conformity with excellence or virtue, and if there are several virtues, in
conformity with the best and most complete" (17). Such a life
necessarily involves acting in accordance with reason.
6. To act in accordance with reason is a matter of observing the
principle of the mean relative to us (finding the appropriate response
between excess and deficiency in a particular situation).
7. The traditional virtues (e.g., courage) all fit this scheme (Books II to
IV).
8. We must distinguish between voluntary and involuntary actions,
since not all human actions arise from deliberation and choice (Book
III).
9. A complex set of intellectual virtues is necessary for human
excellence. The most important of these in the sphere of moral action
is practical wisdom (phronesis) (Book VI).
The sections below examine some salient features of this argument.
Human Behaviour as Teleological Activity
Aristotle makes his most crucial assertion in the very first sentence in
the Ethics: "Every art or applied science and every systematic
investigation, and similarly every action and choice, seem to aim at
some good; the good therefore, has been well defined at that at which
all things aim" (1094a). This claim asserts, in effect, that all activity is
goal directed: it has purpose in mind, an end point (a telos). Aristotle
offers no "proof" of this claim that all behaviour is goal oriented or
teleological, by nature purposeful, and that the notion of goodness is
thus naturally linked to some final destination or stage of
development.
This claim is a vital point (as important as Plato's assumption in the
Republic that human beings are characterized by a natural division in
their talents) because it will enable Aristotle to anchor his discussion
in nature, in the truth of things, rather than in opinion or convention.
The teleological striving of human beings is what is natural to them, so
their moral nature is going to be linked directly and naturally to a
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process of development towards an end point. The excellence of the
human being is thus going to be associated with growth towards some
final realization of his or her true and best nature.
Without this assumption, Aristotle might have serious problems
grounding his ethical framework in the truth of things; whereas, if his
claim is true, then this starting point can form the basis of an answer
to relativists who claim that there is no single truth about moral
conduct. If there is a natural purpose for human life (as Aristotle
suggests) then it seems clear that the quality of a human life (its
excellence or lack of excellence) can then be measured against the
extent to which a human life has realized this purpose. Thus, the
moral life is not just a matter of opinion but deeply rooted in the truth
of life itself. Aristotle does not attempt to prove this point, and there
is no hint of a divine sanction for this initial claim. It is an opening
assumption, of great importance in the argument.
The claim is often made that Aristotle starts here because of his great
interest in biology, a subject of enquiry in which the concept of
natural striving towards some final excellence, some full attainment of
potential, is an obvious way of understanding the behaviour of plants
and animals. And it is also true that in the Greek tradition of
excellence, from Homer onwards, there is a very strong emphasis
placed on measuring the quality of the individual against one's sense
of what a truly heroic and fully developed human being (like
Odysseus, for example) might and can be.
Eudaimonia: Aristotle's Conception of Happiness
Having established the notion of goal-directed activity as the concept
essential to an understanding of human goodness and excellence,
Aristotle then seeks a definition of what is the final goal of human life,
the most important activity which we pursue for its own sake,
something over and above all the other goods (like money, fame, good
looks, learning, and so on). This final goal he identifies on the basis of
an appeal to experience as eudaimonia, a word traditionally translated as
happiness (1097). This English rendering causes some difficulties if we
do not remind ourselves that by the term Aristotle means something
much wider than the word happiness might suggest to us. Eudaimonia
carries the notion of objective success, the proper conditions of a
person's life, what we might more properly call "well being" or "living
well." Thus, eudaimonia includes a sense of material, psychological, and
physical well being over time, for the fully happy life will include
success for oneself, for one's immediate family, and for one's
descendants. This notion links the Ethics directly with the Greek
traditions, especially the Iliad, in which the happiness of life includes a
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sense of posthumous fame and the success of one's children as vital
components. We may better get a sense of what Aristotle means by
the term if we take the advice of one interpreter and see eudaimonia as
the answer to the question "What sort of a life would we most wish
for our children?"
Eudaimonia, we should note, is one of a number of goals desired for
their own sakes, yet it is also, for Aristotle, clearly superior to them.
And this point may cause some confusion. The best way to make
sense of the notion perhaps is to regard happiness as something of a
framework for all the other various goods that we pursue. We achieve
eudaimonia with the proper ordering of such items, by imposing a
pattern on our activities which gives all of them the appropriate
significance, by, if you like, adopting a suitable hierarchy for all the
different goods we pursue. Thus, eudaimonia will be made up of many
different goods and will provide the overall significance to all of them
(it will, in other words, provide a significant meaning to our lives). We
do not achieve eudaimonia by actively seeking it (this is an important
point); we attain it by ordering our pursuit of all the other goods in the
right manner. Happiness, which is the highest and final goal of human
striving, is, in other words, something of a by-product of carrying out
our pursuit of all the other goods (wealth, fame, learning, and so on)
in the proper manner.
The Function (Ergon) Argument
This concept of eudaimonia, Aristotle admits (1097b), is not all that
helpful, without some further attempt to define more closely what the
concept means. In other words, the concept is, to this point, rather
empty of significant content. Aristotle meets this need with another
traditional Greek notion, linking the concept of goodness with that of
function (ergon).
This argument rests on the assumption that everything, living or dead,
has a specific function for which it is designed. The excellence (arete)
of the thing or person will therefore depend upon the extent to which
it fulfils the function for which it is designed. A knife which cuts
poorly will have little excellence, since it carries out its function
poorly; a racehorse which runs fast will have a high arete, since it is
fulfilling its function very well. Since a human being is, above all else, a
social and political being, then the excellence of a human being will be
those things which best enable the human being to fulfill that social
and political function.
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Now, since the excellence of anything is particular to that thing (i.e., is
unique to that object or living creature), Aristotle seeks to find what
the unique functions of human beings might be. And in 1098a he
identifies the unique function of human beings as the rational element
in action: "The proper function of man, then, consists in an activity of
the soul in conformity with a rational principle, or, at least, not
without it" (1098a). The excellence of the human being, therefore, is
going to depend upon the extent to which this unique function
manifests itself.
The Initial Conclusion: The Good Life
Putting together, then, his notion of goal-directed, teleological striving
as the basis for all life, the notion of happiness (eudaimonia), and of the
excellence of human life (arete) linked to a distinctively human
function (ergon), Aristotle can offer as his fundamental moral principle
the following definition:
On these assumptions, if we take the proper function of man to be a
certain kind of life, and if this kind of life is an activity of soul and
consists in actions performed in conjunction with the rational element,
and if a man of high standards is he who performs these actions well
and properly, and if a function is well performed when it is performed
in accordance with the excellence appropriate to it; we reach the
conclusion that the good of man is an activity of soul in conformity
with excellence or virtue, and if there are several virtues, in conformity
with the best and most complete. (1098a)
There are some important problems with the argument up to this
point, notably with the function argument. Social roles (artisans,
musicians, soldier, housewives) have functions, but how to we speak
of a human function? If we had recourse to divine revelation we might
understand something about a uniquely human function, but Aristotle
makes no such appeal. Just because a certain activity is particularly
human, that does not mean we have an obligation to engage in it.
Human beings, for example, are the only creatures who can with
words tell lies to each other. That does not mean we are obliged to
carry out that activity in order to be fully human.
The doubts about the function argument have led some interpreters to
suggest that the main emphasis in the Ethics is not strictly on what we
might consider ethics and more on success: "the immediate aim of the
Ethics is to make us 'good men'—not morally good men, but expert or
successful human beings" (Barnes 29). On this reading, the Ethics "is
not directly telling us how to be morally good men, or even how to be
humanly happy: it is telling us how to live successful lives, how to
fulfill ourselves as men" (Barnes 34).
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We recognize that there is a significant difference between being
successful and being morally good. But if we recall the team analogy,
the way Aristotle brings the two more or less together begins to make
sense. After all, to the extent that we identify people as team players,
to that extent we tend to acknowledge that their excellence as human
beings rests on the success that they demonstrate in the team
environment, a group of activities which involves guiding behaviour
by the standards of excellence established by the group. Since
Aristotle, as we have seen, claims that human beings are, first and
foremost, social and political beings, it is probably not so surprising
that he gauges their excellence in social terms. What enables someone
to contribute well to the group and to be recognized by the group as
an excellent contributor (that is, to be a success) is a measure of the
human being's worth or excellence.
Whatever these difficulties, this definition of the good life shows just
how much Aristotle, like Plato, identifies moral excellence with the
possession of a certain kind of character, with a sense of a full and
rich life constituted by the best virtues in the individual. The central
moral concern of human life, therefore, is going to rest on the
appropriate relationship between the individual's character, desires,
thought process, and choices, as these manifest themselves in action,
rather than on, say, the consequences of certain actions or the fidelity
with which the person follows certain carefully established rules.
The Doctrine of Mean
Up to this point, the argument, although coherent enough, is
somewhat thin. For what does acting in accordance with rationality
mean? If we agree that the excellence of human beings consists in
their carrying out well their unique function and if we further agree
that that function is indeed as Aristotle describes it, are we any closer
to understanding how we ought to behave? To address this concern in
Book II Aristotle introduces his most famous moral principle, the
doctrine of the mean (later amended to read the doctrine of the
golden mean), the idea that "moral qualities . . . are destroyed by
defect and by excess" (35) so that good behaviour consists in avoiding
such extremes.
Now, the doctrine of the mean has been often interpreted to insist
that moral behaviour consists in always acting moderately or without
feeling. But this is a Stoic or Christian misrepresentation of what
Aristotle is actually saying here. For immediately after introducing the
doctrine of the mean, Aristotle insists that the mean he is referring to
is not a mathematical mean (or average between defect and excess), a
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principle that would, in effect, amount to a clear rule of behaviour;
what his principle involves, he states, is a mean "relative to us."
This rider qualifies the doctrine of the mean in a curious way, by
insisting the virtuous action involves a response appropriate to the
particular situation in which one finds oneself—the important thing is
to act appropriately, without overreacting (excess) or under-reacting
(defect) to a particular set of circumstances. In some cases, it will be
clear, the appropriate response might indeed require a very powerful
display of feeling and very powerful action (e.g., if one is attacked
physically and one's life is in danger); at other times, the appropriate
response will be something a good deal milder.
Acting virtuously, therefore, requires an awareness that in any
situation one has to choose how to respond and that there are two
major dangers: over- and under-reacting. The best behaviour, the most
morally excellent conduct, will be the response appropriate to that set
of circumstances.
Having established this doctrine of the mean in Book II, Aristotle
then, in Book III and IV goes on to apply the concept to defend the
traditional virtues, illustrating, often with some confusion, how each
of the traditional virtues fits into his analytical framework.
How useful is this doctrine of the mean as practical advice to act well?
How much of a help is it to me if I am concerned to be a moral
person or to evaluate the conduct of others? Well, at first glance, it
does not seem all that helpful, as Aristotle appears to admit: "this
statement, true though it is, lacks clarity" (1138b). The doctrine may
be helpful in stressing the importance of the emotional components
of action, and it may provide a useful advice to be careful not to be
too enthusiastic or too diffident, but unless it can provide us with
some sense of how we estimate what is "appropriate to the situation"
we are still somewhat in the dark as to what we have to do to be moral
agents. As Barnes points out, in its initial formulation, the doctrine of
the mean appears to be saying that if one wants to be an excellent
person, then one should act as an excellent person should act. Left in
this form, the doctrine would seem to have little practical utility.
Practical Wisdom (phronesis)
Nor is this difficulty made all that much easier with Aristotle's
introduction into the argument about the mean the standard of a
person who displays practical wisdom: "a mean defined by a rational
principle, such as a man of practical wisdom would use to determine
it" (1106b). This seems to be saying that our benchmark for
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understanding the mean should be a role model, a man of practical
wisdom, someone recognized for his moral quality. As we shall see,
this is an important principle (that our moral understanding must use
role models), but at this stage it still leaves open what a person has to
do to display practical wisdom. We might note, in passing, what
Aristotle does not do here: he does not offer any sense that there is a
theoretical route to understanding the doctrine of the mean. Whatever
we are to make of this central tenet of his moral teaching, it is
something practical, something acquired in the world of experience
and daily living. It is not something we can pick up by private study.
Aristotle clearly recognizes the need to clarify this business and in the
opening of Book VI he promises to address the issue: "We must also
have a definition of what right reason is and what standard determines
it" (1138b). Unfortunately in the rest of this book he does not directly
deliver on this promise, although indirectly he illuminates what
practical wisdom involves and therefore what qualities are necessary
for moral behaviour.
Book VI of the Ethics is, in many ways, the most frustrating of all parts
of the argument. Aristotle offers many elusive leads in a number of
different directions, but he never returns to the central question with
which he starts and which needs clarification. So, not unexpectedly,
there is a very energetic argument still going on about just exactly what
Aristotle means by practical wisdom, which one writer, in reviewing
the arguments, has called a concept valuable for its suggestiveness
rather than for its coherent final account. The task of reconstructing
Aristotle's argument is still going on. Given this difficulty the best I
can do here is to offer a sense of what Aristotle seems to mean by the
term in relation to his moral system (recognizing that this is no doubt
a simplified view with which many would disagree).
First, one should note that practical wisdom for Aristotle does not
consist in a simple set of moral rules or maxims, a list of truths which
we can learn and then apply to experience (like, for example, the ten
commandments). It consists rather in an ability to do the right thing in
a wide variety of different circumstances. And this ability, in turn, rests
upon a complex set of mental qualities. In other words, moral action
depends upon certain intellectual virtues, without which one will be
unable to carry out the activities essential to the highest moral
behaviour.
So in Book VI Aristotle explores the various intellectual virtues—their
respective concerns and methods, in order to distinguish the various
intellectual abilities necessary to each form of enquiry. Only when
these are fully deployed, will one have the practical wisdom necessary
for the highest forms of human excellence.
The following list (taken in large part of McIntyre) indicates the range
of intellectual skills and their importance in moral behaviour:
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1. The moral person must be able to evaluate a particular situation, to
recognize it for what it is and in relation to any actions which he or
she might undertake to respond to it. Such analytical skills, that ability
to "size up" a particular event, come from experience, habit, and
education.
2. The moral person must have been able to work out through reason
some knowledge of the overall good as such. In other words, he must
have a developed sense of what he wants his life, as a totality, to add
up to, a standard for living well. Such a standard is given to the
individual by the community in its traditions, role models, and formal
education.
3. The moral individual must be able to understand the various goods
appropriate to his or her situation and stage of life. That is, he must
possess some understanding of what is appropriate for him to pursue
at this stage in the development of his life. This quality Aristotle calls
gnome (good sense); it seeks to answer the question: Given that I live
my life in stages, what is appropriate at each stage for me to desire and
seek?
4. The moral person must be able to reason from the general notion
of the good as such (Point 2 above) to a conclusion about the specific
range of goods immediately to be achieved in the present situation
(Point 3). Given what I want my life's goal to be, is it appropriate at
this stage of my life that I pursue this particular good and, if so, how
should I pursue it faced with these particular circumstances?
5. Practical wisdom is the ability to organize and use these different
intellectual abilities and thus to select the right means for the
attainment of the appropriate goals and to issue commands for action.
The man of practical wisdom (the phronimos) understands how to
behave from one situation to the next in the pursuit of the appropriate
goals in the appropriate ways because he knows how to construct his
life in accordance with the realities of the world around him and with
the realities of his own abilities and stage of life.
6. To this list Aristotle adds, almost as an afterthought, the notion of
cleverness, the ability "to perform those steps which are conducive to
a goal we have set for ourselves and to attain that goal" (169). Practical
wisdom, in other words, also includes a component of efficient skill,
the ability to carry out intelligently the decisions one has made.
7. This form of reasoning can only take place in a systematic form of
activity in which there is a shared sense of roles and actions
recognized to be ordered according to their relative goodness, so that
one does not have a bewildering array of competing goods. If I do not
live in a community in which there is a shared sense of what the good
life is, then I can form no adequate conception of that. If there are
many competing choices about what the good life means, then I
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cannot begin to develop practical wisdom. Or, to revert to the team
analogy, one can see that, if my team has no shared standard of
excellence, then as an individual on that team I cannot begin to
organize my own desire for excellence.
In other words, Aristotle's vision of practical wisdom is a very social
form of thinking about myself. As MacIntyre observes, there is no
practical reasoning in isolation from the group, no morality outside
the polis (just as there can be no excellent team conduct if one is not a
member of a team). Outside the polis there is no commonly agreed
upon ranking of goods, and thus an individual faced with a number of
options in a particular situation has no sense of moral priorities. Moral
behaviour and the reasoning essential to it emerge from one's
membership in the community, not independently of it.
Practical Wisdom Continued: The Practical Syllogism
Given all these necessary intellectual qualities, how should a person
think in order to arrive at a morally good decision? To clarify this
concept, Aristotle introduces the notion of the practical syllogism
(although he never uses this term). Its simplest structure goes
something like this. Suppose a person is in the position of having to
make a choice and wishes to make the morally correct choice. Then,
according to Aristotle's idea of practical wisdom, the process of
choosing goes something like this:
Major Premise: The good life for me, which is my overall goal, means
that in situation X, virtue requires me to do Y (I know this from my
education, my observation of those people famous for their virtue,
and the habits I have acquired over time).
Minor Premise: What I am faced with now is a situation X (I know
this from the analytical skills I have acquired in experience and from
education).
Conclusion: Therefore virtue requires that in this situation I choose to
do Y.
The Major Premise, the universal, comes from education, habit,
observation, and example, from an educated sense of what eudaimonia
means in my community and its relationship to the variously ranked
goods of life. The Minor Premise comes from my intelligent
perception of the particular situation which now faces me and the
various responses I might make to it. And the conclusion comes from
correct reasoning.
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Error arises if the major premise is false (in a bad or poorly educated
person, one who has a false notion of the good life) or if the minor
premise is based upon an inaccurate assessment of the immediate
situation and the possible responses to it, or if the person is ignorant
of some essential facts. To be able to avoid such errors means that
one possesses practical wisdom. It is possible to come to the correct
conclusion erroneously (by chance or luck), but the true phronimos will
go through the process correctly and make the morally right choice.
What this process involves is the ability to bring to bear on particular
situations a knowledge of general principles which relate to the ends
of a purposeful good life and an intelligent sense of the particular
situation facing the person, together with the intellectual skill to
combine these characteristics, so that practical wisdom tells us what
the right action in this case is. This process will involve recognizing
relevant circumstances and reasoning correctly from an awareness of
the various goods and their relationship to the highest good to make
the best decision about the particular options.
The process begins with an informed awareness of a particular
situation: "The man of highest practical wisdom is the man who
brings to bear upon a situation the greatest number of genuinely
pertinent concerns and genuinely relevant considerations
commensurate with the importance of the deliberative context"
(Wiggins 234). This perception then calls into play the relevant major
premise that "spells out the general import of the concern that makes
this feature the salient feature of the situation" (Wiggins 234). The
validity of the major premise brought to bear depends not on its
unconditional acceptability, nor on its all inclusiveness, but on its
adequacy to the particular situation.
The Importance of Feeling
The qualities outlined above are necessary if one is to act morally, but
they are not, by themselves, sufficient. To be fully moral, a person
must by disposition (feeling) desire to act on what practical wisdom
reveals. Aristotle, in other words, sees the absence of inner tension in
making a decision and acting upon it as one of the essential
components of a fully developed moral character. Hence, reason and
desire are inseparable in making the best moral choices: "since choice
is a deliberate desire, it follows that, if the choice is to be good, the
reasoning must be true and the desire correct. . . . [I]n intellectual
activity concerned with action, the good state is truth in harmony with
correct desire" (148; 1138a). Thought and feeling determine human
action. The emphasis of the entire process falls more on a sensitive
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feel for what is right than on a formal process of reasoning which we
then impose on our feelings (Sullivan).
Aristotle's notion of virtue thus flies in the face of some commonly
held notions today, which see virtue as the ability to overcome
temptation. Some of us would see the highest virtue manifesting itself
in those who have to wrestle mightily with temptation, with their inner
desires, and who resist those desires to follow what their reason tells
them to do. In an extreme form, this doctrine might argue that one is
sure of acting morally only when one has to fight mightily against one's
desires. Not so for Aristotle. For him the hierarchy of virtue is clearly
based upon the harmony between what one's practical intelligence says
and the desires about what I want to do, as follows:
Excellent characters aim at the good and desire the good; their
decision making is thus free from tension. Their acts consequently are
good, and they are good people.
Strong characters aim at the good but desire the bad; their decision
making is thus marked by conflict. However, because they are strong,
their practical intelligence overcomes their desires. Hence their actions
are good, but they are not entirely good people, not the highest forms
of moral excellence in human conduct.
Weak characters aim at the good but desire the bad. Their decision
making is thus marked by conflict. The conflict ends when they
surrender to their desires. Their actions are therefore bad and they are
bad people.
The worst characters aim at the bad and desire the bad. There is thus
no conflict in their decision making. But their actions are bad and they
are corrupt people.
Consider this list for a moment. In the most highly developed moral
excellence, the person's feelings mesh effortlessly with his or her
actions, so there is no tension between what the person wants to do
and what is the right thing to do. This may (indeed, should) sound
rather odd to us, who have inherited a tradition where moral
excellence is often seen as involving a struggle of some kind.
Here's a simple example. Two desperately hungry men are walking
along the road. They come across some unattended food laid out on a
picnic table in preparation for a group meal. Should they steal some
of it? The first man, an Aristotelian, in spite of his cravings, responds
easily and without hesitation. Taking food is wrong. So he moves
on. The second man, a Kantian Christian, is sorely tempted. He
struggles to overcome his desires, prays, and finally steels himself to
his moral duty and moves on without taking any food. Which person
has displayed the higher moral excellence? Many of us, I suspect,
would choose the second man, because he had to overcome great
difficulties (after all, Kant insisted that the only time we could be sure
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we were acting morally was when we did something we did not want
to do). Any many of us link moral quality with overcoming
psychological adversity, especially strong temptation. For Aristotle,
however, the first person is clearly the morally superior man, since his
decision came without any inner tension.
Aristotle thus places a great emphasis on the importance of educating
the feelings. This can come about only through education in virtuous
habits, so that one is naturally inclined to do the right thing, even
before one fully understands everything about ethics. That is the
reason he initially insists that the study of ethics is fit only for those
who by their education and upbringing already have some practice and
sense of virtuous and non-virtuous conduct. It is also one important
reason why Aristotle devotes so much time in a discussion of
friendship, on the moral importance of appropriate personal
relationships.
Some Final Comments
I began by saying that one of the great strengths of Aristotle's Ethics is
that, for all the complications in the prose, it does answer to many of
our commonsense notions of how we ought to educate our children
in moral questions. His stress on the community as the basis for our
sense of the good life, on practical observation and experience
(especially of role models), on the importance of habits which
encourage us to mesh desire and good decisions, and on the
importance of practical experience over theoretical insights all make
sound sense to many of us, so much so that in many cases we put our
children through an Aristotelian moral education whether we have
read the Ethics or not.
If we remember, too, Aristotle's initial idea that his purpose is to
provide a rough framework within which we can discuss and think
about moral questions and our own moral conduct, then we can
appreciate how, using his concepts, we can better carry out such
discussions.
. . . if there is no real prospect of an ordinary scientific or simple
empirical theory of all of action and deliberation as such, then the
thing we should look for may be precisely what Aristotle provides-namely a conceptual framework which we can apply to particular
cases, which articulates the reciprocal relations of an agent's concern
and his perception of how things objectively are in the world; and a
schema of description which relates the complex ideal the agent tries
in the process of living his life to make real to the form that the world
impresses by way of opportunity and by way of limitation upon that
ideal. . . . I entertain the unfriendly suspicion that those who feel they
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must seek more than all this provides want a scientific theory of
rationality not so much from a passion for science, even where there
can be no science, but because they hope and desire, by some
conceptual alchemy, to turn such a theory into a regulative or
normative discipline, or into a system of rules by which to spare
themselves some of the agony of thinking and all the torment of
feeling and understanding that is actually involved in reasoned
deliberation. (Wiggins 237)
Here again, the analogy with a team and with team behaviour may
help. If we ask ourselves, "What processes of thought help an
excellent team player choose what to do in a particular situation?" we
shall probably come up with something close to what Aristotle is
talking about. Taking as a starting point the notion that such a person
will begin with some idea of what the ultimate end of being an
excellent team player is and of various subordinate goods in that
activity, we can infer that in particular situation, good team play will
require an accurate assessment of the particular situation, a mature
evaluation of various good options, the ability to select the one most
appropriate to the situation, and then a choice which results in action,
which, to be successful, must manifest a certain cleverness, an efficient
skill at achieving the good selected.
Let's take a trivial example. Suppose a good hockey player is stick
handling the puck in on the opponents' goal with some team mates.
How does he decide what to do as he moves towards the net? If he is
an excellent team player his decision will result from his conception of
his own excellence, a judicious assessment of the situation (what is the
state of the game, how competent are the opponents between me and
the goal, what have my team mates and I practised, how have we dealt
with similar situations successfully in the past, and so on). The
decision he reaches, whether, for example, to pass, to shoot, or to
continue, will result from all of these factors. If he is a good player, he
will make the right decision in that situation and will succeed (or come
very close to success). And if he is a player of the highest excellence
his desire will coincide with his rational decision, so that he will not
execute his decision with any regret, anger, frustration, cowardice, or
malice.
Obviously such a process depends entirely upon the existence of the
individual within the framework of the team. And what the player
does in that situation may well vary from one point in the game to
another or from one game to another, as the situations change (for
example, if the player's team is way ahead in the game, he may choose
to miss the goal, since running up the score on a beaten opponent is
considered unworthy; if he has different team mates and different
opponents, then the decision may well be different; for instance, if
one of his team mates is a much better goal scorer than he is, then he
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might well and appropriately pass the puck; with a different team
mate, he might properly choose to take the shot himself). The
principles that govern the decision making in these different situations
are not written in any book; they are acquired by training, education,
reflection, observation (especially of role models, stars celebrated for
their excellence, like Wayne Gretzky), in short, by excellent habits
picked up by intelligent and talented players.
It's important to stress that Aristotle is not suggesting that the full
thought process outlined above goes on before every decision. The
excellent person, the one with practical wisdom, has a fully integrated
personality which can make right decisions by habit, on the spot. But
if asked to explain the reasoning that led to a decision, he or she could
appeal to the process outlined above. And if we want to explain any
errors in the individual's behaviour, we can appeal to the process
above to discuss that went wrong. After all, even today when we
denigrate a team player, we usually do so in terms of the poor choices
he or she has made in particular situations, and we frequently appeal
to concepts like "love of the game," or "respect for his team mates,"
and so on.
We might also note that in Aristotle's moral thinking, as in the social
dynamics of the team, some players are clearly better than others.
There is no ethic of moral equality here. Part of the challenge of
acting morally is recognizing one's own excellence in relation to other
people's and adjusting one's behaviour accordingly, for one's position
in the moral hierarchy determines the nature of one's obligations and
responsibilities (just as on any sports team). Similarly in the long
discussion of friendship, Aristotle emphasizes that friendship, an
essential part of the successfully realized moral life, comes in many
different forms and that the man of practical wisdom will have a
precise understanding of those differences and take them into account
in his decision making.
Conclusion
By way of bringing these remark to a conclusion (omitting a great deal
of what Aristotle writes about other matters, such as pleasure,
friendship, and contemplation), I would like to finish by offering a few
suggestions about why this particular view of moral behaviour has
been so influential and remains of major interest today, and not just
for historical reasons.
First, for all the difficulty one experiences in reading Aristotle, a good
deal of what he has to say makes good practical common sense to the
educated citizen. Aristotle, by and large, says we must concentrate on
human conduct as we find it in the world around us and deal with it as
best we can, setting aside utopian schemes for moral improvement
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and universal rules of conduct. His arguments that questions about
good and bad conduct are not merely relative but that, on the other
hand, they cannot be defined with scientific precision, that moral
behaviour requires early training in good habits, that central to moral
behaviour is a good character in which the individual's desires are
educated to want to do the right thing, and that this is in keeping with
human nature, all these match fairly closely the standards we continue
to use in the education of our children because they make the most
sense to us.
The notion that human life is purposeful and that the end point we
should seek is a realization of our full potential as human beings in a
community, that we should work towards having a fully educated
character in which intelligent thinking, educated desires, and good
executive skills enable us to work towards a successful active social
existence which will include material well being, many friends, and the
absence of moral tensions in our decision making, such a goal of living
seems to many very attractive, far more so, in some people's eyes, that
the more austere model with Plato appears to hold out for us in the
Republic.
The importance which Aristotle places on human life as only acquiring
moral meaning in the context of a community with a shared sense of
the structure of goods and on the idea that we can discover only in
such a community identity the appropriate starting points for rational
moral behaviour and the final fulfillment of the good life has again
always appealed to the common sense notion that human beings are,
in some essential ways, dependent on each other in the wider social
context and that, without such a rich and identifiable social context,
our moral lives are significantly diminished. As Roger Sullivan states:
Briefly, his [Aristotle's] contention is that through experience we can
learn both our limits and our opportunities. Men have learned, for
example, that they cannot live satisfactorily by trying to live a kind of
life inappropriate to their fundamental nature: we cannot live like
beasts nor can we live as gods. Through both personal experience and
the cumulative experience of others, then, we learn what it is to have a
specifically human nature, and the potentialities and needs of this
nature provide an objective basis for understanding how best to live as
a human being. (10)
Hence, Aristotle's view of moral life has always appealed to those who
speak in the name of the community and its traditional values, and in
recent years, as many people have become disillusioned with the
individualistic ethos we have developed since the Renaissance, the
notion that the good life is primarily a matter of emancipating the
individual from traditional communal restraints, interest in Aristotle as
a spokesperson for a community-based moral life has grown.
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As a postscript, I shall observe that this text has played an important
role in the formation of the Liberal Studies program, at least to the
extent of reminding us that if we wish to make our post-secondary
education system more humane, more effective, and, in a word, better,
we need to concentrate on creating a learning community, a social
environment in which students working together as friends (in the full
Aristotelian sense of the term) can through experience, observation,
and habit, acquire good moral training precisely in the way Aristotle
describes and for very similar reasons.
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