The Legacy of Aristotelian Ethics
William Sweet
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a classic
What is a ‘classic’?
- “a ‘classic’ is a book that everybody talks about but which no one has read.”
- “It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition
of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read. “
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910) - Speech in New York, Nov. 20, 1900
- a classic as having a legacy
1. Influence on one Catholic philosophical tradition in ethics
- Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) & his successors
- Thomism –
Etienne Gilson; Charles De Koninck; James A. Weisheipl;
Karol Wojtyla; Bernard Lonergan; Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange,
O.P. ; John Finnis; Joseph Boyle; Germain Grisez; Jacques Maritain
- a ‘secular’ ethics
Thomas Aquinas
Maritain and Paul VI
What did the Catholic ethical traditions (esp. Thomism) ‘inherit’ from
Aristotle?
- virtue; right reason/practical reason; happiness
- teleology in human nature and in ethics
Teleology is central
Aristotle’s comment on ‘end’ : ”Every art and every investigation, and likewise
every practical pursuit or undertaking, seems to aim at some good…” (Book 1,
1)
- ‘end’ is part of the nature of a thing
- A naturalist view
- teleology in ethics
- rational / ‘reason alone’
- publicly accessible experience / observation
- not dependent upon faith/religion
Aristotelian-Thomistic ethics
Jacques Maritain (1882-1973)
- Early life: interests / science, metaphysics, politics
- Travels to Latin America; residence in Canada and US
- Teaching at Toronto, Columbia, Princeton
- UNESCO & Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- Service as Ambassador from France to Vatican
- Later years (Petits Frères de Jesus)
Maritain
follows Aquinas & Aquinas’s Aristotelianism, but develops it
- ethics is ‘natural’
- ethical knowledge requires an understanding of human nature and human
good
- human good is part of human nature (thus, universal)
- human goods are/involve knowledge, peace, health, friendship,
‘meaningfulness’ of life, &c
- the human good can be known naturally (synderesis)
Maritain made more explicit / added to Aristotle:
- we can see / discover a ‘natural law’
- 1. a basic ethical principle: "Good is to be done and sought after, and evil is
to be avoided“
BUT need to know how to ‘interpret’ and apply the 1st principle
- 2. knowledge of human nature:
- Result
- an account of the virtues, but primarily law
Is there a Natural Law? A ‘proof’
1. There is “a human nature, and that this human nature is the same in all
[human beings].”
2. Human beings have the power to determine for themselves the ends which
they pursue (i.e., are free).
3. All things possess ends which necessarily correspond to their essential
constitution [e.g., pianos]
4. [Therefore] All things possess “a normal way of functioning—the proper
way in which, by reason of its specific construction, it demands to be put into
action [and that says how it “should” be used”]
5. [Therefore] Humanity possesses ends which necessarily correspond to its
essential constitution and which are the same for all.
6. There is an order which human reason can discover, according to which the
human will must act in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary
ends of the human being.
6a. This is the unwritten law, or natural law, considered in its ontological
aspect.
7. [from 5] This natural law is the proper way in which, by reason of their
specific nature and specific ends, they should achieve their fullness of being
typical in their behaviour.
Here, the words ‘should’ or ‘ought – have only a metaphysical meaning (as
when we say that a good or a normal eye “should” or “ought” to be able to
read letters on a blackboard from a given distance.)
8. [from 2] Human beings can put themselves in tune with the ends
necessarily demanded by their nature. [unlike horses]
9. [Therefore “The same words “should” or “ought” start to have a moral
meaning, that is, to imply moral obligation, when we pass the threshold of
the world of free agents. [...] For humanity, the natural law is a moral law
because a man obeys or disobeys it freely, not necessarily.”
10. [Therefore, there is a natural, moral law.]
Maritain differs from Aristotle
- the end of the human person
to complete the human being’s natural desire for happiness, we
need to go beyond the material order
– God is the final end [Moral Philosophy, p. 46]
- human nature
“what is infinite in man has been forgotten” [Moral Philosophy,
p. 50]
Maritain’s influence
- ethical, political and religious thought
-’personalism’ and humanism – Mounier, John Paul II and Paul VI
- UNESCO & Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- in Canada (esp Quebec [Claude Ryan]; Catholic circles)
- Latin America (Chile, Eduardo Frei)
- France (de Gaulle)
- in United States (Dorothy Day)
- Martha Nussbaum
Still, ‘Aristotelian’
- a metaphysical foundation to ethics
- an ‘end’ or teleology in ethics
- the role of ‘right reason’
- relevance of virtue
2. 19th-20th century European Idealism
- associated with G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831)
- ‘speculative philosophy’
- focus on the role of mind or consciousness in reality
- also an emphasis on people in community
- continued into 20th c, with ‘British idealism’
- T.H. Green, B. Bosanquet, G.Bernard Shaw
- F.H. Bradley (1846-1924) (Ethical Studies 1876; 1927)
FH Bradley
“British Idealist”
Merton College, Oxford
Background
In Britain
- Aristotle part of the ‘new’ university curriculum
- Hegel introduced into Britain
- as a response to materialism, empiricism, naturalism
- as part of the attempt to ‘renew’ Plato and Aristotle
What did the Idealist tradition ‘inherit’ from Aristotle’s ethics?
- reason; happiness
- teleology in nature and in ethics (in a different sense)
- emphasis on self-realization [today: “perfectionism”]
Main inheritance from Aristotle:
- “end”
- “function”
Now if the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a
rational principle … and we state the function of man to be a certain kind of
life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational
principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble
performance of these, and … human good turns out to be activity of soul in
accordance with virtue…'in a complete life.' (Nicomachean Ethics I, 7)
- “person as a social and political being’
“man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not
by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above
humanity” (Politics I, 2 )
Bradley:
challenges utilitarianism (Mill), deontology (Kant)
too narrow; doesn’t explain obligation
- an ethics that is ‘natural’, rational, and conforms to experience
- need a ‘thicker’ notion of the ‘human person’
- people tend to seek their own self-realization
Bradley ‘added’
Focus on the self as a social being
- how we become selves and develop morally
- language, family life,
- through social activities: ‘my station and its duties’
- ‘ideal morality’ – rooted in, but beyond, social duties
not an account of the virtues
Bradley’s idealist ethics differs from Aristotle
Still ‘Aristotelian’ in a broad sense
- historically
- metaphysical foundation
- “social self”
The influence of British idealism
- ethical, political, and religious thought
-19th c emphasis on ‘character’
- analysis of responsibilities to community and society
- “communitarianism” [Charles Taylor]
- in Britain, the Liberal and Labour parties
- in Canada
3. Contemporary ‘virtue ethics’
- Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929)
- After Virtue (1981)
- Stanley Hauerwas (theologian); Martha Nussbaum
Alasdair MacIntyre
MacIntyre
- A varied intellectual history
- a “reaction”
- the inconclusiveness / inadequacy of contemporary ethics
- influence by GEM Anscombe
- the 18th c Enlightenment rejected Aristotle, esp. teleology
- afterwards morality becomes ultimately subjective ‘will’
- ‘Nietzsche or Aristotle’?
Background
What does virtue ethics ‘inherit’ from Aristotle?
- virtue, character
- tradition
- ‘human flourishing’ (happiness) teleology
MacIntyre retains teleology and the focus on virtue
- virtue as a state of being and not just doing
- need to attend to the virtues, but virtues are characteristic of practices and
traditions
- time and training
So, a return to pre-enlightenment principles
- teleology
- practice
- a broader notion of reason
- we can justify in terms of practices – i.e., appropriate
to the practice
- practices are rooted in traditions
- And when tradition reaches a crisis…
MacIntyre differs from Aristotle
- aim: “the construction of new forms of community within which the moral
life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the
coming ages of barbarism and darkness”
- but, no foundations
- and no ‘neutral’ ‘formal’ reason to lead to universal truth
- ethics as ‘imprecise’
- we are deeply ‘contextualized’ by our society
- no metaphysics – no ‘human nature’
- no notion of natural law
MacIntyre’s influence:
within ethics – part of a return to Aristotle
the state in supporting virtue - communitarianism
medical ethics - the notion of a practice and virtues
4. A model for cross-cultural dialogue and ethics
-- often, challenges to ethics across cultures and traditions
-- how to respond to this? Aristotelian ethics may have an answer
-- comparison of Aristotelian and Confucian ethics
Background
Aristotle in China
- historical legacy:
Matteo Ricci (1552-1610)
Julius Aleni (1582-1649)
Xu Guangqi (1562-1633)
Xu Guangqi
and Matteo Ricci
Julius Aleni [Giulio Alenio]
(1582 - June 10, 1649)
- Xingxue cushu (De Anima)
- Xixuefan (Introduction
to Western Sciences)
- Desire to introduce western / Catholic thought into China
- recognised difficulties
- Aristotelian books in the form of commentaries of Coimbra College, Portugal
circa 1591-95
translated /edited
Xiu Shen Xi Xue (Alphonsus Vagnoni) - a Chinese syllabus of
Aristotelian ethics
Huanyou Quan – commentary on De Coelo
Lingyan lishao - commentary on De Anima
also Mingli tan (Inquiries into Names and Principles
– Porphyry’s Isagoge)
- style and approach / Aristotle as ‘sage’
- ‘encounter’ and comparison of Aristotelian and Confucian ethics
- not ‘inheritance’
- parallels, and what might follow from these parallels
Confucius (Kong Zi) 551-479 BCE
- relation of ethics and politics
- doctrine of the mean (中庸; zhōng yōng)
(book by Zi Si [子思 ] )
- ren (仁) – humaneness, virtue
Aristotle and Confucian ethics
- the mean as virtue
a midpoint between excess and deficiency
‘hitting the target’
the example of archery
Ethics and archery
The Master said, "In archery we have something like the way of the superior
man. When the archer misses the center of the target, he turns round and
seeks for the cause of his failure in himself.“ (The Mean, ch. 14)
If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake,
clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great
influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be
more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least,
to determine what it is. (Nicomachean Ethics, I. 1094a18)
What do they ‘inherit’ from Aristotle?
- narrowly, nothing
- past ‘communication’ and engagement
- If there are strong parallels, then
- a basis for cultural comparison
- a basis for deepening understanding
- ‘legacy’ as not a matter of influence, but of how we might proceed
Conclusion
- a legacy
some key aspects which endure
Thomism and Maritain
Idealism and Bradley
Virtue ethics and MacIntyre
Jesuit Aristotelianism and Chinese thought
insights which influenced, and were continued
- a ‘classic’
The End