[1] Rep. 514^a-521^b

[2] Electronic version here

 

Let’s consider the virtues that were current in the world that Aristotle knew. They are, after all, the supposed motivators for action that the society approved. You’ll recall that in the first lecture I mentioned that the Greeks rather admired the Heroic moral code that had prevailed in the society of the Greek Dark Ages (~1100-900BC), or at least, they admired the version of it that had been preserved in the Homeric poems that were supposed to be representations of that period. You’ll recall that I mentioned that that code was much concerned with honour, fame, revenge, fate, courage, pride, and other such things. It was really a code of behaviour that was centred upon honour – the honour of the individual aristocratic warrior. Their central moral hero – if we may call him that – was Achilles, the hero of the Iliad. We find this just bizarre, because to our minds, the behaviour of Achilles is far from admirable. Consider what we first see Achilles doing in that epic: he is feuding with King Agamemnon, because the King has claimed a woman as a prize of war that Achilles had his eye on. He wanted to be the one to rape her and is upset that someone else does so. He regards this as an insult, but he can’t really attack his King, so instead he goes off to his tents to sulk, taking all his men with him and leaving the Greek army to be thrashed by the Trojans. This is not behaviour that is likely to impress the modern reader, but the clue to his appeal for the Greeks lies in another story; that he was offered a choice between a long, commonplace life or a short, glorious one, and he chose glory.

 

The whole emphasis of the Heroic or honour-centric life, according to the Greek conception anyway, is on the fullest possible use of all the qualities of body and mind. He has an image of himself which he will not allow to be contradicted or to be denied full expression. Any affront to this self-image must be immediately countered. It is this attitude that explains why Achilles must behave the way he does in the first situation: there is simply nothing in the world more important than his own self-image and the respect it is shown by others. It is in fact only in this way that others feature in the ‘moral’ considerations of the hero. The looked-for reward for his exertions is the approval of others, and the disrespect of others is the mark that he is failing. Fame is the goal of the hero at all times.

 

You can see that the all of this seems to be concerned with the character or the preferences of the individual man and not at all concerned with the welfare of his community. Nevertheless, these ideals of life did survive into the era of the city-state; and they were able to do that to a greater degree than would otherwise be the case because they could be made compatible with the new social order. The heroic virtues could be placed at the service of the city rather than of the private citizen, and yet the idea that this was an act of self-fulfilment never disappeared.

 

The rise of the importance of cities had another consequence, as I also mentioned in the introductory lecture. That is that the types of virtue that were most valued by the heroic ethos came to be supplanted to some degree by virtues that were more appropriate to the life in a city. As I mentioned, these newly valued characteristics included the quartet of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom, and when it came time for the philosophers to attempt to justify the moral system of their societies, it was those sorts of virtues that they were concerned with. We’ve already seen some examples of this, of course, when we looked at both Socrates and Plato. Justice was, in fact, the virtue that Plato was most concerned with, and Wisdom turned out to be pretty much synonymous with virtue for both of them. Courage won’t concern us much – it’s a pretty specific sort of virtue that doesn’t really lend itself to much generalization – but temperance will.

 

 

What we’re going to look at now is how Aristotle attempted to integrate these seemingly very different ways of thought, and to rationalize them so as to give them a justification beyond mere tradition.

Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics with a deceptively simple statement.

 

Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good has been aptly described as that at which everything aims.[1]

 

All actions aim at something. If you are doing something completely aimless, for example day-dreaming, this won’t count as an action for Aristotle. Actions are things we do for a purpose. Another way of putting this is to say that all actions aim at some end. Aristotle holds that the end or purpose of our actions is always to achieve some perceived good.

 

Aristotle then describes a hierarchy of ends: some ends are subordinate to others. Bridle-making has as its end making bridles. But the making of bridles is subordinate to horsemanship in general because we make bridles to facilitate the riding of horses; we do not ride horses in order to facilitate the making of bridles. And horsemanship is subordinate to military science, because we ride horses in order to achieve victory in battle (as the Greeks would have it), we do not seek victory in battle in order to have an excuse to ride horses.[2] Aristotle takes this hierarchy of ends, and the sciences and arts that facilitate their attainment, to be pervasive: all human ends fit in the hierarchy somewhere. Aristotle also makes a commonsense distinction between ends that are valued instrumentally (for example, surgery) and ends that are also valued for their own sake.

 

Aristotle next argues that there must be an ultimate end or supreme good to which we aim. This is an end at the top of the hierarchy of ends. An ultimate end is one that is valued for its own sake and is not valued for the sake of anything else; it is something complete and sufficient, not lacking any good. Every other end is valued, ultimately, for the sake of this supreme good. Here is Aristotle’s argument:

 

So if what is done has some end that we want for its own sake, and everything else we want is for the sake of this end; and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (because this would lead to an infinite progression, making our desire fruitless and vain), then clearly this will be the good, indeed the chief good.[3]

 

The key argument occurs in the middle of the sentence. Suppose we value one thing for the sake of another, and that for the sake of yet another, and that for the sake of yet another … and so on forever. Aristotle claims our desire would be fruitless and vain (i.e. empty). There must be one ultimate goal in our lives and if we achieve this goal, all our other endeavours won’t have been in vain. Notice that this isn’t at all a necessary conclusion. There’s no reason that we couldn’t be put together in such a way that there are several goals that are goals in themselves and that are not instrumental for the achievement of other higher goals. It would be easy for Plato to have argued, for example, that his study of the human soul revealed that there were really three separate ultimate ends corresponding to the three sources of motivation in the human soul. The ultimate end of the appetitive soul, for example, would be the primitive satisfaction of basic bodily needs; the ultimate end of the ‘spirited’ soul would be the achievement and preservation of ‘honour;’ and the ultimate end of the rational soul would be knowledge of things, or the contemplation of the knowledge of things.

 

Aristotle can’t prove that there is only one such goal – his argument doesn’t even attempt to show this. But he thinks that as a matter of fact there is only one such goal. That is, he thinks there is one common supreme good for human beings. So, in response to someone who claimed that there was a Platonic partition of the soul that led to there being three distinct ultimate ends – and suppose that we accept that those are ends that we seek – Aristotle is committed to claiming that each of those ends is actually an instrumental end that contributes to the satisfaction of some other more general, more ultimate end. But what could possibly be so general, and also universally accepted as an end, that it could possibly play that role? It would need to be an end that subsumed bodily satisfaction, the acknowledgement of honour, and intellectual achievement. Well, Aristotle believes that he has a clear and obvious candidate for the one supreme good of human life that could do this.

 

 

According to Aristotle, the one ultimate end of all rational human endeavours is happiness. Now, this sounds a bit odd at first, because happiness doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that, say, intellectual achievement is appropriately seen as instrumental to. We don’t study dead languages in order to make ourselves feel all tingly and smiley – there are easier ways to do that. But this oddness is only apparent, and once again, it’s mostly due to a difficulty in translating. More strictly, we should use the Greek work ‘eudaimonia’ to describe this ultimate end. ‘Happiness’ is close in meaning to ‘eudaimonia’, but the translation is not precise. The sense of the term ‘happiness’ that is closest to the meaning of ‘eudaimonia’ is that of a ‘happy life.’ This sense of ‘happiness’ is brought out when we say of a couple that they have a happy marriage. We also see this usage when we claim that we have the right to ‘Life, Liberty , and the Pursuit of Happiness’ – that isn’t a claim that we must be allowed to do anything that gives us some passing pleasure. Eudaimonia is not a temporary mental state, like pleasure, joy, bliss or tranquillity. Eudaimonia is an overall-condition of a person’s life. Indeed, Aristotle thinks that we can’t be sure that a person has lived a Eudaimonic life until it is over; and even then the eudaimonic character of a life can be ruined by bad luck, for example if your children disgrace your family name.

 

Eudaimonia is the supreme good for human beings because: (1) it is the ultimate end for which we pursue anything; (2) it is unconditionally complete (we don’t seek our ultimate happiness for the sake of anything else); and (3) it is self-sufficient (we don’t say of a happy life that it lacks something – though of course we could always say of a life that it could be more happy).

 

Aristotle develops his own account of human happiness in terms of his account of human nature. Everything has a natural ergon, or characteristic activity. For example, the ergon of a lion seems to be to mate with other lions to produce future generations of lions, raise cubs to such and such an age (if female) and so on. Aristotle contends that human happiness is to be discovered by discovering the ergon of human beings.

 

But perhaps saying that happiness is the chief good sounds rather platitudinous, and one might want its nature to be specified still more clearly. It is possible that we might achieve that if we grasp the characteristic activity of a human being. For just as the good – the doing well – of a flute-player, a sculptor or any practitioner of a skill, or generally whatever has some characteristic activity or action, is thought to lie in its characteristic activity, so the same would seem to be true of a human being, if indeed he has a characteristic activity.[1]

 

The characteristic activity of human beings is to use reason. Our capacity to reason and everything that follows from it – including language, technology and culture – are what distinguish us from all other species. It is what makes us special. Thus, thinks Aristotle, it is also the key to making us ultimately happy – in the eudaimonic sense. One way of looking at this – and it’s what Aristotle thinks – is that the ultimately good life is one spent just using your reason, not by solving problems in geometry or the like, but simply in contemplation of the things that you know. According to the Aristotelian view the truly good life is one in which the wise man passes in review the things that he knows in much the same way that a connoisseur or aesthete tastes his wines one after another or contemplates his paintings.[2] This is a goal that no-one thinks will appeal to many people, so perhaps Aristotle has to allow that not everyone is able to achieve this really good life, but there is nevertheless a version of eudaimonia that will suit everyone and which, if they are not completely mistaken, will form the goal of everyone’s actions in life.

 

Another way of looking at the idea that reason is the key to ultimate happiness is to realise that we live happily or well, only when we use reason with great skill. The use of reason with great skill is virtuous activity. In fact, for this and other reasons which we’ll look at in just a moment, Aristotle does say that a happy life is one lived according to virtue. This sounds rather similar to Socrates’ and Plato’s views: virtue is its own ultimate reward. But there are a couple of caveats, which make Aristotle’s view more worldly than either Socratic or Platonic views. First virtuous activity is accompanied by pleasure.

 

It is also the case that the life of [virtuous] people is pleasurable in itself. For experiencing pleasure is an aspect of the soul, and each person finds pleasure in that of which he is said to be fond, as a horse-lover finds it in a horse, and someone who likes wonderful sights finds it in a wonderful sight. In the same way, a lover of justice finds it in the sphere of justice and in general a person with virtue finds pleasure in what accords with virtue. The pleasures of the masses, because they are not pleasant by nature, conflict with one another, but the pleasures of those who are fond of noble things are pleasant by nature. Actions in accordance with virtue are like this, so that they are pleasant to these people as well as in themselves. Their life therefore has no need of pleasure as some kind of lucky ornament, but contains its pleasure in itself, because, in addition to what we have already said, the person who does not enjoy noble actions is not good. For no one would call a person just if he did not enjoy acting justly, or generous if he did not enjoy generous actions; and the same goes for the other virtues. If this is so, it follows that actions in accordance with virtue are pleasant in themselves.[3]

 

Secondly, pleasure is not made identical to acting virtuously, come what may, even when acting virtuously is pleasant. It also requires external goods, such as health, beauty, good children, good birth:

 

Nevertheless, as we suggested, happiness obviously needs the presence of external goods as well, since it is impossible, or at least no easy matter, to perform noble actions without resources. For in many actions, we employ, as if they were instruments at our disposal, friends, wealth, and political power. Again, being deprived of some things – such as high birth, noble children, beauty – spoils our blessedness. For the person who is terribly ugly, of low birth, or solitary and childless is not really the sort to be happy, still less perhaps if he has children or friends who are thoroughly bad, or good but dead. As we have said, then, there seems to be an additional need for some sort of prosperity like this. For this reason, some identify happiness with good fortune, while others identify it with virtue.[4]

 

Aristotle also claims that what happens after one’s death can affect one’s happiness; for instance, terrible disgrace brought about by one’s children would mean that one couldn’t say that one had had a happy life. This demonstrates how far Aristotle is from identifying happiness with a kind of mental state, or indeed a function of mental states.[5] It’s much easier to see how something like ‘success in life’ can be said to be affected by events after one’s death than something like ‘pleasure.’

 

Finally, we can note that Aristotle doesn’t really seem much interested in the effects that the good life or the good man has upon the wider society. The only thing that is really relevant to a man’s determination of the ‘right’ thing to do or be is the effect upon himself. You’ll see when you look at Aristotle’s investigation of the virtues that their status as virtues is to be determined only with respect to whether or not they contribute to the fullest possible flourishing of the character of the agent himself. Although this seems odd to us in a moral theory which is not explicitly a hedonistic theory, we can see that it is quite similar to what we said about the Heroic ethos.

 

Their Nature

 

It is really Aristotle’s account of the virtues that occupies the greatest part of his book. Aristotle’s account is the most developed in Greek philosophy and helps to make more sense of his claim (that I mentioned above) that a happy life is a life lived according to virtue. Once again we need to take a moment to look at the words that we’re using, and to ask what is being talked about when a Greek talks about ‘virtue.’ You may recall that I made some comments on this point when we were studying Socrates. At that time I said that the word that we translate as ‘virtue’ is the word aretê, and that in other circumstances that word might also be translated as ‘excellence,’ or something like that. It’s a word that doesn’t apply exclusively to humans or to moral qualities – in much the same way that ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in English don’t. The aretê of a thing is the way that the thing should be if it is to do what it should do and do it well. For example, the aretê of a knife would be its sharpness; the aretê of an umbrella would be its coverage; that of an apple would be its tastiness; and so on. The term has a definite flavour of a functionalist evaluation which carries over into this supposed moral use of the word. A virtue for a man would be that characteristic which allows a man to be or do the thing that a man should be or do, and this takes us back to a quote that we looked at before when Aristotle was looking at the characteristic activities of men. Recall:

 

For just as the good – the doing well – of a flute-player, a sculptor or any practitioner of a skill, or generally whatever has some characteristic activity or action, is thought to lie in its characteristic activity, so the same would seem to be true of a human being, if indeed he has a characteristic activity.[1]

 

Now, a virtue for a flute-player would be the characteristics that contribute to the excellence of his flute-playing, and similarly for the sculptor or the practitioners of any skill. And when we have established that the skill at issue for man as man is eudaimonia then we can see that the virtues that are required are those that will contribute to the achievement of eudaimonia. So Aristotle, like the Greeks generally, takes virtues to be states of character, states that issue in dispositions to behave in certain appropriate ways, experience appropriate emotions, perceive situations and think matters through in appropriate ways, etc. This explains to some degree the other term that Aristotle uses when he’s trying to distinguish ‘ethical virtues,’ which is the word ‘hexis.’ This is often translated as ‘habit’ but refers to a sort of disposition to have a kind of feeling.

 

The Mean

 

Much of what occupies Aristotle in his book is a detailed study of the various characteristics that are often proposed as virtues for a man to see whether they can qualify as virtues according to his criterion. And it seems that most of them do, but there are qualifications that need to be made in order to make the traditional view of things jibe with the philosophical. He divides virtues into virtues of character (sometimes called the ‘moral virtues’) and virtues of reason (sometimes called the ‘intellectual virtues’). Virtues of character involve mastering your emotions in accordance with reason. Virtues of reason involve excellences of reason. Virtues of character include such things as courage, temperance, generosity, even-temperedness, magnanimity. Each is associated with a particular feeling or a particular type of action (courage – fear; temperance – pleasure and pain; magnanimity – giving of large donations or gifts).

 

Aristotle’s primary account of them is given in terms of his Doctrine of the Mean (sometimes also known as the via media or ‘middle way.’) According to the doctrine of the mean, virtues lie between excess and deficiency:

 

First, then, let us consider this – the fact that states like this are naturally corrupted by deficiency and excess, as we see in the cases of strength and health … for both too much exercise and too little ruin one’s strength, and likewise too much food and drink and too little ruin one’s health, while the right amount produces increase and preserves it. The same goes, then, for temperance, courage and the other virtues: the person who avoids and fears everything, never standing his ground, becomes cowardly, while he who fears nothing, but confronts every danger, becomes rash. In the same way, the person who enjoys every pleasure and never restrains himself becomes intemperate, while he who avoids all pleasure – as boors do – becomes, as it were, insensible. Temperance and courage, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, and preserved by the mean.[2]

 

It is important to note that Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is not recommending moderation in all things. Virtue may require great feeling – anger or generosity, for instance. The mean is not an arithmetical measure, but varies from circumstance to circumstance; and agent to agent. An example that he uses somewhere is the difference in the mean of appetite for a wrestler in training and for someone who is not exerting themselves in that way. It would be ridiculous to say that the wrestler must eat only as much as a young girl, or vice versa.

 

This doctrine of the Mean, however, has proved troublesome to people who want to use it to find what they should do when they don’t already have an idea of what they should do. Just how does one go about applying the doctrine? How are we to know where the mean lies? When Aristotle tries to clarify what he means by the doctrine he says things like this:

 

I am talking here about virtue of character, since it is this that is concerned with feelings and actions, and it is in these that we find excess, deficiency and the mean. For example, fear, confidence, appetite, anger, pity, and in general pleasure and pain can be experienced too much or too little, and in both ways not well. But to have them at the right time, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the mean and the best; and this is the business of virtue.[3]

 

But such a statement, as one can plainly see, is of no real use as a criterion of judgement. To do the right thing is to follow the mean course in all your choices, with due allowance for circumstances; and to follow the mean course is to do the right thing at the right time the right way. Not useful. Not useful at all. It’s pretty clear too that Aristotle realised that the so-called Doctrine was no good as a criterion, because at one stage he says:

 

We have said that one should choose the mean … But although to say this is true, it is not at all explicit; for in all the other occupations about which there is a science it is true that one should exert oneself and relax neither too much nor too little, but to a mean extent and as the right principle dictates; but if you grasped only this you would know nothing more – e.g. you would not know what remedies to take if someone told you to take what medical science prescribes and as a medical man prescribes it.[4]

 

Training

 

Recall that virtue requires pleasure. This is important for Aristotle (for he realises that a happy life is a pleasant one). A person truly acts from virtue when they do so willingly, knowingly and taking pleasure in the action. Thus a person does not truly exemplify the virtue of courage if they act bravely – and yet terrified, hating every moment of it. And a person does not exemplify generosity, if they give their money away resentfully.

 

One of the standard questions the Greeks used to ask was whether morality could be taught. It’s not something I’ve concentrated on in previous lectures because it hasn’t really been very relevant to our present concerns, but Aristotle’s opinion of this matter is another one of his claims that have given rise to endless controversy and misunderstanding. Because Aristotle thought that virtues were forms of character – dispositions and tendencies and so on – he also thought that they could properly be taught, but not in the standard intellectual way that you’ve been listening to this lecture. He thought that a virtue could only be taught by a type of training, so that the character in question and the actions that it would give rise to would become a matter of habit for the good man. One develops a virtue by acting out the virtue (copying one’s betters); eventually coming to understand, and take pleasure in the exercise of virtue. For example, the miserly man who wishes to be a good man, accustoms himself to giving more generously. At first we can imagine that he will give with clenched teeth, but as he becomes used to the action of giving and as he begins to realise how this action is improving his general quality of life he will come to appreciate the action and the motivation without reservations. A cowardly man should put himself in the way of danger until he learns how to be brave; a glutton should stop stuffing himself; and so on. This notion has given rise to endless quibbling that Aristotle just wants us to behave like trained animals, and doesn’t want us to exercise our judgement in deliberating about what to do.