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Aristotle's EthicsAristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
This summary of Aristotle's Ethics Book One is meant to be part of a project; be sure to answer the project questions at the very end of this summary of Book One.
Book One
All human actions are for the sake of the good.
Some goods are subordinate to others.
The good in itself is the good at which all men and women aim; ethics and politics are subjects that together aim at that good for all.
Intermediate goods are subordinate to the good in itself toward which every good is aimed.
What is this good in itself?
The inexperienced (young, passionate, incontinent, and directionless) do not seem able to profit from knowing aimed at examination of the good.
General agreement among the experienced claims that the good for all people is happiness (that for the sake of which all else must contribute if it is to be good.)
What constitutes happiness? This is not so easy for many, but requires “the wise” and “experienced.”
Pleasure is one way of life advocated by those who see happiness as gratification; while this appears slavish, it has some merit (Sardanapolis). What is the merit?
Life of action: honor seems a good for politicians, but appears too superficial because it lies in people’s opinion rather than in the one who is said to have or possess what is worthy of honor.
Life of study (he postpones)
Life of money-making seems forced on people (?) and does not seem a good so ultimate as is needed for happiness even if it be needed when people are in need.
The good we seek as an answer to happiness has to be a good in itself, a good for the sake of which all human beings do whatever else they do.
It also has to be so final that it is self-sufficient or make one’s whole life most desirable or fulfilling.
It must be such that it can be part of a life that is free from inactivity and excludes misery.
If, however, we recognize the human species as marked by rationality, then happiness would or should be associated with rational activity.
An activity of rationality or in accord rational activity is an activity of virtue and this makes virtuous activity a state of the soul.
This activity must also be good in the sense of being pleasant or enjoyable for the virtuous person to do; virtues are eventually enjoyable by nature and require no other pleasure. In other words, happiness as an activity of virtue must include enjoyment.
How do we get virtue “arete” or excellence in acting reasonably. This is the end of ethics and of politics as well.
Durability over time seems the attribute associated with “virtuous” activity, and so durability will belong to the happy person.
But can a person be really happy acting virtuously if he or she has to encounter unforeseen adversities or if her friends are visited with misfortune?
Durability, in this case, does not mean that the virtuous person is not affected with sadness, but that the sadness is not such that it destroys virtue.
The nature of virtue, though, is such that it applies to the way we act to exercise both intellectual and moral activity.
Project Questions
This project is meant to help you identify your own unique combination of 3-4 intellectual skills (multiple intelligences cf. Humi 1 on this web site) so that you can increase your self understanding.
On a separate sheet, type your answers to the following questions as carefully and accurately as you can. This project is an assignment due when we have finished Aristotle's Book I.
1. Which of the nine (9) multiple intelligences are your strongest right now? (Cf. Humi 1, Creative Mind Syllabus on this web site)
2. What experiences convinced you that they were the ones that were your strongest?
3. What goals and aspirations have you set in place already to develop your skills?
4. What obstacles have you already encountered? How did you overcome them? What obstacles do you foresee?
5. What social supports do you need now and what ones do you foresee needing?
6. What vision of the future do you have? E.g. where would you like to be 15-20 years from now?
Book Two
We can distinguish philosophical wisdom and practical wisdom (phronesis) from moral virtues like liberality and temperance.
It is neither “by nature nor contrary to nature” that virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and they are made perfect by habit.
If they come to us because our nature is adapted to them (co-natural), we have them as natural potentialities.
Exercise of the potentialities (activity of a virtuous sort) is the way to the virtues as habits. Just like we acquire other skills by repeated practice, so also do we acquire virtue in that way.
Aristotle means that we begin doing acts of virtue without having the habit of virtue. The more times we do act so, the more we create the habit (disposition).
Some virtuous acts, then, create virtue, and some virtuous acts flow from virtue.
The difference between the continent and the virtuous is just such a difference.
Good lawmakers and good constitutions form good habits in people, and this is true of every art or skill. Both intellectual skills (multiple intelligences) and character skills (moral virtues) repeatedly exercised develop into habits (virtues).
Likewise parents instill good feelings in children so they may act virtuously without having the virtue as yet.
In practical matters, each person, sooner or later, has to judge for themselves the good they will do. Why?
Because the habit of virtue is a middle ground between two extremes, too much and too little (excess and defect) need to be determined by experience and analysis of our experiences.
The experience of those who have embarked on cultivating virtue, note that excess and defect destroy the good. Exercise too much or too little is unhealthy; eat too much or too little is also.
The proportionate balance produces good while the excess produces bad just as the person who fears everything and flees is a coward and a person who fears nothing becomes rash.
Similarly with the self-indulgent and the person who seeks no pleasure at all (boor or insensible); both are unbalanced.
By acting in a balanced way e.g. abstaining from pleasures and becoming temperate we become habituated to temperance. The same for courage in relationship to fear.
Enjoyment is the feeling associated with virtuous acts and if we are brought up in that way we will be pleased with virtue and pained at excess or defect.
In this way pleasure and enjoyment can be signs of virtue pain a sign of its absence; i.e. vice is painful while virtue is enjoyable activity and is pleasant.
To become virtuous by doing virtuous acts does not mean that one automatically becomes virtuous quickly. It takes time and repeated excercise like the development of proficient skills at playing the violin or playing basketball.
Virtue is a state of character, a habit, and is acquired by doing virtuous acts repeatedly which gradually enable one to hit the “intermediate” consistently.
That intermediate is relative to us while vice is either excess or defect relative to us.
Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean or intermediate good relative to us and determined by our own rational or reasonable estimation.
That rational or reasonable estimation is the action of phronesis or practical wisdom.
The intermediate good relative to us is, however, what is best for us and right. It stands opposite to what is wrong relative to us.
Names for excesses and defects (wrong) have already been coined by people before us from their experience.
Spite, shameless, envy, adultery, theft, murder and many others are already names for what is not subject to an intermediate. Likewise temperance and courage have no excess or deficiency.
If we look at the theory of virtue as a middle ground unique to each person, we can show how that middle is an apex.
If we place the middle as the apex of a triangle with the base being not virtue but vice or the vicious, then the corners of the base are excess and defect along the continuum of the vicious.
Retrieval of Aristotle's Ethics
Alisdair MacIntyre, John Rawls, and Martha Nussbaum, among many others are part of a large movement calling for a "retrieval" of Aristotle's Virtue theory or some aspects of it. I want to outline what I think is the major contribution that each of the above authors has made to that retrieval.
MacIntyre has contributed the idea of comprehensiveness to the theory of the virtues. He thinks that of all the moral theories advanced: code theory, obligation theory, consequential theory, human rights theory, utilitarian theory, no theory other than virtue theory comes close to adequacy. I think he means that the theory of the virtues connects with the purpose of human life, happiness, as described by Aristotle, and that the excercise of the virtues comes close to a description of a good person. In addition, I think MacIntyre recognizes that Aristotle's insistence that a "good life in a good society" calls for a social and political ethics that is compatible with the life of virtue.
Rawls has contributed what he calls the Aristotelian Principle. That principle he thinks is a "description of the relationship between human happiness, activities or exercise of natural and acquired habits, and enjoyment." In his major work, A Theory of Justice he calls for a society in which people can and are helped to "enjoy the exercise of their natural or acquired capacities already realized." He recognizes that these "capacities" are at the heart of human "enjoyment", and that the exercise of these capacities in more skillful ways of performance constitute a "complexity" that makes a person's life more enjoyable. I think Rawls means that we cannot fail to recognize that the purpose of life for each of us consists in identifying and developing those natural or acquired skills (moral and intellectual virtues, in Aristotle's vocabulary) if we want to live a "good life." In addition, he seems to think it is a principle that "ought" to motivate both individuals and the social institutions under which individuals live, or in Aristotle's terms, both the "good life" in a "good society."
Martha Nussbaum calls capability theory one that recognizes a "quality of life" issue in Aristotle's virtue theory. When Aristotle calls the virtues natural or co-natural human functions, he means it as part of an analysis of what "all human beings" need. In this sense, when a society or its institutions recognize the latent or actualized skill functions called intellectual and moral virtue, that recognition forms the basis of a society operating by a "capability" theory. I think she means that the development of virtue is not merely a program for a good personal life, but that it is a major goal for a "good society."
These three philosophers are only some who have developed a "retrieval of virtue theory", but they have done so because it is an important contribution to our realistic ethics for today.
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