ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS
Aristotle: 384 – 322 BCE
Aristotle was born in Stagira, Macedonia, in what is now part of northern Greece. The city was a seaport on the coast of Macedon. (Since most Greeks were known only by one name, they were often identified by the city of their birth. Hence Aristotle was known in his lifetime as Aristotle of Stargira.) The Macedonians, during Aristotle’s life, dominated the rest of Greece and much of Europe, under King Philip and then Alexander the Great, of whom Aristotle was a teacher. Aristotle was the son of a doctor, Nichomachus, who was closely allied to the court in Macedonia. As such, throughout his life, Aristotle was seen as close to the rulers of Macedonia, considered by the citizens of the other Greek city-states as foreign conquerers.
Aristotle moved to Athens in 367 BCE, attending Plato’s Academy until Plato’s death in 347 BCE. During this twenty year period, Plato wrote many of his most important and mature works, including the Timaeus, Sophist, Statesman, and Laws. These works had an enormous influence on Aristotle’s own work, even if, in the end, he disputes a number of Plato’s claims.
Aristotle left the Academy and Athens in 347 BCE. First, he moved to Atarneus in Mysia. Here, Aristotle married Pythias, a niece of Hermeias, the ruler of Atarneus. They had a daughter, also called Pythias. After the death of his wife, Aristotle had a son Nicomachus with Herpyllis. Later, Aristotle left for the island of Lesbos, and then back to Macedon. Back home, Aristotle again was close to the ruling family of Macedon, tutoring the young Alexander the Great. In 334 BCE, Aristotle returned to Athens, founding his own school, the Lyceum.
It is important to note that Aristotle’s works that survive were texts of lectures from his days at the Lyceum. While many parts of his texts were polished enough to suggest that he would publish them, other parts of Aristotle’s surviving work includes incomplete sentences and paraphrased notations. Aristotle's lectures were preserved by a student, Theophrastus, who put the books in a vault. For close to 300 years, Aristotle’s work was lost to the world, until discovered by a Roman scholar in 100 BCE. The order in which Aristotle’s works appear in the Greek manuscripts goes back to early editors and commentators during the era of the late Roman empire. As such, the titles to Aristotle’s work were provided by these editors. For example, it is usually assumed that Aristotle “invented” metaphysics due to the book of this name. However, the term metaphysics was placed on a certain text of Aristotle’s, since it was agreed that this text would follow the Physics in a published edition of Aristotle’s work. That is, the text would be meta, after or above, the text of the Physics, which preceded it.
In 323 BCE, Alexander the Great passed away and so with him the influence of Macedon on the other Greek city states. The Macedonian-led government of Athens fell and the new rulers brought charges of impiety against Aristotle. Aristotle left Athens amidst a fervor of anti-Macedonian feeling for the island of Euboea, where he died in 322 BCE of a stomach illness. Before leaving Athens, fearing for his life, Aristotle is reputed to have said “The Athenians might not have another opportunity of sinning against philosophy as they have already done in the person of Socrates.”
For Aristotle, as he puts it in his Metaphysics and NE, we must begin with what is “better known to us” (1029b3). In essence, what we know best is the empirical world around us. Aristotle’s method is to use induction from particular observations, generalizing from a set of phenomena to reach a principle. But this principle must continually be tested against further empirical data and other principles. In philosophical inquiry, Aristotle argues that we must begin “empirically” by critically studying the common beliefs of the community and the thoughts of prior philosophers. This should not be taken to suggest that Aristotle considered knowledge learned from the senses as the only form of knowledge. Aristotle argued for universals and ultimate causes, such as justice and God, which may not necessarily be found in the sensory world. Yet, for Aristotle, “what is better known to us” must always be the starting point for a philosophical or scientific investigation.
Another feature of Aristotle’s method is to begin by way of analysis, which is defined as breaking up what is being investigated into its component parts. As he puts it in Book I of The Politics, “What I am saying will be clear if we examine the matter according to the method of investigation that has guided us elsewhere … A composite has to be analyzed until we reach things that are incomposite, since these are the smallest parts of the whole, so if we also examine the parts that make up a city-state, we shall see better both how these differ from each other, and whether or not it is possible to gain some expertise in connection with each of the things we have mentioned” (1252a15-20). We will see this in our reading of the NE.
Key Terms for Reading the Ethics
In order to better understand Aristotle’s Ethics, we must first get on the same page, so to speak, with regard to the terminology that Aristotle is using. We will also need to review terms that would have been familiar to Aristotle’s Greek readers, but are less familiar to 21st century readers. However, no definition is ever set in stone and good scholars argue over the precise meaning of Aristotle’s terminology, from what he means by knowledge (epitemē) to his conception of virtue. In other words, as critical readers, you should use these definitions and comments as a help in reading the text; only a thorough reading of the assigned text will help you in gaining a foothold with Aristotelian terminology. (One note on terminology: I use the term “man” and “men” quite a bit below in reference to citizenship and the community. This sexist terminology is purposeful since Aristotle, as we shall see, explicitly excludes women from acting within the political realm.)
Action (praxis): We get the English word “practice” from the Greek “praxis,” which is the result of deliberate choice. Aristotle differentiates in Book I of the Politics between praxis and production. Praxis is an end in itself, while production has an end, is for the sake of, what is produced, for example when one makes a chair. For Aristotle, only free people can act in this specific sense, since the end of any action is acting well, which is the action itself. Action, like happiness, is an end in itself. It is not for the sake of anything but itself; it is the mark of a free man that he can act since he makes a decision to act, and action doesn’t merely happen to him.
Common Beliefs (endoxa): Aristotle begins most of his treatises, and thus his form of dialectic, by treating common beliefs first.
City-State (polis): The dominant political unit in Ancient Greece. The city-states were generally small with one common culture among their inhabitants, except for that of foreign-born slaves. City-states included Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. For Aristotle, the non-deviant city-state would be one in which free and equal citizens are bound together in a community whose end is the most mutually beneficial life possible.
Community: Men, according to Aristotle, are by nature political animals. The first communities, according to Aristotle, were families spaced out across the landscape. Aristotle is almost unique among political philosophers in his claim that the political community is “natural,” that is, not something artificially produced (see the distinction above between action and production). The family is a natural result of man’s wish to partake in the divine by way of a quasi-immortality, by producing offspring that will continue the blood-line of a family. As Aristotle traces it in Politics Book I, the family naturally gathers together in mutual need (exchange of goods, etc.) into villages, the second type of community. This community is modelled on the family, according to Aristotle, with a king presiding over the village as a father does over a family and its slaves. Finally, a number of villages joined together for mutual benefit is the most mature type of community, the city-state., which “comes to be for the sake of living, but it remains in existence for the sake of living well” (1252b).
DECISION (prohairesis): A decision, according to Aristotle, is the result of a wish for something that is good for us, and comes about after delibertation using one’s practical wisdom (phronesis).
Ethics and Politics: Put simply at this point, ethics, for Aristotle, is the ability to review blameworthy and praiseworthy actions of human beings. Ethics seeks to discover a careful balance between the good of the individual and the good of the community. The Nichomachean Ethics proceeds from the standpoint of the individual while the Politics proceeds from the standpoint of the community. Each domain, the political and the ethical, is concerned with what Aristotle takes to be the ultimate good, namely happiness, which is an end for its own sake.
The word “ethics” is derived from the Greek adjective ēthikos, which itself is derived from the Greek word ēthos, which means character. For Aristotle, in order to form a good character or ēthos, one must have formed good habits, or ethoi (note: this a different Greek word—no long “e”), formed through a good education.
END (telos): As Aristotle explains in book I of the NE, the nature of anything is its end. In his Metaphysics, A. argues that there are four causes of any event or object; we will illustrate this with the example of the statue:
1. The material cause. Bronze or marble would be the material cause of the statue; it is its material make-up.
2. The formal cause. This would in most cases be the form of the event or thing; it is the definition of what the thing is. For example the statue of liberty is in the form of a woman holding a torch and representing a beacon of freedom.
3. The efficient cause. This is the direct source, which brought the statue into being. It would be better to think of the efficient cause as the “cause of change.” The sculptor would be the efficient cause of the statue.
4. Final cause. Most important for the discussion in the Politics is the final cause, the telos or event of the event or object. For example, the final cause of a statue is to represent something, such as Lady Liberty. An acorn’s final cause would be a tree; it is the goal for which it exists.
Taking up any event or object, one cause is usually more relevant to the discussion. For the city-state, the most important cause is the final cause. But as we will also see, the formal cause, the particular form (aristocracy, democracy etc.) will also be important to Aristotle. For now, it is important to keep in mind that the final cause of any community, the development it will ultimately lead to, is found in the city-state. And the final cause of the city-state, that for which it is set up, is the good, what Aristotle will define as “living well,” and what we might loosely think of as happiness.
FUNCTION (ergon): The Greek word ergon also means “work,” and the use of ergon in the NE has been argued over. Essentially, Aristotle argues that each thing or animate being (that is, anything with a soul) works in a particular way or has a certain function. If it performs its function well, then it is said to have an aretē, an excellence about it. To perform one’s function (ergon) excellently (with aretē), for Aristotle, is to be a fully ethical human being, and to be happy.
GOOD (agathos): For Aristotle, the ultimate end, that which is “good” for each human being, is happiness. A good is the result of an action, what we seek in doing something. Everything we do is for the sake of some good. Some things are “good in themselves,” for example, happiness. We do not seek happiness in order to get wealth. Rather wealth, which is a good, is sought for a larger good, a good in itself, namely happiness.
HAPPINESS (eudaimonia): This is the ultimate goal of all human praxis and is the ultimate goal of any community. Happiness is found in reflecting upon God, practicing philosophy, or enjoying the company of one’s friends. All of these activities are only available, according to Aristotle, in a political community that affords its free citizens the leisure time to do so. But we should not confuse eudaimonia with our contemporary notion of happiness, which is simply a synonym for pleasure. Certainly, there is pleasure involved in the happiness that Aristotle is talking about, but it is also the ultimate fulfillment of the life of a citizen freely acting within the community. It will be an important part of your task in reading Book I of the Ethics to seek out what Aristotle means by this. As he notes, all men have a different notion of happiness based on their different lives.
JUSTICE (dikē): Justice is the “common benefit.” For Aristotle, a city-state cannot exist without justice, which for Aristotle is the virtue, the defining property, of a city-state.
MEAN (mesotēs): Aristotle is famous for what is called the “Aristotelian mean.” As outlined in Book IV of the NE, and explained further in book VI, if we perform our function well as human beings, we seek the mean or the intermediate between two extremes in order to practice virtue. For example, in order to practice courage, we must react to our fears in a moderate fashion, aiming for a mean or intermediate state between two extremes: (1) showing no restraint in the face of our fears, which would be cowardice, but (2) also not ignoring our fear, which, in the face of overwhelming odds, for example on the battlefield, which would be stupidity. It is brave to fight when one has a possibility of succeeding, even if the odds are slim; it is not brave, according to Aristotle, to fight when there are no odds of winning. This is not bravery and does not find the mean between the two extremes.