Great Books: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book One (part 2 of 2)

The first half of this essay can be read here.

Aristotle ties this quest for happiness into an exploration of those virtues specific to human beings. Virtue, or the fullest expression of a things potential, can be found in every thing, living or otherwise, and many virtues are shared in common between them. The task then, according to Aristotle, is to separate out those virtues exhibited by humanity and humanity alone from those of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdom. While some functions (like growth or perception) are shared by all forms of life to one degree or another, others (like reason or piety) are assumed by Aristotle to be uniquely human and therefore reside in the soul.

Scientific data collected since Aristotle’s time have shown that the gap in some reasoning skills between humans and their animal and vegetable cohabitants is not so wide as he assumes as fact. Though the idea that certain behaviors or experiences are unique to the human animal carries some water, it seems more defensible to point to the unique interplay of higher levels of consciousness at work in humanity as the source of that singularity than it does to posit that, if souls exist, then animals don’t have one. The latter view is one nearly unique to Western culture while the former is ubiquitous worldwide.

Setting aside our quibbles with Aristotle’s anthropocentric worldview, it is difficult to argue with his methodology for arriving at happiness as the chief good. In section eight, Aristotle restates his proof in order to move on to a secondary set of observations about its nature. Paraphrased, it can be understood most succinctly as follows.

1. Happiness is the chief good.
2. Goods which are sought for their own sake are better than those sought for the ends they produce as the end is always better than the good itself.
3. Happiness may be sought by means valued for their intrinsic merits or by external means sought for their own end.
4. Therefore, Happiness sought by means valued for their intrinsic merits are distinguishable and indeed superior to those which seek it in the ends of those means.

Once having established happiness as the chief good and, indeed, the fullest expression of human virtue, Aristotle pragmatically asks, “Well, if happiness is so good, then surely we must identify the means to acquire it?” After ticking off a list of possibilities that includes learning, habit and training, he turns to belief, rather than knowledge, to explain the transcendent qualities of happiness, noting that “if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things insamuch as it is the best” [344].

This speculation that the gods are in some way responsible for happiness harmonizes with another theme that Aristotle explores in Ethics; namely, that happiness is not immune to external pressures. Events like war and illness may greatly influence an individual’s peace of mind and hamper his or her ability to reach the full potential of their happiness. Moreover, happiness may be earned through diligent effort but it is sometimes also simply received by good fortune; an accident of birth or changing political tides. For Aristotle, the former trumps the latter in value as “to entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement” [344].

This idea is broadened later as Aristotle considers the thorny question of when a person might be adequately described as happy. At what point can one truly say that someone is happy as a measure of their life rather than as a snapshot of a single moment within it? If someone can only be said to be truly happy when they have gone beyond external threats to that happiness, then we are led to believe that only the gods and the dead may know it. Furthermore, if the dead may be said to be aware of this state, then musn’t they also be aware of the misfortunes and indignities suffered by their offspring unto infinity thus damaging their hard-earned happiness?

If we are to deny the living true happiness on the basis that we cannot know what may yet happen, happiness seeks nothing but death. If we are to describe the living as happy, then it may not be a sort of happiness dependent on external circumstances else the chief good be achievable only in fits and spurts if at all. Aristotle’s solution is to consider the internal and external factors for happiness as two separate entities. Though he concedes that external events can maim the potential for happiness, “even in these, nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility of pain but through nobility and greatness of soul” [346].

Returning, at least in spirit, to Socrates’ question (posed in the opening book of Plato’s Republic) of whether a poor good man could enjoy the end of life as much as a wealthy one, Aristotle suggests that each individual must first to decide whether to seek happiness or misery and then hope that fortune turns more often in their favor than not. Happy people, then, beset by ill fortune are still happy but if their fortunes are good, then they are said to be blessed. Those embracing misery, but whom otherwise experience good fortune, will still be miserable but should those fortunes turn against them, then they embody the lowest expression of human potential, wretchedness.

As a final argument to differentiate Happiness from other types of the good, Aristotle observes that as the chief Good, Happiness should elicit something more than praise which is rightly given over to lesser goods. “No one,” he suggests, “praises happiness as he does justice, but rather calls it blessed, as being something divine and better” [347]. Happiness, then, is the chief Good and the standard by which other virtues are measured just as divinity is the standard by which the mortal existence is judged.

Having marched his way across numerous minefields to reach a place of rest, Aristotle closes the first book of Ethics with a concise summation of his inquiry into happiness (designed no doubt as the take-away from the lecture), describing it as “an activity of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue” [347] . Before closing, he touches briefly on an interesting observation that is prescient in its anticipation of forays into psychology in the 20th century.

There seems to be also another irrational element in the soul—one which in a sense, however, shares in a rational principle…another element naturally opposed to the rational principle, which fights against and resists that principle…That the irrational principle is in some sense persuaded by the rational principle is indicated also by the giving of advice and by all reproof and exhortation. And if this element also must be said to have a rational principle, that which has a rational principle (as well as that which has not) will be two-fold, one subdivision having it in the strict sense and in itself, and the other having a tendency to obey as one does one’s father.

While Aristotle’s language is clumsy in its exploration of largely uncharted waters, this passage does show already a tendency in human thought to compartmentalize the drives that influence behavior and view their interaction as complementary rather than unilateral.

Great Books: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Book One (part 1 of 2)

Nicomachean Ethics, Book One
Composed by Aristotle presumably between 336-323 BCE
Place: Athens, Greece

The complete text for the W.D. Ross translation of Nicomachean Ethics used in this essay can be read online at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/nicomachean/ though page citations listed correspond to the 2nd edition of the Great Books of the Western World set.


“When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge Of one of many circles.”- Wallace Stevens

The title for this collection of essays, Nicomachean Ethics, is often shortened to just Ethics. Nicomachus was Aristotle’s son and it is assumed that his inclusion in the title is due to the fact that the work was either dictated to or dedicated to him. How ever one prefers to spin it, these are the words of a father to his son on the ethics of being a good human being. Book One (the subject of our response here) focuses entirely on the chief good, happiness, and sets out in a meticulous way to define its parameters and defend its position as the chief good.

The first thing that one notices when reading Aristotle after Plato is the shift in approach between them. Plato endeavors to be invisible in his own work; placing his ideas in the mouths of the dead through formally constructed dialogues that give voice to both argument and rebuttal. Aristotle, in contrast, is a one man band. There is no dialogue; only discourse. He argues with ideas, not people. Where Plato’s Socrates is at once probing and conciliatory, Aristotle is methodical and unyielding. If Plato’s dialogues are a record of ideas in the process of formulation, Aristotle’s essays are a snapshot of those same ideas codifying and becoming something more permanent than speculation.

Aristotle begins the essay by suggesting that the good “has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim” [339]. Good, in this sense, does not mean well-behaved or helpful, but is an abstract idea that encompasses a right outcome, a successful action or the achievement of virtue. Thus, even if invaders enter your homeland, burn down your house, and kill you, there is a good that is achieved; namely, good warfare. The idea is that no one sets out in earnest to do anything badly and, whatever moral or ethical shortcomings may be attached to a particular action, a successful implementation is a good one.

All goods, according to Aristotle, are not born equal. He segregates the good into two separate camps; those goods which are sought for their own sake and those which are sought for the end that they produce. In the latter case, the ends always trump the goods themselves. Health is better than medicine. Sex is better than seduction and pizza, one would assume, is better than cooking. Those goods that are sought for their own merits are then identifiably better than their ends-based counterparts because they have no ends to which they are eventually subordinate.

He goes on to suggest that Politics is highest good which is sought for a particular end. It subsumes all other kinds of knowledge in its quest to seek out that which is best for humanity. In order to justify a statement like this, one must accept Aristotle’s definition of politics as studying “what we are to do and what we are to abstain from [as] the end of this science…must be for the good of all man” [339] as a description of the virtue of Politics while also accepting that the more cynical and common view of Politics as that which is not “good for all man” would represent its complementary aspect of Vice.

The end of political science, then, “aims at and what is the highest of all goods achievable by action” [342] or, as Aristotle deems it, happiness. In an earlier passage, he warns that abstract ideas like Virtue and Good are derived from human behavior rather than from nature and, as such, must be considered in context with the ambiguity that is presupposed by the plastic nature of the subjects in question. Happiness exhibits the same kind of elusiveness as Aristotle concedes that the “general run of men…think it is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure, wealth or honor” (bound to that which they suppose they lack most) while “people of superior refinement…proclaim some great ideal” [340].

In an interesting twist, Aristotle bases his assertion that happiness is the highest good upon his disagreement with a fundamental tenet of Platonic thought, namely that everything exists in at least two modes of being, one Ideal and the other, Actual. While it is clear to him that there is good in many things, it is difficult (if not impossible), using only the tools of reason, to identify the one Good that unifies all others. A traditional Platonist would argue that the Ideal of Good is sought for its own sake and those which seek to somehow to store up that good or prevent its lack from occurring are in service not to an Ideal but to a secondary form of Good. Aristotle notes that even those goods thought to be Good in themselves, many (honor, intelligence) still seek a particular end and, among the more vaguely conceived in the remainder, little accord is to be found as to why they are good.

The good, therefore, is not some common element answering to one idea…and if there is some one good which is universally predicable of goods or is capable of separate and independent existence, clearly it could not be achieved or attained by man. [342]

The good, then, that is sought for its own end is more final than that those sought for their outcomes and that good which is sought only for its own sake and never for another purpose is the most final and therefore, the best.

Author Sketch: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, Politics)

Aristotle-

Born: 384 BCE in Stagira
Died: 322 BCE in Chalcis

Other Things That Happened in Aristotle’s Lifetime:
The 30th dynasty rises in Egypt, the last native house to rule.
Rome builds wall around the city.
Alexander the Great creates an empire stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indus River.
China was reaching the end of the Warring States period under three Zhou emperors, Anwang, Liewang, and Xianwang.

Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC



Works under study: Nicomachean Ethics (Book One), Politics (Book One)

Unlike Plato, who was born and lived almost exclusively in Athens, Aristotle lived and taught all over the Mediterranean. In this sense, he is a model for the Hellenic age that followed the Peloponnesian War and the decline of Athens as a military power. While Athens was still a major seat for the accumulation and dispensation of knowledge, the events that unfolded on the world stage in Aristotle’s lifetime dwarfed the city-skirmishes that largely characterized Greek politics prior to the 4th century and drew nearly every civilization within reach of the Mediterranean into a single culture unified by Alexander.

In the spirit of his times, Aristotle was born in Stagira, a Greek colony not far from the southern border of Macedon and lived apart from the intrigues of Athens until the age of seventeen when he moved there to study at Plato’s Academy. There is ample evidence suggesting that Aristotle was a remarkable student and can be considered, in his transmission of Platonic thought, an accurate and insightful source. After Plato’s death, Aristotle moved his operation to the city of Assus where he and three other former students of the Academy advised a local ruler named Hermias and opened their own school. This arrangement must have been a fruitful one for Aristotle married Hermias’ adopted daughter, Pythias. Three years later, he moved his new family to the city of Mytilene on the nearby isle of Lesbos where he engaged in most of his observations of nature and biological processes.

In 342 BCE, Aristotle was summoned to the court of Phillip II of Macedon that he might tutor his son, Alexander. A mere two years into this relationship, Phillip left Macedonia to wage war and Alexander was installed as regent to rule in his stead. With Alexander mostly distracted by his duties, Aristotle was free to open a school and concentrate on his own studies as well as act as an advisor to the regent prince when asked.

Aristotle Tutoring Alexander by J.L.G Ferris, 1895

When Alexander assumed the throne after his father’s assassination in 336, Aristotle left Macedon and returned to Athens to teach. There is compelling evidence to suggest that Aristotle’s connection with Alexander gave him new authority in Athens and he used it to establish the Lycaeum where he would walk with his students as he lectured. It is widely assumed that the written works associated with Aristotle are something like transcriptions of his lectures at the Lycaeum. In this sense, they are not the work of one particular period of his life but the sum of his learning up to that point.

When Alexander died thirteen years later, having brought what the Greeks would have thought as the known world under one flag, Aristotle’s reputation and fortune in Athens seem to have diminished with his passing. As the political waters around him began to fill up with ever more sharks bent on his death, Aristotle either fled or was exiled from Athens in 323 BCE. He, along with his second wife and two children, returned to his mother’s ancestral lands near Chalcis and, within just a few months, died in 322 BCE at the age of sixty-two.

Though Socrates and Plato are considered the source for much of his philosophy (though he differed with them in some ways), Aristotle, by virtue of his life’s course, was able to bring those ideas to bear on the flow of history in a way that neither of his predecessors could imagine. Meticulous and observational by his nature, Aristotle can seem a colder intellect than those who came before him but, whatever we can glean from his character some 2400 years later, one must respect the comprehensive nature of his learning, his relentless quest to synthesize and codify existing knowledge as well as his influence on knowledge for centuries after his death.

Map Legend:

1. Stagira
2. Athens
3. Assus
4. Mytilene
5. Macedon
6. Athens
7. Chalcis