## 1. Preliminaries



Aristotle wrote two ethical treatises: the *Nicomachean Ethics*
and the *Eudemian Ethics*. He does not himself use either of
these titles, although in the *Politics* (1295a36) he refers
back to one of them--probably the *Eudemian
Ethics*--as "*ta ethika*"--his
writings about character. The words "*Eudemian*"
and "*Nicomachean*" were added later, perhaps
because the former was edited by his friend, Eudemus, and the latter
by his son, Nicomachus. In any case, these two works cover more or
less the same ground: they begin with a discussion of
*eudaimonia* ("happiness",
"flourishing"), and turn to an examination of the nature
of *arete* ("virtue",
"excellence") and the character traits that human beings
need in order to live life at its best. Both treatises examine the
conditions in which praise or blame are appropriate, and the nature of
pleasure and friendship; near the end of each work, we find a brief
discussion of the proper relationship between human beings and the
divine.



Though the general point of view expressed in each work is the same,
there are many subtle differences in organization and content as well.
Clearly, one is a re-working of the other, and although no single
piece of evidence shows conclusively what their order is, it is widely
assumed that the *Nicomachean Ethics* is a later and improved
version of the *Eudemian Ethics*. (Not all of the *Eudemian
Ethics* was revised: its Books IV, V, and VI re-appear as V, VI,
VII of the *Nicomachean Ethics*.) Perhaps the most telling
indication of this ordering is that in several instances the
*Nicomachean Ethics* develops a theme about which its
*Eudemian* cousin is silent. Only the *Nicomachean
Ethics* discusses the close relationship between ethical inquiry
and politics; only the *Nicomachean Ethics* critically examines
Solon's paradoxical dictum that no man should be counted happy
until he is dead; and only the *Nicomachean Ethics* gives a
series of arguments for the superiority of the philosophical life to
the political life. The remainder of this article will therefore focus
on this work. [Note: Page and line numbers shall henceforth refer to
this treatise.]



A third treatise, called the *Magna Moralia* (the "Big
Ethics") is included in complete editions of Aristotle's
works, but its authorship is disputed by scholars. It ranges over
topics discussed more fully in the other two works and its point of
view is similar to theirs. (Why, being briefer, is it named the
*Magna Moralia*? Because each of the two papyrus rolls into
which it is divided is unusually long. Just as a big mouse can be a
small animal, two big chapters can make a small book. This work was
evidently named "big" with reference to its parts, not the
whole.) A few authors in antiquity refer to a work with this name and
attribute it to Aristotle, but it is not mentioned by several
authorities, such as Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, whom we would
expect to have known of it. Some scholars hold that it is
Aristotle's earliest course on ethics--perhaps his own
lecture notes or those of a student; others regard it as a
post-Aristotelian compilation or adaption of one or both of his
genuine ethical treatises.



Although Aristotle is deeply indebted to Plato's moral
philosophy, particularly Plato's central insight that moral
thinking must be integrated with our emotions and appetites, and that
the preparation for such unity of character should begin with
childhood education, the systematic character of Aristotle's
discussion of these themes was a remarkable innovation. No one had
written ethical treatises before Aristotle. Plato's
*Republic*, for example, does not treat ethics as a distinct
subject matter; nor does it offer a systematic examination of the
nature of happiness, virtue, voluntariness, pleasure, or friendship.
To be sure, we can find in Plato's works important discussions
of these phenomena, but they are not brought together and unified as
they are in Aristotle's ethical writings.


## 2. The Human Good and the Function Argument



The principal idea with which Aristotle begins is that there are
differences of opinion about what is best for human beings, and that
to profit from ethical inquiry we must resolve this disagreement. He
insists that ethics is not a theoretical discipline: we are asking
what the good for human beings is not simply because we want to have
knowledge, but because we will be better able to achieve our good if
we develop a fuller understanding of what it is to flourish. In
raising this question--what is the good?--Aristotle is not
looking for a list of items that are good. He assumes that such a list
can be compiled rather easily; most would agree, for example, that it
is good to have friends, to experience pleasure, to be healthy, to be
honored, and to have such virtues as courage at least to some degree.
The difficult and controversial question arises when we ask whether
certain of these goods are more desirable than others.
Aristotle's search for *the* good is a search for the
*highest* good, and he assumes that the highest good, whatever
it turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for
itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and all
other goods are desirable for its sake.



Aristotle thinks everyone will agree that the terms
"*eudaimonia*" ("happiness") and
"*eu zen*" ("living well")
designate such an end. The Greek term "*eudaimon*"
is composed of two parts: "*eu*" means
"well" and "*daimon*" means
"divinity" or "spirit". To be
*eudaimon* is therefore to be living in a way that is
well-favored by a god. But Aristotle never calls attention to this
etymology in his ethical writings, and it seems to have little
influence on his thinking. He regards "*eudaimon*"
as a mere substitute for *eu zen* ("living
well"). These terms play an evaluative role, and are not simply
descriptions of someone's state of mind.



No one tries to live well for the sake of some further goal; rather,
being *eudaimon* *is* the highest end, and all
subordinate goals--health, wealth, and other such
resources--are sought because they promote well-being, not
because they are what well-being consists in. But unless we can
determine which good or goods happiness consists in, it is of little
use to acknowledge that it is the highest end. To resolve this issue,
Aristotle asks what the *ergon* ("function",
"task", "work") of a human being is, and
argues that it consists in activity of the rational part of the soul
in accordance with virtue (1097b22-1098a20). One important
component of this argument is expressed in terms of distinctions he
makes in his psychological and biological works. The soul is analyzed
into a connected series of capacities: the nutritive soul is
responsible for growth and reproduction, the locomotive soul for
motion, the perceptive soul for perception, and so on. The biological
fact Aristotle makes use of is that human beings are the only species
that has not only these lower capacities but a rational soul as well.
The good of a human being must have something to do with being human;
and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential
to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using
reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be
more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what
happiness consists in. Doing anything well requires virtue or
excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities caused by
the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.



Aristotle's conclusion about the nature of happiness is in a
sense uniquely his own. No other writer or thinker had said precisely
what he says about what it is to live well. But at the same time his
view is not too distant from a common idea. As he himself points out,
one traditional conception of happiness identifies it with virtue
(1098b30-1). Aristotle's theory should be construed as a
refinement of this position. He says, not that happiness is virtue,
but that it is virtuous *activity*. Living well consists in
doing something, not just being in a certain state or condition. It
consists in those lifelong activities that actualize the virtues of
the rational part of the soul.



At the same time, Aristotle makes it clear that in order to be happy
one must possess others goods as well--such goods as friends,
wealth, and power. And one's happiness is endangered if one is
severely lacking in certain advantages--if, for example, one is
extremely ugly, or has lost children or good friends through death
(1099a31-b6). But why so? If one's ultimate end should
simply be virtuous activity, then why should it make any difference to
one's happiness whether one has or lacks these other types of
good? Aristotle's reply is that one's virtuous activity
will be to some extent diminished or defective, if one lacks an
adequate supply of other goods (1153b17-19). Someone who is
friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be
able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long
period of time, and what little he can accomplish will not be of great
merit. To some extent, then, living well requires good fortune;
happenstance can rob even the most excellent human beings of
happiness. Nonetheless, Aristotle insists, the highest good, virtuous
activity, is not something that comes to us by chance. Although we
must be fortunate enough to have parents and fellow citizens who help
us become virtuous, we ourselves share much of the responsibility for
acquiring and exercising the virtues.


## 3. Methodology


### 3.1 Traditional Virtues and the Skeptic



A common complaint about Aristotle's attempt to defend his
conception of happiness is that his argument is too general to show
that it is in one's interest to possess any of the particular
virtues as they are traditionally conceived. Suppose we grant, at
least for the sake of argument, that doing anything well, including
living well, consists in exercising certain skills; and let us call
these skills, whatever they turn out to be, virtues. Even so, that
point does not by itself allow us to infer that such qualities as
temperance, justice, courage, as they are normally understood, are
virtues. They should be counted as virtues only if it can be shown
that actualizing precisely these skills is what happiness consists in.
What Aristotle owes us, then, is an account of these traditional
qualities that explains why they must play a central role in any
well-lived life.



But perhaps Aristotle disagrees, and refuses to accept this
argumentative burden. In one of several important methodological
remarks he makes near the beginning of the *Nicomachean
Ethics*, he says that in order to profit from the sort of study he
is undertaking, one must already have been brought up in good habits
(1095b4-6). The audience he is addressing, in other words,
consists of people who are already just, courageous, and generous; or,
at any rate, they are well on their way to possessing these virtues.
Why such a restricted audience? Why does he not address those who have
serious doubts about the value of these traditional qualities, and who
therefore have not yet decided to cultivate and embrace them?



Addressing the moral skeptic, after all, is the project Plato
undertook in the *Republic*: in Book I he rehearses an argument
to show that justice is not really a virtue, and the remainder of this
work is an attempt to rebut this thesis. Aristotle's project
seems, at least on the surface, to be quite different. He does not
appear to be addressing someone who has genuine doubts about the value
of justice or kindred qualities. Perhaps, then, he realizes how little
can be accomplished, in the study of ethics, to provide it with a
rational foundation. Perhaps he thinks that no reason can be given for
being just, generous, and courageous. These are qualities one learns
to love when one is a child, and having been properly habituated, one
no longer looks for or needs a reason to exercise them. One can show,
as a general point, that happiness consists in exercising some skills
or other, but that the moral skills of a virtuous person are what one
needs is not a proposition that can be established on the basis of
argument.



This is not the only way of reading the *Ethics*, however. For
surely we cannot expect Aristotle to show what it is about the
traditional virtues that makes them so worthwhile until he has fully
discussed the nature of those virtues. He himself warns us that his
initial statement of what happiness is should be treated as a rough
outline whose details are to be filled in later (1098a20-22).
His intention in Book I of the *Ethics* is to indicate in a
general way why the virtues are important; why particular
virtues--courage, justice, and the like--are components of
happiness is something we should be able to better understand only at
a later point.



In any case, Aristotle's assertion that his audience must
already have begun to cultivate the virtues need not be taken to mean
that no reasons can be found for being courageous, just, and generous.
His point, rather, may be that in ethics, as in any other study, we
cannot make progress towards understanding why things are as they are
unless we begin with certain assumptions about what is the case.
Neither theoretical nor practical inquiry starts from scratch. Someone
who has made no observations of astronomical or biological phenomena
is not yet equipped with sufficient data to develop an understanding
of these sciences. The parallel point in ethics is that to make
progress in this sphere we must already have come to enjoy doing what
is just, courageous, generous and the like. We must experience these
activities not as burdensome constraints, but as noble, worthwhile,
and enjoyable in themselves. Then, when we engage in ethical inquiry,
we can ask what it is about these activities that makes them
worthwhile. We can also compare these goods with other things that are
desirable in themselves--pleasure, friendship, honor, and so
on--and ask whether any of them is more desirable than the
others. We approach ethical theory with a disorganized bundle of likes
and dislikes based on habit and experience; such disorder is an
inevitable feature of childhood. But what is not inevitable is that
our early experience will be rich enough to provide an adequate basis
for worthwhile ethical reflection; that is why we need to have been
brought up well. Yet such an upbringing can take us only so far. We
seek a deeper understanding of the objects of our childhood
enthusiasms, and we must systematize our goals so that as adults we
have a coherent plan of life. We need to engage in ethical theory, and
to reason well in this field, if we are to move beyond the low-grade
form of virtue we acquired as children.


### 3.2 Differences from and Affinities to Plato



Read in this way, Aristotle is engaged in a project similar in some
respects to the one Plato carried out in the *Republic*. One of
Plato's central points is that it is a great advantage to
establish a hierarchical ordering of the elements in one's soul;
and he shows how the traditional virtues can be interpreted to foster
or express the proper relation between reason and less rational
elements of the psyche. Aristotle's approach is similar: his
"function argument" shows in a general way that our good
lies in the dominance of reason, and the detailed studies of the
particular virtues reveal how each of them involves the right kind of
ordering of the soul. Aristotle's goal is to arrive at
conclusions like Plato's, but without relying on the Platonic
metaphysics that plays a central role in the argument of the
*Republic*. He rejects the existence of Plato's forms in
general and the form of the good in particular; and he rejects the
idea that in order to become fully virtuous one must study mathematics
and the sciences, and see all branches of knowledge as a unified
whole. Even though Aristotle's ethical theory sometimes relies
on philosophical distinctions that are more fully developed in his
other works, he never proposes that students of ethics need to engage
in a specialized study of the natural world, or mathematics, or
eternal and changing objects. His project is to make ethics an
autonomous field, and to show why a full understanding of what is good
does not require expertise in any other field.



There is another contrast with Plato that should be emphasized: In
Book II of the *Republic*, we are told that the best type of
good is one that is desirable both in itself and for the sake of its
results (357d-358a). Plato argues that justice should be placed in
this category, but since it is generally agreed that it is desirable
for its consequences, he devotes most of his time to establishing his
more controversial point--that justice is to be sought for its
own sake. By contrast, Aristotle assumes that if *A* is
desirable for the sake of *B*, then *B* is better than
*A* (1094a14-16); therefore, the highest kind of good
must be one that is not desirable for the sake of anything else. To
show that *A* deserves to be our ultimate end, one must show
that all other goods are best thought of as instruments that promote
*A* in some way or other. Accordingly, it would not serve
Aristotle's purpose to consider virtuous activity in isolation
from all other goods. He needs to discuss honor, wealth, pleasure, and
friendship in order to show how these goods, properly understood, can
be seen as resources that serve the higher goal of virtuous activity.
He vindicates the centrality of virtue in a well-lived life by showing
that in the normal course of things a virtuous person will not live a
life devoid of friends, honor, wealth, pleasure, and the like.
Virtuous activity makes a life happy not by guaranteeing happiness in
all circumstances, but by serving as the goal for the sake of which
lesser goods are to be pursued. Aristotle's methodology in
ethics therefore pays more attention than does Plato's to the
connections that normally obtain between virtue and other goods. That
is why he stresses that in this sort of study one must be satisfied
with conclusions that hold only for the most part (1094b11-22).
Poverty, isolation, and dishonor are normally impediments to the
exercise of virtue and therefore to happiness, although there may be
special circumstances in which they are not. The possibility of
exceptions does not undermine the point that, as a rule, to live well
is to have sufficient resources for the pursuit of virtue over the
course of a lifetime.


## 4. Virtues and Deficiencies, Continence and Incontinence



Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of virtue (1103a1-10): those
that pertain to the part of the soul that engages in reasoning
(virtues of mind or intellect), and those that pertain to the part of
the soul that cannot itself reason but is nonetheless capable of
following reason (ethical virtues, virtues of character). Intellectual
virtues are in turn divided into two sorts: those that pertain to
theoretical reasoning, and those that pertain to practical thinking
(1139a3-8). He organizes his material by first studying ethical
virtue in general, then moving to a discussion of particular ethical
virtues (temperance, courage, and so on), and finally completing his
survey by considering the intellectual virtues (practical wisdom,
theoretical wisdom, etc.).



All free males are born with the potential to become ethically
virtuous and practically wise, but to achieve these goals they must go
through two stages: during their childhood, they must develop the
proper habits; and then, when their reason is fully developed, they
must acquire practical wisdom (*phronesis*). This does
not mean that first we fully acquire the ethical virtues, and then, at
a later stage, add on practical wisdom. Ethical virtue is fully
developed only when it is combined with practical wisdom
(1144b14-17). A low-grade form of ethical virtue emerges in us
during childhood as we are repeatedly placed in situations that call
for appropriate actions and emotions; but as we rely less on others
and become capable of doing more of our own thinking, we learn to
develop a larger picture of human life, our deliberative skills
improve, and our emotional responses are perfected. Like anyone who
has developed a skill in performing a complex and difficult activity,
the virtuous person takes pleasure in exercising his intellectual
skills. Furthermore, when he has decided what to do, he does not have
to contend with internal pressures to act otherwise. He does not long
to do something that he regards as shameful; and he is not greatly
distressed at having to give up a pleasure that he realizes he should
forego.



Aristotle places those who suffer from such internal disorders into
one of three categories: (A) Some agents, having reached a decision
about what to do on a particular occasion, experience some
counter-pressure brought on by an appetite for pleasure, or anger, or
some other emotion; and this countervailing influence is not
completely under the control of reason. (1) Within this category, some
are typically better able to resist these counter-rational pressures
than is the average person. Such people are not virtuous, although
they generally do what a virtuous person does. Aristotle calls them
"continent" (*enkrates*). But (2) others are
less successful than the average person in resisting these
counter-pressures. They are "incontinent"
(*akrates*). (The explanation of *akrasia* is a
topic to which we will return in section 7.) In addition, (B) there is
a type of agent who refuses even to try to do what an ethically
virtuous agent would do, because he has become convinced that justice,
temperance, generosity and the like are of little or no value. Such
people Aristotle calls evil (*kakos*, *phaulos*). He
assumes that evil people are driven by desires for domination and
luxury, and although they are single-minded in their pursuit of these
goals, he portrays them as deeply divided, because their
*pleonexia*--their desire for more and more--leaves
them dissatisfied and full of self-hatred.



It should be noticed that all three of these
deficiencies--continence, incontinence, vice--involve some
lack of internal harmony. (Here Aristotle's debt to Plato is
particularly evident, for one of the central ideas of the
*Republic* is that the life of a good person is harmonious, and
all other lives deviate to some degree from this ideal.) The evil
person may wholeheartedly endorse some evil plan of action at a
particular moment, but over the course of time, Aristotle supposes, he
will regret his decision, because whatever he does will prove
inadequate for the achievement of his goals (1166b5-29).
Aristotle assumes that when someone systematically makes bad decisions
about how to live his life, his failures are caused by psychological
forces that are less than fully rational. His desires for pleasure,
power or some other external goal have become so strong that they make
him care too little or not at all about acting ethically. To keep such
destructive inner forces at bay, we need to develop the proper habits
and emotional responses when we are children, and to reflect
intelligently on our aims when we are adults. But some vulnerability
to these disruptive forces is present even in more-or-less virtuous
people; that is why even a good political community needs laws and the
threat of punishment. Clear thinking about the best goals of human
life and the proper way to put them into practice is a rare
achievement, because the human psyche is not a hospitable environment
for the development of these insights.


## 5. The Doctrine of the Mean


### 5.1 Ethical Virtue as Disposition



Aristotle describes ethical virtue as a "*hexis*"
("state" "condition"
"disposition")--a tendency or disposition, induced by
our habits, to have appropriate feelings (1105b25-6). Defective
states of character are *hexeis* (plural of *hexis*) as
well, but they are tendencies to have inappropriate feelings. The
significance of Aristotle's characterization of these states as
*hexeis* is his decisive rejection of the thesis, found
throughout Plato's early dialogues, that virtue is nothing but a
kind of knowledge and vice nothing but a lack of knowledge. Although
Aristotle frequently draws analogies between the crafts and the
virtues (and similarly between physical health and
*eudaimonia*), he insists that the virtues differ from the
crafts and all branches of knowledge in that the former involve
appropriate emotional responses and are not purely intellectual
conditions.



Furthermore, every ethical virtue is a condition intermediate (a
"golden mean" as it is popularly known) between two other
states, one involving excess, and the other deficiency
(1106a26-b28). In this respect, Aristotle says, the virtues are
no different from technical skills: every skilled worker knows how to
avoid excess and deficiency, and is in a condition intermediate
between two extremes. The courageous person, for example, judges that
some dangers are worth facing and others not, and experiences fear to
a degree that is appropriate to his circumstances. He lies between the
coward, who flees every danger and experiences excessive fear, and the
rash person, who judges every danger worth facing and experiences
little or no fear. Aristotle holds that this same topography applies
to every ethical virtue: all are located on a map that places the
virtues between states of excess and deficiency. He is careful to add,
however, that the mean is to be determined in a way that takes into
account the particular circumstances of the individual
(1106a36-b7). The arithmetic mean between 10 and 2 is 6, and
this is so invariably, whatever is being counted. But the intermediate
point that is chosen by an expert in any of the crafts will vary from
one situation to another. There is no universal rule, for example,
about how much food an athlete should eat, and it would be absurd to
infer from the fact that 10 lbs. is too much and 2 lbs. too little for
me that I should eat 6 lbs. Finding the mean in any given situation is
not a mechanical or thoughtless procedure, but requires a full and
detailed acquaintance with the circumstances.



It should be evident that Aristotle's treatment of virtues as
mean states endorses the idea that we should sometimes have strong
feelings--when such feelings are called for by our situation.
Sometimes only a small degree of anger is appropriate; but at other
times, circumstances call for great anger. The right amount is not
some quantity between zero and the highest possible level, but rather
the amount, whatever it happens to be, that is proportionate to the
seriousness of the situation. Of course, Aristotle is committed to
saying that anger should never reach the point at which it undermines
reason; and this means that our passion should always fall short of
the extreme point at which we would lose control. But it is possible
to be very angry without going to this extreme, and Aristotle does not
intend to deny this.



The theory of the mean is open to several objections, but before
considering them, we should recognize that in fact there are two
distinct theses each of which might be called a doctrine of the mean.
First, there is the thesis that every virtue is a state that lies
between two vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency. Second,
there is the idea that whenever a virtuous person chooses to perform a
virtuous act, he can be described as aiming at an act that is in some
way or other intermediate between alternatives that he rejects. It is
this second thesis that is most likely to be found objectionable. A
critic might concede that in some cases virtuous acts can be described
in Aristotle's terms. If, for example, one is trying to decide
how much to spend on a wedding present, one is looking for an amount
that is neither excessive nor deficient. But surely many other
problems that confront a virtuous agent are not susceptible to this
quantitative analysis. If one must decide whether to attend a wedding
or respect a competing obligation instead, it would not be
illuminating to describe this as a search for a mean between
extremes--unless "aiming at the mean" simply becomes
another phrase for trying to make the right decision. The objection,
then, is that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, taken as a
doctrine about what the ethical agent does when he deliberates, is in
many cases inapplicable or unilluminating.



A defense of Aristotle would have to say that the virtuous person does
after all aim at a mean, if we allow for a broad enough notion of what
sort of aiming is involved. For example, consider a juror who must
determine whether a defendant is guilty as charged. He does not have
before his mind a quantitative question; he is trying to decide
whether the accused committed the crime, and is not looking for some
quantity of action intermediate between extremes. Nonetheless, an
excellent juror can be described as someone who, in trying to arrive
at the correct decision, seeks to express the right degree of concern
for all relevant considerations. He searches for the verdict that
results from a deliberative process that is neither overly credulous
nor unduly skeptical. Similarly, in facing situations that arouse
anger, a virtuous agent must determine what action (if any) to take in
response to an insult, and although this is not itself a quantitative
question, his attempt to answer it properly requires him to have the
right degree of concern for his standing as a member of the community.
He aims at a mean in the sense that he looks for a response that
avoids too much or too little attention to factors that must be taken
into account in making a wise decision.



Perhaps a greater difficulty can be raised if we ask how Aristotle
determines which emotions are governed by the doctrine of the mean.
Consider someone who loves to wrestle, for example. Is this passion
something that must be felt by every human being at appropriate times
and to the right degree? Surely someone who never felt this emotion to
any degree could still live a perfectly happy life. Why then should we
not say the same about at least some of the emotions that Aristotle
builds into his analysis of the ethically virtuous agent? Why should
we experience anger at all, or fear, or the degree of concern for
wealth and honor that Aristotle commends? These are precisely the
questions that were asked in antiquity by the Stoics, and they came to
the conclusion that such common emotions as anger and fear are always
inappropriate. Aristotle assumes, on the contrary, not simply that
these common passions are sometimes appropriate, but that it is
essential that every human being learn how to master them and
experience them in the right way at the right times. A defense of his
position would have to show that the emotions that figure in his
account of the virtues are valuable components of any well-lived human
life, when they are experienced properly. Perhaps such a project could
be carried out, but Aristotle himself does not attempt to do so.



He often says, in the course of his discussion, that when the good
person chooses to act virtuously, he does so for the sake of the
"*kalon*"--a word that can mean
"beautiful", "noble", or "fine"
(see for example 1120a23-4). This term indicates that Aristotle
sees in ethical activity an attraction that is comparable to the
beauty of well-crafted artifacts, including such artifacts as poetry,
music, and drama. He draws this analogy in his discussion of the mean,
when he says that every craft tries to produce a work from which
nothing should be taken away and to which nothing further should be
added (1106b5-14). A craft product, when well designed and
produced by a good craftsman, is not merely useful, but also has such
elements as balance, proportion and harmony--for these are
properties that help make it useful. Similarly, Aristotle holds that a
well-executed project that expresses the ethical virtues will not
merely be advantageous but *kalon* as well--for the
balance it strikes is part of what makes it advantageous. The young
person learning to acquire the virtues must develop a love of doing
what is *kalon* and a strong aversion to its opposite--the
*aischron*, the shameful and ugly. Determining what is
*kalon* is difficult (1106b28-33, 1109a24-30), and
the normal human aversion to embracing difficulties helps account for
the scarcity of virtue (1104b10-11).


### 5.2 Ethical Theory Does Not Offer a Decision Procedure



It should be clear that neither the thesis that virtues lie between
extremes nor the thesis that the good person aims at what is
intermediate is intended as a procedure for making decisions. These
doctrines of the mean help show what is attractive about the virtues,
and they also help systematize our understanding of which qualities
are virtues. Once we see that temperance, courage, and other generally
recognized characteristics are mean states, we are in a position to
generalize and to identify other mean states as virtues, even though
they are not qualities for which we have a name. Aristotle remarks,
for example, that the mean state with respect to anger has no name in
Greek (1125b26-7). Though he is guided to some degree by
distinctions captured by ordinary terms, his methodology allows him to
recognize states for which no names exist.



So far from offering a decision procedure, Aristotle insists that this
is something that no ethical theory can do. His theory elucidates the
nature of virtue, but what must be done on any particular occasion by
a virtuous agent depends on the circumstances, and these vary so much
from one occasion to another that there is no possibility of stating a
series of rules, however complicated, that collectively solve every
practical problem. This feature of ethical theory is not unique;
Aristotle thinks it applies to many crafts, such as medicine and
navigation (1104a7-10). He says that the virtuous person
"sees the truth in each case, being as it were a standard and
measure of them" (1113a32-3); but this appeal to the good
person's vision should not be taken to mean that he has an
inarticulate and incommunicable insight into the truth. Aristotle
thinks of the good person as someone who is good at deliberation, and
he describes deliberation as a process of rational inquiry. The
intermediate point that the good person tries to find is



> 
> 
> determined by *logos* ("reason",
> "account") and in the way that the person of practical
> reason would determine it. (1107a1-2)
> 
> 
> 



To say that such a person "sees" what to do is simply a
way of registering the point that the good person's reasoning
does succeed in discovering what is best in each situation. He is
"as it were a standard and measure" in the sense that his
views should be regarded as authoritative by other members of the
community. A standard or measure is something that settles disputes;
and because good people are so skilled at discovering the mean in
difficult cases, their advice must be sought and heeded.



Although there is no possibility of writing a book of rules, however
long, that will serve as a complete guide to wise decision-making, it
would be a mistake to attribute to Aristotle the opposite position,
namely that every purported rule admits of exceptions, so that even a
small rule-book that applies to a limited number of situations is an
impossibility. He makes it clear that certain emotions (spite,
shamelessness, envy) and actions (adultery, theft, murder) are always
wrong, regardless of the circumstances (1107a8-12). Although he
says that the names of these emotions and actions convey their
wrongness, he should not be taken to mean that their wrongness derives
from linguistic usage. He defends the family as a social institution
against the criticisms of Plato (*Politics* II.3-4), and
so when he says that adultery is always wrong, he is prepared to argue
for his point by explaining why marriage is a valuable custom and why
extra-marital intercourse undermines the relationship between husband
and wife. He is not making the tautological claim that wrongful sexual
activity is wrong, but the more specific and contentious point that
marriages ought to be governed by a rule of strict fidelity.
Similarly, when he says that murder and theft are always wrong, he
does not mean that wrongful killing and taking are wrong, but that the
current system of laws regarding these matters ought to be strictly
enforced. So, although Aristotle holds that ethics cannot be reduced
to a system of rules, however complex, he insists that some rules are
inviolable.


### 5.3 The Starting Point for Practical Reasoning



We have seen that the decisions of a practically wise person are not
mere intuitions, but can be justified by a chain of reasoning. (This
is why Aristotle often talks in term of a practical syllogism, with a
major premise that identifies some good to be achieved, and a minor
premise that locates the good in some present-to-hand situation.) At
the same time, he is acutely aware of the fact that reasoning can
always be traced back to a starting point that is not itself justified
by further reasoning. Neither good theoretical reasoning nor good
practical reasoning moves in a circle; true thinking always
presupposes and progresses in linear fashion from proper starting
points. And that leads him to ask for an account of how the proper
starting points of reasoning are to be determined. Practical reasoning
always presupposes that one has some end, some goal one is trying to
achieve; and the task of reasoning is to determine how that goal is to
be accomplished. (This need not be means-end reasoning in the
conventional sense; if, for example, our goal is the just resolution
of a conflict, we must determine what constitutes justice in these
particular circumstances. Here we are engaged in ethical inquiry, and
are not asking a purely instrumental question.) But if practical
reasoning is correct only if it begins from a correct premise, what is
it that insures the correctness of its starting point?



Aristotle replies: "Virtue makes the goal right, practical
wisdom the things leading to it" (1144a7-8). By this he
cannot mean that there is no room for reasoning about our ultimate
end. For as we have seen, he gives a reasoned defense of his
conception of happiness as virtuous activity. What he must have in
mind, when he says that virtue makes the goal right, is that
deliberation typically proceeds from a goal that is far more specific
than the goal of attaining happiness by acting virtuously. To be sure,
there may be occasions when a good person approaches an ethical
problem by beginning with the premise that happiness consists in
virtuous activity. But more often what happens is that a concrete goal
presents itself as his starting point--helping a friend in need,
or supporting a worthwhile civic project. Which specific project we
set for ourselves is determined by our character. A good person starts
from worthwhile concrete ends because his habits and emotional
orientation have given him the ability to recognize that such goals
are within reach, here and now. Those who are defective in character
may have the rational skill needed to achieve their ends--the
skill Aristotle calls cleverness (1144a23-8)--but often the
ends they seek are worthless. The cause of this deficiency lies not in
some impairment in their capacity to reason--for we are assuming
that they are normal in this respect--but in the training of
their passions.


## 6. Intellectual Virtues



Since Aristotle often calls attention to the imprecision of ethical
theory (see e.g. 1104a1-7), it comes as a surprise to many
readers of the *Ethics* that he begins Book VI with the
admission that his earlier statements about the mean need
supplementation because they are not yet clear (*saphes*). In
every practical discipline, the expert aims at a mark and uses right
reason to avoid the twin extremes of excess and deficiency. But what
is this right reason, and by what standard (*horos*) is it to
be determined? Aristotle says that unless we answer that question, we
will be none the wiser--just as a student of medicine will have
failed to master his subject if he can only say that the right
medicines to administer are the ones that are prescribed by medical
expertise, but has no standard other than this (1138b18-34).



It is not easy to understand the point Aristotle is making here. Has
he not already told us that there can be no complete theoretical guide
to ethics, that the best one can hope for is that in particular
situations one's ethical habits and practical wisdom will help
one determine what to do? Furthermore, Aristotle nowhere announces, in
the remainder of Book VI, that we have achieved the greater degree of
accuracy that he seems to be looking for. The rest of this Book is a
discussion of the various kinds of intellectual virtues: theoretical
wisdom, science (*episteme*), intuitive
understanding (*nous*), practical wisdom, and craft expertise.
Aristotle explains what each of these states of mind is, draws various
contrasts among them, and takes up various questions that can be
raised about their usefulness. At no point does he explicitly return
to the question he raised at the beginning of Book VI; he never says,
"and now we have the standard of right reason that we were
looking for". Nor is it easy to see how his discussion of these
five intellectual virtues can bring greater precision to the doctrine
of the mean.



We can make some progress towards solving this problem if we remind
ourselves that at the beginning of the *Ethics*, Aristotle
describes his inquiry as an attempt to develop a better understanding
of what our ultimate aim should be. The sketchy answer he gives in
Book I is that happiness consists in virtuous activity. In Books II
through V, he describes the virtues of the part of the soul that is
rational in that it can be attentive to reason, even though it is not
capable of deliberating. But precisely because these virtues are
rational only in this derivative way, they are a less important
component of our ultimate end than is the intellectual
virtue--practical wisdom--with which they are integrated. If
what we know about virtue is only what is said in Books II through V,
then our grasp of our ultimate end is radically incomplete, because we
still have not studied the intellectual virtue that enables us to
reason well in any given situation. One of the things, at least,
towards which Aristotle is gesturing, as he begins Book VI, is
practical wisdom. This state of mind has not yet been analyzed, and
that is one reason why he complains that his account of our ultimate
end is not yet clear enough.



But is practical wisdom the only ingredient of our ultimate end that
has not yet been sufficiently discussed? Book VI discusses five
intellectual virtues, not just practical wisdom, but it is clear that
at least one of these--craft knowledge--is considered only
in order to provide a contrast with the others. Aristotle is not
recommending that his readers make this intellectual virtue part of
their ultimate aim. But what of the remaining three: science,
intuitive understanding, and the virtue that combines them,
theoretical wisdom? Are these present in Book VI only in order to
provide a contrast with practical wisdom, or is Aristotle saying that
these too must be components of our goal? He does not fully address
this issue, but it is evident from several of his remarks in Book VI
that he takes theoretical wisdom to be a more valuable state of mind
than practical wisdom.



> 
> 
> It is strange if someone thinks that politics or practical wisdom is
> the most excellent kind of knowledge, unless man is the best thing in
> the cosmos. (1141a20-22)
> 
> 
> 



He says that theoretical wisdom produces happiness by being a part of
virtue (1144a3-6), and that practical wisdom looks to the
development of theoretical wisdom, and issues commands for its sake
(1145a8-11). So it is clear that exercising theoretical wisdom
is a more important component of our ultimate goal than practical
wisdom.



Even so, it may still seem perplexing that these two intellectual
virtues, either separately or collectively, should somehow fill a gap
in the doctrine of the mean. Having read Book VI and completed our
study of what these two forms of wisdom are, how are we better able to
succeed in finding the mean in particular situations?



The answer to this question may be that Aristotle does not intend Book
VI to provide a full answer to that question, but rather to serve as a
prolegomenon to an answer. For it is only near the end of Book X that
he presents a full discussion of the relative merits of these two
kinds of intellectual virtue, and comments on the different degrees to
which each needs to be provided with resources. In X.7-8, he
argues that the happiest kind of life is that of a
philosopher--someone who exercises, over a long period of time,
the virtue of theoretical wisdom, and has sufficient resources for
doing so. (We will discuss these chapters more fully in section 10
below.) One of his reasons for thinking that such a life is superior
to the second-best kind of life--that of a political leader,
someone who devotes himself to the exercise of practical rather than
theoretical wisdom--is that it requires less external equipment
(1178a23-b7). Aristotle has already made it clear in his
discussion of the ethical virtues that someone who is greatly honored
by his community and commands large financial resources is in a
position to exercise a higher order of ethical virtue than is someone
who receives few honors and has little property. The virtue of
magnificence is superior to mere liberality, and similarly greatness
of soul is a higher excellence than the ordinary virtue that has to do
with honor. (These qualities are discussed in IV.1-4.) The
grandest expression of ethical virtue requires great political power,
because it is the political leader who is in a position to do the
greatest amount of good for the community. The person who chooses to
lead a political life, and who aims at the fullest expression of
practical wisdom, has a standard for deciding what level of resources
he needs: he should have friends, property, and honors in sufficient
quantities to allow his practical wisdom to express itself without
impediment. But if one chooses instead the life of a philosopher, then
one will look to a different standard--the fullest expression of
theoretical wisdom--and one will need a smaller supply of these
resources.



This enables us to see how Aristotle's treatment of the
intellectual virtues does give greater content and precision to the
doctrine of the mean. The best standard is the one adopted by the
philosopher; the second-best is the one adopted by the political
leader. In either case, it is the exercise of an intellectual virtue
that provides a guideline for making important quantitative decisions.
This supplement to the doctrine of the mean is fully compatible with
Aristotle's thesis that no set of rules, no matter how long and
detailed, obviates the need for deliberative and ethical virtue. If
one chooses the life of a philosopher, one should keep the level of
one's resources high enough to secure the leisure necessary for
such a life, but not so high that one's external equipment
becomes a burden and a distraction rather than an aid to living well.
That gives one a firmer idea of how to hit the mean, but it still
leaves the details to be worked out. The philosopher will need to
determine, in particular situations, where justice lies, how to spend
wisely, when to meet or avoid a danger, and so on. All of the normal
difficulties of ethical life remain, and they can be solved only by
means of a detailed understanding of the particulars of each
situation. Having philosophy as one's ultimate aim does not put
an end to the need for developing and exercising practical wisdom and
the ethical virtues.


## 7. *Akrasia*



In VII.1-10 Aristotle investigates character
traits--continence and incontinence--that are not as
blameworthy as the vices but not as praiseworthy as the virtues. (We
began our discussion of these qualities in section 4.) The Greek terms
are *akrasia* ("incontinence"; literally:
"lack of mastery") and *enkrateia*
("continence"; literally "mastery"). An
akratic person goes against reason as a result of some *pathos*
("emotion", "feeling"). Like the akratic, an
enkratic person experiences a feeling that is contrary to reason; but
unlike the akratic, he acts in accordance with reason. His defect
consists solely in the fact that, more than most people, he
experiences passions that conflict with his rational choice. The
akratic person has not only this defect, but has the further flaw that
he gives in to feeling rather than reason more often than the average
person.



Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of akrasia: impetuosity
(*propeteia*) and weakness (*astheneia*). The person who
is weak goes through a process of deliberation and makes a choice; but
rather than act in accordance with his reasoned choice, he acts under
the influence of a passion. By contrast, the impetuous person does not
go through a process of deliberation and does not make a reasoned
choice; he simply acts under the influence of a passion. At the time
of action, the impetuous person experiences no internal conflict. But
once his act has been completed, he regrets what he has done. One
could say that he deliberates, if deliberation were something that
post-dated rather than preceded action; but the thought process he
goes through after he acts comes too late to save him from error.



It is important to bear in mind that when Aristotle talks about
impetuosity and weakness, he is discussing chronic conditions. The
impetuous person is someone who acts emotionally and fails to
deliberate not just once or twice but with some frequency; he makes
this error more than most people do. Because of this pattern in his
actions, we would be justified in saying of the impetuous person that
had his passions not prevented him from doing so, he would have
deliberated and chosen an action different from the one he did
perform.



The two kinds of passions that Aristotle focuses on, in his treatment
of *akrasia*, are the appetite for pleasure and anger. Either
can lead to impetuosity and weakness. But Aristotle gives pride of
place to the appetite for pleasure as the passion that undermines
reason. He calls the kind of *akrasia* caused by an appetite
for pleasure "unqualified *akrasia*"--or, as
we might say, *akrasia* "full stop";
*akrasia* caused by anger he considers a qualified form of
*akrasia* and calls it *akrasia* "with respect to
anger". We thus have these four forms of *akrasia*: (A)
impetuosity caused by pleasure, (B) impetuosity caused by anger, (C)
weakness caused by pleasure (D) weakness caused by anger. It should be
noticed that Aristotle's treatment of *akrasia* is
heavily influenced by Plato's tripartite division of the soul in
the *Republic*. Plato holds that either the spirited part
(which houses anger, as well as other emotions) or the appetitive part
(which houses the desire for physical pleasures) can disrupt the
dictates of reason and result in action contrary to reason. The same
threefold division of the soul can be seen in Aristotle's
approach to this topic.



Although Aristotle characterizes *akrasia* and
*enkrateia* in terms of a conflict between reason and feeling,
his detailed analysis of these states of mind shows that what takes
place is best described in a more complicated way. For the feeling
that undermines reason contains some thought, which may be implicitly
general. As Aristotle says, anger "reasoning as it were that one
must fight against such a thing, is immediately provoked"
(1149a33-4). And although in the next sentence he denies that
our appetite for pleasure works in this way, he earlier had said that
there can be a syllogism that favors pursuing enjoyment:
"Everything sweet is pleasant, and this is sweet" leads to
the pursuit of a particular pleasure (1147a31-30). Perhaps what
he has in mind is that pleasure can operate in either way: it can
prompt action unmediated by a general premise, or it can prompt us to
act on such a syllogism. By contrast, anger always moves us by
presenting itself as a bit of general, although hasty, reasoning.



But of course Aristotle does not mean that a conflicted person has
more than one faculty of reason. Rather his idea seems to be that in
addition to our full-fledged reasoning capacity, we also have
psychological mechanisms that are capable of a limited range of
reasoning. When feeling conflicts with reason, what occurs is better
described as a fight between feeling-allied-with-limited-reasoning and
full-fledged reason. Part of us--reason--can remove itself
from the distorting influence of feeling and consider all relevant
factors, positive and negative. But another part of us--feeling
or emotion--has a more limited field of reasoning--and
sometimes it does not even make use of it.



Although "passion" is sometimes used as a translation of
Aristotle's word *pathos* (other alternatives are
"emotion" and "feeling"), it is important to
bear in mind that his term does not necessarily designate a strong
psychological force. Anger is a *pathos* whether it is weak or
strong; so too is the appetite for bodily pleasures. And he clearly
indicates that it is possible for an akratic person to be defeated by
a weak *pathos*--the kind that most people would easily be
able to control (1150a9-b16). So the general explanation for the
occurrence of *akrasia* cannot be that the strength of a
passion overwhelms reason. Aristotle should therefore be acquitted of
an accusation made against him by J.L. Austin in a well-known footnote
to his paper, "A Plea For Excuses". Plato and Aristotle,
he says, collapsed all succumbing to temptation into losing control of
ourselves--a mistake illustrated by this example:



> 
> 
> I am very partial to ice cream, and a bombe is served divided into
> segments corresponding one to one with the persons at High Table: I am
> tempted to help myself to two segments and do so, thus succumbing to
> temptation and even conceivably (but why necessarily?) going against
> my principles. But do I lose control of myself? Do I raven, do I
> snatch the morsels from the dish and wolf them down, impervious to the
> consternation of my colleagues? Not a bit of it. We often succumb to
> temptation with calm and even with finesse. (1957: 24, fn 13 [1961:
> 146])
> 
> 
> 



With this, Aristotle can agree: the *pathos* for the bombe can
be a weak one, and in some people that will be enough to get them to
act in a way that is disapproved by their reason at the very time of
action.



What is most remarkable about Aristotle's discussion of
*akrasia* is that he defends a position close to that of
Socrates. When he first introduces the topic of *akrasia*, and
surveys some of the problems involved in understanding this
phenomenon, he says (1145b25-8) that Socrates held that there is
no *akrasia*, and he describes this as a thesis that clearly
conflicts with the appearances (*phainomena*). Since he says
that his goal is to preserve as many of the appearances as possible
(1145b2-7), it may come as a surprise that when he analyzes the
conflict between reason and feeling, he arrives at the conclusion that
in a way Socrates was right after all (1147b13-17). For, he
says, the person who acts against reason does not have what is thought
to be unqualified knowledge; in a way he has knowledge, but in a way
does not.



Aristotle explains what he has in mind by comparing *akrasia*
to the condition of other people who might be described as knowing in
a way, but not in an unqualified way. His examples are people who are
asleep, mad, or drunk; he also compares the akratic to a student who
has just begun to learn a subject, or an actor on the stage
(1147a10-24). All of these people, he says, can utter the very
words used by those who have knowledge; but their talk does not prove
that they really have knowledge, strictly speaking.



These analogies can be taken to mean that the form of *akrasia*
that Aristotle calls weakness rather than impetuosity always results
from some diminution of cognitive or intellectual acuity at the moment
of action. The akratic says, at the time of action, that he ought not
to indulge in this particular pleasure at this time. But does he know
or even believe that he should refrain? Aristotle might be taken to
reply: yes and no. He has some degree of recognition that he must not
do this now, but not full recognition. His feeling, even if it is
weak, has to some degree prevented him from completely grasping or
affirming the point that he should not do this. And so in a way
Socrates was right. When reason remains unimpaired and unclouded, its
dictates will carry us all the way to action, so long as we are able
to act.



But Aristotle's agreement with Socrates is only partial, because
he insists on the power of the emotions to rival, weaken or bypass
reason. Emotion challenges reason in all three of these ways. In both
the akratic and the enkratic, it competes with reason for control over
action; even when reason wins, it faces the difficult task of having
to struggle with an internal rival. Second, in the akratic, it
temporarily robs reason of its full acuity, thus handicapping it as a
competitor. It is not merely a rival force, in these cases; it is a
force that keeps reason from fully exercising its power. And third,
passion can make someone impetuous; here its victory over reason is so
powerful that the latter does not even enter into the arena of
conscious reflection until it is too late to influence action.



> 
> Supplementary Document: Alternate Readings of Aristotle on *Akrasia*
> 


## 8. Pleasure



Aristotle frequently emphasizes the importance of pleasure to human
life and therefore to his study of how we should live (see for example
1099a7-20 and 1104b3-1105a16), but his full-scale
examination of the nature and value of pleasure is found in two
places: VII.11-14 and X.1-5. It is odd that pleasure
receives two lengthy treatments; no other topic in the *Ethics*
is revisited in this way. Book VII of the *Nicomachean Ethics*
is identical to Book VI of the *Eudemian Ethics*; for unknown
reasons, the editor of the former decided to include within it both
the treatment of pleasure that is unique to that work (X.1-5)
and the study that is common to both treatises (VII.11-14). The
two accounts are broadly similar. They agree about the value of
pleasure, defend a theory about its nature, and oppose competing
theories. Aristotle holds that a happy life must include pleasure, and
he therefore opposes those who argue that pleasure is by its nature
bad. He insists that there are other pleasures besides those of the
senses, and that the best pleasures are the ones experienced by
virtuous people who have sufficient resources for excellent
activity.



Book VII offers a brief account of what pleasure is and is not. It is
not a process but an unimpeded activity of a natural state
(1153a7-17). Aristotle does not elaborate on what a natural
state is, but he obviously has in mind the healthy condition of the
body, especially its sense faculties, and the virtuous condition of
the soul. Little is said about what it is for an activity to be
unimpeded, but Aristotle does remind us that virtuous activity is
impeded by the absence of a sufficient supply of external goods
(1153b17-19). One might object that people who are sick or who
have moral deficiencies can experience pleasure, even though Aristotle
does not take them to be in a natural state. He has two strategies for
responding. First, when a sick person experiences some degree of
pleasure as he is being restored to health, the pleasure he is feeling
is caused by the fact that he is no longer completely ill. Some small
part of him is in a natural state and is acting without impediment
(1152b35-6). Second, Aristotle is willing to say that what seems
pleasant to some people may in fact not be pleasant (1152b31-2),
just as what tastes bitter to an unhealthy palate may not be bitter.
To call something a pleasure is not only to report a state of mind but
also to endorse it to others. Aristotle's analysis of the nature
of pleasure is not meant to apply to every case in which something
seems pleasant to someone, but only to activities that really are
pleasures. All of these are unimpeded activities of a natural
state.



It follows from this conception of pleasure that every instance of
pleasure must be good to some extent. For how could an unimpeded
activity of a natural state be bad or a matter of indifference? On the
other hand, Aristotle does not mean to imply that every pleasure
should be chosen. He briefly mentions the point that pleasures compete
with each other, so that the enjoyment of one kind of activity impedes
other activities that cannot be carried out at the same time
(1153a20-22). His point is simply that although some pleasures
may be good, they are not worth choosing when they interfere with
other activities that are far better. This point is developed more
fully in *Ethics* X.5.



Furthermore, Aristotle's analysis allows him to speak of certain
pleasures as "bad without qualification"
(1152b26-33), even though pleasure is the unimpeded activity of
a natural state. To call a pleasure "bad without
qualification" is to insist that it should be avoided, but allow
that nonetheless it should be chosen in constraining circumstances.
The pleasure of recovering from an illness, for example, is bad
without qualification--meaning that it is not one of the
pleasures one would ideally choose, if one could completely control
one's circumstances. Although it really is a pleasure and so
something can be said in its favor, it is so inferior to other goods
that ideally one ought to forego it. Nonetheless, it is a pleasure
worth having--if one adds the qualification that it is only worth
having in undesirable circumstances. The pleasure of recovering from
an illness is good, because some small part of oneself is in a natural
state and is acting without impediment; but it can also be called bad,
if what one means by this is that one should avoid getting into a
situation in which one experiences that pleasure.



Aristotle indicates several times in VII.11-14 that merely to
say that pleasure is *a* good does not do it enough justice; he
also wants to say that the highest good is a pleasure. Here he is
influenced by an idea expressed in the opening line of the
*Ethics*: the good is that at which all things aim. In VII.13,
he hints at the idea that all living things imitate the contemplative
activity of god (1153b31-2). Plants and non-human animals seek
to reproduce themselves because that is their way of participating in
an unending series, and this is the closest they can come to the
ceaseless thinking of the unmoved mover. Aristotle makes this point in
several of his works (see for example *De Anima*
415a23-b7), and in *Ethics* X.7-8 he gives a full
defense of the idea that the happiest human life resembles the life of
a divine being. He conceives of god as a being who continually enjoys
a "single and simple pleasure" (1154b26)--the
pleasure of pure thought--whereas human beings, because of their
complexity, grow weary of whatever they do. He will elaborate on these
points in X.8; in VII.11-14, he appeals to his conception of
divine activity only in order to defend the thesis that our highest
good consists in a certain kind of pleasure. Human happiness does not
consist in every kind of pleasure, but it does consist in one kind of
pleasure--the pleasure felt by a human being who engages in
theoretical activity and thereby imitates the pleasurable thinking of
god.



Book X offers a much more elaborate account of what pleasure is and
what it is not. It is not a process, because processes go through
developmental stages: building a temple is a process because the
temple is not present all at once, but only comes into being through
stages that unfold over time. By contrast, pleasure, like seeing and
many other activities, is not something that comes into existence
through a developmental process. If I am enjoying a conversation, for
example, I do not need to wait until it is finished in order to feel
pleased; I take pleasure in the activity all along the way. The
defining nature of pleasure is that it is an activity that accompanies
other activities, and in some sense brings them to completion.
Pleasure occurs when something within us, having been brought into
good condition, is activated in relation to an external object that is
also in good condition. The pleasure of drawing, for example, requires
both the development of drawing ability and an object of attention
that is worth drawing.



The conception of pleasure that Aristotle develops in Book X is
obviously closely related to the analysis he gives in Book VII. But
the theory proposed in the later Book brings out a point that had
received too little attention earlier: pleasure is by its nature
something that accompanies something else. It is not enough to say
that it is what happens when we are in good condition and are active
in unimpeded circumstances; one must add to that point the further
idea that pleasure plays a certain role in complementing something
other than itself. Drawing well and the pleasure of drawing well
always occur together, and so they are easy to confuse, but
Aristotle's analysis in Book X emphasizes the importance of
making this distinction.



He says that pleasure completes the activity that it accompanies, but
then adds, mysteriously, that it completes the activity in the manner
of an end that is added on. In the translation of W.D. Ross, it
"supervenes as the bloom of youth does on those in the flower of
their age" (1174b33). It is unclear what thought is being
expressed here, but perhaps Aristotle is merely trying to avoid a
possible misunderstanding: when he says that pleasure completes an
activity, he does not mean that the activity it accompanies is in some
way defective, and that the pleasure improves the activity by removing
this defect. Aristotle's language is open to that
misinterpretation because the verb that is translated
"complete" (*teleein*) can also mean
"perfect". The latter might be taken to mean that the
activity accompanied by pleasure has not yet reached a sufficiently
high level of excellence, and that the role of pleasure is to bring it
to the point of perfection. Aristotle does not deny that when we take
pleasure in an activity we get better at it, but when he says that
pleasure completes an activity by supervening on it, like the bloom
that accompanies those who have achieved the highest point of physical
beauty, his point is that the activity complemented by pleasure is
already perfect, and the pleasure that accompanies it is a bonus that
serves no further purpose. Taking pleasure in an activity does help us
improve at it, but enjoyment does not cease when perfection is
achieved--on the contrary, that is when pleasure is at its peak.
That is when it reveals most fully what it is: an added bonus that
crowns our achievement.



It is clear, at any rate, that in Book X Aristotle gives a fuller
account of what pleasure is than he had in Book VII. We should take
note of a further difference between these two discussions: In Book X,
he makes the point that pleasure is *a* good but not
*the* good. He cites and endorses an argument given by Plato in
the *Philebus*: If we imagine a life filled with pleasure and
then mentally add wisdom to it, the result is made more desirable. But
the good is something that cannot be improved upon in this way.
Therefore pleasure is not the good (1172b23-35). By contrast, in
Book VII Aristotle strongly implies that the pleasure of contemplation
*is* the good, because in one way or another all living beings
aim at this sort of pleasure. Aristotle observes in Book X that what
all things aim at is good (1172b35-1173a1); significantly, he
falls short of endorsing the argument that since all aim at pleasure,
it must be *the* good.



Book VII makes the point that pleasures interfere with each other, and
so even if all kinds of pleasures are good, it does not follow that
all of them are worth choosing. One must make a selection among
pleasures by determining which are better. But how is one to make this
choice? Book VII does not say, but in Book X, Aristotle holds that the
selection of pleasures is not to be made with reference to pleasure
itself, but with reference to the activities they accompany.



> 
> 
> Since activities differ with respect to goodness and badness, some
> being worth choosing, others worth avoiding, and others neither, the
> same is true of pleasures as well. (1175b24-6)
> 
> 
> 



Aristotle's statement implies that in order to determine whether
(for example) the pleasure of virtuous activity is more desirable than
that of eating, we are not to attend to the pleasures themselves but
to the activities with which we are pleased. A pleasure's
goodness derives from the goodness of its associated activity. And
surely the reason why pleasure is not the criterion to which we should
look in making these decisions is that it is not the good. The
standard we should use in making comparisons between rival options is
virtuous activity, because that has been shown to be identical to
happiness.



That is why Aristotle says that what is judged pleasant by a good man
really is pleasant, because the good man is the measure of things
(1176a15-19). He does not mean that the way to lead our lives is
to search for a good man and continually rely on him to tell us what
is pleasurable. Rather, his point is that there is no way of telling
what is genuinely pleasurable (and therefore what is most pleasurable)
unless we already have some other standard of value. Aristotle's
discussion of pleasure thus helps confirm his initial hypothesis that
to live our lives well we must focus on one sort of good above all
others: virtuous activity. It is the good in terms of which all other
goods must be understood. Aristotle's analysis of friendship
supports the same conclusion.


## 9. Friendship



The topic of Books VIII and IX of the *Ethics* is friendship.
Although it is difficult to avoid the term "friendship" as
a translation of "*philia*", and this is an
accurate term for the kind of relationship he is most interested in,
we should bear in mind that he is discussing a wider range of
phenomena than this translation might lead us to expect, for the
Greeks use the term, "*philia*", to name the
relationship that holds among family members, and do not reserve it
for voluntary relationships. Although Aristotle is interested in
classifying the different forms that friendship takes, his main theme
in Books VIII and IX is to show the close relationship between
virtuous activity and friendship. He is vindicating his conception of
happiness as virtuous activity by showing how satisfying are the
relationships that a virtuous person can normally expect to have.



His taxonomy begins with the premise that there are three main reasons
why one person might like someone else. (The verb,
"*philein*", which is cognate to the noun
"*philia*", can sometimes be translated
"like" or even "love"--though in other
cases *philia* involves very little in the way of feeling.) One
might like someone because he is good, or because he is useful, or
because he is pleasant. And so there are three bases for friendships,
depending on which of these qualities binds friends together. When two
individuals recognize that the other person is someone of good
character, and they spend time with each other, engaged in activities
that exercise their virtues, then they form one kind of friendship. If
they are equally virtuous, their friendship is perfect. If, however,
there is a large gap in their moral development (as between a parent
and a small child, or between a husband and a wife), then although
their relationship may be based on the other person's good
character, it will be imperfect precisely because of their
inequality.



The imperfect friendships that Aristotle focuses on, however, are not
unequal relationships based on good character. Rather, they are
relationships held together because each individual regards the other
as the source of some advantage to himself or some pleasure he
receives. When Aristotle calls these relationships
"imperfect", he is tacitly relying on widely accepted
assumptions about what makes a relationship satisfying. These
friendships are defective, and have a smaller claim to be called
"friendships", because the individuals involved have
little trust in each other, quarrel frequently, and are ready to break
off their association abruptly. Aristotle does not mean to suggest
that unequal relations based on the mutual recognition of good
character are defective in these same ways. Rather, when he says that
unequal relationships based on character are imperfect, his point is
that people are friends in the fullest sense when they gladly spend
their days together in shared activities, and this close and constant
interaction is less available to those who are not equal in their
moral development.



When Aristotle begins his discussion of friendship, he introduces a
notion that is central to his understanding of this phenomenon: a
genuine friend is someone who loves or likes another person for the
sake of that other person. Wanting what is good for the sake of
another he calls "good will" (*eunoia*), and
friendship is reciprocal good will, provided that each recognizes the
presence of this attitude in the other. Does such good will exist in
all three kinds of friendship, or is it confined to relationships
based on virtue? At first, Aristotle leaves open the first of these
two possibilities. He says:



> 
> 
> it is necessary that friends bear good will to each other and wish
> good things for each other, without this escaping their notice,
> because of one of the reasons mentioned. (1156a4-5)
> 
> 
> 



The reasons mentioned are goodness, pleasure, and advantage; and so it
seems that Aristotle is leaving room for the idea that in all three
kinds of friendships, even those based on advantage and pleasure
alone, the individuals wish each other well for the sake of the
other.



But in fact, as Aristotle continues to develop his taxonomy, he does
not choose to exploit this possibility. He speaks as though it is only
in friendships based on character that one finds a desire to benefit
the other person for the sake of the other person.



> 
> 
> Those who wish good things to their friends for the sake of the latter
> are friends most of all, because they do so because of their friends
> themselves, and not coincidentally. (1156b9-11)
> 
> 
> 



When one benefits someone not because of the kind of person he is, but
only because of the advantages to oneself, then, Aristotle says, one
is not a friend towards the other person, but only towards the profit
that comes one's way (1157a15-16).



In such statements as these, Aristotle comes rather close to saying
that relationships based on profit or pleasure should not be called
friendships at all. But he decides to stay close to common parlance
and to use the term "friend" loosely. Friendships based on
character are the ones in which each person benefits the other for the
sake of other; and these are friendships most of all. Because each
party benefits the other, it is advantageous to form such friendships.
And since each enjoys the trust and companionship of the other, there
is considerable pleasure in these relationships as well. Because these
perfect friendships produce advantages and pleasures for each of the
parties, there is some basis for going along with common usage and
calling any relationship entered into for the sake of just one of
these goods a friendship. Friendships based on advantage alone or
pleasure alone deserve to be called friendships because in
full-fledged friendships these two properties, advantage and pleasure,
are present. It is striking that in the *Ethics* Aristotle
never thinks of saying that the uniting factor in all friendships is
the desire each friend has for the good of the other.



Aristotle does not raise questions about what it is to desire good for
the sake of another person. He treats this as an easily understood
phenomenon, and has no doubts about its existence. But it is also
clear that he takes this motive to be compatible with a love of
one's own good and a desire for one's own happiness.
Someone who has practical wisdom will recognize that he needs friends
and other resources in order to exercise his virtues over a long
period of time. When he makes friends, and benefits friends he has
made, he will be aware of the fact that such a relationship is good
for him. And yet to have a friend is to want to benefit someone for
that other person's sake; it is not a merely self-interested
strategy. Aristotle sees no difficulty here, and rightly so. For there
is no reason why acts of friendship should not be undertaken partly
for the good of one's friend and partly for one's own
good. Acting for the sake of another does not in itself demand
self-sacrifice. It requires caring about someone other than oneself,
but does not demand some loss of care for oneself. For when we know
how to benefit a friend for his sake, we exercise the ethical virtues,
and this is precisely what our happiness consists in.



Aristotle makes it clear that the number of people with whom one can
sustain the kind of relationship he calls a perfect friendship is
quite small (IX.10). Even if one lived in a city populated entirely by
perfectly virtuous citizens, the number with whom one could carry on a
friendship of the perfect type would be at most a handful. For he
thinks that this kind of friendship can exist only when one spends a
great deal of time with the other person, participating in joint
activities and engaging in mutually beneficial behavior; and one
cannot cooperate on these close terms with every member of the
political community. One may well ask why this kind of close
friendship is necessary for happiness. If one lived in a community
filled with good people, and cooperated on an occasional basis with
each of them, in a spirit of good will and admiration, would that not
provide sufficient scope for virtuous activity and a well-lived life?
Admittedly, close friends are often in a better position to benefit
each other than are fellow citizens, who generally have little
knowledge of one's individual circumstances. But this only shows
that it is advantageous to be on the receiving end of a friend's
help. The more important question for Aristotle is why one needs to be
on the giving end of this relationship. And obviously the answer
cannot be that one needs to give in order to receive; that would turn
active love for one's friend into a mere means to the benefits
received.



Aristotle attempts to answer this question in IX.11, but his treatment
is disappointing. His fullest argument depends crucially on the notion
that a friend is "another self", someone, in other words,
with whom one has a relationship very similar to the relationship one
has with oneself. A virtuous person loves the recognition of himself
as virtuous; to have a close friend is to possess yet another person,
besides oneself, whose virtue one can recognize at extremely close
quarters; and so, it must be desirable to have someone very much like
oneself whose virtuous activity one can perceive. The argument is
unconvincing because it does not explain why the perception of
virtuous activity in fellow citizens would not be an adequate
substitute for the perception of virtue in one's friends.



Aristotle would be on stronger grounds if he could show that in the
absence of close friends one would be severely restricted in the kinds
of virtuous activities one could undertake. But he cannot present such
an argument, because he does not believe it. He says that it is
"finer and more godlike" to bring about the well being of
a whole city than to sustain the happiness of just one person
(1094b7-10). He refuses to regard private life--the realm
of the household and the small circle of one's friends--as
the best or most favorable location for the exercise of virtue. He is
convinced that the loss of this private sphere would greatly detract
from a well-lived life, but he is hard put to explain why. He might
have done better to focus on the benefits of being the object of a
close friend's solicitude. Just as property is ill cared for
when it is owned by all, and just as a child would be poorly nurtured
were he to receive no special parental care--points Aristotle
makes in *Politics* II.2-5--so in the absence of
friendship we would lose a benefit that could not be replaced by the
care of the larger community. But Aristotle is not looking for a
defense of this sort, because he conceives of friendship as lying
primarily in activity rather than receptivity. It is difficult, within
his framework, to show that virtuous activity towards a friend is a
uniquely important good.



Since Aristotle thinks that the pursuit of one's own happiness,
properly understood, requires ethically virtuous activity and will
therefore be of great value not only to one's friends but to the
larger political community as well, he argues that self-love is an
entirely proper emotion--provided it is expressed in the love of
virtue (IX.8). Self-love is rightly condemned when it consists in the
pursuit of as large a share of external goods--particularly
wealth and power--as one can acquire, because such self-love
inevitably brings one into conflict with others and undermines the
stability of the political community. It may be tempting to cast
Aristotle's defense of self-love into modern terms by calling
him an egoist, and "egoism" is a broad enough term so
that, properly defined, it can be made to fit Aristotle's
ethical outlook. If egoism is the thesis that one will always act
rightly if one consults one's self-interest, properly
understood, then nothing would be amiss in identifying him as an
egoist.



But egoism is sometimes understood in a stronger sense. Just as
consequentialism is the thesis that one should maximize the general
good, whatever the good turns out to be, so egoism can be defined as
the parallel thesis that one should maximize one's own good,
whatever the good turns out to be. Egoism, in other words, can be
treated as a purely formal thesis: it holds that whether the good is
pleasure, or virtue, or the satisfaction of desires, one should not
attempt to maximize the total amount of good in the world, but only
one's own. When egoism takes this abstract form, it is an
expression of the idea that the claims of others are never worth
attending to, unless in some way or other their good can be shown to
serve one's own. The only underived reason for action is
self-interest; that an act helps another does not by itself provide a
reason for performing it, unless some connection can be made between
the good of that other and one's own.



There is no reason to attribute this extreme form of egoism to
Aristotle. On the contrary, his defense of self-love makes it clear
that he is not willing to defend the bare idea that one ought to love
oneself alone or above others; he defends self-love only when this
emotion is tied to the correct theory of where one's good lies,
for it is only in this way that he can show that self-love need not be
a destructive passion. He takes it for granted that self-love is
properly condemned whenever it can be shown to be harmful to the
community. It is praiseworthy only if it can be shown that a
self-lover will be an admirable citizen. In making this assumption,
Aristotle reveals that he thinks that the claims of other members of
the community to proper treatment are intrinsically valid. This is
precisely what a strong form of egoism cannot accept.



We should also keep in mind Aristotle's statement in the
*Politics* that the political community is prior to the
individual citizen--just as the whole body is prior to any of its
parts (1253a18-29). Aristotle makes use of this claim when he
proposes that in the ideal community each child should receive the
same education, and that the responsibility for providing such an
education should be taken out of the hands of private individuals and
made a matter of common concern (1337a21-7). No citizen, he
says, belongs to himself; all belong to the city (1337a28-9).
What he means is that when it comes to such matters as education,
which affect the good of all, each individual should be guided by the
collective decisions of the whole community. An individual citizen
does not belong to himself, in the sense that it is not up to him
alone to determine how he should act; he should subordinate his
individual decision-making powers to those of the whole. The strong
form of egoism we have been discussing cannot accept Aristotle's
doctrine of the priority of the city to the individual. It tells the
individual that the good of others has, in itself, no valid claim on
him, but that he should serve other members of the community only to
the extent that he can connect their interests to his own. Such a
doctrine leaves no room for the thought that the individual citizen
does not belong to himself but to the whole.


## 10. Three Lives Compared



In Book I Aristotle says that three kinds of lives are thought to be
especially attractive: one is devoted to pleasure, a second to
politics, and a third to knowledge and understanding
(1095b17-19). In X.6-9 he returns to these three
alternatives, and explores them more fully than he had in Book I. The
life of pleasure is construed in Book I as a life devoted to physical
pleasure, and is quickly dismissed because of its vulgarity. In X.6,
Aristotle concedes that physical pleasures, and more generally,
amusements of all sorts, are desirable in themselves, and therefore
have some claim to be our ultimate end. But his discussion of
happiness in Book X does not start from scratch; he builds on his
thesis that pleasure cannot be our ultimate target, because what
counts as pleasant must be judged by some standard other than pleasure
itself, namely the judgment of the virtuous person. Amusements will
not be absent from a happy life, since everyone needs relaxation, and
amusements fill this need. But they play a subordinate role, because
we seek relaxation in order to return to more important
activities.



Aristotle turns therefore, in X.7-8, to the two remaining
alternatives--politics and philosophy--and presents a series
of arguments to show that the philosophical life, a life devoted to
*theoria* (contemplation, study), is best. *Theoria* is
not the process of learning that leads to understanding; that process
is not a candidate for our ultimate end, because it is undertaken for
the sake of a further goal. What Aristotle has in mind when he talks
about *theoria* is the activity of someone who has already
achieved theoretical wisdom. The happiest life is lived by someone who
has a full understanding of the basic causal principles that govern
the operation of the universe, and who has the resources needed for
living a life devoted to the exercise of that understanding. Evidently
Aristotle believes that his own life and that of his philosophical
friends was the best available to a human being. He compares it to the
life of a god: god thinks without interruption and endlessly, and a
philosopher enjoys something similar for a limited period of time.



It may seem odd that after devoting so much attention to the practical
virtues, Aristotle should conclude his treatise with the thesis that
the best activity of the best life is not ethical. In fact, some
scholars have held that X.7-8 are deeply at odds with the rest
of the *Ethics*; they take Aristotle to be saying that we
should be prepared to act unethically, if need be, in order to devote
ourselves as much as possible to contemplation. But it is difficult to
believe that he intends to reverse himself so abruptly, and there are
many indications that he intends the arguments of X.7-8 to be
continuous with the themes he emphasizes throughout the rest of the
*Ethics*. The best way to understand him is to take him to be
assuming that one will need the ethical virtues in order to live the
life of a philosopher, even though exercising those virtues is not the
philosopher's ultimate end. To be adequately equipped to live a
life of thought and discussion, one will need practical wisdom,
temperance, justice, and the other ethical virtues. To say that there
is something better even than ethical activity, and that ethical
activity promotes this higher goal, is entirely compatible with
everything else that we find in the *Ethics*.



Although Aristotle's principal goal in X.7-8 is to show
the superiority of philosophy to politics, he does not deny that a
political life is happy. Perfect happiness, he says, consists in
contemplation; but he indicates that the life devoted to practical
thought and ethical virtue is happy in a secondary way. He thinks of
this second-best life as that of a political leader, because he
assumes that the person who most fully exercises such qualities as
justice and greatness of soul is the man who has the large resources
needed to promote the common good of the city. The political life has
a major defect, despite the fact that it consists in fully exercising
the ethical virtues, because it is a life devoid of philosophical
understanding and activity. Were someone to combine both careers,
practicing politics at certain times and engaged in philosophical
discussion at other times (as Plato's philosopher-kings do), he
would lead a life better than that of Aristotle's politician,
but worse than that of Aristotle's philosopher.



But his complaint about the political life is not simply that it is
devoid of philosophical activity. The points he makes against it
reveal drawbacks inherent in ethical and political activity. Perhaps
the most telling of these defects is that the life of the political
leader is in a certain sense unleisurely (1177b4-15). What
Aristotle has in mind when he makes this complaint is that ethical
activities are remedial: they are needed when something has gone
wrong, or threatens to do so. Courage, for example, is exercised in
war, and war remedies an evil; it is not something we should wish for.
Aristotle implies that all other political activities have the same
feature, although perhaps to a smaller degree. Corrective justice
would provide him with further evidence for his thesis--but what
of justice in the distribution of goods? Perhaps Aristotle would reply
that in existing political communities a virtuous person must
accommodate himself to the least bad method of distribution, because,
human nature being what it is, a certain amount of injustice must be
tolerated. As the courageous person cannot be completely satisfied
with his courageous action, no matter how much self-mastery it shows,
because he is a peace-lover and not a killer, so the just person
living in the real world must experience some degree of
dissatisfaction with his attempts to give each person his due. The
pleasures of exercising the ethical virtues are, in normal
circumstances, mixed with pain. Unalloyed pleasure is available to us
only when we remove ourselves from the all-too-human world and
contemplate the rational order of the cosmos. No human life can
consist solely in these pure pleasures; and in certain circumstances
one may owe it to one's community to forego a philosophical life
and devote oneself to the good of the city. But the paradigms of human
happiness are those people who are lucky enough to devote much of
their time to the study of a world more orderly than the human world
we inhabit.



Although Aristotle argues for the superiority of the philosophical
life in X.7-8, he says in X.9, the final chapter of the
*Ethics*, that his project is not yet complete, because we can
make human beings virtuous, or good even to some small degree, only if
we undertake a study of the art of legislation. The final section of
the *Ethics* is therefore intended as a prolegomenon to
Aristotle's political writings. We must investigate the kinds of
political systems exhibited by existing Greek cities, the forces that
destroy or preserve cities, and the best sort of political order.
Although the study of virtue Aristotle has just completed is meant to
be helpful to all human beings who have been brought up
well--even those who have no intention of pursuing a political
career--it is also designed to serve a larger purpose. Human
beings cannot achieve happiness, or even something that approximates
happiness, unless they live in communities that foster good habits and
provide the basic equipment of a well-lived life.



The study of the human good has therefore led to two conclusions: The
best life is not to be found in the practice of politics. But the well
being of whole communities depends on the willingness of some to lead
a second-best life--a life devoted to the study and practice of
the art of politics, and to the expression of those qualities of
thought and passion that exhibit our rational self-mastery.


## Glossary


* appearances: *phainomena*
* beautiful: *kalon*
* clear: *saphes*
* complete (verb, also: to perfect): *telein*
* condition: *hexis*
* continence (literally: mastery): *enkrateia*
* continent: *enkrates*
* disposition: *hexis*
* emotion: *pathos*
* evil: *kakos*, *phaulos*
* excellence: *arete*
* feeling: *pathos*
* fine: *kalon*
* flourishing: *eudaimonia*
* friendship: *philia*; *philein* (the verb cognate to
the noun "*philia*", can sometimes be translated
"like" or even "love")
* function: *ergon*
* good will: *eunoia*
* happiness: *eudaimonia*
* happy: *eudaimon*
* impetuosity: *propeteia*
* incontinence (literally: lack of mastery): *akrasia*
* incontinent: *akrates*
* intuitive understanding: *nous*
* live well: *eu zen*
* practical wisdom: *phronesis*
* science: *episteme*
* standard: *horos*
* state: *hexis*
* task: *ergon*
* virtue: *arete*
* weakness: *astheneia*
* work: *ergon*