Teaching The Questions Aristotle's Philosophical Pedagogy in The Nicomachean Ethics and Politic - S. Salkever

Teaching the Questions: Aristotle's Philosophical Pedagogy in the "Nicomachean Ethics" and
the "Politics"
Author(s): Stephen Salkever
Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Spring, 2007), pp. 192-214
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The Review of Politics 69 (2007), 192-214.
Copyright ? University of Notre Dame
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670507000514 Printed in the USA
Teaching the Questions: Aristotle's Philosophical
Pedagogy in the Nicomachean Ethics and
the Politics
Stephen Salkever
Abstract: It is widely acknowledged that the style of Plato's political philosophizing is
radically different from the systems and doctrines approach established by Hobbes
and confirmed and redirected by Kant. But what about Aristotle? Does he intend to
produce systematic political theory in sharp contrast to Plato's question-centered
dialectics? This essay argues that Aristotle's political science is equally as dialogical
as Plato's. Taken together, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics form a single set of
lectures, craftily organized to lead its immediate Greek audience (the equivalent of
Socrates' interlocutors in Plato) deeply into the questions and problems that are
Aristotle's theoretical basis for the paradigmatically human activities of practical
reason (phronesis) and thoughtful choice (prohairesis). He accomplishes this goal
by allowing none of the answers he or his audience might propose to stand
unchallenged, thus acting as another, albeit soberer, Socrates to his politically
concerned audience then and, potentially, now.
Political Science as Liberal Education in the Nicomachean
Ethics and the Politics
One way of defining contemporary liberal education is to say that students
come in looking for answers and leave, we hope, asking questions, questions
about how they are-and how they should be-related to the world around
them, their culture or cultures, their friends, to the past and future, to their
abilities and limitations as human beings living in a particular time and
place. This movement from a request for answers to a persistent questioning
of the answers is the standard pattern of the Platonic dialogues and the sub
stance of the claim that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human
being. The classic statement of what a liberal education is and is not occurs in
Republic 7, 518b6-clO: Paideia is not a matter of putting knowledge into empty
souls, but rather of turning souls and potential learners around, away from a
focus on the things that come into being and toward the brightest of the things
that are.
My argument is that this same
pedagogical intention determines the
pattern of Aristotle's lectures on what he calls political science (politike),
192
NICOMACHEAN ETHICS AND THE POLITICS 193
the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, as well. Aristotle's explicit account of
liberal education in the Politics 8 defines it as the education necessary for free
human beings, that is, those who have the opportunity (and thus also the
problem) of determining their way of life for themselves. The problem such
education must solve is how to be at leisure in a noble or beautiful way,
rather than in a slavish, banausic, childish, or vicious way (1337a-1338b).
My sense of Aristotle is that he speaks to us in these works essentially as a
liberal educator of young Greek men.' This means that he, like Plato, aims
to move his audience to a point outside their own tradition, to liberate
them partially and subtly from their Greekness in the interest of making
them better human beings. His texts are, like Plato's dialogues, written
dialectically and rhetorically, rather than as systematic demonstrations or
deductions. Dialectically, they engage in conversation or dialogue with the
opinions of others (sometimes named, sometimes not) on the questions
they consider; rhetorically, they want to influence their particular audience
in a particular direction, rather than trying to measure up to a universal stan
dard of deductive validity. For Aristotle, as much as for Plato, philosophical
writing cannot be precise and systematic without distorting our understand
ing of the things that are.
My specific claim about Aristotle's intention in the Nicomachean Ethics and
the Politics is that Aristotle tries to move an audience that deeply honors
public life-and that is interested in hearing that life celebrated-closer to
the practice of philosophical inquiry about public life, understood as the
asking and re-asking of questions that are never answerable once and for
all. He sometimes argues explicitly for the value of this shift (as at the end
of Book 6 of the NE). Mainly, however, he tries to achieve his aim by
guiding the audience of the Ethics and Politics on an extended tour of
lrThis view of Aristotle's intention as
protreptic
rather than
systematic
or doctrinal
was first set out at
length by
Tessitore
(Aristide Tessitore,
Reading
Aristotle's Ethics:
Virtue,
Rhetoric and Political
Philosophy [Albany,
NY: State
University
of New York
Press,
1990])
and is
developed by, among
others,
Mara
(Gerald
M.
Mara,
"Interrogating
the Identities of Excellence: Liberal Education and Democratic
Culture in Aristotle's Nicomachean
Ethics,"
Polity
31,
no. 2
[1998]: 301-29; Mara,
"The
Logos
of the Wise and the Politeia of the
Many:
Recent Books on Aristotle's
Political
Philosophy,"
Political
Theory
28,
no. 6
[2000]: 835-59);
Salkever
(Stephen
G.
Salkever,
"Aristotle and the Ethics of Natural
Questions,"
Instilling
Ethics,
ed.
Norma
Thompson (Lanham,
MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2000], 3-16);
Smith
(Thomas
W.
Smith,
Revaluing
Ethics: Aristotle's Dialectical
Pedagogy [Albany:
SUNY
Press,
2000]);
Frank
(Jill Frank,
A
Democracy of
Distinction: Aristotle and the Work
of
Politics
[Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press,
2005);
and Collins
(Susan
D.
Collins,
Aristotle and the
Rediscovery of Citizenship [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,
2006]). Anyone
familiar with these works will know that
my
reliance on
Collins, Frank, Mara, Smith,
and Tessitore
goes
far
beyond anything
that can be
acknowledged
in a footnote.
194 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
plausible answers, some endoxic,2 some more clearly his own, to the question
of the most choice-worthy human life. Aristotle uses this extended tour to
demonstrate that all such univocal answers to the question of the human
good are unstable and
unsatisfactory,
both theoretically and practically. But
he supplies no final formulation of just what human happiness really
means to take their place. As a result, the Ethics and Politics are as aporetic,
as perplexing, as any Platonic dialogue: they return us to the question with
which we began. But like Plato's dialogues, these texts are not merely or aim
lessly perplexing, but protreptic, designed to show that the question itself, if
properly asked, of the best life can be continually illuminating in a variety of
circumstances. Aristotle, like Plato, wants both to perplex his audience and to
supply it with intellectual tools for capitalizing on the perplexity he hopes to
induce. His primary goal in this educational project is not to turn his audience
into either good citizens or good philosophers, or even to reconcile citizens
and philosophers,3 but to produce deeper, more reflective, more serious,
more prohairetic people. In other words, Aristotle's goal is not to set out a
universally true political science or philosophy (politike), but to contribute
to the formation of an educated public.4
2That
is,
answers that are
prominent
and
widespread
in the Greek culture he and his
students share: "The endoxa are
opinions
about how
things
seem that are held
by
all or
by
the
many
or
by
the wise?that
is,
by
all the
wise,
or
by
the
many among
them,
or
by
the most notable
(gn?rimoi)
and endoxic
(endoxoi,
most
famous)
of them."
Topics
100b21ff.
3Although
Tessitore
(Reading, 1996)
makes an excellent case that such reconciliation
is one aim of the
Ethics,
strong arguments
for
treating
the Politics as
fundamentally
aporetic
are
presented by
Ambler
(Wayne
Ambler,
"Aristotle's
Understanding
of the
Naturalness of the
City,"
Review
of
Politics 47
(1985): 163-85)
and Davis
(Michael
Davis,
The Politics
of Philosophy:
A
Commentary
on Aristotle's Politics
[Lanham,
MD:
Rowman and
Littlefield,
1996]).
4In
proposing
this
reading,
I am not
speculating
on what
might
have been in the
mind of the historical Aristotle
(though any reading
must accord with such historical
information as we
possess),
but
trying
to arrive at the intention in the
light
of which
the text of the Ethics and Politics makes most coherent sense.
Any attempt
to make
coherent sense out of
a text
implicitly
constructs what
Wayne
Booth
(Wayne
Booth,
The Rhetoric
of
Fiction.
[Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press, 1983])
calls
an
"implied
author,"
whose "intention"
represents
that
coherence;
another
way
of
saying
this is what Gadamer
(Hans-Georg
Gadamer,
Truth and
Method,
2d
ed.,
trans.
Joel
Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall
[New
York: Continuum:
Crossroad, 1989], 369-79)
and Strauss
(see
Paul A.
Cantor,
"Leo Strauss and
Contemporary
Hermeneutics,"
in Leo Strauss's
Thought:
Toward a Critical
Engagement,
ed. Alan Udoff
[Boulder: Lynne
Rienner
Publishers, 1991], 267-314),
citing Collingwood,
refer to as the
logic
of
question
and answer. To read a text
well
is,
in
effect,
to construct a
plausible
authorial
voice; or,
to read well is to infer
a set of
questions
to which the
explicit
text,
the words on the
page,
can be read as
an answer.
Insofar as Aristotle's project continues Plato's, we may surmise that his
immediate audience is not unlike Plato's in its desire for a successful political
life: members of this audience admire and wish to emulate Pericles above all,
but feel a guilty attraction toward the apparent freedom and power of the
tyrant. They are also inclined to believe that a thorough education in politike
will substantially boost their chances of a successful political career. As
O'Connor and Smith have argued, Aristotle's text seems to presuppose an
audience of eager young political leaders of a variety of characters, not
unlike Socrates' interlocutors in Plato's dialogues, some resembling
Callicles, Meno, and Alcibiades, others the more promising types such as
Cleitophon, Glaucon, Theaetetus, and Theages.5 Aristotle must change what
his audience wants, but if he announces this as his goal at the outset, he is
doomed to failure. Thus, a less direct approach is mandatory.
Without some such assumption about Aristotle's designs on his immediate
audience, it is hard to see what to make of the glaring, internal contradictions
in the text of the NE and the Politics. Many of these contradictions concern the
I also want to avoid
dichotomizing
the audience into
potential philosophers
and
potential politicians. My hypothesis
about the audience is close to O'Connor's and
Smith's,
though
less schematic.
According
to O'Connor
(David
K. O'Connor "The
Ambitions of Aristotle's Audience and the Activist Ideal of
Happiness,"
in Action
and
Contemplation:
Studies in the Moral and Political
Thought of
Aristotle,
ed. Robert
C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins
[Albany:
SUNY
Press, 1999], 109),
Aristotle
assumes that his
"nobly brought up"
audience will have
developed
a commitment
to and a taste for an "active"
life,
generally
a life of
political leadership,
as
opposed
to a life of sensual
enjoyment:
"Aristotle's
primary
addressee is a man
driven
by
ambition,
an ambition that manifests itself
fundamentally
if not
ultimately
in
politics."
What Aristotle does to that
audience,
according
to
O'Connor,
is to
replace
their
"political
action"
(praxis)-based conception
of human life with his
own "function"
(ergon)
or
"actuality" (energeia)
idea of what it means to be
truly
active. This enables Aristotle
eventually
to make the
paradoxical
claim
(in
NE 10
and Politics
7),
relative to the
endoxa,
that the
sedentary
theoretical life is
considerably
more "active" than the
political
life. Plato carries out this same unannounced shift
from a
praxis-vocabulary
to an
ergon-vocabulary
in his
introductory
discussion of
the
question
of the most
profitable
life for a human
being
in book 1 of the
Republic.
For the numerous
passages
in Plato
containing
these
surreptitious
switches
from the
vocabulary
of
praxis
and man to the
vocabulary
of
ergon, caring,
and human
being,
see Salkever
(Stephen
G.
Salkever,
Finding
the Mean:
Theory
and Practice in
Aristotelian Political
Philosophy
[Princeton:
Princeton
University
Press, 1990],
ch.
4;
and
Stephen
G.
Salkever,
"Plato on Practices: the Technai and the Socratic
Question
in
Republic
1,"
in
Proceedings of
the Boston Area
Colloquium
in Ancient
Philosophy,
ed.
John J.
Cleary
and William Wians
[Lanham,
MD.:
University
Press of
America,
1992],
8:
243-67).
50'Connor
("Ambitions")
and Smith
(Thomas
W.
Smith,
"The
Protreptic
Character
of the Nicomachean Ethics"
Polity
27
(1994): 307-30; Smith,
Revaluing).
value of a political life. He asserts, for example, that political life is an end in
itself (NE 6, 1140b6-7; Politics 1), but he also asserts that political praxis is
only an instrumental means to something better (NE 10; Politics 7), in the
same way that war is choice-worthy only as a necessary means to peace.
If we take these assertions out of context and ask him which he stands by,
he will not answer; we need, instead, to watch him as he plays out each of
these claims and exposes the limitations of each. Thus, if we begin our
reading with the assumption that the text is a set of systematically arranged
propositions, we cannot help but misread it.
A related source of misreading is the long-standing academic tradition of
treating the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics as two separate systematic
treatises, the first containing Aristotle's ethics and considered the property
of departmental philosophers, and the second presenting his political
theory and belonging to political science departments.6 The two works are
different in character, but they do not seem to be directed to different audi
ences or to be concerned with separate subject matters-they are complemen
tary works of practical philosophy or political science (politike). Internal
evidence (the last chapter of NE 10) suggests a clear transition from the end
of the Nicomachean Ethics to the beginning of the Politics. The differences
between the two works are of a kind to suggest that they are interdependent
parts of a single course of lectures that comment on one another. My argu
ment is that Aristotle's two texts should be read as scripts for lectures that
need to be completed by reading or performance in a particular historical
context, not as treatises to be accepted or rejected universally. They raise ques
tions that they do not answer. Like Plato, Aristotle's task is to establish a
language or discourse for evaluating laws and customs (nomoi) and regimes
(politeiai), to introduce a new kind of theoretical language into political
debate, a language that provides a new way of answering the ordinarily
unasked question, What questions should I bring to ethical and political
life? Like Plato's image of Socrates-the-gadfly, the aim of Aristotle's political
philosophy is neither to take sides in a partisan debate nor to set out the pro
cedural terms for reaching a fundamental consensus on the questions that
provoke debate, but to supply a theory that can incite and shape debate of
a certain kind, to redirect it by supplying the debaters with new ways of
asking and addressing old questions. Theory's job in
Platonic/Aristotelian
political science/liberal education is to persuade us of the importance of
what might be called "natural" questions-those, like the question of
the best life and the best regime, that cannot be answered theoretically
6This is so in
spite
of the fact that most
commentators,
whatever their
interpretive
orientation,
would
acknowledge
that the two works are not
separate
and distinct trea
tises. For
example,
Irwin and Fine
(Terence
Irwin and Gail
Fine,
Aristotle: Selections
[Indianapolis:
Hackett
Publishing Company,
1995], xix) say
this: "The Ethics leads
directly
into the
Politics; indeed,
the two treatises are
parts
of a
single inquiry
that
belongs
to
political
science."
(by Plato or Aristotle) but which must be answered (by us) practically-in
context.
Although he is a profound critic of the politics of his time, Aristotle's goal is
not to lay down the rules for founding a better polity. Rather, he wants to
introduce his audience to philosophy as more than a method to solve
certain problems, as an activity in its own right, a way of life, or a part of a
way of life. This must be done carefully, since it is not a goal Aristotle's audi
ence of Glaucons and Menos has in mind from the moment he addresses it.
Thomas W. Smith puts this nicely: "Aristotle's purpose in writing the
Nicomachean Ethics was not to set forth theoretical conclusions about human
hap7piness but to show us why we need constantly to ask questions about
it." The questions insisted on by the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics are
all squarely rooted in one large question, the one Plato's Socrates poses to
Callicles in the Gorgias and to Thrasymachus in the first book of the
Republic: "Do you think it is a small matter to try to determine the way of
living life as a whole (holou biou diagoge) through which each of us would
have the most profitable (lusitelestate) life?" (Rep. 344el-3). Both Plato and
Aristotle insist on the importance of persistently asking and responding to
this question. Asking and responding to it is what distinguishes the serious
person (the spoudaios) from the trifler (the phaulos).8 But this subtle call to phil
osophy, for Aristotle as well as Plato, is not a manifesto for some single
principled, spiritual discipline: both the nature of the truth about the best
life and the audience's resistance to that truth rule simplicity out.
For Aristotle, the practical work of logos is to reflect on our desires, to trans
form them from biologically inherited impulses to parts of a mature person
ality that we, along with the nomoi and the mentors of our childhood and- as
he will argue in books 8 and 9 of the NE-our friends, construct. Unlike the
modems, Aristotle acknowledges no guarantee of success, even if fortune
smiles, because vice-in this case immoderation-as well as virtue, is "accord
ing to thoughtful choice (kata ten prohairesin)" (1151a6-7)9-even though
Aristotle has just said in book 6 that action based on the prohairetic interplay
of logos and desire is what makes us human beings (1139b4-5), and even
though he will say in book 3 of the Politics that human eudaimonia can
almost be defined as living kata te^n prohairesin, according to thoughtful
choice (1280a33-34). For Aristotle, serious reflection on what sort of life we
want to lead can result in a right (orthe) decision or not (1150a33-35), in
spite of the fact that the central recommendation of the Ethics is that we
take life seriously. For him, there is no scientific method and no categorical
7Smith, "Character,"
330.
8And above all Aristotle
is,
as
Sparshott (Francis Sparshott, Taking Life Seriously:
A
Study of
the
Argument of
the Nicomachean Ethics
[Toronto:
University
of Toronto
Press,
1994]) says, urging
his audience to take life
seriously.
9Note that Aristotle does not
say,
here or
anywhere
else,
that the
thoughtful
choice
(prohairesis)
that results in vice is not
really prohairesis
at all.
imperative that can rescue us from this doubt. The best advice he can offer us
in our dilemma does not come in the shape of a rule but in his discussion in
book 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics about the importance of having character
friendships, intimates who allow our self-perceptions to become actualized
(energeia), and hence open to reflection and critique, in a way we cannot
manage on our own (1171b32-1172al).
But Aristotle's theoretical politike^ can also provide us with an explanation
for this problem-the uniquely problematic character of the question of the
best human life- and he does so at the end of NE 7, in the passage at
1154b20-31. Here he says that our nature is composite, not simple, because
we are mortal. As a result, human activities that seem desirable and pleasant
because they support our attempts to stay alive may clash with other activi
ties, such as inquiry and logos in general, that please and attract because they
define us as human beings. In a way, the message at the end of NE 7 is that we
are constituted by two natures rather than one, and that the human good can
only be clearly understood in the light of the good of a different and god-like
being. Aristotle's image here of nature (phusis) contra nature (1154b23) can
suggest, from a modem point of view, a tragic view of humanity as the end
lessly conflicted species.10 This invocation of a more perfectly actualized
being is not an aporetic end to inquiry but, like his references to gods at the
end of NE 6 and the ones to follow in Nicomachean Ethics 9 and 10, it serves
instead to clarify the many-sided problem of human virtue. Aristotelian
gods don't need habituation, or a sense of honor and shame, or nomoi, or edu
cation in politike, or friends (not to mention good fortune, some property or
wealth, and a body temperature in the normal range). Humans, however,
do need all of these things. If we could somehow slice off the most perfectly
active work of which human beings are capable and preserve it forever as an
independent entity, we would be gods. The problem of human virtue thus
becomes how to honor our unique kinship with the divine while realizing
that it is kinship only, not identity, and without in our bedazzlement slighting
the complex and varied possibilities for an excellent prohairetic life inherent
in those potentialities for desire and thought that are ours alone, not shared
with the gods or with other animals. This, essentially, is the starting point
that Aristotle's theorizing passes on to deliberative inquiry and phronesis
the lesson he wants to teach. If I am correct, then it must be the case that the
central theoretical insight of his political philosophy can become clear to his
auditorsfor the first time only at the end of Book 7 of the NE.
The style in which Aristotle presents his lesson must be elliptical- discur
sive, rather than algorithmic and deductive-because it is hard for people
who have been raised in the habits and longings of his audience to grasp,
and also because the lesson itself is full of nuance and qualification.
10For
a subtle
development
of this view about the end of NE
7,
see
Sparshott (Taking,
260-63).
To understand the lesson, Aristotle appears to think that his audience must be
prepared by what comes before in the Nicomachean Ethics and what comes
after in that text and in the Politics. In what follows, I will sketch the shape
of that discourse, spending more time on the Nicomachean Ethics than the
Politics, since we political theorists are presumably more familiar with the
latter. I will conclude with several suggestions about what we lose when
we read either of these two works independently of the other. In doing so, I
will touch briefly on what we have to gain from reading in this way now.
The Strategy of Aristotle's Discourse in the NE and Politics
In the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that the aim of his
course of lectures is action (praxis) rather than knowledge (NE 1, 1095a4-6)
and that the inquiry is undertaken not to acquire theoretical knowledge,
but in order to become good (NE 2, 1103b26-30). But Aristotle's theoretical
message seems as charged with ambiguity as his rhetorical intent: from
book 1 of the NE on, Aristotle asserts what appear to be two distinct views
of the human good: one supports a life of action and politics, the other sup
ports a life of philosophical inquiry that keeps the concerns of a political
life at a certain distance. At the same time, however, Aristotle repeats in
various contexts the idea that there is a unified way of answering the question
of the good life: by understanding the specific human work or activity (ergon),
we can understand the human good. His initial statement of what the best life
based on an understanding of the human ergon is, in book 1 of the NE, is one
that fully endorses the political life: "We posit that the ergon of a human being
(anthropos) is a certain bios, and this bios is an activity (energeia) of the soul and
activities (praxeis) that are with logos, and that it is the work of a serious male
(spoudaios aner) to do these things nobly and well" (1098al3-15). This empha
tic reference to maleness and to praxis as components of the best life, reminis
cent of Pericles, looks like a clear resolution to the problem. The human good
is not the life Aristotle says the many prefer, based on the quest for sensual
gratification (1095bl5-17), but the life chosen by "refined and active (prakti
koi) people" who see the good as honor (time), "the telos of the political life"
(1095b22-23).
But Aristotle does not allow this initial formulation to stand unchallenged.
Immediately after stating that "we posit" the human good to be the life of the
serious male politikos, he appends a lengthy series (1098a20-1098b8) of cau
tions, saying that this is only an inexact "sketch" to be "filled in" later, that
some beginnings come from habit, and that facts are not the same as expla
nations. These qualifications raise questions about the finality of Aristotle's
apparently ringing endorsement of Greek political life and about the identity
of the "we" who "posit" the supremacy of that life.
Aristotle has already planted seeds of similar doubts about the political life
a few pages earlier in a discussion (1095b-1096a) of the three (rather than
two) ways of life that might claim to be definitively human. He says there that
a third candidate for the title of human good is the bios theo^retikos, the life of
study, which will be examined later. Aristotle alludes to this third life and its
preeminence once more in the discussion of the intellectual virtues in NE 6
and in the discussion of super-human virtue in NE 7, but he does not
discuss it thematically until NE
10,
where he argues that such a life surpasses
the political life in embodying the human ergon. There he says that the happi
ness of the political life-the life of the serious male devoted to honor-is not
the happiest or best life for a human being (he uses anthro^pos in book 10, not
aner); the happiest is the life of inquiry and study, the theoretical life (1177b).
Praxis and maleness recede together as normative features of humanity, but
this recession is not announced until the very last book of the Nicomachean
Ethics. Strikingly, the very same depreciation of maleness and praxis occurs
in the next to last book of the Politics, though now with more elaborate expla
nation as well as a new account of ways in which the two lives might coexist.
But from book 1 until book 10, the Ethics unfolds with the theoretical life as a
sort of subliminal presence, a cloud in the bright sky of honor, maleness, and
political virtue. This will not be apparent to the listener or reader encounter
ing Aristotle for the first time. Aristotle will introduce the theoretical alterna
tive as a candidate for the title of the serious human life only after he has
shown a variety of ways in which the way of life of the serious male
devoted to politics and honor-a life so immensely and likely attractive to
his audience-is internally inconsistent. Before praxis can be rehabilitated
in the light of a new theoretical understanding, it must (rhetorically) be
allowed to fall of its own weight. My interpretive claim is that unless we
understand this, the design of the NE and the Politics as a course in political
science makes no sense at all.11 The question of the identity of the shared
nEven earlier in NE
1,
Aristotle has
suggested
a
possible
incoherence within the
pol
itical life itself
(1095al8-26).
Here he
says
that both the
many
and the cultivated
(char
ientes) agree
that
happiness
or
flourishing (eudaimonia)
is the
highest good,
and that
"happiness
follows
living
well
(eu zen)
and
acting
well
(eu prattein)."
Good
praxis
and
good living
lead to
happiness.
But the
many
and the wise
(whom
Aristotle now
substitutes,
without
comment,
for the
political
charientes as the alternative to the
many) disagree
about what
happiness
is. The
many,
he
says,
see eudaimonia this
way,
as "one of the
things
that are visible and
apparent,
such as
pleasure
or wealth
or honor
(time),
and others think other
things?and
often the
very
same
person
will
have different
opinions:
when sick
thinking
it
health,
when
poor
wealth;
and when
they
are aware of their own
ignorance, they
wonder at those who
speak
of
something
great (mega)
or
something beyond
them." The
many
are not
presented
here as slaver
ing gratification-seekers,
but include those who
identify living
well with honor and
greatness?which only
one
page
later will be attributed not to the
many
but to the
refined and active
(compare
1095a23 and
1095b22-23).
Aristotle seems to
imply
here that if a concern with honor is the core of the
political
life,
then that life
may
not be so different from the life of those for whom "refined and active men" have con
tempt,
the
many,
as the refined and serious
political
men would like to think.
"we," of who we are and what we assume, is one of the central unstated but
unavoidable aporiai that constitute the "beginning" of Aristotle's politike. In
raising it, he invites his audience to reconsider who they are, or who they
want to be-though without explicitly thematizing this invitation.
There is, thus, good reason to wonder whether the definition of eudaimonia
Aristotle provides in 1098a-a serious male's political praxis informed by
logos-will turn out to be adequate. These doubts are reinforced by other
aporiai Aristotle raises (and does not resolve) about happiness in book 1. Is a
virtuous life always happy? No, since bad fortune can destroy not only content
ment but real happiness as well, as in the case of Priam (llOOa, asserted again in
Book 10, 1176a33-35). Can we ever know with certainty whether a particular
life is happy? No, because the quality of one's life is affected by how one's des
cendants and friends live (llOla). The impact of fortune and the indefiniteness
of the boundaries of a human life exclude the possibility of any certainty about
matters of virtue and happiness. But Aristotle neither removes the aporiai nor
treats them as the end of the story. He pushes the logos on with the aporiai
about happiness and virtue still in place, saying that such aporiai are evidence
for the view that any stability in human happiness is due to virtue rather than
fortune (llOOb). We should, therefore, want to know better what virtue is. He
further indicates that whatever this virtue is, it may have less to do with praxis
and with political honors than with intelhlgence or phronesis (1095b26-30),
whatever that may turn out to be.
Nicomachean Ethics 1 concludes with a discussion of the human soul, as a
preliminary to considering human virtue in the light of the question of the
best way of life yet again: "Since eudaimonia is some activity (energeia) of the
soul in accordance with perfect (teleia) virtue, it would be necessary to
examine virtue" (1102a5-6). It turns out that we have not yet considered
virtue adequately. Furthermore, Aristotle's new beginning on the question
of eudaimonia removes "praxis" from the definition of the human ergon
stated in 1098a. Aristotle both underscores and balances this change by
reminding us immediately that virtue is a proper subject for politike because
true lawgivers, such as those of Sparta and Crete, made citizen virtue a
chief concern:
"[T]hey
want to make citizens good and obedient to the
nomoi" (1102a9-10). The tension about empirical politics and Aristotle's
virtue, hinted at here by an unremarkable equation of goodness and law
abidingness, remains alive through the Ethics and Politics until Politics 7, at
which point Aristotle announces that the Spartans, from Lycurgus onward,
do not really differ from everyone else in their conception of the good: as
grasping as anyone else, they think the good is power and conquest, not
virtue (1333b-1334a). They differ only in believing that a truncated vision
of virtue (in which virtue is equated with being a real man, with andreia) is
the instrumentally best way to get the power everyone (i.e., the many as
well as the refined) desires.
But we are yet a long way from Aristotle's emphatic criticism of what
refined Greeks think is best in the realm of the political. Book 1 of
the Ethics does not place virtue and the political life in direct opposition, far
from it. Still, in the technical account of the soul that concludes NE 1, the
central place is occupied by logos, rather than by any distinctly political
faculty, such as spiritedness (thumos). The soul is composite, with several
parts, although these may be separable in analysis only. One part has logos;
a second does not, though there is no clear specification of what logos
means as yet. The part without logos is further divided into a part-including
growth, decay, and digestive activity-that works without logos, and another
part-involving a variety of desires-that may or may not "listen to" logos.
This latter part Aristotle calls character (ethos), and says that specifically
human virtues can be of two kinds: "ethical" or moral virtues, those involving
ethos, such as liberality, manliness, and moderation, and virtues of thought,
"dianoetic" virtues, such as wisdom and phronesis. The moral virtues are
those that arise from habit (as ethos, character, arises from ethos, habit), and
will be considered first. It will soon turn out that these moral virtues are
impossible without the intellectual virtue of phronesis, and this weakening
of the distinction between moral and intellectual virtue will not surprise the
careful listener who recalls Aristotle's remark in book 1 that political people
should realize that what matters is phronesis rather than honor and greatness.
In the first book of the Ethics, Aristotle places widely held views about virtue
and the political life in such a new light that he may well have puzzled his
original auditors in two respects: his ambivalence about the value of the pol
itical life, and his reliance on terms whose meanings are evidently technical,
not drawn from ordinary language or the endoxa.
Having left this aporia about eudaimonia as a standing qualification on
the power of generalizing theory to clarify human life, Aristotle then proceeds
to outline his own biological account of human life and human virtue.
This outline runs from the beginning of book 2 to the middle of book 3 and
culminates in three related propositions:
1) Excluding those forces we cannot control, such as fortune and natural
aptitude, virtue is the key element of happiness.
2) Character (ethos), developed by habit and by growing up under a
particular set of laws and practices, is the key element of virtue.
3) "Thoughtful choice" or prohairesis is the key element of character: "The
virtues are prohairesis, or not without prohairesis" (1106a3-4). Without phron
e^sis, all the habituation in the world cannot turn into virtue of character.
Again, we must be careful not to confuse this last proposition with the Kantian
identification of virtue and reason. For Aristotle, desire for the human good
intertwining with thought about that good mutually transform each other
into a "prohairetic hexis," a firm inclination to thoughtful choice that is the indis
pensable foundation for human virtue. Such a psychic condition is our natural
destination, though it cannot be achieved without appropriate habituation
(not to mention good luck). In the context of this theory of moral development,
Aristotle's own teaching in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics can be seen
as an attempt to influence the way his generally well-brought-up audience
desires the human good, but to do so indirectly, by changing the concepts
and terms in which they think and speak about that good.
Quite appropriately, then, from the middle of book 3 of the Nicomachean
Ethics on, Aristotle gives his readers or auditors not a defense and application
of his psychological and ethical doctrines, but a series of exemplary figures
who exhibit and embody human virtue in different ways. His task is not to
provide systematic theory, but to bring abstractly theoretical eudaimonia to
imaginary life by showing us individuals or types that in different ways
and to different degrees embody his idea of human happiness. This is
Aristotle's "virtue ethics": as in Plato's dialogues, the human good is realized
in particularly individual ways of life rather than in action-guiding rules. The
order in which these figures are arranged is from images of virtue that are
most familiar and accessible to Aristotle's students to images of virtues and
ways of life farther from the conventional Periclean Greek wisdom and
closer to Aristotle's notion of the human good.12 As he suggests he will do,
he begins with the virtues and lives most accessible to his audience and
ends with the vision of the human good that seems truest to him. Aristotle
does not, in other words, write as a Rawlsian "public philosopher" whose
task is to articulate and clarify the deepest insights of his tradition, but criticizes
that tradition in terms of a standard that is not a familiar part of the culture's
vocabulary. At the heart of his rhetorical task is a dilemma similar to the one
Plato faces in the dialogues: the problem of introducing that vocabulary
without calling excessive attention to its strangeness. Leo Strauss puts it this
way: "Such a philosophic critique of the generally accepted views is at the
bottom of the fact that Aristotle, for example, omitted piety and sense of
shame from his list of virtues, and that his list starts with courage and moder
ation (the least intellectual virtues) and proceeding via liberality, magnanimity
and the virtues of private relations, to justice, culminates in the dianoetic
virtues."13 Aristotle's arrangement of the moral virtues is part of his attempt
12My reading
differs from a more common
view,
that the order of the virtues is an ascent
from the most material to the most
"spiritual."
On the
latter,
stemming
from
Aquinas,
see
Sparshott, (Taking, 147-49). Sparshotfs
own
position
is that the list of the ten virtues in NE
3 and 4 follows the order of the
development
of
civilization,
from the need for war
(manli
ness)
and sex
(moderation)
to the need for
civility (affability,
tmthfulness,
and
wittiness).
I
would
say
instead that the movement is from the virtues that make least use of
practical
wisdom or
phronesis (like
manliness and
moderation), through
those
(like justice
and
decency)
which make most use of
phronesis,
and
finally
to a virtue and
way
of life that
seems,
but
only
seems,
to be
beyond phronesis altogether.
13Leo Strauss
(Leo Strauss,
"On Classical Political
Philosophy,"
What Is Political
Philosophy?
And Other Studies
[Glencoe,
IL: Free
Press, 1959], 94). Sparshott
makes a
similar
point, citing
both the
rejection
of shame as a virtue and Aristotle's assertion
that several
key
virtues and vices have no Greek names. Like
Strauss,
he claims that
to move the philosophical life closer to the center of the world of thought of his
audience and the manly life closer to the margins.
While each exemplary figure portrayed in the Nicomachean Ethics represents
a mature and coherent way of life that goes beyond immature pleasure
seeking regulated only by an unsteady sense of shame, they do so in quite
different ways. The differences between them stem from the different
horizon-like visions of the human good that animate them. The first two
figures to be considered here, the manly man (andreios) and the great-souled
man (megalopsuchos) take the Periclean goods of freedom, honor, and great
ness as their limiting horizon. The third and fourth, the just man (dikaios)
and the decent man (epieikes), discussed in NE 5, go beyond Periclean
freedom and greatness to embody nomos and the public good as a limit.
The fifth and sixth ways of life, the phronimos (defined in book 6) and the
friend (discussed in books 8 and 9) go beyond nomos and politics to treat
the human good itself as a goal. The last way of life presented in the Ethics,
the theoretical human being (sketched in NE 10) goes beyond humanity to
adopt the divine or the good of Aristotle's (though not the Greeks') theos as
the central aspiration of a virtuous human life.
From the middle of book 3 (1115a) through the end of book 4, Aristotle
takes up ten particular virtues of character, ones he had already mentioned
briefly in the form of a diagram in book 2 (1107a-1108b).14 Aristotle says
nothing about why he has chosen these particular virtues rather than
others, nor does he give reasons for the order of their presentation. But think
ing through these questions suggests a great difference between Aristotle's list
and one his audience of young Greek males might be expected to bring to the
lectures. The first two virtues he discusses, manliness and moderation, would
no doubt appear on any endoxic Greek list of the virtues, nor is it strange that
we must
pay
close attention also to what Aristotle omits: "More
strikingly,
the virtues
of
'piety' (eusebeia)
and 'holiness'
(hosiot?s)
are not on his list. Actual Greek life was
saturated in
religion;
Aristotle's failure to countenance it shows
clearly enough
that,
whatever he is
doing,
he is not
simply describing
the
folkways
or the
prevailing
value
system" (Sparshott, Taking, 142).
14They
are,
in
order,
manliness
(andreia)
and
moderation,
both concerned with "feel
ings";
four virtues
concerning
the external
goods
of
money
and honor:
liberality
(eleutheriotes)
in matters of small sums of
money, magnificence (megaloprepeia) regard
ing great
sums,
a nameless virtue that is a mean between lack of ambition and love of
honor in matters of small honors and
dishonors,
and
greatness
of soul
(megalopsuchia)
where
large-scale
honors and dishonors are
concerned;
one virtue
again
concerned
with a
feeling,
this time
anger (orge),
a
"nearly
nameless" mean between
irascibility
and slavishness that Aristotle
proposes
to call
"gentleness" (praotes);
and
finally,
three virtues
having
to do with
"logoi
and actions in communities": truthfulness
(as
opposed
to
self-deprecating irony
and
boastfulness),
wittiness
(as opposed
to boorish
ness and
buffoonery),
and
affability (as opposed
to
grouchiness
and
obsequiousness).
manliness is listed first. But Aristotle, without comment, drastically narrows
the scope of both of these virtues relative to the endoxa. Strictly speaking,
according to Aristotle, manliness refers only to our response to the fear of
death and wounds in battle, and not, for example, to our willingness to risk
the security of private life in order to achieve preeminence in the polis:
"In the decisive sense, one is said to be andreios when he fearlessly faces a
noble death and those things that lead to it-such things especially concern
military affairs" (NE 3, 1115a32-35). For Aristotle, war is unavoidable if
one is to escape slavery in a world of warring poleis, and thus manliness is
a genuine virtue because it is needed to protect the prohairetic life, which
cannot flourish without a polis and its laws and practices. Plato's Socrates
uses a similarly instrumental version of manliness in the Republic. Speaking
to Glaucon in book 3, he says that the guardians will be andreios if "they
choose death in battles over both defeat and slavery" (386b5-6). Aristotle's
account of the occasion and activity of manliness in the Nicomachean Ethics
is like Plato's in omitting all of the vitality and daring that characterize
Pericles' funeral oration, in which the Athenian war dead are congratulated
and envied for trading in their fleeting mortal existence for an earthly immor
tality as part of the shining narrative of Athenian imperial adventure.
Aristotle's severe lowering of the rank and meaning of manliness relative to
his audience's expectations is maintained throughout both the Nicomachean
Ethics and the Politics.15 He treats it as a necessary virtue, but not of the
highest order; to seek occasions for the display of the manly virtues makes
no Aristotelian sense. War, he notes, is the occasion for the greatest of
honors; but this proves only that honor is a seriously imperfect guide
to virtue when virtue is defined, as Aristotle wants it to be, in terms of
prohairesis.
15Aristotle's treatment of manliness in NE 3 as a
surprisingly
low and
ordinary
virtue is reinforced for his Greek audience
by
the word he chooses to characterize
the
action,
the
praxis,
of the
manly
man. Over and over, the verb Aristotle uses to
identify
what the andreios does is
hupomenein,
to remain behind
(though
others
flee),
or to stand fast.
(He
uses it at least eleven times in the
space
of five Bekker
pages,
and uses
menein,
to
remain,
at least
twice.)
This notion of manliness as
stolidity
in
battle is Greek
enough,
since it calls to mind the virtues of the
hoplite phalanx.
But
it does not
correspond
at all with the active and
daring
virtues Pericles ascribes to
Athens' adventurous citizen-soldiers. His audience cannot be
surprised
that he con
cludes his discussion of manliness
by saying
that men who
possess
other virtues
will have more to value in life and thus find it harder to
accept
death in battle than
those who
possess
no other
good
than manliness. The most virtuous
people
will not
make the best soldiers because
they
will feel a
greater pain
at the
prospect
of death.
The best soldiers
may
be those who have
only
andreia and not other virtues
(1117b).
What
appears
noble and
great
to the
manly
man will not
be,
humanly speaking,
the
greatest good.
Aristotle's intention is not to discredit manliness but to
problematize
it,
to raise
questions
about its
sufficiency
and coherence.
The figure of the great-souled man brings the horizon of freedom, honor,
and manliness into sharper critical focus. The megalopsuchos is concerned
with greatness to the exclusion of every other good and virtue, and greatness
requires being seen as great by others. The quest for greatness leads the mega
lopsuchos into a life without the wonder that opens the way to philosophy, and
without the friendship within which (Aristotle will argue in NE 8 and 9)
human virtue and happiness can flourish.16 The pursuit of honor and
greatness seems to threaten the pursuit of the human good.17
Book 5 is a new beginning. Aristotle here introduces a new and more com
prehensive virtue (justice and decency) and a new and more comprehensive
horizon (the nomoi). This is a very different way of being political than we
have seen to this point (though it is still exclusively male, and thus not
simply human). The indication of this comes in Aristotle's statement that it
is not necessary to discuss universal justice at length, since that is the same
as complete virtue. Invoking universal justice, he says, is simply a way of
reminding ourselves that the laws instruct us to practice every virtue and
lay down an education to promote the common good. Aristotle then adds
the following: "It is necessary to set aside until later the decision whether
the education through which an individual becomes an unconditionally
good man (ane'r) is in politike or something else; for, presumably, being a
good man (aner) is not the same as being every good citizen" (1130b26-29).
Aristotle's gender-specific language here is significant and is frequently
obscured in translation into English. Whenever he speaks of human virtue
or the human ergon in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, as in book 1
of the Nicomachean Ethics, he uses the expression anthro^pos, human being,
without specifying gender.18 When he speaks of the political life, by contrast,
he consistently uses the word ane^r, male. The reason why politics is
16Sparshott (Taking, 151-53) ingeniously proposes
that Aristotle must
imagine
the
megalopsuchos
as the sort of
god-like
ruler called the absolute or
all-powerful
monarch
(pambasileus)
in Politics
3,
1284a3-b34.
High ranking
officials,
Sparshott
says,
must act the
part:
"When
Shakespeare's Harry
became
Henry
V,
he
immediately
dumped
Falstaff." But
nothing
in Aristotle's text
supports
the view that the
megalopsu
chos holds or desires to hold
any public
office at all.
17"m
truth,
only
the
good person (ho agathos)
is
worthy
of honor"
(1124a25)?not
the
great
man,
unless he also
happens
to be
good,
which is
especially
hard,
according
to
Politics
4, 1295b,
for those who
possess extremely large quantities
of the
goods
of
fortune,
such as wealth and
good
birth.
18My
claim is that
Aristotle,
in the NE and the
Politics,
does not use aner to refer to
human
beings
as such. His
motive,
like
Plato's,
is to
challenge
what he sees as the
mistaken and
widespread
Greek inclination to
identify
virtue with
virility.
For an
extended discussion and text
references,
see Salkever
{Finding, 178-85).
For an
insight
ful and
thorough
treatment of aner and andreia in
Plato,
see Hobbs
(Angela
Hobbs,
Plato and the Hero:
Courage,
Manliness and the
Impersonal
Good
[Cambridge:
Cambridge University
Press,
2000]).
necessarily a male affair, according to Aristotle, becomes clearer in book 1 of
the Politics: politics involves ruling as well as being ruled, and women cannot
rule men because their deliberative ability is not sufficiently "authoritative" -
although it is not clear whether the cause of this lack of authority is that
women are by biological inheritance incapable of decisive practical reasoning,
or that males are generally unwilling to listen to women, however reason
able.19 Whatever the reasons, Aristotle consistently treats politics as a male
world, and so when he raises again in Politics 3 the question of the virtue of
the good citizen, he asks whether the good citizen is a good male, ane^r, and
not whether the good citizen is a good human being, anthro^pos (1276b). But
since Aristotle, like Plato, is consistently in control of whether to say aner or
anthropos, the question of whether the good citizen is also the good man
raises a more comprehensive question, whether the good man is a good
human being. Stated otherwise, this is the question of whether the two
male orientations so far elaborated in the Nicomachean Ethics-the perspective
of honor and the manly or great-souled man, and the perspective of nomos
and the decent man-are an adequate background for the prohairetic life.
The movement beyond justice and the nomos in the next book of the
Nicomachean Ethics suggests a negative answer.
The laws open greater scope for phronesis-this horizon is much more
demanding, intellectually, than the horizon of honor and greatness. It is
hard to know what the just thing to do is (1137a9-12), because the just
itself is not the same as the legal. Thus the reflection on justice and the laws
leads to a sense of the inadequate or at least provisional quality of the
horizon they supply. But the inadequacy of these perspectives does not
require Aristotle to discard them or absorb them into a more comprehensive
perspective. Instead, he retains honor and the nomos as plausible orientations
toward the question of the good life-along with his criticisms of them-as he
goes on to consider a more directly theoretical orientation in the rest of the
Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics. Moreover, Aristotle consistently uses the
word epieikes, along with spoudaios and phronimos, as his principal names
for the best sort of human being. Perhaps the strongest evidence for
Aristotle's retention of the political orientation as a plausible answer to the
question of the human good is that, in his ultimate discussion of the best
life in Politics 7 (1324a-1325a), he says that the primary contenders in the per
manent debate about the best life are those who defend the political life and
those who defend the philosophic life (1324a29-32). His position is summar
ized in this carefully worded sentence: "It is clear that there are just about two
ways of life that are
thoughtfully chosen (proairoumenoi) by those human
beings who are most ambitious about virtue (ton anthropon hoi philotimotatoi
pros areten), both now and in the past. The two I mean are the political and
the philosophic lives." The manly life is still an option at the end of his lectures
19For discussion of this
passage
at
1260al3,
see Salkever
(Finding,
ch.
4).
on politike, but it must be considered from the horizon of the anthropos, not
from that of the andres alone.
Books 6 and 7 are in a sense the most analytic books of the Nicomachean
Ethics, concerned to make distinctions that are apparently generated by
Aristotle's theory itself, rather than by the substantive and rhetorical pro
blems of moral education the work addresses. Book 6 presents relatively
precise distinctionS20 among ways of thinking or intellectual excellences or
virtues, situating phronesis in relation to scientific inquiry (episteme and
sophia), to craft (techne), to political science, to amoral instrumental shrewd
ness (deinotes), to a general grasp of human affairs that does not lead to
action (sunesis), to good guessing (eustochia), and to a nondeductive grasping
of either the first principles of the unchanging things or the nature of a par
ticular situation calling for action (nous). Aristotle opens book 7 by announ
cing a new beginning, one that recognizes that vice is not the only kind of
character to be avoided. Vice must now be distinguished from incontinence
(akrasia) and bestiality; as a result, virtue itself must be distinguished from
two other admirable hexeis: continence and divinity. But the distinctions so
carefully drawn in books 6 and 7 are not classifications for their own or for
theory's sake; instead, they serve Aristotle's delineation of a third kind of
moral horizon, the human good, and a way of life that centers on the activities
of practical reason and prohairesis. This horizon is more comprehensive and
theoretically coherent than the horizons of greatness/honor and justice/
nomos set out in the first five books. But like the earlier horizons, Aristotle's
depiction of the prohairetic life devoted to the human good includes the rec
ognition of a limit that serves to temper our enthusiasm, a limit supplied by
his indication of a yet more comprehensive and coherent horizon, the one
supplied by Aristotle's own idea of divinity, or of the best kind of being, or
the most complete good. This is not simply added on to the picture of the
human good; as books 6 and 7 make clear, it is impossible to understand
what the human good is without understanding in some detail the ways in
which it is less than perfect. In particular, while we hear early in book 6
that a life of thoughtful choice, a prohairetic life, is emphatically and norma
tively a human life (Book 6, 1139b4-5), we also hear by the middle of book 7
that such a life can be devoted to vice (kakia) as well as to virtue (Book 7,
1151a5-7). As with greatness and justice, in order to understand clearly the
life guided by the human good, it is necessary to see beyond it.
Aristotle's discussions of pleasure and of friendship in books 7-10 are
responses to this perplexity. His two separate discussions of pleasure, at the
end of Nicomachean Ethics 7 and the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics 10,
which serve as brackets to the lengthy discussion of friendship in 8-9, are
20Irwin's
(Terence
Irwin,
Aristotle: Nicomachean
Ethics,
2d ed.
[Indianapolis:
Hackett
Publishing Company,
1999])
glossary provides
a
helpful guide
to Aristotle's
usage
of
terms in books 6 and 7.
dialectical throughout. His intention is not to propose a systematic theory of
pleasures and pains but to persuade his auditors that, in this matter at least,
they are better off listening to the many than to a more distinguished few who
either demonize (in NE 7) or deify (in NE 10) pleasure. His contempt for sim
plifying moralists is more colorful and acerbic than the general tone of his
prose: "Those who assert that we are happy when we are broken on the
wheel or when we fall into great misfortunes, so long as we are good, are will
ingly or unwillingly saying nothing" (1153bl9-21). Aristotle also rebuts the
sophisticated hedonist position set forth by Eudoxus, especially in book 10,
but seems to see hedonism as closer to the truth than antihedonist moralism:
"The fact that all pursue pleasure, beasts as well as human beings, is some
kind of sign that pleasure is somehow the best thing in itself ... for everything
that is by nature has something of the divine" (1153b25-32). But his central
teaching is that both sides fail to see that pleasure and pain are not indepen
dent entities, but feelings an animal agent has subsequent to its performance
or nonperformance of some activity, energeia -eating or fighting or crafting a
law, for example, or listening to music or gazing at the heavens or at the parts
of an animal, or simply being alive. What matters, so far as happiness is con
cerned, is which activities we choose to pursue; pleasure and pain can't them
selves be chosen as ends to be pursued or avoided, since they are only signs of
the way a particular agent feels about a particular activity.21
If "the pleasure question" proves to be a blind alley for those puzzled by
the problem of how to counter the uncertainty of the prohairetic life, the dis
cussion of friendship (philia)-which is utterly novel, not a standard Greek
philosophical topos like the relationship of the pleasant and the good-is
much more positive. The friend is concemed with the good fully actualized
human life. Philia absorbs justice (1155a). The peak of living together
(suze^n) for human beings is sharing discourse, articulate speech (logos), and
thought (dianoia) (NE 9, 1170b12-15). Friends seem to be the greatest external
good (1169b9-10), directly contradicting a judgment made in the context of
the megalopsuchos that honor is the greatest external good (1123b20-21).
This is because "friendship furnishes the primary context within which
human beings may grow in self-knowledge and virtue."22 This is not to say
that other contexts are replaceable by virtue-friendships; families and polities
are still necessary. But friendship matters most and will be noted least, thus
requiring two full books of the Nicomachean Ethics. Nevertheless (NE 8,
1159a), some incoherence, some degree of aporia still remains: Friends
21
"It is
necessary
to treat the
pleasure
or
pain
that follows
upon
an
activity (ergon)
as
a
sign
of the hexis"
(NE
2,
1104a3-5).
Aristotle does
say
that
pleasures
and
pains
are
also
"activities,"
since
they
are neither
potentialities
to do
something
nor movements
from one condition to
another,
but activities of an
especially dependent
sort,
ones that
are
consequences
of and somehow
complete
the
primary
activities for each actor
(NE
10,
1175al0-21).
22Jacob
Howland,
"Aristotle's Great-Souled
Man,"
Review
of
Politics
64,
no. 1
(2002):
50.
don't really wish their friend the greatest good, to become a god, because we
need the friend as another self, as our equal (NE 9 1166a); moreover, we are
friends to ourselves most of all (1168b). Yet we need friends to actualize
our excellence-in one sense, we need such friends even more than we
need good nomoi and the freedom that depends upon manliness. The rhetori
cal strategy of the Nicomachean Ethics is such that the horizons or focal points
presented later rank above earlier ones-being as such over human being,
human being over human law, and human law over human freedom.
Similarly, later exemplary ways of life are in some sense superior to earlier
ones-the philosopher over the friend, the friend over the practically wise
man without friends, the practically wise man over the decent man, the
decent man over the just man, the just man over the great-souled man, and
the great-souled man over the manly man-but they are all unstable in
various ways, both theoretical and practical. As a result, later exemplars
and horizons do not erase or supersede earlier ones in a Hegelian manner.
Given the unique and immense variety and contingency of human life, and
given that we do not and cannot know or choose in advance the challenges
our lives will set for us, each of them (as well as their relative rank order)
must be kept in mind as a theoretical guide to the prohairetic life.23 One
way of putting this relationship among the different horizons would be to
say that Aristotle wants to caution his audience against treating some good
things as if they were the only good things. He does not say that that the phro
nimos should stop caring about honor or about justice or about the human
good or about the divine good. These things are all in some way good by
nature. His intention, instead, is threefold: first, to rank these goods or hor
izons relative to the standard implicit in the activity of being; second, to
warn us against being too serious (or not serious enough) about any one of
them;24 finally, to indicate that theory cannot go beyond the first two
points, and that decisions of each individual or community about the mix
23My
discussion here is
greatly
indebted to Tessitore
(Reading).
Tessitore
argues
that
apparent
inconsistencies in the text of the
NE,
such as the one
giving
rise to the much
discussed intellectualist
vs. exclusivist debate about what Aristotle thinks is the best
human
life,
can best be understood
by dropping
the
assumption
that Aristotle is
writing systematic philosophy
for other
philosophers
and
thinking
instead about
how he
might
be
trying
to affect the audience
implied by
the text. This allows
Tessitore to treat
ambiguities
and inconsistencies as intentional and leads him to
assert a
strong
connection between Aristotelian and Platonic
political philosophy:
"The
edifying moral-political teaching
of the Ethics rests
upon
a theoretical foundation
that is
intractably aporetic.
Aristotle's
deep
and
insufficiently appreciated agreement
with Plato on ethical matters lies in the
irreducibly
dialectical basis in which his
account of ethical
inquiry
is set"
(120).
24It
seems clear that he is most worried that his Greek audience will take honor too
seriously
and the nature of the whole not
seriously enough.
Even
so,
he never denies
that honor is indeed a
genuine
human
good by
nature: "Some
people
are
mastered
by
among these plural goods that is appropriate for them is not a task for philosophy,
but for phronesis informed by a serious engagement with philosophy.
The second half of book 10 makes a case for the superiority of the theoreti
cal life to the practical; Aristotle presents it as more secure, less open to
contingency, than any practical life. It is continuously active- something
that we sublunary beings cannot possibly be. The reason that the political
life is ranked lower than the philosophic life is not that it is dependent on
other people and external goods but that the excellent citizen is dependent
on other people and institutions in a particular way: the political life is
limited by the connection between politics and war and by the dependence
of the political life on nomos.25 Human happiness is "unimpeded activity"
(energeia anempodistos, NE 7 1153b9-12, see also Politics 4 1295a36-37).26
The word anempodistos appears to be an Aristotelian coinage; the image it
conveys is a freedom from anything under your feet to trip you up. What
impedes us all is death; we are creatures of conflicting pleasures because
we are mortal (1154b20-25), vulnerable to mortality as well as to vice.
What trips up good citizens are not other people-since nothing prevents
the people we live with from being philosophic friends who help remove
obstacles to energeia-but rather the exigencies of war and of the nomoi. Is it
possible to imagine a political life that transcends war on the one hand and
law on the other, one that is thus as free from "trouble" within the defining
limits of inherited human potential as the philosophic life? If not, why not?
In a sense, these are the central questions the last book of the NE bequeaths
to the Politics.
This is why the Politics begins with a return to the horizon of the nomoi and
of justice. The NE takes for granted a "decent upbringing," and goes on to ask
how theorizing about actions and ways of life can improve the character of
already well-raised people. The answers that it gives to this question are
varied and complex and cannot be reduced to a system. But they all presup
pose that "we" -the community of well-raised souls the lectures seek to
establish in speech-are already present. There are, to be sure, indications
throughout the text that the prejudices of well-raised Athenians about the
best life cannot so easily be sustained-in particular, the views about honor
held by the typical Athenian gentleman-but the overriding message is
almost always one of a harmony between Aristotle's theory and existing prac
tice. Dissonance is kept in the background, even in places such as book 10's
discussion of the inferiority of the political life to the theoretical life, where
or
pursue against logos naturally
noble and
good things by being
more serious than
they ought
to be about honor or about children and
parents" (NE
7,
1148a28-31).
25Cf.
Tessitore,
Reading,
108.
26"As
was said in the
Ethics,
the
being (to einai)
of the
happy way
of life
(bios)
is
according
to
unimpeded
virtue."
we expect it to be strong and clear. But the Politics continually brings such
dissonance into view; its central purpose may be to address directly the ques
tion bracketed by the Nicomachean Ethics, the question of just what it means to
have a "decent" upbringing, how such an upbringing may be achieved, and
the conditions both within and beyond our control that support and/or
obstruct the practice of moral education or character formation.
The whole of the Politics encompasses a more careful tour of the possibili
ties covered by the horizon of the laws -possibilities that are criticized, such
as the life of the master in book 1 and the utopian solutions to the political
problem proposed in book 2-possibilities that seem promising though
flawed, such as the lives of the citizens of Sparta, Crete, and Carthage in
book 2, of the just and manly citizen in book 3, and of the semi-political
farmer of middling means in books 4-6. Once more, as in the Nicomachean
Ethics, the culmination of this political discourse, in book 7, is a glimpse at
a transpolitical horizon. Once more, the end of the Politics, just like the end
of the Nicomachean Ethics, leaves us with the question of the extent to which
political life, necessary as it is, can be brought into some sort of harmony
with the highest human aspirations. That question is posed in at least two
ways: first, by Aristotle's exposition of "the polis according to prayer" in
book 7; second by his discussion of liberal education in book 8. I believe
that we are meant to see the first as deeply flawed (since this "ideal" polis
is compelled to allow all its soldiers to graduate to full deliberative citizen
ship, whether they have the virtues for it or not; because this polis depends
on slavery that is against nature; and because this polis venerates gods who
have nothing to do with the unmoved movers of Aristotle's theology).27
The second gives us the beginnings of an account of what we have been
doing all this time, and leaves it to us to continue.
How Are the Two Texts Related?
The Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics are linked texts, but how do the two
differ? The Politics seems both more and less theoretical than the
Nicomachean Ethics. It is more theoretical in that it is more clearly governed
by an application of the universal standard of nature as a means for evaluat
ing particular laws, practices, and polities. The Nicomachean Ethics seems to
take the standards of virtue that are most approved by the Greek endoxa
too much for granted, while the Politics frequently and insistently calls
many of these endoxa into question before the bar of teleological human
nature. But the Politics is less rich in its theorizing-the Nicomachean Ethics,
not the Politics, is the book in which Aristotle lays out in some detail
27For
argument
and text references for this
interpretation
of the
significance
of
Politics
7,
see Salkever
(Stephen
Salkever,
"Whose
Prayer?
The Best
Regime
of Book
7 and the Lessons of Aristotle's Politics" Political
Theory (35[2007]: 29-46).
(though always disclaiming precision) his views about the character of
human nature and the human soul. The Politics without the Ethics loses its
metaphysical and psychological ground. Reading the Politics alone makes
Aristotle's political philosophy look too much as though it were a freestand
ing political theory in the manner of Rawls and Habermas. The Politics is also
less theoretical in that it is more empirical, drawing on examples from a
variety of times and places to provide a kind of thick description of ancient
Greek (and not only Greek) politics. Leaving the Nicomachean Ethics out has
no doubt contributed to the badly mistaken yet widespread view that
Aristotle is somehow the father of modern "civic republicanism." To avoid
that misreading, we need to know about the ideas of potentiality and actuality
that inform Aristotle's use of the word "nature," and we need to know
about the hylomorphic soul-it is crucial that every reader of the Politics
bears in mind Aristotle's remark (in the De Anima) that if the eye were an
animal seeing would be its soul.
On the other hand, the Nicomachean Ethics without the Politics reads too
much like a sympathetic exposition of the Greek endoxa about the good life.
Aristotle is, as we have seen, countercultural in the Nicomachean Ethics, too,
but his rhetorical design seems to require that this criticism be muted. But
the Politics makes us see the world of praxis and nomos as a much less tract
able place, partly because it calls attention to a problem that arises but is not
extensively discussed in the Nicomachean Ethics, and that is the problem of
war and its relationship to human virtue-the problem that I think is the prin
cipal lesson Aristotle wants to teach in book 7 of the Politics. There is a kind of
temperamental difference between the two works: the Nicomachean Ethics can
often seem cheerful and hopeful about the world as Aristotle sees it, while the
Politics is much darker, drawing our attention frequently to obstacles to
human virtue and happiness that are inseparable from the nature of things.
The Politics thus appears to me to be deeper, more empirical, and less confi
dent than the Nicomachean Ethics.
Finally, what can we at present gain from reading Aristotle as if he were
addressing us indirectly? The recent revival of interest in Aristotle has
produced several valuable answers about what we might gain as moral
and political agents, some noting important similarities between our own
political situation and that of Aristotle's original audience, others suggesting
the great value of rethinking our own practical situation from the ground up
by entering into a world of thought radically different from our own.28 My
own suggestion is that a rhetorical reading of the Nicomachean Ethics and
Politics indicates that Aristotle also has something important to teach us as
practitioners of politike, of political theory or science. To follow this
Aristotle, our philosophizing about practice must contain three elements.
28Frank
(Democracy)
and Collins
(Rediscovery) provide persuasive arguments,
respectively,
for these two
imperfectly
reconcilable
points
of view.
First, we must identify a central problem or problems confronting our own
contemporary endoxa, ones that these endoxa are inadequate to solve.
Aristotle does this by indicating ways in which Greek political life both
empowers and subverts human excellence. Second, we must articulate a
conceptual language for addressing these problems that, to some degree,
transcends the particular endoxa from which it emerges by bringing to light
a proposal about human psychology. Aristotle does this in the Nicomachean
Ethics and Politics by proposing a teleological theory of human nature and
of the prohairetic life. Third, we have to reflect, as Aristotle does throughout,
on the permanent problem of theory and practice, the problem of the extent to
which the language developed in our second element can and cannot be
brought to bear on the problems identified in our first. These three elements
can be thought of as adequacy conditions that point toward an Aristotelian
model of political inquiry that focuses on identifying natural questions and
thus avoids both modernism's scientistic deductive systematicity and post
modernism's distrust of attempts to articulate truths about the meaning of
human life.

Teaching The Questions Aristotle's Philosophical Pedagogy in The Nicomachean Ethics and Politic - S. Salkever

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