The Great Ethics of Aristotle

Peter L. P. Simpson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351481892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In this follow up to The Eudemian Ethics of Aristotle, Peter L. P. Simpson centres his attention on the basics of Aristotelian moral doctrine as found in the Great Ethics: the definition of happiness, the nature and kind of the virtues, pleasure, and friendship. This work's authenticity is disputed, but Simpson argues that all the evidence favours it. Unlike the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle wrote the Great Ethics for a popular audience. It gives us insight less into Aristotle the theoretician than into Aristotle the pedagogue. For this reason, the Great Ethics has distinct advantages as an introduction to Aristotelian ethical thinking: it is simpler and clearer in its argumentation, matters such as the intellectual virtues are made suitably secondary to the practical focus, the moral virtues come through with a pleasing directness, and the work's syllogistic formalism gives it a transparency and accessibility that the other Ethics typically lack. Arius' Epitome, which relies heavily on this work, helps confirm its value and authenticity. Because the Great Ethics is generally neglected by scholars, less has been done to clear up its obscurities or to expose its structure. But to ignore it is to lose another and more instructive way of approaching and appreciating Aristotle's teaching. The translation is prefaced by an analytic outline of the whole, and the several sections of it are prefaced by brief summaries. The commentary supplies fuller descriptions and analyses, sorting out puzzles, removing misunderstandings, and resolving doubts of meaning and intention. This book is a fresh rendition of the work of the preeminent philosopher of all time.

COMMENTARY ON THE GREAT ETHICS

Book One: The Science of Ethics in General and in Particular

Chapter 1

Subject Matter and Practical Aim of This Science

Aristotle begins by announcing, without further ado, that his chosen topic is ethics or character. The Nicomachean Ethics (NE) starts off with the self-evident proposition that activities, whether practical or theoretical, have some good as their object; the Eudemian Ethics (EE) begins with the particular good that is the manifest object of human activity, namely happiness. The Great Ethics (GE) does not begin with the good at all, whether universal or particular. It begins, that is to say, further away from what is naturally first in ethics, for the good is first in the case of any activity and ethics is about human activity. But what is first in nature need not be first for us, or for all of us, and by beginning with ethics or character, GE does start with what is indeed first for some of us. For it starts with what is first for the serious or decent citizen, the citizen who is good and who cares that others be good so that the city can live well. It begins with moral character.

It begins too by arguing, on the basis of character, that the study of character, which is what this treatise is about, forms part of the science of politics. The argument may be formalized thus: (1) nothing can act in politics without having some character or other, as a serious or virtuous character; (2) to have a serious character is to have the virtues; (3) therefore, if one is going to act in politics, one must have the virtues; (4) therefore this study of character is part of politics. This argument is only sound if one adds to it further assumptions or, rather, draws out what is implicit in it. The first conclusion (3) needs the assumption that the acting in politics under consideration (as the additional remark in premise [1] insinuates) is good acting or acting well, for seriousness of character is not needed to act badly. Bad men can act in politics as much as good men; indeed those most active in politics seem often rather to be the bad than the good. The second conclusion (4) needs the assumption that this study of character is going to be about good character, as well as the assumption, stated in the antecedent in conclusion (3), that it is going to be about good character with a view to political activity. For even if it be granted that political activity needs good character, it does not follow thereby that good character needs to be active in politics. It could be active at home or at school among friends and family and have no express relation to activity in the larger city (as is suggested in NE 10.9.1180a30–34). These further assumptions, then (that acting in politics is acting well and that such acting is what one want or ought to do) need, if only implicitly, to be in place if the conclusions Aristotle draws are to follow. But these further assumptions are precisely those that the serious minded citizen, young or old, will naturally make and, indeed, will consider it base and irresponsible not to make. GE, therefore, by the very structure of its opening argument, as well as by its opening words, is addressed to an audience of decent citizens. It would make little sense if addressed to some other audience, as, say, to an audience of those who are not such citizens or who feel the temptation not to be.¹ These will only be persuaded to study good character and virtue, if they are persuaded, by the sort of arguments (about the good and happiness) that begin the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics.²

On the basis of this argument, with its assumptions, the further conclusions that (5) the first thing to talk about is virtue (for virtue is what makes character), and that (6) virtue is to be studied not merely to know what it is but also to know what it comes to be from. For if this study is about acting well in politics, mere knowledge of what virtue is cannot be enough; there is need to know how actually to get it too. These two questions of the nature of virtue and of its sources form the principle of division for what immediately follows and, indeed, for the whole treatise. For the discussion of the opinions of others that fills the rest of the first chapter is divided into a discussion of opinions about the first question and then of opinions about the second. The same two questions can in fact also be seen to organize the whole treatise (as presented in the analytical outline).³

Errors about the Subject Matter and the Aim

About the Subject Matter

Virtue

The first set of opinions examined, then, those of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato, concern their error of confusing virtue with something else. Pythagoras confused moral virtue with numbers, but virtue is not a number (even if, as in the case of justice, numbers can help in its analysis). Socrates spoke better for he talked about knowledge, which, because knowledge is in the soul, gets at least the right locus for virtue. His error was to confuse moral virtue with science, which belongs to the reasoning part of the soul, and so to dispense with the nonrational part of the soul, the passions, and character. But virtue of character is what we are here interested in. Plato did not make this mistake, for he did talk of the nonrational part of the soul, as well as the rational, and gave each their proper virtues.⁴ His error was to mix discussion of virtue with discussion of the good, which Aristotle glosses as mixing it with discussion of beings and truth. He must mean that Plato mixed virtue, not with discussion of good (for Aristotle does that himself), but with discussion of the Idea of the Good as the source of being and truth (topics belonging rather to metaphysics than ethics).

The Political Good

What Aristotle says next is ambiguous. The Greek at a32, autous, could mean “they” and what these thinkers should say instead, or it could be taken with a “we” understood to mean “we ourselves” and what we should say (the word for “we” appears at 1182b2). Perhaps the ambiguity is deliberate. Aristotle’s attention in what follows is as much on “they” and what they said as on “we” and what should be said, for it is on the error he has just identified (confusion over the sciences) and how to overcome it.⁵

As formalized, the argument runs: (1) every science and power has an end; (2) this end is good; for (3) no science or power is for the sake of bad; therefore (4) the end of the best power is a better good; (5) politics is the best power; therefore (6) the end of politics is a good.⁶ (1) and (2) are backed up by (3), whose peculiarly negative formulation may be taken as an emphatic way of explicating the sense of the terms, that “end” and “for the sake of” and “good” include each other. But why does (4) say the end of the best power is a better good⁷ and not the best good, and why does (6) say the end of politics is a good and not a better good (or the best good)? An answer is suggested by the remark that the good here is not the good simply or the good of gods but the political or human good. The good of the best human science or power might be best among men, but it need not be the best simply or the best among gods. It would be a better good (because better than the goods of the other sciences), but not the best good simply. Also, what matters for Aristotle’s argument, and for his clarification of why Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato went wrong, is that politics has a particular good for its object, and a better good is a good even if, as emerges, it includes other goods under it.

The good proper to the present study is our good (not the good of gods), and that good is the political good, or the good to be attained by us through and for political life (the study of morals, as remarked at the beginning, is part of the study of politics). But talk of anything requires dividing the kinds and focusing on the relevant kind (failure to do so was the error of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato). The first division of good springs from discussion of those errors, for there is the good that is the best in each thing’s nature (which Pythagoras mixed up with numbers), and there is the good by sharing in which other things are good (the Idea of the Good, which misled Plato into talking of metaphysics). Aristotle considers and rejects each in turn as possible candidates for the good proper to the present study.

The argument that the good proper to politics is not the common good by way of definition may be formalized thus: (1) definition states the substance of a thing; (2) to state the substance of a thing is to say it of all instances universally; therefore (3) the definition of good says good of all instances of good; (4) therefore the definition of good says good of the ends of all the sciences; (5) but no science says good of its end; (6) therefore politics does not say good of its end; (7) therefore politics does not speak of the common good by way of definition. The sense of (7) must be, not that no sciences say their end is good, but that they do not establish it as a conclusion within the science; they take it instead as a given of the science and use it to prove or establish other things. A doctor reasons that since health is good, therefore one should do such and such to bring it about; but a doctor does not reason, qua doctor, that since good is such and such (some supposed definition of good), therefore health is good.⁸ Medicine reasons about what health is, since sciences do define their subject matter, and politics too spends time establishing what the good of politics is. But neither, qua the science each is, argues that this good of medicine or politics is good or worth pursuing.

A puzzle nevertheless arises. If no science says its good is good but always assumes it, and if therefore no science studies the common good, what science does study the good or by what science has Aristotle studied the common good sufficiently to say that it is not the study of any science? The answer, paradoxically, must be that there is no such good and that no science studies it. If there were, the science that studied it would end up establishing its own end to be good. Aristotle’s argument does not proceed on the supposition that there is a common good, but only that, if there is such a good, it is not the good of politics,⁹ and metaphysics, which must be the science that studies the good, establishes that good is not common but analogical. Metaphysics knows the goods of all sciences, including its own good, but in different ways. It may establish the good of other sciences by way of argument, but it knows its own good by immediate evidence (in the way presumably that all sciences know their good), and what it establishes is that there is no account of good that applies in common to all instances. So it does not establish anything that involves it in the impossibility of establishing its own good. This point of metaphysics, which must lie behind what Aristotle says here if his argument is not to lead to paradox, is left implicit in GE. The point does, however, appear in the other Ethics,¹⁰but it is a feature of GE that it avoids the sort of metaphysical excursuses we find in those other works. GE has a different audience.¹¹

The argument that proves that the common good by definition is not the good of politics proves the same of the common good by induction (if there is one). Induction establishes a general conclusion from known particulars and applies it to the unknown particular. In Aristotle’s example, we show magnanimity is a good by showing that certain particular virtues are good, and hence that virtue is good, and hence that magnanimity, being a virtue, must be good too.¹² But if politics studies the good that is common in this way, it will end up establishing of its own end that it is good. For whether politics is assumed as one of the particulars in the induction or as the particular to which the induction is applied, the induction itself establishes that the ends of the sciences, including politics, are good. The problem will not arise if good is analogical. Any review made by metaphysics of the ends of all sciences (including itself) will not result in a common good that logically embraces metaphysics under it. When metaphysics says of these or those goods that they are good, it will not establish a proposition, which by saying something common of many particulars, logically requir...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Analytical Outline of Aristotle’s Great Ethics
• Translation of the Great Ethics
• Epitome of Peripatetic Ethics by Arius Didymus
• Commentary on the Great Ethics
• Bibliography
• Index