Aristotle's Moral Realism Reconsidered

Phenomenological Ethics

Pavlos Kontos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136649875
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

This book elaborates a moral realism of phenomenological inspiration by introducing the idea that moral experience, primordially, constitutes a perceptual grasp of actions and of their solid traces in the world. The main thesis is that, before any reference to values or to criteria about good and evil—that is, before any reference to specific ethical outlooks—one should explain the very materiality of what necessarily constitutes the 'moral world'. These claims are substantiated by means of a text- centered interpretation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in dialogue with contemporary moral realism. The book concludes with a critique of Heidegger's, Gadamer's and Arendt's approaches to Aristotle's ethics.

Part I

Aristotle and Kant

Actions within the Moral World

1	Action, prakton and Visibility

It is common to assume that in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE)¹ moral action (praxis) incorporates its own excellence and thereby constitutes happiness itself, or that it points to the political realm wherein it is finally solidified and validated. The Aristotelian definition of actions in terms of self-referring performances that include their practical ends (1140b 6–7) suggests the first possibility, the undeniable fact that the Nicomachean Ethics is to be complemented by the Politics (1181b 12 ff) suggests the second. This disjunctive way of seeing things threatens to blur the worldly character of moral action, as I will argue by rehabilitating and analyzing the concept of prakton (plural: prakta)—a term intentionally left untranslated. This analysis of prakton will illuminate the worldly configuration of moral action and its correlate visibility. In particular, I shall argue that prakta are not primarily internal to the agent but are parts of the visible world. Obviously, I do not mean that either the self and his ethical and intellectual dispositions or contemplation have no moral relevance, or that their role within the Nicomachean Ethics should be neglected. My point is rather that Aristotle’s ethics presupposes a conception of moral reality that contemporary interpreters disregard each time they approach ethics in terms of intentions, rational desires and happiness.

Chapter I contests certain common assumptions about prakta, while Chapter II brings to light the worldly (or perceptual) status of prakta. To anyone who complains that “there is no phrase in Aristotle’s Greek that corresponds exactly to the ‘moral reality’ that features in some contemporary philosophical writing”,² I reply that Aristotle refers to this ‘moral reality’ by using the term prakton.

§1. THE BURDEN OF THE DISPUTE

Although the term prakton is omnipresent in the Nicomachean Ethics, it has not attracted the attention it deserves. On the contrary, current Aristotle interpretations and translations feel free to render it in divergent ways according to what they take to be its ad hoc significance, without ever noticing the theoretical burden at stake.³ Prakton does have a technical though twofold meaning, however, designating either ‘what is achievable within and through action’ or ‘what has already been brought into being through action’. But the former alternative in its different versions is often taken to be the term’s only meaning. Why is this? Why is there resistance to recognizing in prakton an end already accomplished? And what philosophical perplexities or prejudices motivate the resistance?

For reasons of clarity, let me begin by discussing the grammar of the term. The word prakton is strange because of its ending. In particular, its oddity is due to the fact that one customarily understands the ending -tos as implying potentiality, i.e., possibilities to be realized in the future, so that ‘achievable’, ‘realizable’, are appropriate translations. This is the Aristotelian meaning of the term each time prakton refers to the object of deliberation, since deliberation takes into consideration a variety of options in order to select the appropriate ones (1112b 15–16). When viewed as pointing to the course of forthcoming actions, prakta are future entities and exhibit a certain potentiality, in that they may or may not be realized (On Interpretation, 18a 28–33: genomenôn,, mellontôn). Deliberating about prakta presupposes that we experience our actions as the startingpoints of something future. However, this is not the unique meaning of the ending -tos, nor is it its very first meaning. According to the Greek grammar, the usual and main meaning of verbal adjectives ending in -tos denotes something already accomplished.⁴ Hence, my initial question gains in clarity: Why does one tend to ignore this bit of grammar?

§2. THE SINGLE LITERAL EXAMPLE OF PRAKTON IN THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

In order to shed light on the latter meaning of the ending -tos and on its implications regarding the way in which we have to understand what is a prakton, I will examine the single, except for eudaimonia, literal example of prakton within the Nicomachean Ethics:

Phronêsis is the same (intellectual) disposition as political science, though their being is different. One type of phronêsis about the city is the ruling part, namely, legislative science, whereas the type dealing with particulars bears the name political science that also applies to both types in common. The latter is concerned with action and deliberation; to gar psêphisma prakton hôs to eschaton. This is why it is only those persons who deal with particulars who are spoken of as taking parts in politics, because it is only they who act like handicraftsmen (1141b 23–29).

It is significant that there are two traditions (hereafter T1 and T2) specifying how the untranslated phrase should be rendered:

T1: “a decree is something to be acted upon, as what comes last in the process [of deliberation]”; “a decree is to be acted upon, as the last thing reached in deliberation”;⁵

T2: “because the decree is the object of political action”; “because the decree is the ultimate thing that exists in political action”;⁶ “the decree, as ultimate, is what [political] action has brought into being” (mine).

There is no mystery about the consequences of these divergent translations. In order to make them explicit, let me paraphrase the Aristotelian argument in light of the two rival interpretations already recognizable between the lines of the previous translations. Before proceeding, it would be prudent to keep in mind an historical example illustrating what decrees consist in: “Let the temple of Athena Nikê be built on the Acropolis bastion”.⁷ Then, the two interpretations could be expressed as follows:

T1: “[the decree is] “ultimate”: the last means discovered by deliberation for realizing the end in view [ … ] The temple is the last, specific means selected, and therefore the erection of a temple is the final action the assembly decided to take (it being left up to the magistrates to oversee the letting of contracts, and so on).”⁸ Then, the translation “something to be acted upon” is meant to describe the relation between the decree and the ‘final action’ that the erection of the temple consists in. Hence, the decree constitutes a prakton insofar as it potentially implies (and further leads to) the future action of the erection.

T2: Decrees are ultimate because there is nothing else for the politician to be occupied with and no further political action to be undertaken by the assembly. They are particular, because political decisions generate single decrees rather than exposing a variety of options the law may allow for. In a sense, then, the political action of voting a decree embodies or crystallizes political deliberation itself.

According to T1, prakton is a terminus a quo since, while it represents the final decision of politicians (the end of deliberation), it points to a further practical end to be accomplished.⁹ According to T2, prakton is a terminus ad quem by being the final outcome of political action. Consequently, the quarrel culminates in the following dilemma: Should one grasp what is prakton as a terminus ad quem or rather as a terminus a quo? Needless to say, these two alternatives correspond to the twofold meaning of the term I pointed to earlier.

To decide between these we begin by looking at the political practice Aristotle refers to by using the notion of a decree. The realization of what a decree prescribes, e.g., the erection of a temple, cannot constitute an object over which political phronêsis should watch. In fact, the connection between the decree already stated and the subsequent erection of the temple appropriately concerns production (poiêsis), not action (praxis). Indeed, it is clear that the vague and preliminary description of the temple that the decree eventually includes (by determining the place of the erection or the amount the city should spend, etc.) coincides with the preliminary idea on which the erection of the temple is grounded. The steps from this idea to the temple itself has to be worked out not by politicians but by builders, who, thanks to their technical expertise, are capable of converting this preliminary idea into a concrete plan for a particular temple. By contrast, builders as such do not recognize decrees as something prakton, namely as an end which, were the decision different, might not have existed at all. In their eyes, decrees, far from being the outcome of a deliberation, constitute a pre-given and fixed starting-point or first principle.

The perplexities are only increased when one realizes that T1 implies that the decree is the end of deliberation and the means towards the end of a broader political action—the erection of the temple. In Cooper’s terms, “the erection of a temple is the final action the assembly decided to take”. Where T2 recognizes the gap between the end of a political deliberative action (the decree) and a production (the erection of the temple), T1 discerns a continuity between the preliminary deliberation and the broader political action (the erection of the temple). However, this continuity is hardly convincing, once we consider the issue of whether Aristotle describes decrees as means towards the execution of projects in the polis and whether the erection of a temple might represent a political action, i.e., a responsibility, assumed by the assembly.

Without a doubt, both Aristotle and the Athenian political practice take for granted that decrees are intra-politic ends and not means to the doings they prescribe. The whole Aristotelian discussion of the subject (1137b), by defining decrees as rectifications of the law, highlights the fact that laws are too general to cover the particular cases of justice. Decrees are meant as a means only to the extent that their end consists in the rectification of the law within a legislative context. Decrees can, for example, stimulate further legislative political actions in the narrow sense of the term. On the one hand, the moment decrees claim independence from the law, as though they could replace it, they immediately incite a further political action against an ‘unconstitutional’ decree. On the other hand, decrees occasionally serve as a means whereby the assembly might permit that an exemption clause be passed by the legislators.¹⁰ By contrast, on Cooper’s proposal, one should imagine 6000 Athenians inspecting the erection of a temple whose construction might not finish until after the death of the voters. But no supervision of the execution of decrees, no matter what their content, should be considered a (political) action in the proper sense of the term.¹¹ Consequently, although decrees undoubtedly point somehow to the erection of the temple, they do not point to it by being prakta (but only by being praktika), since the erection of the temple does not constitute a political action (praxis), let alone a political action assumed by the assembly. Within the very context of political actions, above/before decrees lies only the law and under/after decrees, there is nothing. That is to say, the reality of decrees as prakta is established prior to and irrespective of whether and how they might be executed. Decrees are defined as prakta, then, not because they represent, thanks to an eventual relation to a future activity, something to be further acted on, but to the extent that they correspond to the end (political) action has brought forth. Thus, the appropriate translation of the clause “to gar psêphisma prakton” should be “the decree as something that action has (already) brought into being”. I think this is sufficient proof that prakta may be accomplished practical ends in which we recognize the outcome of actions properly so called.

We are now in a better position to understand Aristotle’s own definition of prakton in the Eudemian Ethics:

Prakton has two meanings (since we call prakton both the ends for the sake of which we act and what belongs to action as a means to those ends), for example we term likewise both health and wealth and the actions qua means (prattomena) thereby we reach them, that is, healthy exercise and lucrative business. Besides, it is clear that happiness should be set down as the best of what is prakton for human beings (EE, 1217a 35–40).

At first glance, this passage¹² seems just to make a distinction between ends to be attained and actions as means whereby we reach these ends, and does not explain why prakton may also denote ‘what has been already brought into being through action’. In order to bring out its bearing on this further claim, I will follow Aristotle’s own strategy in NE Book 6, and compare action with production, that is, the conceptual pair prakton versus ‘actions qua means’ (prattomena conceived as constituent means) with the pair ‘things produce-able’ versus ‘things produced’.

What is produce-able or what is under production (poiêton) originates in an idea in the builder’s mind and ends in a product. The product already produced is termed either poiêton or, more frequently, poioumenon,¹³ and represents the only actual retrospective confirmation that the actuality of what is produce-able admits of. The house built is the final product which, so to speak, harbors the reality and the accomplishment of the process of production (Metaphysics, Θ 1050a 22, 28–29). The case of learning is perhaps the most telling Aristotelian example. Actual performances whereby pupils expose their acquired knowledge constitute the only proof that retrospectively justifies and confirms the process of learning as such. Furthermore, the process and its f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Aristotle and Kant: Actions within the Moral World
• Part II: Phenomenological Voices and their Dissonances
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Passages