Phantasia in Aristotle's Ethics

Reception in the Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin Traditions

Jakob Leth Fink

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781350028012
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle suggests that a moral principle 'does not immediately appear to the man who has been corrupted by pleasure or pain'. Phantasia in Aristotle's Ethics investigates his claim and its reception in ancient and medieval Aristotelian traditions, including Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin. While contemporary commentators on the Ethics have overlooked Aristotle's remark, his ancient and medieval interpreters made substantial contributions towards a clarification of the claim's meaning and relevance. Even when the hazards of transmission have left no explicit comments on this particular passage, as is the case in the Arabic tradition, medieval responders still offer valuable interpretations of phantasia (appearance) and its role in ethical deliberation and action. This volume casts light on these readings, showing how the distant voices from the medieval Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin Aristotelian traditions still contribute to contemporary debate concerning phantasia, motivation and deliberation in Aristotle's Ethics.

1

Introduction

Jakob Leth Fink and Jessica Moss

Scope and aims of the volume

As originally conceived, this volume was to be devoted to a single sentence in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, eleven words altogether (EN 6.5.1140b17–18). Here, Aristotle puts forward a remarkable claim concerning the appearance (phantasia) of moral principles. The chapters were to describe the reception of this string of words among a number of interpreters from the Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin Aristotelian traditions from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and ascertain its philosophical merits. But it soon became clear that this narrow focus on one sentence would have to be widened to a more general focus on phantasia in Aristotle’s Ethics.

Due to the hazards of transmission, there is simply not enough material devoted to the sentence in the Ancient Greek, Arabic and Hebrew traditions. Nevertheless, these traditions do contain interesting material concerning phantasia more generally. As a result, the present volume discusses the relevance of phantasia in Aristotle’s Ethics generally, while never losing sight of the one claim concerning the appearance of moral principles from Nicomachean Ethics 6.5. The aims remain the same. They are to describe the reception of phantasia in Aristotle’s Ethics among ancient and medieval Aristotelians – as far as possible with this one sentence in view – and ascertain its philosophical merits.

It might seem odd to focus on just one sentence out of the entire Nicomachean Ethics. However, from Aspasius in the Imperial Period of Rome to Joseph b. Shem-Tob in Renaissance Spain, commentators on the Nicomachean Ethics proceeded by singling out passages and scrutinizing the argument in them. So the present volume merely adopts an approach found in its sources. This has the advantage of making otherwise unwieldy material, spanning four language traditions and more than a thousand years, manageable. Since our commentators basically follow the same approach, their interpretations are actually directed at the same problem posed in fairly similar terms. This gives a reasonable coherence to the discussions of these very different commentators.

But obviously this focus comes at a price. The volume covers neither the Nicomachean Ethics in its entirety nor the reception of it in the entire Aristotelian tradition. Far from it. It covers a specific topic, phantasia, and a single passage as interpreted by a select number of interpreters across the Aristotelian tradition. Readers who wish to know more about the general reception of Aristotle’s Ethics are advised to consult the survey literature on this subject.¹

Our focal point sentence appears in the chapter on phronêsis (‘practical wisdom’, ‘prudence’). Aristotle says:

But the principle does not immediately appear (euthus ou phainetai archê) to the person who has been corrupted by pleasure or pain. (EN 6.5.1140b17–18; trans. J. Fink)²

On a straightforward reading, Aristotle seems to say that an agent of a certain kind suffers from what might be called moral blindness. The agent lacks a certain sort of moral perception, it seems. But on further reflection, the claim provokes a number of questions. Is it a principle (archê) of action or of deliberation that does not appear; is it a principle that or a principle why? What is the force of immediately (euthus), and how can pleasure and pain corrupt an agent’s moral phantasia? What kind of moral agent does Aristotle have in mind, an incontinent or a vicious one, and why is this corrupted agent introduced here in the chapter on phronêsis? Finally, and directly addressing the theme of this volume, what does appear (phainetai) mean? What is the role of phantasia in Aristotle’s moral psychology?

It is slightly surprising, perhaps, that standard commentators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their contemporary colleagues do not attach importance to the occurrence of phainesthai here. Sometimes a mere paraphrase is given with a reference to Plato’s Cratylus in explanation of a strange piece of etymology in the immediate context; and where an interpretation is suggested, it takes phantasia, usually with no further argument, in a predominantly intellectual sense; that is, they take Aristotle to be saying that the person corrupted by pleasure and pain does not have the right intellectual grasp of the starting point.³ Among Aristotle’s medieval interpreters the situation is different. They share the emphasis on the intellectual aspect of phantasia, but expand on how this is to be spelled out in terms, for example, of the practical syllogism or the ‘eye of the soul’ mentioned by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics 6.12. So they support by arguments what most commentators of the last decades seem simply to assume.

The editor’s ambition in publishing this volume is twofold: (1) to present the ideas and observations found in the Aristotelian tradition as worthwhile additions, or even challenges, to contemporary scholarship on Aristotle’s moral psychology, and also (2) to challenge the basic tenet of the ancient and medieval interpretations themselves: the focus on phantasia in the Ethics as something predominantly intellectual.

Phantasia in Aristotle’s Ethics: Contemporary Perspectives

Our sentence speaks of how things appear (phainetai) to an agent. How should we understand this notion? In Greek, as in English, talk of how things appear can be broad, indicating how we think or are inclined to think things are, or narrowly perceptual, indicating how things look or otherwise appear to sensory perception. Moreover, in Greek as in English talk of appearance can be committal, non-committal (sometimes called ‘epistemic’ and ‘non-epistemic’) or even sceptical: sometimes ‘It appears to me that p’ entails that I believe that p, while sometimes it is neutral and sometimes suggests that I doubt that p – that it merely appears to me to be so. How do we decide what use Aristotle has in mind here?

It may seem that we are without guidance here, but in fact Aristotle’s Ethics contains valuable resources to help us, for this is far from the only passage in which it discusses the appearance of the principle (archê). Consider the following:

Practical syllogisms are equipped with a principle: ‘Since the end and the best is of such a sort’. And this does not appear (phainetai) except to the good person. For vice perverts, and makes us be deceived about the practical principles. (EN 6.12.1144a31–36; trans. J. Moss)⁴

Should we say that what is wished for without qualification is the good, but for each person the apparent (phainomenon) good? …. For the virtuous person discerns each thing rightly, and in each case the truth appears (phainetai) to them. (EN 3.4.1113a23–33; trans. J. Moss)⁵

And suppose someone said that everyone longs for the apparent (phainomenon) good, but they are not in control of the phantasia: whatever sort of person one is, in that way the end [i.e. principle – see 1114b31] appears (phainetai) to one? … Whether then the end does not appear (phainetai) in whatever way to each person by nature, but is partly due to himself, or whether the end is natural … vice will be no less voluntary [than virtue]. (EN 3.5.1114a31–b20; trans. J. Moss)⁶

All these passages, like ours, speak of how things appear to people of different characters, and in particular of how the starting point or first principle or end or goal of action appears. The language is strikingly similar between these passages, and so it would be desirable to give a univocal interpretation of ‘appears’ across them. What interpretation should that be? Does Aristotle think that the principle of action appears to us quasi-perceptually? Intellectually? Commitally? Non-commitally?

This is not a question that has received much attention, but it is one worth pressing. Aristotle’s texts give us resources for two very different ways of answering it, which will in turn have very different repercussions for our understanding of his moral psychology and moral epistemology.

First, there is what most readers have probably assumed as the default interpretation: there is no special significance to his choice of phainetai here, despite its frequent repetition; Aristotle simply means to capture in broad and neutral terms the notion that the vicious person does not have the right view of the principle – the right idea or conception or belief.

Second, there is a possibility that is usually overlooked – Aristotle may have in mind a narrow or technical sense of phainetai closely connected to a notion he develops in the psychological works: phantasia.

Phantasia is, very briefly, a close cousin of perception. To have a phantasia of something is to have a quasi-perceptual appearance of it, one traceable to an actual perception of that thing or something similar (see DA 3.3, Insomn., Mem. and Section ‘Phantasia and phainesthai’ in Chapter 7 of this volume). Phantasia is active in after-images, hallucinations, misperceptions, dreams and memory; it also seems to play a crucial role in locomotion, and in all thought. It is found in most non-human animals, and in humans its primary locus is the non-intellectual, perceptive part of the soul. Aristotle beyond doubt sometimes uses phainesthai to indicate an appearance to phantasia; is that what he is doing in our passages about how the principle appears?

Our answer to this question will have very significant consequences for our interpretation of Aristotle’s moral epistemology, and thereby for his moral psychology and his ethics. Aristotle clearly thinks that bad moral character interferes with one’s grasp of moral principles. Does he however think that this failing is in the first instance intellectual – that a bad character directly corrupts our powers of moral reasoning or intellectual intuition? This is a possibility at least left open, and perhaps strongly suggested, by the broad, neutral reading of his talk of appearances. Or does he instead think that the failing is primarily a failing of the non-intellectual, emotional part of the soul – a failure in how we perceive and have quasi-perceptual appearances (phantasiai) of moral qualities? More generally, does he think judgements of moral principles are the province of reason, with emotions playing merely a supporting conative or affective role, or does he think that the emotions play a crucial role in moral cognition even of our ends?

There has not been much attention to the question of how to interpret Aristotle’s appearance talk in these passages.⁷ There is however extensive debate over a parallel thesis about a closely related topic, and we can use that debate to illuminate this one. We have in mind the interpretation of appearance words in Aristotle’s account of emotions in the Rhetoric. Here too Aristotle uses variants on phainesthai and phantasia in connection with things appearing good, just as he does in our passages on the principle. And here there are two clear camps in the secondary literature. Phantastic interpretations take the appearance talk to be narrow and technical: Aristotle is speaking of exercises of phantasia. Intellectual interpretations by contrast take the appearance talk to be broad and non-technical: Aristotle is talking about how we believe things to be, and uses appearance words to emphasize that the beliefs that play a role in emotions are vivid, or subjective.⁸ The strongest arguments for the phantastic account note similarities between Aristotle’s descriptions of the appearances that play a role in the emotions and those that he describes in the psychological works as literal phantasiai. The strongest arguments for the intellectual account note problems in spelling out the notion of phantasia of value-qualities (by contrast with sensory ones), and they note reasons to take the relevant representations as intellectual, tied to beliefs rather than non-intellectual appearances. Let us see how these considerations bear on our present topic. In support of the phantastic interpretation of our passages, we can note:

1. In the passages which discuss how the principle appears, quoted above, Aristotle leans heavily on perceptual analogies, indicating that the appearances in question are quasi-perceptual. The virtuous person ‘sees’ the truth; we grasp the end as if through a ‘sense of sight’. Most compellingly, virtuous discernments of value are like healthy discernments of the bitter, sweet, hot and heavy – paradigm perceptible qualities. A sick body distorts not (or not directly) one’s intellec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• The Ancient Greek Tradition
• The Arabic Tradition
• The Medieval Greek Tradition
• The Medieval Latin Tradition
• The Medieval Hebrew Tradition
• Aristotle and The Aristotelian Tradition
• Bibliography
• Index Locorum
• Index Nominum
• Index Rerum
• Imprint