University of Kansas, Fall 2003
Philosophy 672: History of Ethics
Ben Eggleston—eggleston@ku.edu
Class notes: Aristotle
The following notes correspond
roughly to what we cover, including at least a portion of what I put on the
board or the screen, in class. In places they may be more or less comprehensive than what we
actually cover in class, and should not be taken as a substitute for your own
observations and records of what goes on in class.
The following outline is designed to
be, and is in some Web browsers, collapsible: by clicking on the heading for a
section, you can collapse that section or, if it’s already collapsed, make it
expanded again. If you want to print some but not all of this outline, collapse
the parts you don’t want to print (so that just their top-level headings
remain), and then click here to print this frame.
-
historical background of Aristotle and the Nicomachean Ethics
- Aristotle’s life
- born in 384 B.C.
- student of Plato, in Athens, from 367 to 347
- some traveling, including a stint as tutor to Alexander (the Great)
- returned to Athens in 334 and founded philosophical academy
- died in 322
- Nicomachean Ethics
- apparently not authored by Aristotle as a freestanding book; more like
lecture notes requiring some filling in by subsequent translators (e.g.,
Irwin)
- apparently so named because it was dedicated to, or compiled by,
Aristotle’s son Nicomachus
- survives into modern times via many copyings and translations
-
book I, chapters 1–12
- the good
- preliminary remarks
- The main idea of this book is what the good for humans is—what it is for a
human life to go well, and what it is for a community of humans to do well.
- Before going further into this question, we need to note some of the basic
features of the way Aristotle approaches it.
- a practical question
- First, Aristotle intends this question to be taken very practically, as a
question about how to live. It’s not a question of purely theoretical
interest, like (perhaps) the question of what a number is or (somewhat more
practical but still not really practical) the question of what human beings
would be like if they were ideally constructed instead of the limited beings
that they are.
- When Aristotle asks what the human good is, he means to be asking a
question whose answer will enable him and his intended audience to live
better: literally to make their lives go better. (See especially book I,
chapter 3, section 6, as well as book II,
chapter 2, section 1.)
- living well, not living “morally”
- Second, there is a distinction taken for granted by modern moral
philosophers, and by modern people generally, that is basically absent from Aristotle’s
ethics. This is the distinction between (1) what is good for a person, without
regard to whether it’s morally acceptable for this person to possess or enjoy
this good, and (2) what is good overall, from the moral point of view. Indeed
morality is typically thought of by moderns—not just in moral philosophy but
also in everyday thinking—as a set of norms that adjudicate the conflicts that
arise when individuals press their self-interested claims on one another, and
circumstances do not permit all of these self-interested claims to be
satisfied. (To take a trivial example: I want the whole cake, and you do, too;
so we take up the moral point of view in order to divide the cake
appropriately—that is, to reconcile this conflict
between my self-interest and yours.)
- Aristotle, however, observes no such
distinction. There is just living well, and we moderns have to take
this as covering both the point of view of self-interest and the point of view
of morality.
- reliance on common opinion
- To answer the question of what it is to live well, Aristotle begins with
what people commonly think about what it is to live well, and tries to make
common ways of thinking about it deeper and more rigorous.
- He does not take any sort of “top-down” approach.
- happiness as the good
- happiness or flourishing
- Aristotle proposes that the human good is happiness. Or, at least, what
Aristotle said is often translated as ‘happiness’.
- But we should understand ‘happiness’ here, and throughout our discussion
of Aristotle, to have a lot of the same meaning as ‘flourishing’. (It’s not
just a state of mind, or a feeling of enjoyment or contentment.) To keep this
notion in view, I’ll use the phrase 'happiness or flourishing'.
- two reasons for regarding happiness or flourishing as the good
- completeness
- First, happiness or flourishing is complete, in the sense of containing other things:
when we want other things (horseshoes for our horses, or victory in battle, or
whatever), we want them not for their own sakes, but in order to be happy or
to flourish.
- This completeness is something we would expect of whatever is truly the human
good.
- self-sufficiency
- Second, happiness or flourishing is self-sufficient, in the sense that
once we have happiness or are flourishing, we don’t want other things:
happiness or flourishing is enough; it does not need to be supplemented by
other things.
- This, too, is something we would expect of whatever is truly the human
good.
- what happiness is
- some specification needed
- So we have seen that the human good consists of happiness or flourishing:
this fits the bill, the criteria of the human good. But what does happiness
consist of? What does it mean for a human to flourish? The very idea of being
happy or of flourishing is so vague that some more-definite specification is
badly needed.
- Aristotle supplies this more-definite specification in two different (but
compatible) ways in this book.
- common opinion
- First, there is the consideration of what people commonly believe
constitutes a happy or flourishing life, in chapter 5.
- Some people think that such a life is simply one of pleasure. Aristotle
rejects this, saying that such a life may be proper to grazing animals, but
not to such advanced beings as humans beings.
- Some people think that such a life is one of honor. But, Aristotle says,
these people really want not just to be honored, but to be honored by people
whose opinions matter to them. That is, it seems that they want to be
deserving of honor, or to possess virtue. But possessing virtue is not enough
for happiness or flourishing, since a virtuous person may suffer great hardships.
- Some people think that such a life is one of thought. Aristotle has little
to say about this here, but he says more about it later.
- the function argument
- Aristotle’s second way of answering the question of what happiness or
flourishing is comes in chapter 7.
- In this chapter Aristotle considers the function of a human being.
(Thus, the argument of this chapter is known as “the function argument.”) The motivation for this is that
what it the good is for any being can be ascertained by
finding out what that thing’s function is: then, its good will consist in its
fulfilling its function. So if we can find out what the function of a human
being is, then we will know what the good for a human being is.
- It may seem odd that Aristotle is inquiring here into the function of
humans, in order to find out what the good for humans is. What about the
fact/value divide? For
Aristotle, there is no such divide between facts and values, or between
science and morality. Ethics is a
practical inquiry just as, say, gardening is; and just as you look at how
plants actually operate in order to figure out how to garden well, so you look
at how humans actually operate in order to figure out how to live well. Of
course, there is a lot more to be said both for and against the fact–value
distinction, but this is at least the gist, I
think, of Aristotle’s approach.
- To find out what the function of a human being is, Aristotle looks at what
is distinctive about humans: “activity . . . in accord with reason or
requiring reason.” (One might object to the procedure of ascertaining
something’s function by identifying what’s distinctive about it. Would the
function of humans have anything less to do with reason if not only humans but
also some other beings than humans had the same reasoning capacities as
humans, and what made humans unique was some obscure non-reasoning ability,
like the ability to balance chairs on their chins? Surely that wouldn’t be
enough to make balancing
chairs humans’ function!)
- Given that the function of a human being is activity involving reason, the good for a human is to act in accord with reason
well, or activity involving reason and in accord with virtue. So this is how happiness (or flourishing)
should be understood. Note that being “in accord with virtue” is to be taken
to mean something like excellently, not something like in accord
with morality.
- further support from common opinion
- a note on Aristotle’s method
- So we have a conception of the human good as happiness or flourishing, and
a conception of happiness or flourishing (for humans) as activity involving
reason and in accord with virtue. In chapter 8, Aristotle claims that some
confirmation of these results can be found by considering what people commonly
believe about the human good.
- (Notice here an important element of Aristotle’s method: an appeal to what
is commonly believed. Whereas modern moral philosophy takes, as its context,
domestic strife and international conflict, and thus cannot very often just
say, “Well, everybody knows that such-and-such,” Aristotle wrote in a
community with a fair measure of agreement on basic values. As a result, we
find in Aristotle’s writing much less concern with anticipating every
objection that may arise, or defending every claim with all the arguments that
can be mustered for it.)
- three supportive considerations
- First, it is commonly believed that there are three kinds of goods—of the
mind, of the body, and external—and that goods of the mind are the best.
- Second, it is commonly believed that the the good person lives well and
does well.
- Third, it is commonly believed that the human good is a pleasant thing for
someone to have.
- some misconceptions corrected
- Happiness or flourishing does not consist of just pleasure. For a pleasurable life in
accord with reason and virtue would be better than a pleasurable life lacking
reason and virtue; therefore happiness or flourishing requires these extra ingredients.
- Happiness or flourishing is not ensured by virtue (capability of
excellence) alone. Happiness or flourishing requires rational activity, and
misfortune beyond the control of virtue can impede rational
activity. So you need not only virtue, but the conditions conducive to
rational activity, in order to be happy or to flourish.
- Happiness or flourishing is not a momentary or episodic thing; rather, it extends over a
complete life. So it depends on having been brought up well, and requires
having acquired certain habits. You can't be virtuous just by deciding to, in
the way that you can bowl by the rules of bowling just by deciding to
(assuming you have some way of knowing what the rules of bowling are). And if
you lack virtue, then you can’t really be happy or flourish, though you might
have a pleasant existence like that of a pampered grazing animal.
- Your happiness or flourishing is not settled entirely by what you do when you’re alive.
It is also influenced by what happens to your friends and descendents after
you die.
- the section on Plato
- In chapter 6 of the book, Aristotle argues against taking a Platonic
approach to the question of what the good is.
- Basically, this means arguing that we have to start with what we know of
specific instances of the good and work up to a grand idea of the good (or as
much of a single idea as the facts allow), instead of trying to arrive at some
grand idea through abstract reason (as a Platonic approach would involve) and
then apply it downward to specific areas of life.
- But we will not be further concerned with this chapter.
- book I, chapter 13, and book II
- two kinds of virtue of the soul (book I, chapter 13)
- In the last chapter of book I, Aristotle discusses the virtues—in
particular, the virtues of the soul, since these are what happiness is
concerned with.
- Some of the soul’s nonrational parts or activities do not concern us, such
as the parts having to do with digestion and growth and so on.
- But the soul has other apparently nonrational parts that do concern us,
since there are parts—having to do with appetites and desires, for example—that do not themselves engage in reasoning but do obey or disobey, enforce
or flout, the
dictates of reason.
- There are two kinds of virtue of the soul: virtues of thought, such as
wisdom, comprehension, and prudence; and virtues of character, such as
generosity and temperance.
- how virtues of character arise (book II, chapters 1–2)
- through action and habit
- Unlike virtues of thought, which arise mostly through teaching, virtues of
character arise through action and habit. What kind of action and habit does
it take for a person to acquire a virtue of character? Precisely that sort of
action and habit that the person would exhibit if he or she already possessed
the virtue in question.
- For example, one acquires the virtue of generosity by
doing the acts that he or she would do if he or she already possessed the
virtue of generosity. You become virtuous by doing virtuous acts.
- neither by nature nor against nature
- Closely related to this view of the development of the virtues is the
thesis that the virtues arise neither by nature or against nature; rather,
each person is naturally capable of becoming virtuous.
- But each person
is also naturally capable of becoming vicious, by engaging in and becoming
habituated to vicious behavior.
- the importance of one’s upbringing
- Here we should stop to dwell on the importance that Aristotle accords a
person’s upbringing in whether or not he or she is virtuous, because it is
another distinctively non-modern aspect of Aristotle’s approach. The story
from just above is, in effect, that performing actions of certain kinds is
both necessary and sufficient for becoming the corresponding sort of person.
This means that if someone is raised badly—raised so that they become
habituated to laziness, thoughtlessness, unfairness, etc.—then he or she is
very likely going to have those vices. Only if you’re raised in the right way,
Aristotle means for us to understand, can you, now, be virtuous.
- Now from the modern point of view this may look elitist: as if Aristotle
is saying that being good is the entitlement of only those few who are
privileged to have proper upbringings, and that others who lack such favorable
formative environments cannot be good (at least, not without a lot of work in
unlearning bad habits and learning new ones). In response, Aristotelians are
generally wont to point out two things: first, being good is hard, and we
should not be surprised if we need the help of others—e.g., the people who
raise us—in order to achieve it. And second, you don’t need a highly
privileged upbringing; all you need is an upbringing in which you’re taught to
be honest and to treat other people kindly and so forth. Of course there is
much more to be said about this, but this much is worth noting at this point.
- virtue not just a matter of behavior
- The fact that someone possesses a certain virtue can’t be determined
simply from looking at the content of their actions. Certain things are true
of people who act virtuously, above and beyond what can be discerned from
examining their behavior.
- want to act virtuously (chapter 3)
- The exercise of the
virtues is pleasant to the agent. If someone performs a generous act but is
pained by it, then he or she is not really generous (i.e., does not really
possess the virtue of generosity), and has not really acted generously (though
we may not be able to tell this from the outside, if the person pretends to
have enjoyed it in order to hide his or her lack of generosity).
- example from Urmson: Brown and Smith standing up for what’s right
- Still, the person may be working on acquiring the virtue of generosity,
and may be making progress towards this end by performing generous acts.
- three criteria (chapter 4)
- The agent knows he or she is acting virtuously.
- The agent must decide to perform a virtuous action on account of its being virtuous.
- The agent must act in this way from a firm and unchanging state.
- disanalogy with crafts
- Note, then, the difference between being virtuous and being good at some
craft. In the case of crafts, we have an external standard for whether someone
is good at it: we look at the piece of furniture that’s been made, or we
listen to the song that’s been played, and if those products are good, then we
say that the person is good at the corresponding craft, no matter how
unorthodox his or her technique may be. In short, with crafts, the proof is in
the pudding.
- But acting virtuously is not like this. We don’t have an
independent idea of the kinds of actions we would like to see performed, and
then just use that idea in order to figure out what the virtues consist of. (A
consequentialist might come up with an account of the virtues in this way, but
Aristotle does not.) Instead, the virtues are themselves states of excellence
for humans, and their manifestation in action, while generally beneficial, is
not what gives them all of their value. This is why acting virtuously requires
certain things about the agent to be true, as well as certain kinds of outward
behavior.
- virtues not feelings (chapter 5)
- Virtues are not feelings like anger and fear, nor are
they capacities like the capacity for anger or the capacity for fear.
- Rather,
they’re states.
- moderation (chapter 6)
- relative to the person
- The mean must, of course, be relative to the person, not to the external
circumstances. For example, if you can each anywhere between zero and twenty
pounds of beef for dinner, the mean with respect to the beef itself may be ten
pounds, but the mean with respect to your own digestive capacities may be
something more like a third of a pound.
- So it might make more sense to say
that what being virtuous has to do with the mean is not (1) choosing something
intermediate—unless understood in the way just described—but (2) having a
disposition to choose that is, as a disposition, intermediate between two
more-extreme dispositions.
- circularity?
- Here is the right place to pause to note an important structural feature
of Aristotle’s account of virtuous action: what can reasonably be called a
sort of circularity in Aristotle’s ethics.
- We will see that the modern normative
ethicists we will study—Mill and Kant—sought to provide a way of understanding
morality in non-moral terms: a way of describing and identifying moral actions
that did not itself presuppose any antecedent moral insight on the part of the
agent. Mill, for example, very explicitly says that he’s trying to come up
with a test of right and wrong, without relying on the assumption that we
already know what’s right and wrong. And for Kant it is a pretty dry logical
exercise, not requiring any distinctively moral thinking, to arrive at
correct moral judgments. Thus both Mill and Kant consciously sought to come up
with a non-circular account of morality.
- But Aristotle has no such aspiration,
and this first place this becomes important is here in his discussion of the
mean, relativized to the agent instead of to the external circumstances. For
in response to this discussion, one is tempted to say, “Well, if I already
knew how to find the mean for me—how to avoid too much and too little of
things for me—then I would already know how to perform virtuous acts. Where’s
the account of how to find the mean for me? Where’s the algorithm that I can
use, if I don’t know anything about virtuous actions, in order to perform
them?” In response to this, Aristotle would say something like, “Sorry, you cannot have a
recipe for performing virtuous acts if you don’t already have any idea how to
do them. My account of ethics does not attempt to reduce the moral to the
non-moral, as it seems to have become fashionable among the moderns to do.
Instead, it speaks to people who already have some idea of how to live, and
offers them a deeper understanding of this important question. My account may
be circular, but it is a very large and informative circle, a much larger one
than people normally comprehend in their everyday thinking.” (On this point
see book II, chapter 9, section 8.)
- With this in view let us revisit the question of how to become good, which
we considered earlier in the context of habituation. For now it might seem
that becoming good not only requires a lot of practice, but requires the sort
of practice that is accessible only to those who already know how to do it.
But this is a bit of an exaggeration. Here, in rough outline, is how Aristotle
thinks that virtuous people got that way:
- They were raised by people who
taught them about honesty, fairness, and so on, and who encouraged, or
pressured, or bribed, them to behave in these ways—parents have all sorts of
ways of getting children to do things.
- They gradually got the hang of
these concepts, and came to be motivated to exhibit them in behavior for their
own sake, not for parental approval or whatever.
- Now they act in accordance with the virtues, and do so on purpose, and
from a commitment not easily shaken.
- So the process of becoming good is not that mysterious, despite the fact
that a person can’t be good just by waking up one morning and deciding to be,
and despite the fact that there are no non-moral criteria that can be used to
conclusively identify virtuous acts.
- examples (chapter 7)
- The various virtues fit into the framework of means, excesses, and
deficiencies, and although there are some cases in which not all three have
names, there are some cases in which they do.
- cowardice, bravery, rashness
- ungenerosity, generosity, wastefulness
- self-deprecation, truthfulness, boastfulness
- boorishness, wit, buffoonery
- (Still to come: justice and the virtues that belong to reason. The virtues
mentioned here are mainly for illustration.)
- choosing on which side to err (chapter 9)
- When trying to achieve the mean of a certain kind, you have to take into
account which extreme you’re more prone to, and you may need to aim for the
opposite extreme, at least to some extent, in order to hit the mean.
- For example, a cowardly person might need to aim for some rashness just in
order to perform a brave act.
- book III, chapters 1–5
- actions in which virtue and vice are on display
- Such actions must, of course, be voluntary. What does it take for an
action to be voluntary? Aristotle maintains that one acts involuntarily
only when one is physically forced (as when someone puts your hand on a gun
and uses it to pull the trigger) or when one is ignorant of some particular
about what one is doing (as when you think you think you are throwing water on
a fire but you’re actually throwing gasoline on it, because you didn’t realize
there was gasoline in the glass). As a result, Aristotle has a pretty broad
notion of the voluntary, including some things that people might say they were
“forced” to do (and thus did not do voluntarily), like throwing cargo out of a
ship in order to keep it from sinking. It might make more sense to think of
what Aristotle is talking about here as the intentional rather than the
voluntary.
- But not all voluntary actions are ones in which virtue and vice are on
display. Rather, this is
true of only those actions that result from decision, which Aristotle regards
as a subset of voluntary actions. For an action to be the result of decision,
it must be the result of deliberation: its particulars must have been
considered (correctly), and it must have been selected as choiceworthy.
(Again, the notion of intentional action helps here.) These,
Aristotle says, are the actions that reflect virtue and vice.
- responsibility for one’s own virtues and vices
- The second main point of these five chapters has to do with the way in
which virtues and vices are themselves voluntary (i.e., voluntarily chosen).
Aristotle maintains that we’re responsible for whatever virtues and vices we
have, since they are the product of actions done voluntarily in the past.
(Involuntary actions—pulling a trigger because you’re forced to or
accidentally adding fuel to a fire, or whatever—don’t instill virtues and
vices.)
- Of course virtues and vices are not under our control in quite the same
way as actions are, since we’re in control of actions from beginning to end,
whereas once a virtue or vice is formed or is getting formed, it’s a little
like the train has already left the station. (Indeed Aristotle uses the
metaphor of the stone having left the hand that threw it.) With some work we
can undo what we’ve done; but also, what we’ve done now has a momentum of its
own. But while virtues and vice are less under our direct control than our
actions are, we’re still responsible for them.
- book III, chapters 6–12
- overview
- In these chapters Aristotle discusses the virtues of bravery and
temperance, and their related vices, in some detail.
- These are the first of several virtues of character that Aristotle
discusses from here through book V.
- bravery
- mean between cowardice and rashness
- Bravery can be understood as being intermediate between being cowardly and
being rash.
- The cowardly person fears things he shouldn't fear, and fears things too
much; while the rash person is not fearful enough.
- appropriate fear
- It is not true that the brave person fears nothing.
- On the contrary, there are certain things it is proper to fear, such as
getting a bad reputation or acting badly oneself, so even brave people fear
these things. Fearing these things doesn’t make one a coward.
- wanting to act bravely
- We saw that Aristotle says that anyone who
has a particular virtue typically wants to do the actions that are
characteristic of it. It is especially important, when thinking about bravery,
not to make the mistake of thinking that Aristotle means that someone
with a particular person always finds it pleasurable to exhibit that
virtue.
- The brave person needn't actually be enjoying himself when he act
bravely. But he will do it because he wants to, of because he thinks it's
worth doing, not because he’s bribed to do it or because he’s forced to do it.
- not quite bravery
- People compelled by their superiors may perform brave actions, but they
are not brave, because they act from the desire for reward or the fear of
punishment.
- People moved by “spirit” may perform brave actions, but they are not
brave, because they do not (knowingly and deliberately) choose brave actions
because they are worth doing.
- Similarly for people moved by the desire for revenge, or people with
unjustified confidence in their abilities.
- temperance
- This is concerned with pleasures, and to some degree
pains, of the body, but not the soul.
- This is concerned not with all the pleasures of the body, but
only those that are shared with other animals, such as touch and taste.
- circularity again
- One thing to notice in Aristotle’s discussion of both of these virtues is
the re-emergence of the “circularity” we saw earlier (in connection with book
II). For in regard to both bravery and temperance, Aristotle does not provide
any algorithm for using non-moral properties of actions to identify the brave
and temperate ones: rather, he says that the brave person is the one who fears
the right things, in the right circumstances, in the right way, etc.—and
Aristotle makes no apologies for characterizing the virtue of bravery in terms
of actions with the “right” properties.
- The way to read these sections is not
as an analysis, in non-moral terms, of any virtues or any virtuous actions,
but as a characterization of certain structural features of the virtues: for
example, whether an action is virtuous depends on many different aspects of it
(object, circumstances, motivation, etc.), and the action isn’t virtuous
unless all these are just right. What it means for all these to be just right
depends, of course, on each particular case.
- book IV
- In this book Aristotle discusses some related virtues: (1) generosity and
(2) magnificence;
and (3) the virtue concerned with small honors (lacking its own name) and (4)
magnanimity. Since magnificence is, in effect, generosity on a large scale,
not everyone has the resources to be magnificent; similarly, since magnanimity
is concerned with great honors, this isn’t relevant to everyone, but everyone
can be generous and appropriately interested in small honors.
- One passage important from a methodological point of view is chapter 5,
section 13, where Aristotle says that there’s no precise standard for when
someone has acted generously, or whatever, “for the judgment depends on
particular cases, and [we make it] by perception.” This is similar to a remark
he makes in book II, chapter 9, section 8, noted above.
- In chapters 6–8, Aristotle discusses friendliness, truthfulness, and wit,
and clarifies the relations among them in chapter 8, section 12.
- In chapter 9, Aristotle discusses shame. This, he says, is not a virtue,
but a feeling; and feeling it on the right occasions (i.e., when you’ve done
something bad) does not make you virtuous, since in order for that to happen,
you must have already acted disgracefully.
- book V: justice
- two kinds of justice (chapters 1–2)
- Aristotle arrives at an understanding of justice by considering injustice.
- He says that there are two main kinds of injustice: (1) being lawless and
(2) being overreaching and unfair. So justice involves obeying the law and not
overreaching or being unfair. But these are not the same thing; rather, they
reflect an ambiguity in the Greek word that is translated as ‘justice’ (an
ambiguity that is also found, though perhaps to not as great an extent, in our
own notion of justice).
- Irwin translates Aristotle’s distinction between these as “general”
justice and “special” justice.
- general justice
- Because general justice requires conformity to law, Aristotle regards this
as “complete virtue in relation to another” (or, we might say, complete virtue
in relation to others) (chapter 1, section 15) and as “the whole, not a part,
of virtue” (chapter 1, section 19).
- His assumption here seems to be that the laws can be counted on to be
well-designed (i.e., to require that people behave well towards one another);
obviously this seems open to doubt.
- special justice
- justice in distribution (chapter 3)
- concerned with persons’ receiving their fair shares
- equal shares to equals, unequal shares to unequals, in proportion to their
inequality
- Of course, opinions differ as to what counts as equality or inequality:
citizenship, wealth, birth, virtue. Ultimately, though, it’s just a matter of
mathematical proportion.
- justice in rectification (chapter 4)
- two kinds of transactions involved
- voluntary transactions
- examples: buying, selling, loaning, etc.
- Aristotle seems to be concerned with what sort of compensation is due to
the first party when the second party doesn’t do what he or she agreed to do
(pay a bill, etc.)
- involuntary transactions
- via stealth: burglary, adultery, poisoning
- via force: assault, kidnapping, murder
- Aristotle’s solution
- compensation—restore status quo
- problems
- occasional impossibility of compensation
- lack of deterrence
- justice in exchange (chapter 5)
- concerned with what constitutes a fair exchange
- remarks on using currency to facilitate exchanges
- incipient theory of markets, but little guidance as to fairness in
markets
- concludes with remarks on justice and the mean
- justice not related to the mean as virtues are supposed to be (in terms of
a state of moderation)
- justice related to the mean in terms of giving others the right amount
- book VI: virtues of thought
- theory and practice (chapters 1–3)
- parts of the soul
- nonrational part
- rational part
- scientific part
- rationally calculating part
- acknowledgment of circularity (chapter 1, section 2)
- understanding both in terms of truth (chapter 2)
- scientific part: to assert (or believe) what is true
- rationally calculating part: to pursue what true (or correct) reason
advises
- five virtues of thought (chapter 3, section 1)
- craft knowledge
- scientific knowledge
- prudence
- wisdom
- understanding
- scientific knowledge (chapter 3)
- deals with things that cannot be otherwise (section 2)
- is teachable (section 3)
- craft knowledge (chapter 4)
- deals with things that can be otherwise (section 1)
- concerns production, not action (sections 2–3)
- prudence (chapters 5 and 8)
- deals with “living well in general” (chapter 5, section 1)
- concerns action, not production (chapter 5, section 4)
- the same state as political science (chapter 8, section 1) and household
science (chapter 8, section 3)
- connection between these manifestations of prudence (chapter 8, section 4)
- need for experience (chapter 8, section 5)
- understanding (chapter 6)
- like scientific knowledge, deals with what cannot be otherwise
- unlike scientific knowledge, deals with “the principles of what is
scientifically known”
- wisdom (chapter 7)
- both “virtue in a craft” and “the most exact [form] of scientific
knowledge” (sections 1–2)
- “understanding plus scientific knowledge” (section 3)
- unlike prudence, not species-specific or deliberation-centered
- prudence and wisdom (chapter 12)
- circularity (sections 1 and 7)
- each the virtue of one of the two rational parts of the soul (section 4)
- book VII, chapters 1–10: incontinence
- introductory points (chapter 1)
- It helps to imagine the six states along a continuum from best to worst.
- “divine” virtue
- virtue
- continence
- incontinence
- vice
- bestiality
- a note on method (section 5)
- continence and incontinence characterized (section 6)
- how it is possible to (know and still) act incontinently (chapter 3)
- Socrates had claimed that it is not possible to act against one’s better
judgment—that apparently incontinent people must really be ignorant of things
relevant to their situations.
- having knowledge without attending to it (section 5)
- having knowledge in the way that sleeping or drunk people do (sections 7
and 12)
- simple incontinence vs. incontinence about various things (chapter 4)
- Simple incontinence is about the same pleasures and pains as intemperance
(section 4).
- It is also o.k. to say, by analogy, that someone is incontinent about
other things (section 6).
- why intemperance is worse than incontinence (chapters 7–8)
- It takes less to get the intemperate person to indulge than the
incontinent one (chapter 7, section 3).
- “the intemperate person is incurable, and the incontinent curable”
(chapter 8, section 1).
- “the vicious person does not recognize that he is vicious, whereas the
incontinent person recognizes that he is incontinent” (chapter 8, section 1).