In Aristotle’s ethics, is being a good human being the same as being good at being human?

Essay

Yes, Aristotle claims that being a good human is the same as being good at being human, although the arguments he presents to support this claim are weak. Moreover, there are substantial tensions between what we typically understand being a good human to constitute on one hand, and Aristotle’s account of what is required to be good at being human on the other. In this essay, I first disambiguate three distinct senses of goodness, and present Aristotle’s view on the relationship between each. Then, I set out one potential objection to his position and a successful defence, as well as two more fundamental flaws. Finally, I conclude that Aristotle does indeed identify being a good human with being good at being human, but that his arguments in favour of this are unconvincing and their weakness undermines part of his project in the Nicomachean Ethics.

The word “good” in English is ambiguous between at least three different concepts, all of which are relevant to Aristotle’s ethics. We can distinguish between:

(1) Good_moral: an agent is good_moral when they meet the appropriate standard of right conduct or character.¹ For example: “Jesus was a good man.”

(2) Good_functional: an object or agent is good_functional when it performs its intended/characteristic activity effectively or skilfully. For example: “This is a good knife.”

(3) Good_prudential: an outcome is good_prudential when it promotes the interests of some agent. For example: “It’s good that she got her banking internship.”

In the terminology of the question, we can relatively uncontroversially identify “being a good human being” with (1) Good_moral, and “being good at being human” with (2) Good_functional. The first phrase is clearly referring to ethical conduct – when we say “Emily is a good human being”, we mean more than anything else that she conducts herself in a morally admirable way. The second phrase is less straightforward, perhaps because we do not typically think of “being human” as an activity which individuals can be good at performing, but the most natural interpretation is that it relates to how skilfully one carries out the function of a human (assuming such a function exists).

What, then, does Aristotle have to say about the relationship between (1) Good_moral and (2) Good_functional? As presented in the Nicomachean Ethics, his position is that one must have a certain kind of virtue in order to perform one’s function as a human being:

Now each function is completed well by being completed in accord with the virtue proper [to that kind of thing]. (NE 1.7, 1098a15-16)

Put differently, an individual is good_functional only if they have the sort of character that befits an excellent human. Aristotle goes on to sketch out the connection between excellence and ethical conduct, arguing that the characteristics that we need to perform our function well are precisely those qualities commonly called the moral virtues (Korsgaard, 2008). So, it is not that Aristotle defines function in terms of moral goodness – indeed, he says that the function of a human is simply that activity which is unique to us (Charles, 2017; NE 1.7 1097b35) – but rather that he believes we can show these two concepts are equivalent.

We will soon come on to examine more closely the nature of this posited human function, but let us first explore Aristotle’s other statement about the relationships between the kinds of goodness outlined above:

Just as the good… for whatever has a function and [characteristic] action seems to depend on its function, the same seems to be true for a human being, if a human being has some function (NE 1.7, 1097b25-28)

Here, Aristotle identifies Good_functional with Good_prudential, claiming that if some S has a function, then S performing that function well is good for S (Barney, 2008). Provided that Aristotle can show that there exists a human function (which we have so far assumed to be the case), it will then follow from his other arguments that humans ought (both morally and prudentially) to perform that function.

According to Aristotle, the best candidate for the unique human activity which comprises our function is the exercise of rational thought:

We take the human function to be a certain kind of life, and take this life to be activity and actions of the soul that involve reason, hence the function of the excellent man is to do this well and finely. (NE 1.7, 1098a14-16)

As the wording of the question implies, Aristotle’s emphasis is very much on the continuous aspect of being a good human. For him, functional and moral excellence is neither something fleeting nor something passively attained, but rather a durable good that flows from a life of virtuous activity (NE 1.7, 1098a18-20; NE 1.8, 1098b34-1099a1). So, it is an accurate description of Aristotle’s views to say that he thinks being a good human being the same as being good at being human.

With a clear understanding of Aristotle’s position, we can now examine its shortcomings. The first problem is that it seems as though the exercise of rational thought does not meet Aristotle’s criteria for a human function, namely being an activity unique to humans (Charles, 2017). According to Aristotle, the gods are constantly engaged in philosophical contemplation – indeed, this divineness is what makes it so valuable. But how, then, can we say that this is a uniquely human activity? And why not single out one of the many other activities that humans unambiguously are unique in performing, like building ships or telling jokes? Wilkes (1978) presents a reasonable, albeit revisionist, defence, arguing that practical reason is the activity which guides and is served by all (and only) human endeavours, and thus constitutes the human function. Since in the modern day we no longer believe that theoretical reason is divine, a life grounded in practical reason need not lack any completeness of the good, and may very well include some philosophical contemplation. In this way, we can justify why rational thought is the unique human function and therefore rescue Aristotle’s notion of being good at being human, although not without giving up his emphasis on theoretical reason.

Even if we are able to explain how precisely one might be good at being human, though, there are deeper problems for the Aristotle’s claims about the relationships between three concepts of goodness. Consider first Good_functional and Good_moral. Is it really true that S performing well the characteristic activity of their type is morally good? Drawing on Charles (2017), we can construct a compelling counterexample:

It seems perfectly reasonable to say that Rebecca’s characteristic activity is lying, yet we certainly would not want to commit to the view that her mastery of this is in any respect good. Our intuitions tell us that, contrary to the implications of Aristotle’s beliefs, she is living a morally reprehensible life – and perhaps even one that is worse for herself than it would be were she a less competent liar.

When Aristotle tries to draw a link directly between Good_moral and Good_prudential, similar problems emerge. His assertion that “actions in accordance with virtue are pleasant by nature, so that they are pleasant both to lovers of the fine and in their own right” (NE 1.8, 1098b14-15) demands substantial concessions from our commonsense views about what is pleasant, such as in the following scenario:

Again, our intuitions tell us that a truly excellent human would have the courage and compassion to make this ultimate sacrifice, but also that any theory of wellbeing which claims this course of action leads to that individual’s flourishing must surely be mistaken. It is therefore hard to maintain the claim that acting in accordance with virtue – or fulfilling one’s function – promotes the good, either for oneself or in general.

These flaws are a serious problem for Aristotle’s attempt to show that flourishing consists in acting virtuously. Without the equivalence of Good_functional with Good_moral or Good_prudential, there is no longer any reason to think that living an ethically excellent life would necessarily benefit an individual. As Wilkes (1978) highlights, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics at first seems to offer a reply to the amoralist, by claiming that possessing moral virtue is in one’s own interests. However, these arguments must be understood in their ancient context, where the distinction between the self-regarding and other-regarding was muddier. Seen in this light, Aristotle’s aims are less ambitious and slightly more successfully realised, although his failure to convincingly establish why rational thought is the human function puts his subsequent discussions of both the value of contemplation and how to cultivate practical reason onto shaky foundations.

So, to conclude, in Aristotle’s ethics being a good human is indeed the same as being good at being human. He identifies moral virtue with excellence in performing humans’ characteristic function, which he suggests is the exercise of reason. Although the account is an attractively elegant unification of ethics and rationality, the arguments in support of it are weak. There are tensions in Aristotle’s discussion of theoretical and practical wisdom as candidate human functions, and more importantly his broader claim that Good_functional is the same as either Good_moral or Good_prudential is vulnerable to several counterexamples. This undermines Aristotle’s ambition of demonstrating that eudaimonia captures both what it is admirable to aim for and what best promotes one’s own interests.

References

Barney, Rachel. 2008. ‘Aristotle's Argument for a Human Function’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34, 293–322. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199544875.003.0009

Charles, David. 2017. ‘Aristotle on Virtue and Happiness’, in Bobonich (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781107284258.007

Korsgaard, C. 2008. ‘Aristotle's Function Argument’, in The Constitution of Agency, pp129-150. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199552733.003.0005

Wilkes, Kathleen. 1978. ‘The Good Man and the Good for Man in Aristotle’s Ethics’, Mind 87, 553-71; reprinted in Rorty ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, 341-57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2253690