Commentaries

These are for the gobbets section of the Nicomachean Ethics exam, where you have an hour to write critical commentaries on four passages.

2018

Studying the soul

(a) It is clear that the virtue we must examine is human virtue, since we are also seeking the human good and human happiness. By human virtue we mean virtue of the soul, not of the body, since we also say that happiness is an activity of the soul. If this is so, it is clear that the politician must in some way know about the soul, just as someone setting out to heal the eyes must know about the whole body as well. This is all the more true to the extent that political science is better and more honourable than medicine; even among doctors, the cultivated ones devote a lot of effort to finding out about the body. Hence the politician as well must study the soul. But he must study it for his specific purpose, far enough for his enquiry. (i 13, 1102a13-25)

This passage comes from Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, after Aristotle has established the scope of his work – to elucidate the nature of human happiness and virtue – and laid out his function argument identifying human happiness with rational activity in accordance with virtue, but immediately before his discussion of the parts of the soul. As the first sentence makes clear, the remainder of the Nicomachean Ethics will focus on human virtue, given its importance for eudaimonia – but Aristotle spends the remainder of Book I, II, and the first half of III setting up the groundwork for his subsequent discussion of specific virtues of character and thought.

I.13, in particular, describes Aristotle’s account of the parts of the human soul. This matters “for [the] specific purpose” of the political scientist (i.e., ethicist) because on Aristotle’s account part of what distinguishes the virtuous agent from a merely continent one is the harmony among the rational and non-rational parts of their soul. Without an account of how each part of soul generates desires and relates to the others, Aristotle will struggle in Book VII to characterise the akrates and explain how one might attain virtue. Indeed, as Coope notes, it is only if we understand the flaw of the enkratic as a failure to take correct pleasure in the fineness of right action, that we can really explain why they are less praiseworthy than the virtuous agent.

Also notable in this passage is the emphasis on happiness as an activity (energeia). Aristotle’s view, expressed earlier in Book I and returned to in Book X, is that eudaimonia is something which must involve active engagement, and is not merely a passive state. One puzzle in this passage is what Aristotle might mean by virtue of the body. Earlier in Book I, he makes the passing comment that the function of the eyes is to see well, and analogously the function of humans is to perform the characteristic human activity well. We might therefore conclude that there are virtues specific to each part of the body which might also merit examination – and it could be this that Aristotle is seeking to draw our focus away from, in favour of the proper object of political science: virtues of the soul.

After feedback from Claude

Virtues are not feelings

(b) First, then, neither virtues nor vices are feelings. For we are called excellent or base insofar as we have virtues or vices, not insofar as we have feelings. Further, we are neither praised nor blamed insofar as we have feelings; for we do not praise the angry or the frightened person, and we do not blame the person who is simply angry, but only the person who is angry in a particular way. We are praised and blamed, however, insofar as we have virtues or vices. Further, we are angry and afraid without decision; but the virtues are decisions of some kind or [rather] require decision. (ii 5, 1105b28-1106a4)

This passage comes from Book II, in which Aristotle first characterises the nature of virtue, his theory of habituation, and lays out the Doctrine of the Mean. In this particular section, Aristotle is rejecting the idea that virtues and vices are feelings, building towards the view that they are each a state (hexis) of character. His argument goes something like the following:

  1. When describing others as excellent or base, these evaluative judgements are in respect of others’ virtue or vice, not their feelings.

    a. This applies to descriptions, and also the application of praise or blame.

  2. Feelings alone are not blameworthy or praiseworthy. But virtue and vice are.

  3. In addition, feelings do not involve any decision (or deliberation), while virtues exist only in the context of prior decision.

  4. So, virtue and vice cannot be identified with any feelings.

Aristotle’s methodology follows the pattern used throughout much of the Nicomachean Ethics: he starts off with a rough description of an apparent phenomenon (phainomena), before confronting various puzzles (aporia) about the exact nature and metaphysics of the phenomenon, and finally vindicating common beliefs (endoxa) about it, while clarifying our understanding by application of eliminative reasoning. We see structurally similar arguments when he describes the nature of happiness, and akrasia, for instance.

In this case, one challenge for Aristotle is that it seems like we do sometimes blame people purely in respect of their feelings. Consider, for example, a second son who feels jealous at his father’s funeral (for his small share of inheritance), rather than sad. It seems like the fact of his feeling jealous is the blameworthy feature in this situation, contra Aristotle’s claim that “we are … [not] blamed insofar as we have feelings”. But there is a response available for Aristotle: he can say that it is the combination of the feelings and the circumstances which makes the jealousy blameworthy. Indeed, as Aristotle will go on to argue later in II, feelings do have an important relationship with virtue: the virtuous agent will have the right feelings in response to each situation, and this distinguishes them from akratic and enkratic agents; moreover feelings are what allow for habituation to take place. So although virtues and vices are not themselves feelings, they are closely connected.

After feedback from Claude

Deliberating about means

(c) We deliberate not about ends, but about what promotes ends. A doctor, for instance, does not deliberate about whether he will cure, or an orator about whether he will persuade, or a politician about whether he will produce good order, or any other [expert] about the end [that his science aims at]. Rather, we lay down the end, and then examine the ways and means to achieve it. If it appears that any of several possible means will reach it, we examine which of them will reach it most easily and most finely; and if only one [possible] means reaches it, we examine how that means will reach it, and how the means itself is reached, until we come to the first cause, the last thing discovered. (iii 3, 1112b11-20)

Aristotle here is providing an account of deliberation (bouleusis), as part of his discussion in Book III of voluntariness and decision, in the final part of the more abstract opening of the Ethics (before III.6 starts to discuss specific virtues of character). The main argument Aristotle makes in this passage is that deliberation occurs relative to a fixed end – that is, it’s a process of means-end reasoning chaining backwards from the desired outcome to the action to be taken now in service of it.

Aristotle makes an inductive argument from doctors, orators, and politicians to try to persuade us that we do not deliberate about ends: none of those professionals considers what their goal ought to be, but rather spends all their intellectual effort on how to achieve the goal that they have. The trouble is that the purpose of doctors, orators, and politicians is very clear, and indeed comprehensible by definition – someone whose end was to harm would simply not be a doctor. But for humans, it seems a genuinely open question what our end ought to be: to pursue wealth, or pleasure, or virtue, or something else entirely?

Aristotle might appeal to his function argument of I.6 to address this concern, but that can only get him so far. Although it might be the case that there is a fact of the matter about the human end (eudaimonia, on Aristotle’s view), that does not imply that we never deliberate about ends. Indeed, much of the first book of the Ethics seems to be exactly deliberation about ends! One interpretation of this passage that can accommodate this intuition would be that Aristotle means to say that, in the course of ordinary decision-making, we hold fixed the end and simply reason about how to get there – but there are occasions where we reflect on what our ends ought to be, and sometimes adjust them.

After feedback from Claude

2019

The craft analogy

(a) Someone might be puzzled, however, about what we mean by saying that we become just by doing just actions and become temperate by doing temperate actions. For [one might suppose that] if we do grammatical or musical actions, we are grammarians or musicians, and, similarly, if we do just or temperate actions, we are thereby just or temperate. But surely actions are not enough, even in the case of crafts; for it is possible to produce a grammatical result by chance, or by following someone else’s instructions. To be grammarians, then, we must both produce a grammatical result and produce it grammatically that is to say, produce it in accord with the grammatical knowledge in us. Moreover, in any case, what is true of crafts is not true of virtues. For the products of a craft determine by their own qualities whether they have been produced well; and so it suffices that they have the right qualities when they have been produced. But for actions in accord with the virtues to be done temperately or justly it does not suffice that they themselves have the right qualities. Rather, the agent must also be in the right state when he does them. First, he must know [that he is doing virtuous actions]; second, he must decide on them, and decide on them for themselves; and, third, he must also do them from a firm and unchanging state. (II.4, 1105a17-33)

In this passage, Aristotle addresses a doubt we might have about his theory of habituation, which he introduced earlier in Book II. The extract above comes a few chapters before Aristotle’s precise definition of virtue, in II.6, and immediately after discussion of how habituation cultivates our character, which in turn is crucial for virtue. It’s important for Aristotle’s argument that a not-yet-virtuous agent is able to perform actions in accordance with virtue, otherwise there would be no way for unvirtuous agents to acquire virtue via habituation.

As a result, Aristotle must defuse the objection raised at the start of the passage: that if someone is carrying out virtuous actions, then it seems like they must have virtuous character. Aristotle takes a two-pronged approach to this, first demonstrating by analogy with the crafts that the right result can obtain even if someone lacks the right disposition, and second arguing that – disanalogously with the crafts – the quality of actions is (partly) determined by the motivational states of the agent performing them.

For the first defence, Aristotle is on firm ground. It seems clear, as he argues, that someone could arrive at a right action without true understanding by following rules laid down by someone else, just as an infant might chance upon a grammatical sentence while mimicking their parents. This method of production relates to discussion that will follow in Books V and X, on the importance of the lawgiver in setting legislation for unvirtuous city-folk to follow.

Aristotle’s second argument is the more philosophically interesting one: he claims that although a craft’s product is good only if the process of making it was good, the value of an action can come apart from the value of the process by which it was taken. This would imply that even if someone is perfectly reliable at reaching the correct action, they might not have virtuous character – and in particular, we think here of the enkratic agent, who takes the correct decisions in spite of their appetitive desires. The conditions that Aristotle describes at the end of this passage for the “right state” pre-empt the eventual definition he provides of virtue, as a state which decides with reference to reason – and this is what motivates the subsequent analysis of decision (prohairesis) and voluntariness in Book III.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

Vice is voluntary

(b) We have found, then, that we wish for the end, and deliberate and decide about things that promote it; hence the actions concerned with things that promote the end are in accord with decision and are voluntary. The activities of the virtues are concerned with these things [that promote the end]. Hence virtue is also up to us, and so also, in the same way, is vice. For when acting is up to us, so is not acting, and when no is up to us, so is yes. And so if acting, when it is fine, is up to us, not acting, when it is shameful, is also up to us; and if not acting, when it is fine, is up to us, then acting, when it is shameful, is also up to us. But if doing, and likewise not doing, fine or shameful actions is up to us, and if, as we saw, [doing or not doing them] is [what it is] to be a good or bad person, being decent or base is up to us. The claim that ’no one is willingly bad or unwillingly blessed’ would seem to be partly true but partly false. For while certainly no one is unwillingly blessed, vice is voluntary. (III.5, 1113b1-17)

In this passage, which rounds off Aristotle’s discussion of voluntariness and decision in Book III before he begins to treat the individual virtues of character, Aristotle rejects the view popular among earlier Greek philosophers that vice is involuntary yet virtue praiseworthy. This matters to Aristotle for at least two reasons. First, his methodology in the Ethics often relies on appealing to endoxa about what we praise and what we blame, and so establishing that these reactions are connected to virtue and vice is necessary for him to be able to derive properties of virtue and vice from our moral judgements about others. Second, Aristotle is of the view that virtue is admirable and vice reprehensible, and that we can use someone’s actions to judge their character – but if our actions and character are not up to us, then that seems unwarranted.

The opening passage of the sentence summarises the connection between wish (boulesis) and deliberation (bouleusis). On Aristotle’s account, we do not deliberate about ends, but rather hold those fixed (given by our wishes and conception of the good), and reason backwards to whatever action we ought to take at this moment in service of that end. This is rather puzzling: it seems like humans do, at least sometimes, reflect on and deliberate about what ends they ought to promote (“should I be more compassionate for distant people, even if that means I will be less generous towards my fellow countrymen?”). One potential resolution here is that Aristotle thinks we hold fixed a very broad conception of the good (perhaps as loosely defined as just happiness, or eudaimonia), and then deliberate about how to fill it out in specific circumstances.

The remainder of the passage recapitulates Aristotle’s argument that both virtue and vice are up to us, the thrust of which goes as follows:

  1. When we take actions to pursue our conception of the end, those result from decision, and are voluntary.

  2. Given that taking these actions is voluntary, it is up to us whether or not we do them.

  3. So if an action is shameful, and we decide to do it (or fine, and we decide not to do it), then that was up to us.

  4. But voluntarily taking good (bad) actions is just what it is to be virtuous (vicious).

  5. So, being virtuous or vicious is up to us.

There are a number of intricacies to this argument, which I do not have the time to address in this brief commentary, but one worth noting is that this passage does not establish that our conception of ends is up to us, i.e. the soundness of premise 1. Aristotle does make the argument for this, in Book III of the Ethics, but there he concedes that our conception of the good is also determined by external factors, such as our nature and (most importantly) upbringing. So Aristotle really only succeeds in showing that for those brought up finely and in good habits, it is within their power to be virtuous or vicious.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

Decision as deliberative desire

(c) As assertion and denial are to thought, so pursuit and avoidance are to desire. Now virtue of character is a state that decides; and decision is a deliberative desire. If, then, the decision is excellent, the reason must be true and the desire correct, so that what reason asserts is what desire pursues. This, then, is thought and truth concerned with action. The thought concerned with study, not with action or production, has its good or bad state in being true or false; for truth is the function of whatever thinks. But the function of what thinks about action is truth agreeing with correct desire. (VI.2, 1139a21-31)

This passage, taken from Aristotle’s discussion of the intellectual virtues in VI, distinguishes between phronesis (practical wisdom) and sophia (intellectual wisdom). Earlier in the Ethics, in II.6, Aristotle defines virtue as a “state which decides with reference to reason”, and it is in VI where we finally come on to discussing the intellectual components of virtue (after a first treatment of them in III). One of Aristotle’s overall goals in Nicomachean Ethics is to demonstrate the unity of the virtues – i.e., that a person cannot possess virtue in one respect of character without possessing full virtue. The relationship of mutual dependence between virtue of character and phronesis is how Aristotle secures this: he has already argued that each virtue of character requires phronesis (to decide correctly); in this passage he now makes the case that one cannot have phronesis without full virtue of character (ethike arete).

The core of Aristotle’s argument in this passage is that, unlike thought concerned with study (whose object is simply truth), that which thinks about action aims at a special kind of knowledge: practical truth. Drawing on his broader teleological worldview, Aristotle argues that the goodness of a mode of thought depends on whether it fulfils its function, and that for thought about action to be excellent, the decisions it produces must be excellent – namely, aiming at the right end for the right reasons, given that decision has a motivational component to it, on Aristotle’s account.

If one accepts Aristotle’s account of decision, this is an elegant and successful argument. But taking decision simply as a plan of action, it isn’t clear why the function of that which thinks about action needs to be truth agreeing with correct desire. Without the link to correct desire, though, Aristotle will struggle to explain why the virtuous agent is any better than the enkratic one, who arrives at the “right decisions” in the sense of which actions they plan to take, in conflict with their desires.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

Socrates on akrasia

(d) We might be puzzled about what sort of correct supposition someone has when he acts incontinently. First of all, some say he cannot have knowledge [at the time he acts]. For it would be terrible, Socrates used to think, for knowledge to be in someone, but mastered by something else, and dragged around like a slave. For Socrates used to oppose the account [of incontinence] in general, in the belief that there is no incontinence; for no one, in Socrates’ view, supposes while he acts that his action conflicts with what is best; our action conflicts with what is best only because we are ignorant [of the conflict]. This argument, then, contradicts things that appear manifestly. If ignorance causes the incontinent person to be affected as he is, we must look for the type of ignorance that it turns out to be; for it is evident, at any rate, that before he is affected the person who acts incontinently does not think [he should do the action he eventually does]. (VII.2, 1145b21-31)

This passage comes near the start of Aristotle’s discussion of akrasia, to which the entirety of Book VII is devoted, and lays out the central question he hopes to address: what type of knowledge, if any, does the akratic agent possess? As is typical for Aristotle’s methodology in the Nicomachean Ethics, he begins by laying out appearances and commonly-held beliefs, before considering various puzzles (aporia) which present difficulties.

Of particular interest in this passage is the view ascribed to Socrates (from Protagoras), that the akrates – defined as someone who decides on an action and yet acts otherwise, against their better judgement – does not exist at all. Socrates’s objection to akrasia, as Aristotle describes, is that it seems to let the passions make a mockery of knowledge: if someone knows that another action is better, how could they possibly find themselves taking another? The resolution that Socrates reaches for, then, is to assert that the putatively-akratic agent did not really know that their action was different to the best one.

But as Aristotle notes, Socrates’s position seems clearly at odds with our experiences in the world – indeed, most people will not only have witnessed akrasia, but been victims of it (for example, in eating one slice of cake too many). The closing sentence of this passage sets up the dialectic for much of the remainder of VII: identifying in what specific ways the akratic is ignorant. Aristotle will eventually partially vindicate Socrates, in concluding that the akratic does not possess full knowledge, because they lack perceptual knowledge, while also accommodating the commonsense position that humans do sometimes knowingly take suboptimal actions.

One point of interest in this passage is Aristotle’s observation that the akrates “does not think he should do the action he eventually does”, which seems in tension with his later taxonomy of akratic agents. Aristotle distinguishes between the weak akratic, who reaches a decision and doesn’t heed it because of passions overwhelming the rational part of the soul, and the impetuous akratic, whose deliberation never gets off the ground. Although the weak akratic seems well-covered by the characterisation Aristotle presents here, the impetuous akratic sits rather uncomfortably – if they do not deliberate, and instead rush to act, then in what way do they disapprove of the action they took? A potential resolution is to extend temporal scope of “eventually” – Aristotle makes clear that true akrasia involves pain and regret, so even the impetuous akratic would, with hindsight, concede that he should not have done the action he did.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

2020

Precision in ethics

(a) Our discussion will be adequate if we make things perspicuous enough to accord with the subject matter; for we would not seek the same degree of exactness in all sorts of arguments alike, any more than in the products of different crafts. Now, fine and just things, which political science examines, differ and vary so much as to seem to rest on convention only, not on nature. But [this is not a good reason, since] goods also vary in the same way, because they result in harm to many people for some have been destroyed because of their wealth, others because of their bravery. And so, since this is our subject and these are our premises, we shall be satisfied to indicate the truth roughly and in outline; since our subject and our premises are things that hold good usually [but not universally], we shall be satisfied to draw conclusions of the same sort. Each of our claims, then, ought to be accepted in the same way [as claiming to hold good usually]. For the educated person seeks exactness in each area to the extent that the nature of the subject allows; (1.3, 1094b11-25)

Things I could’ve talked about

Justice as a mean

(b) Justice is a mean, not as the other virtues are, but because it is about an intermediate condition, whereas injustice is about the extremes. Justice is the virtue in accord with which the just person is said to do what is just in accord with his decision, distributing good things and bad, both between himself and others and between others. He does not award too much of what is choiceworthy to himself and too little to his neighbor (and the reverse with what is harmful), but awards what is proportionately equal; and he does the same in distributing between others. Injustice, on the other hand, is related [in the same way] to the unjust. What is unjust is disproportionate excess and deficiency in what is beneficial or harmful; hence injustice is excess and deficiency because it concerns excess and deficiency. The unjust person awards himself an excess of what is beneficial, [considered] without qualification, and a deficiency of what is harmful, and, speaking as a whole, he acts similarly [in distributions between] others, but deviates from proportion in either direction. In an unjust action getting too little good is suffering injustice, and getting too much is doing injustice. (V.5, 1133b32-1134a13)

In this passage from Book V, Aristotle explains how his theory of justice fits into his Doctrine of the Mean established earlier in the Ethics at II.7. Aristotle dedicates the entirety of Book V to the topic of justice, starting off with a taxonomy of its subtypes, and this passage focuses on specific justice; that which is about distributions of resources and corrections of injustice. The central argument goes as follows:

  1. Justice is about an intermediate state, where individuals receive neither too little nor too much (relative to what they deserve).

  2. Injustice is about the extremes of allocation, where individuals are allocated an excess or deficiency of some good.

  3. Therefore, justice is a mean.

Aristotle wishes to demonstrate that justice is (at least in some sense) a mean, because the Doctrine of the Mean forms the conceptual framework for all his virtues: in Book II, he defines virtue as consisting in a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. Since part of Aristotle’s goal in Book V is to establish that justice is among the virtues of character, he therefore needs to establish that it can be understood within this framework too.

The concession at the start of the passage, that justice “not as the other virtues are”, is indicative of the difficulties that such an account runs into, however. Earlier in the Ethics, Aristotle establishes that the sense in which virtues are means are that they are located between two corresponding vices of excess and deficiency, and moreover involve a stable state of character which generates actions intermediate between those of each vice. Even if we grant that Aristotle successfully shows that justice is about intermediate actions, nowhere in this passage – nor elsewhere in Book V – does he argue that justice has two corresponding vices. In fact, it is difficult to see what such vices could be: not suffering injustice and doing injustice, since the former is, according to Aristotle, involuntary and thus not a vice at all.

Aristotle’s argument that justice consists in an intermediate state is somewhat more successful, although it too runs into problems. One point of interest is his emphasis on what is “proportionately equal”: earlier in Book V, Aristotle clarifies that the just distribution is the one which gives people resources in proportion to their worth, rather than being a simple arithmetic average. But if the distributor is an excellent person, deserving of great things, then it might well be that they ought to allocate to themself a very large share of what is being distributed – so the sense in which justice consists in an “intermediate” allocation is rather tenuous. To be sure, it would be unjust for the allocator to give themself a “disproportionate” amount, but it is not clear that the idea of a mean sheds any light on what that amount is, and neither does it seem to add anything conceptually valuable.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

Unity of the virtues

(c) What we have said, then, makes it clear that we cannot be fully good without prudence, or prudent without virtue of character. And in this way we can also solve the dialectical argument that someone might use to show that the virtues are separated from one another. For, [it is argued], since the same person is not naturally best suited for all the virtues, someone will already have one virtue before he gets another. This is indeed possible in the case of the natural virtues. It is not possible, however, in the case of the [full] virtues that someone must have to be called good without qualification; for one has all the virtues if and only if one has prudence, which is a single state. And it is clear that, even if prudence were useless in action, we would need it because it is the virtue of this part of the soul, and because the decision will not be correct without prudence or without virtue for [virtue] makes us achieve the end, whereas [prudence] makes us achieve the things that promote the end. (VI.13, 1144b30-1145a6)

This passage on the unity of the virtues comes from the end of Book VI, in which Aristotle describes the intellectual virtues, after having discussed the virtues of character in Books III-V. Aristotle will soon move on from discussing specific virtues (Book VII is about akrasia), and this passage is therefore designed to help the reader understand the ways in which the virtues are connected. We can summarise Aristotle’s argument as follows:

  1. Full virtue of character requires prudence.

  2. Prudence requires virtue of character.

  3. Therefore, one is prudent just in case one has full virtue of character.

  4. Therefore, one cannot have full virtue in one respect but not others.

At first, it might not be clear how (4) follows from (1)-(3). Aristotle’s goal in this passage is to reject the view that the virtues might be “separated from one another” – i.e., to demonstrate the unity of the virtues – but from a surface reading all he establishes is that full virtue of character and prudence are interdependent. It seems open, therefore, that I could attain the virtue of courage without prudence, and thereby without any other virtues either.

Familiarity with Aristotle’s discussion of virtue earlier in the Ethics can help us to solve this puzzle. Specifically, we need to strengthen (1), so that it reads (1’): Full virtue in any particular dimension of character requires prudence. This follows naturally from the definition of virtue as a state which decides with reference to reason: if I am to be virtuous with respect to courage, then I need to have prudence to decide in what ways I ought to exhibit my courage.

The final sentence of this passage makes things still more explicit. Aristotle’s view is that taking right actions requires two separate qualities: first, that we have the right goal and conception of the good; second, that we are capable of deliberating well to identify the means which secure that end. The former is what ethical virtue supplies; prudence provides the latter. So, although one might start off closer to virtue in one dimension of character than another by nature, they will not attain virtue without qualification without the ability to reason well, and balance the many competing considerations which weigh in on each decision – including those stemming from other virtues that they did not naturally start with.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

Spirit versus appetite

(d) Moreover, let us observe that incontinence about spirit is less shameful than incontinence about appetites. For spirit would seem to hear reason a bit, but to mishear it. It is like overhasty servants who run out before they have heard all their instructions, and then carry them out wrongly, or dogs who bark at any noise at all, before looking to see if it is a friend. In the same way, since spirit is naturally hot and hasty, it hears, but does not hear the instruction, and rushes off to exact a penalty. For reason or appearance has shown that we are being slighted or wantonly insulted; and spirit, as though it had inferred that it is right to fight this sort of thing, is irritated at once. Appetite, however, only needs reason or perception to say that this is pleasant, and it rushes off for gratification. (VII.6, 1149a24-1149b1)

This passage, on the blameworthiness of different types of incontinence, comes from Aristotle’s broader discussion of incontinence (akrasia), throughout Book VII. At the start of VII, Aristotle motivates his discussion with the puzzle that even though akrasia seems to be a common phenomenon in everyday life (in that we often see people who appear to act against their better judgement, knowing this to be the case at the time of acting), Socrates denied that it existed, on the grounds that knowledge could not be a slave to the passions. In this passage, Aristotle builds on the account of the failure of the akrates developed earlier in VII to argue that akrasia caused by spirit (thumos) is less shameful than that caused by appetites.

Aristotle’s general explanation of akrasia is that the akrates fails to fully know that their action is suboptimal, like how a drunk uttering verses does not fully know what they are saying. In the paradigmatic case of akrasia caused by appetites, the akrates might (for instance) fail to attend to their knowledge that the cake in front of them is sweet [and hence ought not to be eaten], because of an excessive appetitive desire causing them to instead focus on the fact that it would be pleasant to eat. The failure of the akrates, then, is that the appetitive part of their soul (drawing on Aristotle’s psychology, described in De Anima and outlined in Book I of the Ethics) overpowers the rational part, and they “rush off for gratification”.

On Aristotle’s account, the person who is incontinent about spirit (who, Aristotle will later clarify, is not unqualifiedly akratic, but akratic only by analogy) is less shameful than the pleasure-akratic, precisely because of the larger role reason plays in their deliberation. While the pleasure-akratic acts against their rational part of the soul from a purely non-rational desire, the spirit-akratic does so from a desire which is at least grounded in reason – for example, to not be “slighted or wantonly insulted”. One difficulty with this distinction is that it’s not particularly clear why we should think that the spirit-akratic really does involve reason more in their deliberation than the pleasure-akratic. In the final sentence of the passage, Aristotle seems to suggest that the pleasure-akratic acts without deliberation at all (since they “rush off”), but earlier in Book VII he establishes that there are two types of akratic: the tempestuous one, who acts without deliberation, but also the weak akratic, who reaches a decision and then acts contrary to it. Given this, we might think that the pleasure-akratic has reason involved in their decision-making just as much as the spirit-akratic – and therefore that Aristotle’s grounds for the difference in shamefulness are unjustified.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

Friendship in marriage

(e) The friendship of man and woman also seems to be natural. For human beings form couples more naturally than they form cities, to the extent that the household is prior to the city, and more necessary, and childbearing is shared more widely among the animals. For the other animals, the community goes only as far as childbearing. Human beings, however, share a household not only for childbearing, but also for the benefits in their life. For the difference between them implies that their functions are divided, with different ones for the man and the woman; hence each supplies the other’s needs by contributing a special function to the common good. For this reason their friendship seems to include both utility and pleasure. And it may also be friendship for virtue, if they are decent. For each has a proper virtue, and this will be a source of enjoyment for them. Children seem to be another bond, and that is why childless unions are more quickly dissolved; for children are a common good for both, and what is common holds them together. (VIII.12, 1162a16-29)

In this passage, Aristotle applies his theory of friendship to the family, in a section of the Ethics where he explores different types of relationships within a polis and discusses whether each can be taken as a friendship. Earlier in VIII, Aristotle presents his tripartite classification of types of friendship: they can be of pleasure, utility, or virtue. Aristotle thinks that the third type is the finest, and involves two virtuous (or decent) agents who each promote excellence in the other, and loves their friend as “another self”. It is notable, therefore, that he thinks that marriages can be a source of virtue-friendships, given his other views on gender relations: Aristotle believed that women were naturally inferior to men, yet for there to be a friendship between partners each person must value and respect the other. Aristotle might explain this with reference to his theory of proportional desert – since the man is worthier than the woman, it would be right and just for him to assign greater amounts of certain goods to himself in the relationship, since they ought to be allocated in proportion to worth.

The discussion of the differing functions of men and women also connects closely with Aristotle’s teleological worldview. In I.6, Aristotle lays out the function argument, whose conclusion is that the flourishing consists in a life of virtue, where one does the characteristic human activity excellently. On the assumption that men and women have different functions, or characteristic life-activities, it would then follow that they have their own virtues and versions of eudaimonia. Notably, the Ethics is directed at an audience of male citizens, and the virtues it enumerates largely overlap with those proposed by Aristotle’s contemporaries – but they have little to say about what it would look like for a woman to achieve full ethical virtue. (For instance, one would not expect her to engage in megalopsycheia, as culturally-specific as it is.) Brief as this mention of women and the household is, its inclusion underlines the fact that one of Aristotle’s broader goals in writing the Ethics was to explore the conditions for a flourishing polis, or political community – and that will naturally involve women and children, as well as the men towards whom the book is largely aimed.

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2021

External goods

(a) Nonetheless, happiness evidently also needs external goods to be added, as we said, since we cannot, or cannot easily, do fine actions if we lack the resources. For, first of all, in many actions we use friends, wealth, and political power just as we use instruments. Further, deprivation of certain [externals]-for instance, good birth, good children, beauty mars our blessedness. For we do not altogether have the character of happiness if we look utterly repulsive or are ill-born, solitary, or childless; and we have it even less, presumably, if our children or friends are totally bad, or were good but have died. And so, as we have said, happiness would seem to need this sort of prosperity added also. That is why some people identify happiness with good fortune, and others identify it with virtue. (1.8, 1099a31-b8)

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Solon and posthumous fortune

(b) Then should we count no human being happy during his lifetime, but follow Solon’s advice to wait to see the end? But if we agree with Solon, can someone really be happy during the time after he has died? Surely that is completely absurd, especially when we say happiness is an activity. We do not say, then, that someone is happy during the time he is dead, and Solon’s point is not this [absurd one], but rather that when a human being has died, we can safely pronounce [that he was] blessed [before he died], on the assumption that he is now finally beyond evils and misfortunes. But this claim is also disputable. For if a living person has good or evil of which he is not aware, a dead person also, it seems, has good or evil, if, for instance, he receives honours or dishonours, and his children, and descendants in general, do well or suffer misfortune. (1.10, 1100a10-21)

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States are voluntary

(c) Now the virtues, as we say, are voluntary. For in fact we are ourselves in a way jointly responsible for our states of character, and the sort of character we have determines the sort of end we lay down. Hence the vices will also be voluntary, since the same is true of them. We have now discussed the virtues in common. We have described their genus in outline; they are means, and they are states. Certain actions produce them, and they cause us to do these same actions in accord with the virtues themselves, in the way that correct reason prescribes. They are up to us and voluntary. Actions and states, however, are not voluntary in the same way. For we are in control of actions from the beginning to the end, when we know the particulars. With states, however, we are in control of the beginning, but do not know, any more than with sicknesses, what the cumulative effect of particular actions will be. Nonetheless, since it was up to us to exercise a capacity either this way or another way, states are voluntary. (III.5, 1114b21-1115a3)

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General justice as lawfulness

(d) Now the law instructs us to do the actions of a brave person- for instance, not to leave the battle-line, or to flee, or to throw away our weapons; of a temperate person not to commit adultery or wanton aggression; of a mild person not to strike or revile another; and similarly requires actions in accord with the other virtues, and prohibits actions in accord with the vices. The correctly established law does this correctly, and the less carefully framed one does this worse. This type of justice, then, is complete virtue, not complete virtue without qualification, but complete virtue in relation to another. And that is why justice often seems to be supreme among the virtues, and ’neither the evening star nor the morning star is so marvellous’, and the proverb says, ‘And in justice all virtue is summed up.’ (V.1, 1129b19-30)

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Cleverness and prudence

(e) There is a capacity, called cleverness, which is such as to be able to do the actions that tend to promote whatever goal is assumed and to attain them. If, then, the goal is fine, cleverness is praiseworthy, and if the goal is base, cleverness is unscrupulousness. That is why both prudent and unscrupulous people are called clever. Prudence is not cleverness, though it requires this capacity. [Prudence,] this eye of the soul, requires virtue in order to reach its fully developed state, as we have said and as is clear. For inferences about actions have a principle, ‘Since the end and the best good is this sort of thing’ (whatever it actually is let it be any old thing for the sake of argument). And this [best good] is apparent only to the good person; for vice perverts us and produces false views about the principles of actions. Evidently, then, we cannot be prudent without being good. (VI.12, 1144a23-1144b1)

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The good self-lover

(f) This sort of person, however, more than the other sort, seems to be a self-lover. At any rate he awards himself what is finest and best of all, and gratifies the most controlling part of himself, obeying it in everything. And just as a city and every other composite system seems to be above all its most controlling part, the same is true of a human being; hence someone loves himself most if he likes and gratifies this part. Similarly, someone is called continent or incontinent because his understanding is or is not the master, on the assumption that this is what each person is. Moreover, his own voluntary actions seem above all to be those involving reason. Clearly, then, this, or this above all, is what each person is, and the decent person likes this most of all. That is why he most of all is a self-lover, but a different kind from the self-lover who is reproached. He differs from him as much as the life guided by reason differs from the life guided by feelings, and as much as the desire for what is fine differs from the desire for what seems advantageous. (IX.8, 1168b28-1169a6)

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