An argument for the existence of a highest human good (I.2):
Every practical activity aims at some good
If X is for the sake of Y, then Y is more choiceworthy than X
These chains of instrumentality do not go on forever
However, this doesn’t establish that there is one highest good. You could have many terminal goods. It’s the function argument which gives us uniqueness
What does the highest human good, a life of eudaimonia, look like? (I.4-5)
Talks about the endoxon that “living well (eu zên) and doing well (eu prattein) are the same as being happy (eudaimonein)”
Emphasis on happiness as an activity (energeia)
Link between prudential good and moral good
It’s stable: “one day or a short time [does not] make us blessed and happy” (I.7)
Not the life of pleasure – that is suitable only for animals
Not the life of politics – that is about honour and so too fragile because of its dependence on others’ opinions
Rather, it is the life of contemplation
Three properties of the highest good (I.7):
Most complete (teleion)
He notes that there might be many ends which are complete; happiness is the most complete of them
So it must be always choiceworthy (haireton) in its own right, never because of something else
Thus it is complete without qualification (haplos teleion)
Self-sufficient (autarkes)
It makes a life choiceworthy and lacking in nothing
But happiness is dependent on external goods (e.g. family, friendship, wealth to an extent) since “a human being is a naturally political animal”
See 1153b19-22 rejecting the identification of happiness with virtue!
Most choiceworthy (panton hairetotaten)
Nothing can improve it by addition; it is “not counted as one good among many”
Key questions
Dominant vs inclusivist debate
Dominant view: happiness consists in a single supreme activity (contemplation / theoria), as suggested by Book X.7-8.
Struggles with self-sufficiency – a life of pure contemplation seems to lack many things. And all of Books II-IX treat practical virtue as constitutive of happiness, not merely instrumental to it.
And is there really any single activity which plausibly is most choiceworthy and self-sufficient?
Inclusivist view: happiness is the composite of all intrinsically valuable activities.
Struggles with completeness – can I pursue some intrinsic good X “for the sake of” happiness if X is a part of happiness?
Aristotle seems to think instrumental and constitutive “for the sake of” relations are distinct – i.e. you can pursue X as a part of happiness, even though not instrumentally as a means to produce happiness. Ackrill (1980) puts forward this view.
Wilkes’s (revisionist) resolution: drop the theological premises that make contemplation incommensurably superior, so that theoria is just one valuable activity among others. Practical reason can be the genuine human function, and we take the inclusivist view.
Is eudaimonia trivially agreed?
At I.4, Aristotle notes everyone agrees happiness is the good, but they disagree about what it consists in
E.g. the pleasure-seeker, politician, and philosopher all mean different things by “eudaimonia”.
Although the endoxon doesn’t get us very far, it goes some of the way. Aristotle characterises the common belief that “living well and doing well are the same as being happy”, so happiness is an activity, and something you do.
The formal criteria (completeness, self-sufficiency, most choiceworthy) do constrain the answer. They rule out money, honour, and pleasure as sole candidates.
Individually they’re not very substantive but together, it actually is quite hard to think of what would satisfy them all. And that suggests it’s not trivial!
The whole point of the function argument (and the moment it’s introduced) is to clarify what eudaimonia is. It’s meant to pick out the good that satisfies the formal criteria.
External goods and the Solon problem
Aristotle says happiness requires external goods (I.8-11) (e.g. wealth, friends, good birth). And this is the intuitive position.
Yet happiness is also supposed to be stable, self-sufficient, and “not easily taken away”. If it depends on fortune, it fails the self-sufficiency condition.
Solon claims we can count no man happy until he is dead. But Aristotle wants to reject that, because happiness is an activity, which the dead can’t perform, so then nobody is happy.
Recall Aristotle’s view that happiness is stable. “The happy person could never become miserable” – but achieving blessedness (makarioi) requires more, including good fortune and external goods.
E.g. Priam was virtuous, so he doesn’t become miserable (athlios) but his catastrophic misfortune means that he doesn’t reach blessedness.
Aristotle concludes that descendants’ fortunes can affect the dead, but only in a “weak and unimportant” way. It wouldn’t flip the verdict on whether somebody was happy.
The function argument (lecture 2)
Sketch of argument (thanks to Charles 2017)
[A] A human being has a function (ergon) and that function is to perform the activity which is unique to humans
Gives examples about bodily parts, types of workers, all having functions
In general, the function of a species is its characteristic activity; that which is unique to it (NE I.7 1097b35). Picking out e.g. boat-building, etc, is not a suitable candidate for a function.
[B] The activity unique to humans is rational activity
But what about rational capacity of other animals? Not even contemplation is unique to humans – the gods do it too. Besides, there are lots of other activities unique to humans.
Wilkes (1978): practical reason is the activity which guides and is served by all (and only) human endeavours, and thus constitutes the human function. But then we have to give up on the focus on contemplation.
Or, you could take it as the unique combination of theoretical and practical intellect. But then why not also include e.g. perception in it too, since that in combination is unique – seems gerrymandered just to include theoria.
“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 I.7, 1098a14-16)”
[C] To be a good human is to perform the human function well – and this is when it is performed in accordance with virtue
“Now each function is completed well by being completed in accord with the virtue proper [to that kind of thing].” (NE I.7, 1098a15-16)
It’s not that he defines function in terms of virtue. Rather, he thinks they’re equivalent. This makes sense given the teleological worldview
[D] If one carries out the human function well, one achieves the good for oneself
“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 I.7, 1097b25-28)”
But this conflates (i) being a good X vs (ii) being good for an X. For example, consider a battle-horse! Or a habitual liar.
Aristotle later asserts “What is proper (oikeion) to each thing’s nature is supremely best and most pleasant for it. (NE X.7, 1178a5-6)”.
But what about a soldier dying in battle. That doesn’t seem pleasant!
Conclusion: the human good is rational activity in accordance with virtue
Is this an answer to the amoralist? Well, it’s not a very convincing one.
But as Wilkes (1978) notes, the ancient philosophers didn’t really have a distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding. The idea that virtues might be bad for their possessor would just be absurd.
So the criticism that Aristotle is objectionably egoistic doesn’t really go through.
Problems with the argument
What is the purpose of the function argument?
Inductive reading: generalising from carpenters & eyes having functions → humans have functions. But that’s a terrible argument.
Expository / introductory: just illustrating the concept of ergon before he deploys it.
Dialectical: (Barney, who thinks the examples are poorly chosen for exposition and must constitute some kind of argument) – the point is to show that even though humans aren’t tools, they can still have a function. (This is an objection from Hardie).
That objection assumes a Platonic conception of function. But for Aristotle, you can have a function without being instrumental!
Function is tied to telos: everything has an end.
Why is rational activity in accordance with virtue the human function?
Charles: the function of an A is a certain kind of life – a way of living individuated by (a) the controlling capacity and (b) the capacities controlled. And for it to be a function, it must be the life-activity unique to As whose being done well distinguishes an excellent A.
So this is why e.g. joke-telling isn’t part of our function, because it doesn’t distinguish an excellent human.
This reading addresses the gods overlap. Even though gods contemplate, the human way of life involving reasoning is unique, because only we have it controlling perception, emotion, etc.
There’s some circularity here though – how does one grasp what makes an excellent A? (Well, we can rely on endoxa.)
Wilkes: as mentioned, suggests restricting the function to phronesis. But ruins Book X which says theoria is the highest. Still, maybe this is fine if you give up on the theological premisses about gods.
Why is performing the function good for a human?
Charles: if you look at Aristotle’s metaphysics, really he’s saying that a function by definition must – as well as making S a good A by performing it – be good for an A to perform well.
So the question is less “is the function argument valid” [since it’s really definitional / setting out a characterisation of a function], and more “does man have a function?”.
Fits in with Aristotle’s teleological worldview, everything has a telos.
Appeal to fineness (kalon)
Brave person does find death painful, but the action is pleasant insofar as it attains the fine. Seems rather dubious.
How does Aristotle establish that humans have a function?
Not through the I.7 rhetorical questions about carpenters and eyes.
They’re very weak as some kind of inductive argument – trying to generalise from “carpenters have a function” and “eyes have a function” to → “humans have a function” is clearly bad reasoning. And Aristotle would’ve been aware of that! He’s using these as initial rhetoric, not the underlying argument.
Perhaps through a background metaphysical belief about what constitutes human flourishing, and then arguing that only ethical activity can secure this.
Aristotle probably did have a metaphysical conviction that human nature has certain teleological goals achievable only through virtue.
But he doesn’t pursue this line of argument very much in NE. Indeed, whenever he talks about natural goods, he talks about the manner of engaging with them (i.e. the activity of practising virtue) as the goal (telos), not the goods themselves.
And his warning to not seek too much precision in the political science suggests he wasn’t going to use a metaphysical argument anyway.
(Charles’s view) By demonstrating that there is indeed an activity which, as required, (i) an excellent human does, and (ii) leads them to achieve the good.
Charles thinks that the project of NE is to establish that one who acts excellently finds it enjoyable, and that there’s a connection between these instances of acting excellently in all cases such that it makes sense to think of them as a single function.
The approach taken: show that virtuous activity is fine (kalon), and thus good for a person to do.
Often he talks about particular virtues (e.g. courage, generosity, magnificence, temperance) being done for the fine. And also, he just does assert that “actions in accordance with virtue are fine and done for the sake of the fine” (IV.1); excellent people choose what is fine above all else.
Moreover, fineness is central to what makes it ethically virtuous: virtuous activity is marked out as such because the end for which it is chosen is fine. The standard of correctness rests on the notion of fineness. It’s not that actions are fine simply because they’re chosen by the virtuous; it’s the other way round! Virtue of character is not the bearer/source of ethical value.
And there’s a connection to practical wisdom too – you aim at what is fine and just.
There’s some connection to pleasure too.
A virtuous person understands what is fine, and this regulates their emotional responses. So of course they find it pleasant to do the virtuous thing.
For a self-controlled (but not virtuous) person, they don’t experience the fineness of acting virtuously. And this explains why they don’t see it as enjoyable. (and perhaps are stuck in a loop?)
Problems remain though. We don’t know (i) what accounts for fineness in activity, and (ii) how it is grasped by the practically wise – and so again we reach the concern about action-guiding-ness.
For (i), perhaps it’s a distinctive irreducible way of being good. Although then, what does this imply about the nature of the highest good?
But every ethical theory needs to bottom out somewhere; Aristotle’s has the kalon as its base.
That said, if fineness is a brute property, then we don’t really need the function “argument” – you could just argue “virtuous activity is fine; fine activity is intrinsically enjoyable; therefore virtuous activity is good for you”. So maybe the function argument is just scaffolding to get us there from endoxa, to look for something excellence-marking and prudentially good.
Parts of the soul (lecture 3)
Be clear that there are different parts, with different functions, and corresponding virtues
Avoid making category errors, e.g. don’t say that sophia is what part of the soul does. Rather, it is the virtue of a part of the soul responsible for intellectual reasoning
Three kinds of desire, generated in different parts of the soul
Wishes (boulesis): rational desires
Appetites (epithumia): bodily pleasures, e.g. food, comfort
Spirit/passion (thumos): emotions
The rational part (logon) ⇒ generates wishes, according to Lorenz. Associated with the virtues of thought. (VI.1, 1138b7-9).
For both subparts, Aristotle says the function is to seek out truth, because that’s the characteristic activity of reason
Scientific/contemplative subpart does intellectual reasoning, about necessary truths. This is “thought concerned with study”
“Rationally-calculating” subpart does practical reasoning. This is “thought concerned with action”
The non-rational part (alogon) ⇒ generates spirited desires and appetitive desires. Associated with the virtues of character.
Desiderative part, which “share[s] in reason in a way, insofar as it both listens to reason and obeys it”
Vegetative & nutritive part, which plants and all living things possess but has no part in reason (or morality)