Summary of previous
lecture:
Aristotle’s ethics offers us
orientation for a ‘good life.’
The one who tries to lead a
good life pursues excellences or virtues. Excellences are value states of
purposeful beings that can be evaluated as to how well they fulfill their
purpose. They tell us whether that being is a ‘better’ or ‘not-so-good’
specimen of its kind.
In rational beings that have
affects excellences deal with affects. Courage, for example, deals with fear.
Fear responds danger. All those conducts pursue the excellence of courage,
which deal with fear or its possibility adequately, by responding to fear or
its possibility.
Excellences have their basis
in the nature of our rational soul. The more perfectly they are
performed and internalized by an agent, the more perfect that agent becomes as
an individual and exemplar of the human kind.
At the beginning our
excellences lie dormant in us. They do not develop automatically. The agent
needs to decide to pursue the virtues and needs to fashion them in deliberate
and deliberative activity. I need to want my life to be shaped by the
excellences, and I need to work at acquiring, maintaining, and adapting them to
ever-changing circumstances.
Excellences or virtues guide
us in our choices. Our choices and activities in turn give concretion and
significance to those excellences. Interdependent determinations: we justify
and evaluate our choices by appealing to excellences for evaluation and
we confer flesh and bones to abstract and open excellences by determining their
meaning in applications.
Aristotle formula for
excellence:
“Excellence, then, is a state
concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by
reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess, and that
which depends on defect” (NE p. 393, 1107a1).
The grid, Aristotle offers to
us for this activity is the idea that we choose the conduct that enacts excellence
as the right thing by determining that conduct as an intermediate between
extremes that are not the right thing. We have played that through for courage
using the example of the freshman who fears to fail in a course. In the
example, we have isolated features of the situation relevant for the
evaluation. They concerned my character and past, the threats presented to
things that are important to me, the consequences of different courses of
actions, again in terms of advantages and possible achievements. My fears
together with their object and the consequences of letting myself be led by my
fears, as well as the consequences or resisting my fears. Then the question,
asked to each of the different courses of action and the constellations around
them: Would that be brave, or, perhaps, cowardly? Brave, or perhaps rash?
Brave, or perhaps closing my eyes to the problems of my situation. (Also a more
fine-grained approach: compare different courses and ask which is the braver or
most courageous among them.)
The example was to show the
openness of the decision and the fact that the decision is taken under
normative constraints. This openness does not prevent the choice from being
guided, for it evaluates alternatives by locating them on a scale of better or worse
realization of the excellence.
Habit
Book II, Chapter 1:
We need to distinguish
learning, acquisition and practice on the basis of having the experience of an
excellence. So far we have mentioned acquisition of an excellence. How do we
let ourselves be guided by excellences once we have learned them? (NE p. 376,
1103a31) Big difference between the excellence of a knife and the excellence of
courage, justice, temperance, truthfulness, or practical wisdom. Once the knife
has its excellence, it does not vanish. And it diminishes through use. The
opposite for moral excellences of the human animal. Our moral excellences,
however, are states that fade, vanish or even transmute into their extremes
when they are not practiced. Reasons for this: (1) there is always some
resistance to be overcome against the choice and the implementation of the
right kind of conduct, (2) there also is the necessity to constantly redefine
the excellence in different circumstances. Most importantly: (3) the habit and
the habitus weaken and fade unless practiced. We slowly lose the moral
sensibility we have acquired through practice. The virtuoso musician. (So, when
Aristotle says: “Being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave
or cowardly,” . . . “states arise out of like activities” (NE p. 377, 1103b16
& 1103 20) he is not just pointing to learning.
Attitudes, background for action: The agent who pursues
excellence “must also be in a certain condition when he does them [i.e. the
actions]; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose
the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly, his action must
proceed from a firm and unchangeable character” (1105a30) Aristotle is
articulating a thesis about what it is to have the state of courage or
justice. We have it only insofar as we practice it. We do not have it, or
diminish its being in us, when we do not enact the excellence. For excellences:
Being depends on doing. Being is a form of becoming. Or better: we are
constantly in the state of becoming brave, perhaps also ‘more courageous.’
And the other way round:
every case where there is an occasion for practicing a moral excellence, but we
do not do so, diminishes the excellence and contributes to a state of vice. The
process and practice has priority. The state is practice. And, as the ‘good
life’ consists of having excellences, the good life is no more and no less than
the practice of excellences – in the manner of choices that aim at the
intermediate. That said, the more we build habit, the more it feeds back into
future practice. A self-reinforcing activity and self-weakening inactivity.
“Being habituated to feel
fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly” (1103b16) . . . What
distinguishes fear and confidence? What is Aristotle’s overall picture of
courage, the extremes of cowardice, rashness, ignorance (and possible others),
fear, danger and what counts as courage? NE Book III. Chapters 6 & 7.
A mean between fear and
confidence (1115a7 & 1103b15). With respect to fear two propositions
difficult to bring together. On the one hand “the brave man is also a fearless
person” (1115a16). On the other hand, the brave man is “will fear even the
things that are not beyond human strength, he will fear them as he ought to
fear them and as reason directs, and he will face them for the sake of what is
noble” (1115b12).
The role of fear and what’s behind it: fear is an affective response
to a perceived or imagined threat to something dear to us, like our life,
health, freedom, reputation, recognition, but also fear for others that are
dear to us, or for things or objects that are a good for us (our favorite pet,
aging). By extension: situations that are prone to lead to a threat (darkness,
bad neighborhood). The perceived or imagined threat is an essential part in the
situation that is relevant for courage. Fear: normally a strong motive for
action that removes or alleviated the perceived or imagined threat.
“Expectation of evil.”
Aristotle distinguishes and
evaluates differently situations that are prone to inspire fear, or are factors
in the evaluation of fear, and his distinctions are important for courage.
Dimensions of distinctions: (1) situations that present a threat beyond our
power vs. situations where we can do something to remove the threat. (2)
Situations in which fear is the right kind of affective response (threat of
disgrace, fear for wife and children) vs. situations where the threat ought not
to inspire fear (poverty, disease – expressed in the dubitative mode). (3)
Greatness vs. smallness of threat, great or small good. (4) Situations that
realize some other important excellence while presenting a threat of ‘evil’
(noble, service for one’s polis, ‘prowess’ (1115b4). (5) Personal differences
and role differences (the warrior, the seaman, Book III, Chapter 7)
It is obvious that Aristotle
sees these as variables that are important for courage. In some constellations,
courage is to overcome felt fear in the right way. In other cases courage is to
not let one be seized by fear or to train oneself to become less prone to feel
fear (experience: seamen 1115b1). Aristotle distinguishes courage with fear
(where fear is appropriate, perhaps also where we have been unable to not feel
fear) and courage without fear. The two need to be handled differently: for the
one I train myself not to feel fear or fight off a fear that tries to creep
into me. In the other case, I feel the fear, and might act bravely or not
bravely vis-à-vis my fear by overcoming my fear. It seems to me that to act
from fear alone is always cowardly. For even where fear is appropriate or even
noble, the degree of fear and the response to fear will need to be fashioned by
reason. The brave person will either not fear what Aristotle calls an ‘evil’ or
feel fear and take the right action in spite of fear.
The role of confidence:
One would think that
confidence is just an extreme: “with regard to feelings of fear and confidence
courage is the mean, . . . of the people who exceed the man who exceeds in confidence
is rash” (1107b1). But: Confidence is several times mentioned in a positive
way: the brave man does not fear everything; “for confidence is the mark of a
hopeful disposition” (116a4). The one who avoids the feeling of fear and
chooses the appropriate action in the situation of danger is confident that he
is able to cope – either by putting the evil to the side or even by accepting
it, or taking action to avoid that the threat becomes reality? Similarly for
the one who feels fear and confronts the danger all the same (the seamen
example).
Confidence as extreme must
mean something else. It is what we call ‘overconfidence.’ Fearlessness of the
kind: the threat will not come true. Or: I will find the means to avoid the
danger as I go along. Or even: ‘I do not know what fear is’ = insensitivity to
fear (115b23Grimm’s fairy tale: “the boy Who went forth to learn what fear
was.”) So, confidence is an extreme only if it is not had in the right way,
towards the right object, etc.
So far: the extremes are rashness,
cowardice, overconfidence, and insensitivity. They are qualitative excesses in
fear or fearlessness, or in attitudes towards fear and fearlessness, and in
conduct chosen as driven by these forces. “The man, then, who faces and fears
the right things and with the right aim, in the right way, and at the right
time, and who feels confidence under the right conditions, is brave” (1115b18).
The Insincere Man:
Theophrastus’ ‘insincere’ man
(IM, Course Reader p. 30) practices one of the extremes of truthfulness: the
vice that is at the deficient end of the sincerity continuum. Interestingly, it
is called ‘eironia.’ Theophrastus type ‘IM’ is unfamiliar to us. We do not recognize
our idea of insincerity in many of the IM’s actions. Truthfulness for us: to
tell the truth. Insincerity: to knowingly tell untruths; not to show the truth
of the matter, especially of feelings, under circumstances where one should
show them. Our insincerity is a kind of deceit. By contrast the ‘IM’ does
exactly tell an untruth or deceive when he makes friendly conversation to his
enemy instead of showing the enemy his dislike. How about bad-mouthing you
behind your back and praise you to your face? For us today, this is vicious and
deceptive, but not insincere. He blackens us towards others; and he hides that
fact from us. We perceive the discrepancy between the two acts, but do not call
them insincere because we do not primarily evaluate them from the point of view
of truth. For us talking in a friendly way to someone is not a sign of friendly
feelings towards that person. It can just be polite behavior. Furthermore, how
can his evasiveness be insincere, when he tells those who come with
urgent business to come back later, or does not admit what he is doing, or
avoids taking a stand, leaving in the vague what he believes, how he feels, or
how he judges things? Even more bizarre the blame the IM gets from Theophrastus
for his little exclamations, as for example “I am absolutely staggered.” How
often have we said ‘that’s awesome’ in a single day? But scrutiny reveals that
there is always something here, that is there but remains hidden, or something
that is made manifest but is not the thing that is shown. Do we believe that
the event we comment on is in fact awesome when we say ‘that’s awesome?’ So,
the IM’s insincerity seems to not really consist in the fact that the IM
believes one thing to be true or untrue and lets it look as if he believed the
opposite. That attitude is certainly included in insincerity. But Theophrastus’
implicit idea of insincerity seems to require that the agent deliberately
create or let stand a discrepancy between the inner and the outer, the
private and the public persona. From Theophrastus’ point of view, this
falls to the side of extreme of insincerity. It is a deficiency in
truthfulness. The deficient mode shows us indirectly that the scope of the
virtue of truthfulness is much larger than we imagined. Could this cause us to
have second thoughts about its moral adequacy? Ought we really to be pursuing
the kind of openness and personal transparency Theophrastus seems to favor? à cultural change!
The Show-Off:
The ‘Show-Off’ (SO; Course
Reader p. 31) also shows the difference of ancient and modern notions and
values, particularly for Southern Californians who measure their value in
wealth and proudly and conspicuously exhibit that value to their neighbors and
the world at large in order to gain recognition of their status. Let us assume
against the truth that all the wealth we exhibit is wealth we really have. We
may be show-offs in Theophrastus’ sense. But we are not necessarily impostors!
Doesn’t Theophrastus mix
excellences when he seems to tie ‘showing-off’ to making claims that not backed
by facts? To ask the slave to stop at the bank lets the SO appear to be rich
when in fact “his account totals one solitary drachma.” Theophrastus opens his
sketch by saying that the type SO will lay claim to advantages he does not
actually possess? For us this is, again, a case of lying. False pretence runs
through the sketch of the ‘show-off’ like a red thread, all the way to
pretending that the rented villa is the traditional family mansion. For us to
show off is a rhetorical strategy: It is to present something thought to be
impressive in an exaggerated, highlighted manner with the aim to impress
another. The fact that the trait underlying the presentation is actually there
or is feigned, does not really matter for ‘show-off-ish-ness.’ ‘Show-off-ish-
ness’ is to transgress convention by displaying what in this way ought not to
be displayed. It is lack in modesty and reticence.
What could motivate
Thepophrastus to include false pretence in show-off-ish-ness? I think the basic
excellence the SO misses out on is not decency in exhibition of wealth or
importance, but the discrepancy between appearance and being. In all of the
examples, Theophrastus emphasizes that the show-off tries to appear as
important, wealthy, descending from a god family, being well connected, when in
fact he is not. To appear to be more than one is.
Conclusion on
Theophrastus:
Is there a common denominator
to both ‘vices’? That would be the negative value of a discrepancy between the
attitude one displays and the attitude one has (IM), and between what one is
and what one appears to be. Truthfulness seems to imply that one display the
attitudes one has. Proper pride seems to require that one get exactly the
recognition for the status one actually has. Here are two types who let their
lives be oriented by appearing what they are not. But Aristotelian reason seems
to demand that there be a match between outer appearance and external status on
the one side, a match between that which appears and that which grounds the status
one has. This demand for a match between the inner and the outer is pre-modern.
Before the inner has acquired an independent status that confers privacy to the
inner.
How do the two types miss out
on their excellence? They allow their life-orientation to be dominated by a
craving for recognition and by the enjoyment of power that comes from hiding
their inner from the public world. It is not difficult to detect the power
theme in the sketch of the IM. They do not let proper reason tell them, that
the coincidence between being and appearing, and the appearing of inner being
in the outside world belong to reason, at least in the culture of the
Alexandrian. (Homer’s heroes, by the way, show that same ideal of a match
between the inner and the outer and the rapid externalization of the inner).
The striking oddity of the
conglomerate of attitudes he calls insincere or ‘show-offy.’ There is system
behind the bizarre assemblage. We live in a culture that has separated the
domain of the ‘inner’ from the domain of the ‘outer.’ We think, feel and decide
at the inner self. We perceive the outer, act on it, and express ourselves in
the outer, towards the outer, when we choose to do so. The inner is our
essential realm and forum. We have privileged access to it, but also enjoy the
privilege to feel and think what belongs to us exclusively.
Why be good by pursuing
excellences? What makes excellences good?
What if someone said: why
pursue excellences in my life, why not the vices? Why be truthful rather that
insincere? Why try to match the status one enjoys with the justification for
that status? Why not rather choose the pursuit of wealth or of pleasure as main
orientation of my life, and subordinate other pursuits to this central purpose?
It is, by the way, pretty clear that Theophrastus’ IM does not just practice
his vice for the sake of other goals, for example to gain an advantage over his
creditors (I do not have any money with me - while his pocket is full of silver
drachmes.) He obviously experiences pleasure when he does not let others on to
what he is up to, thinks, feels etc., and also enjoys the power that confers to
him. The power of the poker player! He looks to me like someone who is
insincere because that is his life project. At least his way of having fun.
Can we argue with him,
claiming that he does not lead a good life? What if he says, that he is living
his idea of the right kind of life?
I am raising a question of a
second order: What makes the excellences/virtues good, and the vices bad? Let
us look at his rejection of a money-making life first. (NE p. 367, 1096a5-10).
Where the acquisition of wealth is the dominant project in a life, Aristotle
says, there that life is undertaken under a compulsion. We may wonder where the
compulsion is when the life on money is a fundamental choice of an agent.
(Disney’s Uncle Scrooge McDuck!). But Aristotle really argues that the
compulsion lies in something else. Wealth is not a goal in itself. It is only a
means for something else. From our point of view this is probably a normative
statement: that is what the interest in wealth should be, for example to allow
a life of leisure that can be spent in contemplation. In Uncle Scrooge, money
has obviously become a goal in itself, a goal where the sheer possession and augmentation
confer pleasure. A true scrooge reverses this instrumental relation. For him
money becomes a goal in itself. From Aristotle’s point of view that is an
aberration. Wealth is not a primary good, like health. It is not rational to
desire wealth for its own sake. Wealth should be no more than a means to an end
different from wealth itself. If that is
the case, then a life that puts the highest value on wealth puts itself under
the constraint of the things wealth can procure. Wealth is a conditional good.
It is “merely useful and for the sake of something else.” (NE p. 367, 1196a6).
A problem Aristotle does not
address at this place: money can buy goods that are worth for their own sake,
like health or a life of contemplation. Money, as it functions in our
environment, is the generalized access to very different kinds of good. Does
that make it worth one’s while to pursue it for its own sake? I do not think
so. But this opens a difficult
discussion.
How about a different
pursuit, the pursuit of pleasure? We are now asking whether such a life is not
a good life too. Or perhaps the only good life. Aristotle is again very short
in his rejection: A life of pleasure – understood as a life of enjoyment (NE p.
366, 1095b17) – is a preference for a life suitable to beasts. Aristotle seems
to presuppose that practical reason aims at refinement and, I would think, at
things that are not pleasurable. We begin to get a clearer notion why only his
excellences are good, and are the only real good things for the pursuit of the
good life. Pleasures may be something we pursue for their own sake. That would,
by the way, include the more beastly ones and the more refined ones. But to be
truthful or courageous or just is not per se pleasurable, and in many cases unpleasurable.
If pleasure is the ultimate measure for the good life, then these other
excellences will not be chosen. Not in our text, but Aristotle could think like
this: the pursuit of pleasure carries with it a special and peculiar kind of
dependence. I may be able to fashion my pleasures, at least to some extent. But
even if I were their master in that respect, once they are in place, I will be
the slave of my pleasures. I do not choose my pleasure and what provides them,
in the same way in which I choose to be truthful, brave or just. The interest
in pleasure always manifests itself in form of a desire. And desires motivate
to go after their object. In cases of courage, truthfulness of justice we are
the masters of both the decision to let our life be guided by the virtue and to
choose it as guide in a given case, and we determine the object of the
excellence in this case. Our mastery coincides with our choice of the
excellence. That choice enables us to be masters in the application of the
virtue, and to be masters of ourselves in dealing with the resistances.
What do we take away from the
two negative cases for our question why the excellences designated by Aristotle
are good? First, unlike wealth, these excellences are not goods because they
are means towards something else. Excellences are chosen for their own sake and
for the sake of no other good (NE p. 369/370, 1097a30-36). Why is truthfulness
good? Because we choose it for its own sake only, and not also for the sake of
anything else. This is of course not an argument! It is just saying the same
thing in the answer and in the question. We are only explicating the goodness
of the excellences, not giving an independent ground for their goodness. In
other words: the question what makes excellences good and vices bad does not
receive an independent answer, an answer that provides a reason beyond of what
the excellences are. You may be a little disappointed. Does the philosopher
have nothing more to offer for his ethics than an explication of what we mean when
we look for a ‘highest good’ what we mean, he says, is a good that is good only
for its own sake. But, then, Aristotle thinks that reason is here at both
sides: at the side of the object and at the side of the inquiry into the
object. The objects are the excellences. Reason has gains insight into itself,
and its unconditional character when it finds that the excellences are
autotelic goods. To articulate the highest goods is self-elucidation of
reason. Not self-grounding! To act under the guidance of the highest
goods is self-realization of reason.
Those who have done the
readings will have realized that my order of presentation follows the opposite
direction Aristotle chooses. He starts with the form of the highest good, and
works his way to the idea of choice and of the intermediate. We have worked our
way from choice, back to the highest good and goods. Unlike wealth and money
the excellences are goods we choose for their own sake. They are reason’s own
tendency to become real and to fashion our lives, simultaneously goods we need
to make real by choosing them and by choosing under their guidance. Is there
something that unites all the excellences without being a further purpose to
which they all are means? We have just seen that pleasure and enjoyment do not
qualify, in spite of the fact that we also seek pleasure for its own sake (EN
p. 368, 1096b18). However refined, pleasure will always be connected to the
senses: sensuous pleasure, and the happiness based on pleasure will not be
shared by excellences.
Is there something they all
share? (NE p. 368, 1096b21-25). Aristotle thinks there is such a common
feature. And it is, again, happiness, but a happiness of a specific kind.
Aristotle calls it “eudaimonia:” ‘to be be-spirited in the good way.’ Let us
call it ‘moral happiness’ in order to distinguish it from meaning ‘sensuous
happiness.’ What is kind of a feeling is the ‘moral happiness? Aristotle calls
it complete (NE p. 369, 1097a31) and self-sufficient (NE p. 370, 1097b7 &
15). The completeness is the lack of dependence of the excellences on other
things justifying them, the fact that they are highest goods. Self-sufficiency
is “that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing.” (NE
p. 370, 1097b15). Moral happiness thus seems to be a feeling of plenitude. Of
having or pursuing something that makes one’s life worthwhile living: a good
life. Living a life that seeks to enact excellences thus confers a feeling of
completeness and self-sufficiency. Aristotle thinks that this is the purpose of
man: “the kind of life” that consists in “an activity or actions of the soul”
implying a rational principle” (choice of the intermediate between extremes),
and the purpose of a good human being to be the good and noble performance of
these, and . . .any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance
with . . . the best and most complete excellence,” “and that ‘in a complete
life’” (NE p. 371, 1098 a12-20, citation modified). A (morally) happy man lives
and fares well” (NR p. 372, 1098b20). His life is “in itself pleasant.” (NE p.
373, 1099a5), whether he enjoys what he is doing or does not, also because he
does well what his most precious and dignified purpose is: to use reason.