Aristotle’s Ethics
The questions cover the two Ethics lectures before friendship.
I. Comprehensive:
Read:
Book I, Chapters 2, 4, 5, 7, 8.
Book II, Chapters 1, 5, 6, and 7,
For friendship: Book θ = Book VIII, Chapters 1-11. (Not in our Reader. Pick up Excerpts).
Book IX, chapters 4 & 8. (In our Reader)
Advice: Many of the terms for ethically relevant attitudes and feelings are unfamiliar to us. Look those terms up in the OED if Aristotle does not explain them.
II. Specific passages to think about, presented in the
order of the text. (They will not be discussed in that order.):
1094a18-22: What is the difference between desiring something for the sake of something else, and desiring something for its own sake? What do we desire wealth for? What do we desire courage for? Are the two kinds of reason for desiring something exclusive?
1095a16ff.: What different things do people mean when they try to identify what we mean when we call ‘happiness’ “the highest good achievable by action”? Can you think of a highest good achievable otherwise than through action?
1095b17: List the three prominent types of life, distinguished by the kind of good they pursue?
All of chapter 5, in particular 1095b16 & 20; 1096a6-10: What does Aristotle say to devalue a life spent in the pursuit of pleasure? What does he say in order to devalue a life that pursues wealth as its highest good?
Not part of the
required reading, but interesting because of the connection with Plato:
1096a23-32: Aristotle points to the variety of things we call ‘good’ and the many different reasons we invoke as criteria of what makes something ‘good.’ This is an argument against the theory that the good is an idea like Plato’s beauty, (Symposium 211B1): “itself by itself with itself; always one in form”). What is the problem Aristotle here creates for himself? Is there unity in the variety? If so, what is it? Watch out for efforts at unity in the text! Run through his different objects and examples, and think about a respect, in which we call them ‘good’ (examples: For what reason do we call ‘good’ – God/a god, reason, a useful item, etc.) The problem returns at 1097a15.
1096b18: Certain goods seem to “be good in themselves.” Identify Aristotle’s examples. Then ask what it means to pursue those goods as ‘goods in themselves.’ How does Aristotle define ‘good in itself’? (Also look at 1097b2).
1096b35-1097a2: Shows Aristotle’s pragmatic orientation. Try to say in your own words how that pragmatism articulates itself in the passage.
Return to required
reading:
1097a15-25: What is the question Aristotle confronts to all the different ‘goods’ with, in order to find out whether or not they all come together in something they have in common?
In chapter 7, retrace the trajectory that leads to the thesis that happiness is the highest good. (1097b22-37). What is it for a good to be “complete without qualification?” (1097a30-36)
1097b15: What is it for a good to be self-sufficient?
1098a8: Does man have a function or purpose? What is it? Read carefully the definition. How does the example of the lyre-player fulfill that definition? (See Study Question # 2 below).
1098a13-18: Take apart Aristotle’s complex conclusion, dividing it up into steps in order to understand why the human good is an activity of the soul in accordance with the best and complete excellence.
After having read chapter 7: what does Aristotle try to achieve in that chapter?
Chapter 8 explores happiness into greater depth. Make a list of the different possibilities to understand what constitutes happiness. Which one(s) might be the one(s) Aristotle privileges?
1099a21: How does Aristotle argue towards the conclusion ‘excellent actions are in themselves pleasant?’ Look for steps in this argument in the passages from 1098b30-1099a21.
1098b19; 1099a32-1099b8: What is Aristotle’s distinction between internal and external goods? Think of an example for each.
1098b32: “to excellence belongs activity in accordance with excellence” – why is this not a trivial statement?
1099b6-31: there seem to be two kinds of pleasure, one tied to the pursuit of excellence, the other not. How are they distinct? What if you perform a noble action that is also leading to great physical pain. What, if any, could be the pleasure in it?
1103a16-1103b25: The role of habit? Why is habit important for an activity in accordance with excellence? The role of exercise? What is the result of exercise? Couldn’t we just be excellent by remaining what we are when we were born, or just with the competences we acquire through maturation and social learning of skills when we grow up? Try to say what excellence is if it is acquired through practice, using the examples at 1103b7-19.
1105b19 ff.: Aristotle distinguishes passions, faculties and states – all belonging to our soul. What distinguishes these three? Why are passions a problem for the pursuit of excellences? Reflect on this question by thinking of the passions of anger and fear (1106a3). What is a ‘state’? In which way is excellence a ‘state’? (Hint: Think of ‘state’ as ‘taking a stance’)
Can we choose our passions? How does our activity in pursuit of excellence
‘involve choice? (1106a4)
1105b28-1106a12: What is the object of moral evaluation – evaluation from the point of view of excellence – when we are subject to a passion?
1106a15-17: What is the ‘job’ of excellences? (See Study question # 2 below).
Try to understand Aristotle’s definition of the ‘practical intermediate (1106a25-1106b6). What is the difference between what that intermediate is not (arithmetical proportion) and what it is (intermediate relative to us)? What determines an intermediate relative to us, something the “master of any art” has the practical wisdom to find?
1106b15: How do we determine what counts as excellent? Look through Book II, chapters 6 & 7 for examples. Draw a list of extremes that are the opposite of excellence, and the type of excellence that is an intermediate relative to these extremes.
1106b20: Why is it important for all the feelings, passions and appetites “to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right aim, and in the right way?”
III. Study Questions:
# 1: The form of a ‘highest good’ and of the highest good, according to Aristotle? Note that this study question concerns a formal or structural element, and that it will later be supplemented by a ‘material’ element. This study question is concerned merely with the structure of the highest good, the form of ‘highest. It spells out conditions a good must fulfill if it is to count as ‘highest.’ (1095a14-28; 1097a15-23; 1097a30-36.)
# 2. What is an excellence/virtue/aretē? (Book I, Chapter 7=1098a7-17, Book II. Chapter 5=1105b19-1106a13; Book II, Chapter 6=1106a14-24 & 1106b-107a1.)
# 3. What is the function or purpose of man? (1097b22-1098a19)
# 4. What is the role of the intermediate in the conduct of a ‘good life?’ What is the conceptual model of the intermediate? How does the intermediate function when we try to lead the best lives we can lead? (Book II, Chapters 6 & 7).