Glad you liked it!
Silghtly off-topic I suppose, but I've found these sorts of Aristotelian "human good" accounts of morality, which I take you to be espousing, to be persuasive recently so I would like to ask whether you have made some posts previously elaborating and maybe formalizing these views to any larger extent? If not, are there any resources you would recommend for seeking out these views - both their proponents and critics?
I'm not sure how familiar you are with the tradition. I've written some very general summaries I'll share below.
In terms of going deeper, Alasdair MacIntyre's
After Virtue is one of the more influential works comparing the classical/medieval tradition and modern ethics. His thesis is that most modern moral discourse is not truly reasoned, but emotive and rationalized after the fact. That means that systems that appear to have rational principles are in fact voluntaristic frameworks disguised as rational. Misology is a big problem here. Reason is said not to apply to many different areas, and so reason loses its coherence and relation to the whole.
It can be a little dry and "gets into the weeds," at times, but overall, it is quite accessible. A big point of his is that Nietzche's critique of ethics, so popular in our times, seems spot on for Kant, Hume, etc. (Enlightenment ethics) but doesn't really touch the older tradition. I found myself mostly agreeing with this. Nietzsche tends to deal with strawman versions of Plato and other older thinkers (or more charitably, how those thinkers are seen popularly in his time) and I don't think he adequately addresses some of the big challenges they have for his philosophy, particularly the need for reflexive "inner" freedom, and the ways in which our
polis is prior to our personal identity.
Another really good one is Robert M. Wallace's
Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present, which is a fairly short and accessible book that lays out the classical idea of freedom (grounding ethics) quite well. For the ancients and medievals, freedom is perfected in actuality. Whereas today, we tend to look at freedom more in terms of potentiality, the freedom to "choose between."
The ancients certainly saw choice as part of freedom. However, consider that no one would seem to want to knowingly choose what is bad for them. If someone knows something to be evil or worse, there is a sense in which they will always choose the better
if they are able. Thus, freedom is perfected in the actuality to choose the Good, not in the mere potentiality to choose
anything. A person who choses the worse/evil is in some way constrained, be it by being disordered (Plato's civil war within the soul), having defective reason, or being in some way ignorant of what is truly best.
The relation between knowledge and freedom is crucial for the ancients. Plotinus' use of the story of Oedipus in the Enneads is instructive here. Sophocles’ Oedipus is in many ways a model of freedom. He is powerful, a king, competent, and wise. Yet he ends up doing the very thing he has been seeking to avoid his entire life, killing his father, due to a truth that lies outside his understanding. Here, we might also consider Homer's Achilles. Achilles is considered praiseworthy because he chooses a glorious death rather than a long but inglorious life. Such a choice requires that Achilles
know his options. Were Achilles to simply blunder into his death, he would be much less a hero, more a pathetic victim of a fate that lied outside his understanding
Then, for a look at the metaphysical shift the undercut Aristotle, Joshua Hochschild's look at the rise of nominalism in late-medieval scholastic philosophy is good:
https://www.academia.edu/36162636/What_s_Wrong_with_Ockham_Reassessing_the_Role_of_Nominalism_in_the_Dissolution_of_the_West
Finally, there are D.C. Schindler's two books comparing the classical and medieval tradition with modernity:
Freedom from Reality and
Retrieving Freedom. The first looks at modern notions of freedom and ethics, primarily using Locke as an exemplar, and then compares it to Plato and Aristotle. You could probably skip to the Plato and Aristotle chapters and still get a lot of value. The second traces the evolution of the tradition through Plotinus, St. Augustine, Boethius, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, and St. Aquinas, before looking at how it was supplanted. Schindler has really strong analysis, but at times gets a little "preachy," or seems to undervalue many of the good things about modernity that help enhance freedom. I think this might turn off some readers. Wallace's work as the benefit of being shorter and lacking this element, although it doesn't go as deep into the Aristotelian tradition.
Schindler is someone who has worked in Catholic philosophy his entire life, and so whether he means to or not he tends to often write for his particular audience. This doesn't detract from the good analysis, but it can be grating at times.
In terms of primary sources, Boethius'
Consolation of Philosophy is fantastic and a good synthesis of Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonism, and the Christian philosophical tradition. Aristotle's ethics is also quite accessible too if a bit dry. For Plato, I might put the
Republic and
Phaedrus up to. Maybe
Symposium too. The
Sophist/Statesman too, but those get much more "into the weeds."
I'll try to get to the other questions later. Here are my attempts at very briefly summarizing key distinctions in Aristotle, although they necessarily miss out on quite a lot. Ancient and medieval ethics tend to be unified to epistemology and metaphysics. Hence, it's hard to give an adequate exposition of the part without the whole. They would almost certainly best be classified as "objective" though, although ethics contains subjective and socially constructed elements for Plato and Aristotle for sure.
Aristotle defines the human good in terms of the Greek term "eudaimonia." This term has been famously difficult to translate, corresponding to some blend of the English terms "happiness," "flourishing," and "well-being." Given the difficulties in defining this term, it may be helpful to first investigate what eudaimonia is not.
In Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that pleasure, honor, and virtue are not equivalent to eudaimonia. Rather, these three are subordinate means of achieving eudaimonia, in the same way that “bridle making… [is] subordinate to horsemanship.”1 They are “lower ends… pursued for the sake of the higher,” i.e., eudaimonia.2
Aristotle calls the life spent pursuing pleasure “completely slavish… a life for grazing animals.”3 Pleasure is a “good of the body,” while eudaimonia is a “good of the soul,” unique to man because it requires reason.4 Pleasure is temporary, while eudaimonia must be measured across a lifetime.”*5 While “a truly good… person… will bear the strokes of fortune suitably,” a hedonist will fall into misery if their fortunes change.6 Neither is eudaimonia equivalent to honor. Those who seek honor wish to be honored for being virtuous. Thus, “in their view… virtue is superior [to honor].”7 Virtue cannot be equivalent with eudaimonia either, for one may be virtuous, yet still “suffer the worst evils and misfortunes.”8
Having said what eudaimonia is not, let us now turn to what it is. Eudaimonia is a self-sufficient cause for action, admitting no ancillary considerations. “Honor, pleasure… and every virtue we certainly choose because of themselves… but we also choose them… [so that] we shall [achieve eudaimonia ] .”9 However, “we always choose [ eudaimonia] because of itself, never for the sake of something else.”10 Other candidates for "the human good," (e.g. virtue, pleasure, etc.) cannot be equivalent to eudaimonia if what is true of eudaimonia is not true of them.
For Aristotle, eudaimonia is “activity of the soul in accord with virtue.”11 It is the development of what is unique to man: reason. Excellence in reason allows man to make good choices and turn his desires towards good aims. Virtue is a “necessary condition for eudaimonia ,” while honor and pleasure may be “cooperative instruments” that aid eudaimonia, but they are not eudaimonia itself. 12 We praise honor and justice, which bring eudaimonia about, but instead celebrate eudaimonia , as it is the greatest good we hope to achieve.13
What sort of life then best fulfills man's unique telos? This would be the life of theôria or "contemplation."14 For it is the contemplation of truth that is "best," and "the pleasantest of the virtuous activities."15 Further, it is theôria that is most unique to man as the "rational animal," and thus most indicative of man's telos. Such a life is also preferable because it is reason that is the most "divine" characteristic of man. Pursuit of reason is what allows us "to make ourselves divine" "as far as we can," and "live in accordance with the best thing in us."16 That said, Aristotle allows that other forms of life can nevertheless result in eudaimonia, it will just not be the highest form of it. **
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*For Aristotle, happiness might even be judged beyond a lifetime, involving what happens to one’s descendants, i.e. Solon's pronouncement that we must "count no man happy until the end is known."
** In Book X, it seems we can see more of Plato's influence on Aristotle; this corresponds more with the Phaedo.
1 Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Book I, Chapter I § 4.
2 Ibid. Book I, Chapter I § 4
3 Ibid. Book I, Chapter V, § 3
4 Ibid. Book I, Chapter VII, § 2-3
5 Ibid. Book I, Chapter VII, § 5
6 Ibid. Book I, Chapter VII, § 5
7 Ibid. Book I, Chapter V, § 6
8 Ibid. Book I, Chapter VII, § 5
9 Ibid. Book I, Chapter VII, § 5
10 Ibid. Book I, Chapter IX, § 7
^11^Ibid. Book I, Chapter IX, § 7
^12^Ibid. Book I, Chapter IX, § 7
^13^Ibid. Book I, Chapter XII § 4
14 Ibid. Book X, Chapter 7 § 1
15 Ibid. Book X, Chapter 7 § 2
16 Ibid. Book X, Chapter 7 § 3
17 Ibid. Book X, Chapter 8 § 1
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Aristotle's arguement that the virtues are more similar to crafts than natural faculties (e.g. sight) hinges on how we come to possess the virtues. For Aristotle, the virtues are a type of habit. For instance, if we are generous, this means that we are in the habit of acting generously. Such habits can be ingrained in an individual through repeated action. Natural properties of objects can not be "trained" in this way. For example, Aristotle notes that it is not possible to train a rock into having the propensity to fall upwards simply by throwing it upwards repeatedly. Since nothing in nature can be trained to act against its nature, Aristotle concludes that the virtues are neither contrary to human nature, nor a product of it.
For Aristotle, one can become more brave by acting bravely in perilous situations and habituating oneself to overcoming fear. That is, we develop the virtue by practicing it. This is not the case for natural faculties. For example, we do not come to see or hear by often engaging in the acts of seeing or hearing. Rather, we see and hear by nature, and doing more seeing or hearing neither improves nor degrades either faculty.
By contrast, we do seem to learn the virtues in the same way we learn crafts. For example, a man learns to build houses by participating in the act of building houses in the same way that a man can learn to be prudent by regularly taking time to carefully assess situations before forming a judgement about them. Likewise, crafts can be taught, and it also seems possible to teach the virtues.
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Aristotle uses the concepts of the continent and incontinent person to develop a distinction in the ways people end up pursuing vices. Some people do not believe that their vices are immoral. Perhaps they were raised in a bad environment and have come to see cheating as a proper means to an end, or to see licentiousness and gluttony as natural routes to the "good life" of pleasure. These people do not perform their vices because they lack constraint, rather they do so because they have bad habits and believe engaging in vice to be proper behavior.
By contrast, the incontinent person knows their vices as vices. They will acknowledge that their sloth or gluttony is bad, and yet they are unable to exercise the self-control required to stop themselves from engaging in these vices. The incontinent person might even attempt to develop virtue, overcoming small temptations, and yet continually fail to overcome large ones - the triumph of appetite and passion over reason and virtue.
A continent person then, is one who is tempted by vice, but who acts in accordance with virtue and reason instead. They are not perfectly virtuous, for the person who is perfect in virtue enjoys being virtuous, but neither do they give in to vice. In the virtuous person, desire, reason, and action are in harmony, while in the continent person there is disharmony between desire on the one hand and reason and virtue on the other.
Aristotle notes that of these types, the incontinent person is the hardest to help. For the person raised in vice might reform if shown what is good, but the incontinent person already knows what is good and fails to do it.
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It's interesting to contrast Aristotle's view with that of modern thinkers who would have it that virtue lies precisely in following moral laws even when we don't desire to follow them. Afterall, where is the sacrifice or effort on our behalf if we are simply doing what we like?
I suppose the disagreement here probably lies in how virtue is defined. If virtue is those dispositions and skills needed to live a good life, then it would seem obvious that it is beneficial to enjoy doing what is good. However, if virtue is the ability to follow moral laws, then it seems like being able to override desire is more important than having right desires.
I tend to come down more with Aristotle. The good, meaningful life seems to entail freedom. One is freer if they do what they want than if they have to constantly wage war against themselves (e.g. St. Paul in Romans 7). I happened to come across a great line on this reading the Penguin Selected Works of Meister Eckhart last night: "[the just] person is free, and the closer they are to justice, the more they become freedom itself... For nothing created is free. As long as there is something above me which is not God, I am oppressed by it..." (German Sermon 3 on John 15:16)