Copyright 1997, 1999 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
The Academy, by this time, has established a system of general education that was based on mathematics and was postured in opposition to a school organized by Isocrates which offered a strictly rhetorical training. Aristotle's earliest works were written in his twenties while at the Academy. As one might imagine, these earliest works are strongly Platonic.
When Plato died in 348 BC, direction of the Academy moved to his nephew, Speusippus. Aristotle moved to Assos, on the coast of Asia Minor, where a branch of the Academy had been established earlier. The following period, from 348 to 342 BC was a time of rapid intellectual growth, for Aristotle, but it was also a time in which he became absorbed into the political future of Greece. The patron of this school was Hermeias, tyrant of Atarneus, who was politically wedged between the Persian Empire and Macedonia. Hermeias was evidently involved in a conspiracy with Phillip of Macedonia to invade Persia; at any rate, the Persians captured Hermeias and executed him. Aristotle fled to the island of Lesbos with the others associated with the school, including Hermeias' niece, Pythias, who became Aristotle's wife. Through the end of this period, Aristotle quietly engaged in scientific studies.
In 342 BC, Aristotle was asked to return to Macedonia to tutor Phillip's son, Alexander. Little is known about this period of Aristotle's life; though, given Alexander's later invasion of Persia and Aristotle's earlier connection with Hermeias, it placed Aristotle in a dangerous position. In 336 BC, Alexander became king of Macedonia and spent the next thirteen years expanding Greek influence throughout the region.
The period from 336 to the time of Alexander's death in 323 BC was the period of Aristotle's true creativity. He returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum, which flourished as a center of both humanistic and scientific research. Unfortunately, by the time of Alexander's death, the Athenians moved to remove all Macedonian connections from their midst; Aristotle himself was put up for trial on a charge of impiety for some verses he had written, many years earlier, in praise of Hermeias' bravery. Aristotle's attachment to Athens was not as great as that of Socrates, however, and he fled to Chalcis, his mother's birthplace, where he died shortly afterward.
Aristotle's wife Pythias had died during the Lyceum years, and he had remarried (in some ill-defined sense) with Herpyllis. The latter union bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nichomachus. Hence, his "Nichomachean Ethics" represents a conversation between father and son on the subject of living well.
Aristotle begins this work by observing that we always increase our knowledge by employing prior knowledge. Either we deduce particular knowledge from general truths that we accept or we induce general knowledge from particular truths. In Book 2, he begins a lengthy treatise on scientific knowledge. For Aristotle, scientific knowledge is necessary and causal. It is always in the form of a syllogistic demonstration; hence, what we know in science is always demonstrated from deeper and more fundamental knowledge.
The syllogism was introduced in the Prior Analytics. "All animals are mortal; all humans are animals; therefore, all humans are mortal" is a classic syllogism. Looking at the deduced sentence, we see that the subject S is "humans" and that the predicate P is "mortality." "Animals" is the so-called middle term M; it is the crucial term that necessarily links humans and mortality. The middle term functions the way it does, evidently, because predication P of the middle term M is known more surely and fundamentally than predication of P to S.
If we outline this demonstration with the terms only, we have
M - P
S - M
------------- (AAA)
S - P
It is a necessary, valid argument and, in some sense, it tells us why humans are mortal, i.e., the cause of mortality in humans. Aristotle's logic is "categorical" in the sense that it is entirely based on knowing what can be properly predicated of classes and knowing what individuals belong to what classes.
Each of the statements is in the demonstration above is in "universal mood" and this mood is indicated as A since the word "all" is used to express it. The particular syllogism, above, has mood AAA as indicated to the right. There are three other moods that categorical propositions can have. E is a universal negation; "no individual is such-and-such" or, if you wish, "all individuals are not such-and-such." I is a particular affirmation; "some individual is such-and-such." O is a particular negation; "some individual is not such-and-such." Moods can be mixed in syllogisms; thus, we could argue the same syllogism form, above, in the mood EAE, as "no animal is made of metal; all humans are animals; therefore, no humans are made of metal." There are 64 different combinations of the four moods; hence, there are 64 syllogisms based on the placement of S, P, and M in this particular syllogism.
To complicate matters further, there are three other ways of placing the terms in the syllogism figure; hence, we have the four standard figures of syllogism, below.
M - P P - M M - P P - M
S - M S - M M - S M - S
----- ----- ----- -----
S - P S - P S - P S - P
This means that there are actually 256 different syllogisms. Are all of these valid demonstrations? No way! But, then, how do we discover which are valid? Recognizing a valid demonstration depends upon our intuitions for class membership and class relations. In particular, we can use Venn Diagrams to discover validity. The first demonstration illustrated, above, is valid because the Venn circle for S is entirely within the circle for M which is entirely within the circle for P, meaning that P is predicated of all M and, hence, of all S.
The second figure, above, in the mood AOO, is another classic and valid argument form. For instance, "All men are mortal; John is not mortal; therefore, John is not a man." The Venn circle for men is entirely within the circle for mortality; however, the circle for John is outside the circle for mortality; hence, the circle for John cannot be inside the circle for men.
In Book 4, Aristotle recognizes that universality may occur in either of two ways. An attribute may belong to a class essentially by being a part of the meaning of the class itself; but an attribute may belong to a class accidentally, merely by discovery after the class has already been understood. The statement relating an essential attribute to its subject is a necessary truth. And, for Aristotle, "demonstrative knowledge must rest on necessary basic truths." As scientific investigations begin, we may discover various accidental universals; the object of investigation is, then, to work our way backward until we find the class containing the subject and out of which the attribute comes by necessity. He considers a situation (p. 22) where it is proposed that "all C are A necessarily" but where someone has tried to demonstrate this with the argument "All B are A; all C are B; therefore, all C are A," where neither of these premises is known by necessity. While the syllogism is valid, Aristotle declines to call this scientific knowledge because the necessity of the conclusion is not derived from the deduction which also does not reveal its cause. He concludes, "demonstrative knowledge must be knowledge of a necessary nexus." The middle term, B, must be necessary.
Aristotle's science is based on archetypes, as is Plato's theory of knowledge. Consider the archetype "mother." Plato supposes Socrates to be walking along and engaging Alltruon about the latest news, a mother, Faith, who has protected her son, Confident, from wolves. Socrates, of course, asks Alltruon, "What is motherhood?" While Socrates implicitly assumes there is an archetypal mother, the dialectic is a different kind of argument form from Aristotle's science. In the dialectic, Alltruon suggests plausible approximations to an archetype. "Motherhood is savagery," he suggests; then, Socrates fits this into various deductive demonstrations and they both recognize that this archetypal attribute yields results that are not like mothers they have known. Another archetypal attribute is proposed. According to Plato, this dialectic process eventually leads us to recollect the true archetype. For Aristotle, it is quite different. The news of Faith may stimulate us to remember other instances of mother's defending their children. For Aristotle, we literally see the archetype of mother within the subject at hand, within the assembled experiences. Its final demonstration, then, lies in its scientific explanatory power. "All mothers (the middle term) defend their children; Faith is a mother; therefore, Faith defended Confident from the wolves." In this we understand the news as an instance of necessity, the action being caused by an archetypal behavior.
There is much more detailed information in the Posterior Analytics, of course, but perhaps this is a good start.
Aristotle's subject, unlike our own physics, is all objects that we find around us. Since all objects move, change, or undergo processes, he is interested in the principles of motion and change. In Book 1, then, he takes up "natural objects." All objects consist, in the most basic sense, of a material substrate; but, in emerging as objects of our world, they also possess inseparable forms. Some would argue that the form is more the nature of the object than the matter. Natural objects are those objects that possess an internal principle of motion or change. A seed grows into a tree; a bed does not grow into a bed. There are, thus, natural objects and made objects. Aristotle sees the concept of making an object of any kind as lying within the arts; that is, the Greeks do not distinguish between art and technology.
Since objects are made up of both matter and form, Aristotle asks which of these is the proper subject of physics or whether both are. Interestingly, he recognizes that matter was the main concern of the early natural philosophers, and modern physicists are similarly disposed. However, he argues that a physician must exercise his/her skills by understanding both the material cause of a diseased body and the formal cause of health. Hence, Aristotle considered physics as addressing both matter and form. This conceptual system was so successful that it stood as a model of science from his time through the 16th Century AD.
In Book 3, Aristotle considers how things change and, consequently, what factors we need to account for whenever we try to explain why something happened. There are four causes. (1) material --- that out of which a thing comes and that persists in it; (2) formal --- the form or the archetype (essence and genera); (3) efficient --- the primary source or agency of change; and (4) telos --- that for the sake of which something is done. These are illustrated in a diagram that depicts transformation of a block of marble into a marble statue. Aristotle's concept of causation is of enormous importance. While Plato left the substances of this world largely ignored and irrational, Aristotle's causes rationalize the changes that occur in this world and, consequently, make it intelligible, that is, accessible to knowledge. Aristotle's forms are essentially (descriptively) the same as Plato's ideas, but they are no longer other-worldly, inhering in substances along with matter.
There follows a brief discussion of "modes of causation." While he imagines twelve different modes, the most important are his distinctions between actual and potential and between proper and incidental. A sculptor is a potential and proper cause of an art work; Fred is an actual and incidental cause of this statue, incidentally because he actually sculpted it and is a sculptor.
Now, he turns to the status of chance and spontaneity. Both are often referred to as causes of events. Should they be added to the list of four causes or accounted for in some other way? After a typically Aristotelian discussion of how the concept of chance has been treated (or not treated) by others, he considers events that come about "for the sake of something" and separates these into natural and deliberate events. An event occurs by chance when it was deliberately planned for the sake of something but occurs directly because of some unanticipated factor. Thus, Aristotle sees chance and spontaneity as incidental modalities of cause, not additional causes as such. Interestingly, according to Aristotle, we can only speak of chance in situations where an event was "for the sake of something."
Spontaneity is a wider concept than chance; the difference centers on deliberation. Agents capable of moral action (humans) can deliberate and, hence, think through how an action will be for the sake of something. Other objects may still be on a natural path for the sake of something. Here, an incidental occurence is said to be spontaneous.
Aristotle goes on to pursue the discussion of natural objects more thoroughly. Do these objects merely change (mechanically) by necessity? He considers that absurd. Instead, he sees all of nature tending toward ends, that is, for the sake of definite things. It is this generally purposive behavior of nature that enables incidental divergence. He even considers a "pre-Darwinian" notion of spontaneous evolution and counter-evolution. Nature, like man, is an "artist" or agent of causation. How, then, does necessity occur in natural things? In Aristotle's mind, natural necessity comes from the material cause. Because a seed bears the material of oak certain changes and stages will be necessary on the route to development for the sake of being an oak tree.
The materials that were editorially placed in what we call the Metaphysics were named so because, in the mind of the early editors, they fell between Aristotle's discussion of physics and his later discussions of practical and productive sciences and because they took up a different collection of problems. (In Greek, 'meta-' can mean either "after" or "between" depending on context.) Since Aristotle's discussion in this text seems to look at science from a different perspective, that is, from the perspective of first principles and fundamental objects or ideas, the term 'meta' is often used in English to indicate this kind of discipline, or meta-discipline --- e.g., meta-mathematics or meta-linguistics. Careful scrutiny has demonstrated that the twelve books of Metaphysics come from a variety of times, from some of Aristotle's first writings to some of his last.
Book 1 (Alpha) deals primarily with a discussion about ancient concepts of causation. Chapters 1-2 introduce the subject; chapters 3-6 consider these ideas from Thales to Plato; chapters 7-10 develop Aristotle's own responses to these. Book 12 (Lambda) is Aristotle's discussion of fundamental substance, motion, and the origin of movement.
The subject of metaphysics is what we must know in order to possess wisdom. While sense experience delivers us to knowledge about particulars, this is not useful knowledge because it cannot be extended, in general, to other experiences. People who are wise are able to move between particulars and they are able to teach because they have an understanding of causes and principles. The subject of metaphysics, then, is what kinds of causes and principles we must know in order to be wise. Among the sciences, this pursuit of wisdom is alone pure and free, being without practical or productive ends and solely for the preparation of the mind.
In chapters 3-6, Aristotle reminds us that he has identified and discussed four causes (material, formal, efficient, and telos); however, it is clear that all philosophers, from Thales onward, have contemplated these same issues. What, then, can be said about all of the ideas that have been brought forward? His discussion is extensive and demonstrates the diversity of early ideas regarding these matters. Of special significance, however, is his discussion of Plato, in chapter 6. On p. 259, he observes that Plato combined Socrates and Heraclitus by realizing that definitions of universals (Socrates' problem) could not refer to particular things in the experienced world (Heraclitus' flux) because of their lack of permanence. Thus, Plato constructed a realm of Being in which he conceived of the Ideas as what universals denote; and Plato conceives of the Good as the single cause of the Ideas themselves. Borrowing from the Pythagoreans, who conceived that everything imitates numbers, Plato described the relation between experienced things and the Ideas as "participation." In Aristotle's mind, not only did Plato fail to explain adequately what was meant by "participation" but he also set himself up for certain contradictions, or paradoxes, when it came to dealing with the status of numbers and souls as intermediaries.
One conclusion that can be drawn from this discussion of the philosophical tradition, is that no one ever conceived of any cause beyond the four that Aristotle discussed. Thus, progress in metaphysics will be made in refining these ideas rather than in extending them. In Aristotle's mind, while early thinkers focused on matter, they had great difficulty accounting exactly for differentiation into essences and for movement or change. Returning to Plato, in chapter 9, he complains that the concept of the Ideas tended to proliferate an Idea suitable to each entity; that is, there was nothing to suggest exactly how many, or how few, Ideas were necessary to account for everything in the world. As Plato himself and the Platonists who followed became more Pythagorean in their pursuit of mathematics as the key to science, they involved themselves in increasing contradictions that Aristotle briefly articulates. Running throughout this critique, Aristotle's Forms, which inhere in substance, and Plato's Ideas, which stand apart, are compared. The book ends with a general observation on the absurdity of assuming that we know everything originally and an appeal to the spirit of empiricism, which always needs to inquire through sense experience in order to gain knowledge of things.
Turning to Book 12, Aristotle concerns himself with two topics --- a further discussion of substance and a new discussion of motion. Chapters 1 through 5 are concerned with substance. Having rejected Plato's bifurcation of worlds, Aristotle is committed only to the world that we experience, and that world is made up of particular substances. Substance consists of matter and form, and most substances are on a path of change between potentiality and actuality. What Plato identified as Ideas with a separate existence, Aristotle identifies as the specific forms inhering in particular substances. We have access to these forms because they are precisely that which we can intellectually discuss regarding each substance.
Nothing has been said, thus far, that was not already in the Physics. This discussion is different in that, accepting the general idea of substance, it considers some very basic issues about kinds of substances and processes. The discussion is heavily based on Aristotle's Categories, that is, his account of the different kinds of things that we can say about any substance --place, motion, quantity, quality, relation, etc. In chapter 3, for instance, he notes that there are three basic characteristics of any substance we can discuss --- its matter, its nature, and its particularity. Hence, looking at Socrates, we can see that we are dealing with something of human flesh; indeed, we can see that Socrates is of the nature of man; but Socrates is also a particular man with snub nose, wild curly hair, and short in posture.
At the beginning of the Book, he has asserted that there are three general kinds of substance possible. These are, first and foremost, sensible perishable substances --- things that are moved and that can move other things and that both come into and go out of being. He also allows the possibility of sensible eternal substances --- things that are moved and that can move other things but that remain fixed in existence. By these he has in mind the eternal objects of the heavens and their eternal existence reflects the fact that they are moved only in terms of their place and not in terms of their other properties. There remains, then, one other possible substance --- an object that can move others but is not itself moved, which means that it must be changeless in all respects, eternal, in one place, and unseen. At chapter 6, he turns to this "unmoved mover" to prove that its existence is necessary. Why must there be an unmoved mover and what would this substance be like? These are the issues of chapters 6 through 10.
The concept of an unmoved mover comes out of Aristotle's commitment to the idea that all substances change eternally. That is, motion itself is eternal. But motion, for Aristotle (consistent with causal agency) and in contrast to Newton, requires a mover. But for the mover to be an eternal agency of motion, it itself cannot be moved. However, if it itself is not moved, it is outside of place and outside of matter and so it cannot be seen. Equally, since it cannot change, there is nothing in it that is potential. The unmoved mover is pure actuality. Incidentally, the motion caused by the unmoved mover must be circular motion because, of the three possible kinds considered by Aristotle (circular, infinite linear, and harmonic linear) only circular is pure and possible (infinite is impossible and harmonic is mixed or complex).
At the beginning of chapter 7, he reviews the situation and establishes the basis for his cosmology, formalized eventually by Ptolemy. Coming "inward" from the unseen unmoved mover toward the world of substance as we know it, is "the first heaven," the sphere of the fixed stars. These are eternal sensible substances which merely change place in an eternal circular motion around us. Inside of this heaven are other eternal substances (e.g., the planets, sun, and moon) which undergo more complex circular motions. And, at the center of it all, is earth, the realm of sensible perishing substances, a realm of chaotic motions. (It is interesting to see, here, how tremendously revolution- ary it was for Galileo and Newton to think of motion and the heavens so differently. Galileo's first significant inquiry was into harmonic motion. And Newton conceived of motion persisting without a mover, of force at a distance, and of heavenly gravitation being identical to the terrestrial laws of falling bodies, thus denying Aristotle's separation between the purity of the heavens and the perishability of the earth.)
The unmoved mover is the centerpiece of Aristotle's "theology," for he sees the principle of a necessary unmoved mover as essentially good and calls it God. It is, however, a remote God, to say the very least; it is little more than a source of energy. Perhaps, in some definite sense, Aristotle's God exists for us, today, only as an eternal principle, E=mc2. But Aristotle's eternal circular motion has been replaced by our concept of an eternal harmonic motion of mass-energy-interconversion, the Big Bang to the Big Crunch.
Book I constitutes an introductory discussion and the subject is the good of man. In chapters 1-5, Aristotle lays out the general path to be taken. In ethics we consider human actions. All human actions aim toward some end; indeed, the good is that end. However, not all goods are final goods. There are many good things that we aim at because they will lead to other good things. What, then, is a final good, something that we aim at because it is good in itself. Happiness is that final good.
Along the way, Aristotle lays out the grounding for any discussion of ethics. A child cannot engage in this discussion, nor can an untrained adult. In fact, to discuss ethics and, through it, to achieve happiness, one must have been brought up well already. By this aristotle means that the forms of good behavior must already have been instilled in the young man who now turns toward maturity.
Having said all this, Aristotle turns directly to the issue of the good. The problem is that most people identify the good with pleasure and, hence, are likely to interpret happiness simply as a maximization of pleasures. He turns first to the doctrine of Plato, namely, that there is a single Idea of the Good that occupies a central place among the Platonic ideas. In effect, what Aristotle argues is that there are two many diverse objects, qualities, and relations in the world, all of which are good in some sense, to allow participation with a single idea to make sense. Besides, Aristotle sees a single ultimate good as unattainable, and he is looking for something that is attainable. It is pointless to see happiness as the end of a good life if happiness is not attainable. But if the good is not a single idea (p. 315), what then is it?
Contrary to Plato, Aristotle takes substance as the proper subject; and viewed as substances, humans are quite diverse. When we look at any substance, we find it in states of change; and change is caused in diverse ways. But there is one cause that deals with ends; the telos. Aristotle makes reference to function in this discussion. The function of a physician is to seek health; the function of a ship builder is to build great ships. What, then, is the general function of man? If we hold aside the diverse functions of specialists and look at man alone, as distinct from other animals, what do we find. In effect, plants, animals, and men grow; animals and men have sensation; but only man has the faculty of rationality. Thus, man's special function must be to develop the rational faculty; hence, the good for man must be activity of the soul which follows a rational principle. And Aristotle sees this as equivalent to "activity of the soul in accordance with virtue."
This concludes (p. 319) the outline of Aristotle's "Ethics" as such. Aristotle conceives of humans as he conceives of any substance. Humans change within the realm of causation. A person emerges from the material cause of being flesh. Parents and other teachers, as efficient causes, bring the forms of behaving well to their children so that they will become political people (good citizens of the polis). As Aristotle points out, we cannot actually learn ethics unless we have been brought up well from the beginning. Now, however, the Ethics serves as a new agency, directing introspection and discovering the forms of deliberate action in concert with virtue. The contemplative person is on her way to happiness, drawn by the telos of human perfectability (the that-for-the-sake-of-which all human development happens). These causal relations are depicted in an accompanying diagram.
In Books II - V, Aristotle describes moral virtue in depth. Generally speaking, people suggest that the good lies in three different areas --- external things, the body, and the soul. Aristotle, clearly, is in harmony with those who see the highest good in the soul. Furthermore, he suggests that one who is good in the soul and, hence, acts virtuously will take pleasure in these acts. Thus, solving the task of the Republic, he argues that the just person does not have to give up pleasure but will take pleasure in his just acts. Nevertheless, Aristotle acknowledges that happiness is enhanced by possession of certain things --- family, prosperity, good name, etc. --- for this gives the rational faculty more to work with. It is not that prosperity gives us happiness but that it elevates the potential of our virtuous activity (p. 325).
Aristotle concludes his introduction by considering virtue in some generality. It is clear, he suggests, that humans are affected by both rational and irrational faculties. Growth itself is irrational and scarcely a matter of activity; but the appetite, or desire, is irrational and definitely active. Similarly, he imagines that the rational faculty is divided into intellectual and (practical) moral spheres. Since virtue is the development of a faculty toward perfection, moral virtue must be the development of this sphere of practical rational activity. It is to the subject of moral virtue that he now turns.
From the beginning of Book II until chapter 6 of Book III, Aristotle discusses moral virtue and virtuous activity in general. He begins by making it clear that ethics arises out of habit. It is crucial, indeed, that one develop good habits from the beginning; and if there is any central obligation in politics, it is to guide citizens in the development of good habits. Only in this way can people develop virtuous behavior as a matter of character and, ultimately, achieve happiness.
Aristotle is well aware of the roles that pleasure and pain play in guiding our activities. However, he does not see pleasure as intrinsically, or necessarily, inhering in specific acts or objects. Pleasure is learned in connection with acts or objects; thus, the challenge is to learn to take pleasure in good habits.
Furthermore, when a person is virtuous, he/she must act consciously. The person must know the possible actions, must choose the correct action, and must do this firmly out of established character. Producing this kind of behavior requires time and development.
What then, in general, is virtue? Aristotle gives the following formula (p. 340): "Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e., the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it." Most activities, as Aristotle sees it, can be arranged in relatable groups, like triads, in which one represents an excess, one a deficiency, and one a mean. Detailed examples of this are to be taken up later. For now it is sufficient to recognize this in some obvious cases. Courage, for instance, is clearly a mean between cowardice and rashness. The same kinds of activities are involved and they differ only along a spectrum ranging from deficiency of something to an excess of the same thing.
Two points are important here. First, there are certain acts that do not apparently break down into this kind of spectral grouping. He mentions (pp. 340-1) adultery, theft, and murder, as obvious examples. These are clearly vices and don't admit of a mean. One wonders if there are certain virtues simpliciter that equally do not admit of a mean, but he doesn't mention any. Second, the mean is not construed to be set by the action or the object but, rather, by a rational principle in the person. The mean for one person will be different from the mean for another. One must know oneself in relation to the possibilities.
Having discussed, in general, what we must choose, Aristotle now brings up some features of how we choose. Virtue must be voluntary; it would not make sense to talk about involuntary virtue or vice. We "act" involuntarily when we when we do something by reason of ignorance or by compulsion. Thus, we act voluntarily when "the moving principle is in the agent himself."
Voluntary activity requires deliberation, choice, and execution. Having a certain end in mind, we deliberate over various means to attaining that end. Of these, we choose the best and, then, we act on our choice. We do not deliberate over something that lies outside of our power or over which we can exercise no choice. Virtue, then, requires deliberation and choice and it aims at a mean, reasoned individually between two extremes; and all of this should be developed as a habit of character. It is in the conscious exercise of this activity that we will find happiness.
From Book III, ch. 6, through Book V, Aristotle puts these general ideas to work by analyzing each of several moral virtues in great detail. The first of these is courage. Courage, as he has already observed, is a mean between the extremes of rashness and cowardice. When we consider the idea of courage, we are considering a person's approach to evils, rather than to goods, since it does not make sense the say that someone approached a wonderful gift of pleasure with courage (perhaps modesty or temperance). Therefore, the courageous man faces evils, or dangers, and meets them. The importance of detail in Aristotle's discussion lies in the fact that everyone has different capacities to overcome dangers in different situations. Courage does not require of us that we tackle the impossible and destroy ourselves; indeed, finding courage between rashness and cowardice is a matter of carefully understanding the nature of danger and the level of our abilities. Equally, there are quite diverse kinds of danger to be assessed.
Just as courage addresses pains, the moral virtue of temperance addresses pleasures and attempts to find a mean in approaching these. But temperance is not defined in relation to any or all pleasures, rather for the pleasures of body than for mind or soul. Equally, not all bodily pleasures are objects of temperate behavior; for instance, Aristotle does not imagine sight and smell being involved. Mostly it is those pleasures that satisfy appetites, e.g., food, drink, and sex. Temperance is a mean between insensibility and self-indulgence, though Aristotle sees the extreme of insensibility as almost inhuman. It is natural, then, to take pleasure in these things and to take some time with them; we should not feel guilty as Christians do. The real problems that occur are when we take any of these to the excess of being self-indulgent. Again, finding this mean is an individual matter that must depend on a person's capacities. Aristotle notes that issues of temperance appear to be more voluntary than those of courage. That is, pains come at us and force our hands; we are always under some coercion. Pleasures are available or have to be sought out; they do not force us to do anything.
The culminating discussion in this section regards justice, the moral virtue to which Plato devoted the entire Republic. Here we can see the divergence of Aristotle's ideas from Plato's in relief. For Aristotle, justice must be a mean between extremes, like any of the moral virtues. For Plato, justice was that quality of an individual or of a state in which each of its parts is free to express and contribute its own nature (e.g., the mind ruling, the spirited part defending, and the appetitive part making and consuming).
It is common to contrast justice with injustice so part of the question is whether we can interpret injustice as two diverse extremes. Generally speaking, we see justice a lawfulness and fairness. If we follow out justice as lawfulness, interpreting laws as political acts that establish fair treatment for the benefit of all citizens, then a just person is one who acts consistent with the good of everyone. In this regard, Aristotle agrees with Plato in seeing justice as a virtue of a different order. We can practice courage and temperance as individuals and for ourselves; but we practice justice not just for ourselves but also for everyone else. "Justice in this sense, then, is not part of virtue but virtue entire." For justice is the appreciation and practice of moral virtue, not just for ourselves, but also in relation to everyone. Justice as fairness represents the smaller concept which is part of virtue, and this form of justice follows simple rules of proportion.
In Book VI, Aristotle takes up the intellectual virtues as opposed to the moral virtues. Reminding us that "the virtue of anything is relative to its proper work" and remembering that virtue is bringing something to perfection, the intellectual virtues must represent the perfection of human intellectual capacities. This is central to the ethics because exercise of the intellect is crucial to action.
All natural things change spontaneously by virtue of inner principles of development; among the animals, the vegetative principles are joined by principles stemming from sensations and appetites. Among humans, emotional states and desires are added. But humans, in particular, possess reason which also functions as an efficient cause of action, or change. It is the ability to reason, indeed, that separates humans from all else and that enables humans to be individuals and to be free --- that is, to act autonomously (as the authors of their own action). To allow less is to fall short of being human; indeed, this is why any political society should seek to provide the context in which citizens can become truly free individuals. This, in fact, is the true state of happiness that Aristotle imagines to be the end of human life.
To reason, Aristotle suggests, is to bring the soul into possession of truth regarding something. There are five "states of virtue" (perfectable reasonings) through which this can happen --- art, science, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, and intuition. Art includes crafts and technology; as he says, "all art is concerned with coming into being." Science deals with our capacities to demonstrate the connectedness of things through syllogism.
It is about practical wisdom that we are concerned in ethics. Aristotle defines practical wisdom as being able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for oneself. The idea makes reference backward to the moral virtues, of course, and it is clear that only a person who is already good, by habitual behavior, has the raw materials of life on which to deliberate in choosing further action. Ultimately, human happiness rests on perfection of practical wisdom since it requires deliberation over choices in order to exercise moral activity.
In Book VIII, Aristotle takes up the subject of friendship and love, just as PLato did in "Lysis" and "Symposium." Aristotle's approach to friendship is, as we would anticipate, thoroughly empirical (experiential). He rejects Plato's concept that friends love "the good" and suggests, instead, that friends love what seems good to them. "To be friends, then, they must be mutually recognized as bearing goodwill and wishing well to each other." There are three grounds on which Aristotle sees this happening --- utility, pleasure, and virtue. We can be friends out of utilitarian interests, that is to say, out of what the friendship will bring us. Such friendships are likely to be short-lived since the utility generally lasts a short time. We can also be friends for the pleasure that it brings us; but this too seems a short-lived form of friendship. "Perfect friendship," Aristotle observes, "is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves." (p. 475) And since virtue is a matter of character it is not soon lost; indeed, it should perfect itself in time. Friendships among the good should be the most lasting. Clearly, Aristotle finds himself in agreement with Plato, ultimately, though he sees the goodness of friends in their mutual deliberation over virtuous action rather than in their coincidental recognition of the idea of the good through experience of each other. Good men are friends and come to love each other because they share the happiness of activity in harmony with moral principles.
Book X of Nicomachean Ethics is probably somewhat spurious, an independent piece, authored early on and added as a summary end to the larger work. It is broken into two parts. The first is a discussion of pleasure. What is pleasure and, especially, is pleasure the good? Aristotle rejects pleasure as the good. For one thing, pleasure is different degrees, is completed by different actions, and seems to occur in different kinds. Also, not all pleasures are to be sought after, which would clearly not be the case with the good as such. In the end (ch. 5), Aristotle sees the roles reversed. It is easier to define and describe virtue and the virtuous man. Thus, the virtuous man becomes the real measure of pleasure in our lives. Since the virtuous man tends toward human perfection and happiness, the pleasures entertained by him are those pleasures that are proper to man.
From this point, Aristotle considers the pleasures of the contemplative life and comes very close to Plato in praising the philosophical life as the highest. This he connects with politics and legislation, in particular, which sets the stage for his own work on Politics. Clearly politics must aim at attaining the happiness of the citizens; but, clearly, citizens cannot become happy unless they begin by developing habits of living well. The purpose of legislation must be to assure that a proper foundation of activity is established.
Aristotle's Politics actually consists of eight books of which we are merely reading two, books I and III. In outline, the whole work reviews (I) the origin of the polis out of households and villages, (II) various theoretical and actual constitutions, (III) the theory of citizenship and constitutions, (IV) actual constitutions and their varieties, (V) factual conflicts and constitutional changes, (VI) construction of democracies and oligarchies, (VII) educational principles as related to political ideals, and (VIII) the training of youth. Like so many of Aristotle's works, it is a comprehensive program.
In Book I, after a brief introduction, Aristotle takes up the management of households; this is central to politics because political society begins in the household. There are three kinds of relationship within households --- the master and slave, the husband and wife, and the father and child. Is slavery natural or unnatural? In Aristotle's mind it is natural, expedient, and right. His reasoning is based on the natural and right rule of soul over body, or of reasoning over the purely mechanical. We can observe easily that the reasoning capacity occurs to different degrees in different people and that the balance of reason over body is different. We can also see that life is better managed when a competent soul rules. Thus, for Aristotle, it is possible to rank people and animals in a hierarchical order, and it becomes clear that for some men to be slaves, mastered by others, will be best for all interests. A form of slavery that is unnatural and not right is that brought about by conquest or legal action. Here it is possible that the natural superior could conceivably come to be mastered by his inferior. That would neither be expedient nor right.
There follows (chapters 8-11) a very interesting discussion of the role of gaining wealth in household management. The natural mode of gaining wealth consists of a man's natural and necessary activities in fishing, hunting, agriculture, and animal husbandry. These all lead toward the provision of what a household requires for its welfare. In primordial family life, this activity consumes most of the master's time and the distribution of this natural wealth within the family is a simple matter of sharing. As families grow into villages, specialization begins to occur and the redistribution of natural wealth becomes somewhat more complex and leads to a system of barter. Aristotle sees the origin of coinage, as most people do, in the complexities of the modern marketplace where barter is no longer convenient. But coinage has an unnatural side to it, in the fact that coinage can be accumulated without any natural bounds. There is a second mode of gaining wealth, then, and it is the unnatural and unlimited accumulation of coinage. There is even the thoroughly unnatural and perhaps reprehensible possibility of earning coinage by the lending of coinage! Coinage wealth is, of course, the ultimate medium through which men acquire land and power in excess of other men. Without coinage this would be impossible.
Aristotle's discussion of wealth is timeless and has been reflected in the thinking of many followers in political philosophy. Plato himself thought the problems of property and wealth to be so significant that he designed his ideal republic as a communist society in which wealth was held by the community at large. Plato saw wealth as a corrupting institution and a medium of unnatural division. Plato even went so far as to recommend that children be separated from their parents and brought up in schools where their natural talents could be properly nurtured independent of the abuses of wealth. (See his Republic.)
The ability to achieve a radically unequal distribution of wealth through the accumulation of coinage sets many political problems for Western Civilization. In early periods, wealth was mostly held by kings, noblemen, and churches. However, the modern era began as wealth was being acquired increasingly by merchants and a rising middle class. Issues in modern political philosophy revolve increasingly around wealth and property and the role(s) of government in the protection of personal wealth and property. If property is a right, as many modern political societies suppose, then does this mean that government is required to help individuals gain superiority over others by accumulation of excess wealth? Obviously, Liberalism and Capitalism argue these causes. But by the 19th Century, problems with the distribution of wealth had become so great that the justice of such systems was questioned thoroughly.
Book I concludes with a discussion of the other household relations. The superiority of father to children is a natural relation of mastery, the child havingmuch to learn. The superiority of husband to wife, however, is viewed as "constitutional," that is, a mastery as "first among equals." Man and woman are viewed as adult equals; yet, the male is still superior to the female, in Aristotle's mind, and deserves to be master of the household.
In Book III, Aristotle takes up the concept of citizenship and the classification of constitutions. There are three constitutions --- monarchy, aristocracy, and polity --- and there are three corruptions to these --- tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. The basic difference lies in the rule of one, of a few, or of the many. The corruptions lie in the way power is grasped and by whom. An aristocracy, for instance, can represent a few wise men (Plato's "philosopher kings"); but an oligarchy merely represents power wielded by wealth.
Of greatest interest, perhaps, is Aristotle's discussion of citizenship. Who is a citizen and what is the good citizen? It is by no means obvious that every person in a society should be a citizen; indeed, in Aristotle's Athens only land-holding native-born males were citizens. Ultimately, Aristotle settles on the idea that seems natural to him, that "he who has the power to take part in the deliberative or judicial administration of any state is . . . the citizen of that state." (#1275)
Of special significance, is Aristotle's sense that one can become a good citizen and yet fail to become a good person. Being a good citizen depends upon fulfilling the obligations of citizenship as defined within the polis. This in turn depends upon the constitution of the polis. If the constitution is corrupt, then it misses the mark of promoting the best course of human life, and that is the telos of political society. Man is a political animal, born to live in political society, and the polis is intended to provide the best atmosphere in which both to habituate good behavior and to develop its practice as a deliberate activity rooted in one's character. Only the ideal society can be a happy society in which individuals can truly become happy people. Human happiness as individuals, outside of an ideal society, is improbable.
