Aristotle's Ethics

This is a summary of Hutchinson's chapter in The Cambride Companion to Aristotle, 'Ethics.' I particularly admire Hutchinson's chapter because it fulfills the promise made by Barnes, the editor of the volume, to provide a companion to Aristotle (as Barnes himself does not do for the Metaphysics): he summarizes one standard view of what A says, and provides the textual passages very conveniently for us to verify each claim. My summary will have very few references to A's actual text: it is a simple matter to go to Hutchinson's section and find the references at the end of the relevant paragraph.

We have three separate ethical works handed down to us under the name Aristotle: the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, and the Magna Moralia. Aristotle also regarded his Politics as a work of ethics.

By and large, Aristotle thought that what we often consider goods, such as health and wealth, are not good per se. Rather, they are good if and only if one has a good soul. "The best thing we can do is to bring out the best in the best part of us" (Hutchinson P. 196). The best part of us is our rational part, which is the divine part of us. It is the divine part of us because it partakes in the activities which divine things do.

If we could be shorn of everything except our rational part, we would contemplate the universe and be happy: if we were shorn of our rational part, we would be nothing by brutes.

'Living Successfully'
People generally have some objective(s) in life. They have some abilities and resources. The aim is to arrange one's life so as to achieve one's objectives.
Without resources, a life may be rendered not worth living, because success is impossible.
Without the right objective(s), a life is not worth living, because success is impossible.
Resources are only good if one has the right objectives.
Having the right objectives is good, but not enough.
Merely having resources and the right objective(s) is not enough: one has to act, because without action, success is impossible. Sitting there being virtuous is not really being virtuous: virtue involves action.

What is success?

Given that humans are a certain sort of thing (i.e. they have a nature), the way for a human to be a successful human is to actualize the potential of the human's nature. Our nature is to be rational animals, and thus success will involve actualizing our rationality to the fullest extent.

The skills which are required for success are called "virtues": they are those skills that are required to be responsible for a political community, a household, and oneself (i.e. start with the immediate, oneself, then expand it out to include one's intimates, then expand it out to include one's entire community). A rejects the possibility that there is such a thing as "knowledge of the good" which is independent of those practical skills.

SUCCESS='living a life of entirely virtuous activity, with moderate good fortune, throughout an entire lifetime.'

Virtue may guard sufficiently against failure, but it cannot guarantee success. In other words, the virtuous may not be happy, but will nonetheless make the best of any situation. Virtue combined with moderate good fortune can guarantee success.

'The Best Ways of Life'

Three reputable reasons to live (not all of which are good reasons):
for refined pleasures (the life of culture)
for a good name (in your own and your community's estimation) (the public service life)
to understand the universe (the philosophical life)
Which one(s) are good reasons? See below...

The life of pleasure itself is not a candidate in spite of the fact that absolute rulers (who are free to choose any life) choose it, for slaves and animals too choose it.

Those who have tried all three choose pleasure as a means of relaxation to better achieve the life of service or the philosophical life.

Humans are political, says Arisotle, which means that their nature is only capable of full development within the context of a community (a human on a deserted island could not possibly exhibit all the major virtues). Thus the life of public service is a life that is fine and proper to human nature.

But human nature also partakes in the divine via its understanding of the universe, and this is the highest human good, according to A.

The intellectual life is less dependent on fortune than that of public service: it is more self-sufficient, requires less wealth, power, and support of fellow humans (not all of whom are virtuous).
The pleasures of the intellectual life are the most pure and lasting.

'Reason and the virtues of the mind'

As rational animals, humans are using their highest capacity in the highest way when they use reason to know and contemplate the truth.

There are two sorts of virtues: intellectual and moral. Moral virtues involve our response to practical situations. Intellectual virtues are distinct from moral virtues, except that 'practical wisdom' (which is an intellectual virtue) is tied to the moral virtues.

Intellectual virtues (the first three concern things that cannot be changed):
Practical wisdom and skill are virtues involving things that can be changed about the world.
Skill brings things into being and so is productive.
Practical wisdom is an intellectual virtue which leads us to correct action. So why does A also posit moral virtues (i.e. additional virtues that are not 'intellectual')?
The moral virtues provide us with the proper objective. Practical wisdom tells us the right way to achieve it, given the facts of our situation.
Moral virtues provide the values. Practical wisdom provides the correct application.

'Wisdom' as a whole requires both moral virtues and practical wisdom.

Knowledge can be misused, but practical wisdom cannot, says A.
For A, it seems, a virtue might be said to consist of a moral part (the part that has to do with emotions: what we desire, fear, are repulsed by, etc.) as well as an intellectual part (the practical wisdom side).
Because practical wisdom takes into account the full picture of all of our objectives, we cannot have real practical wisdom (i.e. practical wisdom that is truly wise) and not have all the virtues.
Thus the virtues come as a package which has different aspects.

'Responsibility for actions and decisions'

Actions reveal character.
Involuntary action involves being unaware of some aspect of the action: I may poison a man, but not voluntarily poison my friend (I may not realize the man is my friend). If the action is truly involuntary, it must be that case that the reason for being unaware is a reasonable reason and is not my fault. Not knowing one's legal or moral duty is not an excuse. If I use ignorance as an excuse, I must also regret the action.
Voluntary action is "acting with reasonable knowledge of the circumstances, when it is possible to do otherwise." The sense of 'possibility' used here cannot be the sense in which it is not possible to act otherwise than I am currently acting. In other words, there must be options, and the actor must decide on an option for it to be a voluntary action.
There are mixed actions: where the circumstances can be said to move the agent. E.g. my children are held hostage, so I steal money.

"Decision" for A is "a deliberate desire to do something within the agent's immediate range of options." It is 'deliberate' because it results from deliberation (consideration of how to achieve one's goals). Deliberation starts with a goal and works backwards through means to the goal until one reaches an action that is in one's power to do.

We praise or blame people for their decisions and actions because they reveal the sort of people we are.
If someone claims to do bad involuntarily because they are a bad person, then even if Aristotle agrees that at that point the person could not possibly have acted well, Aristotle will still blame that person for having become bad.

'Understanding pleasure'

A thinks that pleasure comes with any unimpeded action which exercises our natural capacities.
It is a thing that accompanies action as an aspect of that action. It is not something separate from the action. In other words, we can't just have pleasure any more than we can just have redness: it must accompany some underlying thing (in the case of pleasure, the underlying thing is an activity).
Whether it is good or not depends on whether the action is good or not.

Pleasure is what the nonrational part of the soul desires. We should habituate ourselves to take pleasure in virtuous activity.

Pleasure, like wealth, good looks, etc. is part of happiness, but it is not identical to happiness, and it is only part of happiness if it accompanies virtue (ie. a bad person cannot be a success, except in his or her own subjective opinion: the fact of the matter is that being bad is being a failure).

A thinks that the standard which we should hold in mind is a human who is exercising human capacities to a high degree: an excellent human, a virtuous human.
A successful life is one full of activities well performed, and so it will be a pleasurable life.

Aristotle thought that a life spent in pursuit of pleasure as the only or most important goal was not a good life, but he did not think pleasure was bad in and of itself. So he thought that the pleasure of virtuous activity was good, the pleasure of vicious activity was bad.

It seems that he thought that all things being equal, pleasure is choiceworthy in itself and pain to be rejected in itself.

'Emotions and the moral virtues (and vices)'

Moral virtue consists in aligning the reactions of one's emotions to what reason dictates: one should habitually allow one's rationality to control one's emotions.

You cannot argue with an emotion: you must train it over time. That is called a habit. Thus Aristotle advocates not moral argument, but rather moral training. If one has to ask oneself and persuade oneself of what is right every time, one is not really virtuous: one should train oneself to set the virtuous choice as the default choice.

Pleasure and pain and their application are the most important factors in the formation of habits. Reward and punishment structures must be created and applied that inculcate the right habits.

Aristotle held that if you do something virtuous only with great emotional struggle and through force of will, it is not truly virtuous: to have moral virtue, one should do the moral thing without internal resistance. This is radically different from many theories of virtue.

We often need another person for the initial formation of our character (as children are formed by their parents), but at some point, we take over and set our own reward and punishment structure and become responsible for our own actions and character. The child who does the right thing because of a reward and punishment structure is not really virtuous, but with enough practice, once doing the right thing settles into a habit, she will become virtuous.

In virtue, there is no need for the rational part to assert its control in a violent way: the irrational parts are in agreement with the rational part through habituation.

There is such a thing as godlike virtue that is as far above normal virtue as depravity is below vice. One who has godlike virtue would be fit to rule over others absolutely and legitimately. Aristotle does not say much about this.

'Moral virtues as middle states'

Every virtue is a middle state between vices. In each case, there is some thing that needs to be balanced, and an excess or a deficiency is a vice.

That is not to say that some adultery is right. It is always wrong, says A. In other words, not every mean is a virtue. Only some are.

Also, there is often more than one variety of vice: take anger. One may be too quick to anger, one may get angry at the wrong things, one might stay angry too long: they are all excesses of anger. The temperate person is none of those.

Some vices have no name: insensitivity to pleasure is a vice, but it has no particular name (it is quite rare).

In some cases, A says it is OK to depart slightly from the mean: in essence, he is admitting that the mean is not a precise point, but rather a range. Once again, Aristotle comes across as common-sense-ical.

There are exceptions that are hard to account for: Take courage: real courage involves facing the enemy and risking death because it is the right thing to do (not because one is suicidal, not because one does not know enough to fear the enemy, not because one knows that the enemy are weaklings, not because one is drunk, not because one has been lucky in the past, not because one is angry, etc.). In this case, having moderate fears is part of it, but there is also a more important part, which seems to be moral strength (which is in fact not a virtue)!

Justice
Justice for Aristotle is not one single thing, it seems.  In general, justice is often that aspect of the other virtues that deal with other people. It is essentially other-regarding for Aristotle.

A held that there are written laws, decrees, unwritten laws, and universal principles that are relevant to justice:
One way to define justice according to A is obedience to the law. Laws serve to lay down what a society considers just and unjust, and so obeying the law is being just (That has obvious problems. We will try to address them when we read passages from the Politics).

Another way to approach A's justice is as follows. Justice is proportional equality: not equal distribution, but rather proportional distribution. A thinks that people should receive the benefit of common goods in proportion to their value to society. A virtuous person is more valuable and so should receive more benefit than a vicious person. Rich people are not necessarily more valuable, although because a rich and virtuous person can contribute more than a poor and virtuous person (everything else being equal), the rich virtuous person should receive more benefit.

Another sense of justice involves equality and proportion yet again: if I steal from you, inequality is introduced. You should be made whole and I should be punished to restore equality.

Justice is thus a mean between unfair gain and unfair loss when it is considered as proportional equality.

Being just involves not just knowing the law: one must also know how to apply it. That involves practical wisdom.

The person who distributes goods unfairly commits the injustice, not the one who receives an unfairly large share (unless of course that person deliberately chose to benefit from the injustice and/or took some action to bring himself an unfairly large share).
No one can unfairly deal an unfairly small share to himself or herself: that is because that person dealt the 'unfairly' small share voluntarily to himself or herself.

A few other virtues

As for money, A said that one should be reasonable in one's expectations of income and not overreach.  Adjust expenditure proportionately to your income.

If you are rich, you can exhibit a virtue called 'magnificence,' which is a mean between penny-pinching and vulgar ostentation. In Athens, the rich were expected to pay for dramatic festivals, missions to oracles, ships, etc.

Aristotle believed in aristocracy, but not based on blood or wealth lines: rather, he believed that the morally best should expect others to recognize that and that the morally best should rule. If one has all the virtues, one may exhibit 'magnanimity,' a further virtue which is something like justified pride and the expectation that others will accord one one's due. The magnanimous person values values more than life, is pleased by praise from the virtuous and displeased by praise from the vicious, is supremely  courageous, does not wrong others, quickly forgets wrongs committed against himself or herself, is dignified, is open, speaks frankly, ...

'Friends'

The friendship that interests A is between social equals. One is not a friend with one's sons and daughters or one's wife (according to A, of course). There must be equal reciprocation.

The state did very little to alleviate hardship, regulate business, or encourage prosperity. Thus such friendships were essential for households.

Three kinds of friendship:
The last is the best.
Problems arise when one party approaches a friendship as one kind of friendship and the other approaches it as a different kind of friendship.

Selfishness: a true friend is someone for whom one wishes the same thing one wishes for oneself. Is one thus one's own best friend? If so, is that selfish? A says that selfishness is bad in that it overreaches and is a desire for more than one's due, but demanding what is one's due is not the same. One should demand one's due, and that is not selfish (or if you insist on calling it selfish, it is not bad selfishness).

Does the most virtuous person need friends other than that person's own self? Yes, says A. The finest activities are perception and knowledge (contemplation). Perceiving and knowing a true friend is like perceiving and knowing one's self, and thus for the completely virtuous person, a friend is of benefit, because the friend provides an object of contemplation.