Habituation, actions, and character

At the heart of Aristotle’s account of ethical upbringing is habituation. At least all of the virtues of character – justice, generosity, temperance, courage, and so on – just are habituated states brought about by the repeated doing of actions of a certain ethical type. We are not born courageous or cowardly (although we may have natural dispositions in one direction or the other); rather, we are made courageous or cowardly insofar as we have engaged in courageous or cowardly actions in our lives. Engaging in actions of a certain type gives rise to the corresponding habituated state of character. In short, “we become just by doing just things, temperate by doing temperate things, and courageous by doing courageous things” (N.E. ii.1, 1103a34–b2). Let us call this idea “the habituation principle” (HP). As the explicit analogy with craft (technê) in N.E. ii.1 shows, the habituation principle is itself value neutral: one becomes a good harpist or a good builder if one acquires good building or harp-playing habits, but a bad one if not; similarly one becomes a virtuous person if she engages in virtuous acts, but a bad or vicious person if one doesn’t.

Aristotle claims that we do everything for the sake of happiness (eudaimonia). It is now well recognized that he does not mean by this that our actions are aimed at making us feel happy, satisfied, or otherwise pleased. “Happiness” (eudaimonia), for Aristotle, is a placeholder for “the ultimate end in life” – that which we desire for its own sake and for whose sake we pursue all our other objectives (E.N. i.2, 1094a18–19; cf. i.7, 1097a30–b6). The normative question of importance to Aristotle, as well as for the rest of Greek ethics, is not whether we should pursue happiness, but rather what happiness consists in. Is it for the sake of pleasure, honor, virtue, contemplation, or something else that we should direct all our actions in life?

The answer to this normative question was disputed among the major philosophical schools in antiquity, and the precise nature of Aristotle’s own answer has been a matter of considerable controversy among his modern interpreters. Could he really be affirming, as he patently appears to in E.N. x.7–8, that the ultimate goal of life is to engage in theoretical contemplation (theoria)? Would not this “intellectualist” conception of the ultimate good imply that ethical activity (the exercise of the virtues of character) is for the sake of contemplation? And how could this be so? Aristotle’s extensive discussion of ethical activity shows no evidence that he takes it to be productive of contemplation, nor does it seem credible that he thinks our commitment to it should be contingent on its ability to yield this result.

Introductions to scholarly books can serve different ends. One of these might be to convince prospective buyers of the value of the volume before them. In the present case, since the contents of this volume are about another – Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics – a dual pitch might seem necessary. About the Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.), Jonathan Barnes has written: “I shall not attempt to extol the merits of the Ethics: a good wine needs no bush; and it is mere impertinence to advertise the rarest of vintages.”  Barnes is so obviously right that I shall not talk at all about Aristotle’s book. As for this one, I shall speak briefly to the importance of the papers it presents toward the end of my Introduction. For the most part, however, I must let those papers sell themselves. Only by reading them can their value be fully appreciated.

A different end that introductions might serve is preparing readers for what they are about to encounter. Here, too, I will distinguish between the N.E. and the present volume. A number of superb introductions to the N.E. are already in print. I could add little, if anything, to them, so I shall not try. On the other hand, I will sketch the general contours of this volume as well as provide a precis for each paper. These can be found in section v of my Introduction. For fear of being long-winded, I have kept the synopses short. It is to be hoped that they will be useful summaries of the book’s contents but they are no substitute for them.

Diogenes Laertius offers a very brief overview of Potamo's doctrines, based on the traditional division of philosophy into logic (where epistemology played a central role), physics and ethics (compare D.L. 7.39–41, with reference to the Stoics). Within this scheme, the short report concentrates on Potamo's responses to the central issues on which one needed to articulate a position in order to declare allegiance to a particular school or venture a claim of doctrinal originality: the criterion of truth (epistemology); the first principles (physics); and the moral end (ethics). The few lines from Diogenes have to provide the bulk of our evidence for an assessment of Potamo's eclecticism and the type of approach to preceding philosophical traditions that this (self-) characterisation implies.

Recalling the programmatic report that Potamo ‘selected the doctrines (i.e. his doctrines) from each of the sects’, important questions that will come under consideration include (i) Which sects are understood in the rather vague expression ‘each of the sects’? (ii) Does Potamo select ideas from each of these equally, or is he influenced by some more than by others? (iii) Should we imagine his Stoicheiosis as an anthology of ‘approved’ (ἀρέσαντα) doctrines simply listed side by side, or as an attempt to make something out of the selected ideas by drawing connections and correlations? The information that Potamo was not simply a historian of philosophy but had introduced his own sect, which would require a programmatically distinct intellectual attitude of some sort, already points towards the latter option.

The Background

The capital of the Ptolemaic kingdom was the undisputed centre of intellectual life in the Hellenistic period. It benefited from active royal patronage that went beyond favouring gifted individuals in court, to include the establishment of permanent institutions devoted to learning and research. The achievements of scientists and literary scholars associated with the Museum and Library of Alexandria remained extremely influential for a long time after its heyday in the third century bc. There is therefore a striking contrast with the field of philosophy, where Ptolemaic Alexandria does not have anything as remarkable to offer.

There are two references to Potamo in Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle's On the Heavens. Both come from his comments on the third book of the work, which contains Aristotle's discussion of the earthly elements, their number and properties, and is dominated by a critique of earlier theories. The first reference to Potamo is part of Simplicius’ discussion of Aristotle's views on the number of elements. Aristotle introduces the topic as follows: πότερον δὲ πεπερασμένα ἢ ἄπειρα, καὶ εἰ πεπερασμένα, πόσα τὸν ἀριθμόν, ἑπόμενον ἂν εἴη σκοπεῖν (‘the next thing would be to examine whether they are limited or infinite, and if they are limited, how many in number’, Cael. 3.4.302b10–11). More specifically, Potamo's intervention is related to the criticism of the view Aristotle ascribes to Anaxagoras, namely that there is an infinite number of entities, divisible into parts that are the same as each other and the whole (ὁμοιομερῆ), which Aristotle treats as equivalent to his elements. He argues that even on Anaxagoras’ view one need not postulate an infinite number:

Eclecticism is not often thought of as representing something new, something that ‘emerges’ as a fresh beginning – the term is used more commonly for intellectual attitudes that are viewed as the end or the anticlimax after a period of development and innovation. This book proposes to examine the circumstances under which an unexpected claim of innovation was made on behalf of eclecticism. Potamo of Alexandria was the only ancient philosopher explicitly to declare himself an eclectic, and what is more, he went on to establish a new philosophical sect under the banner of eclecticism. As discussed in more detail inalongside a survey of ancient and modern applications of the term ‘eclectic’, in ancient philosophy eclecticism has served primarily as a conventional characterisation for many different thinkers such as Cicero, Antiochus of Ascalon, Eudorus of Alexandria or Plutarch, whose views cannot be pinned down firmly to one of the traditional schools (such as the Academy, the Peripatos, the Stoa or Epicurus’ Garden). Many of the problems arising from this characterisation were treated in the volume The Question of Eclecticism, where chapters are devoted to Cicero, Philo of Alexandria and Plutarch among others. The main common feature among ‘eclectic’ or Eclectic philosophers remains the elusive nature of their otherwise diverse ideas. What radically distinguishes the other thinkers from Potamo is that they, formally at least, claimed allegiance to one of the traditional schools.

Eclecticism as a technical term in modern scholarship

Eclecticism has become a popular category for describing an intellectual stance that involves approving of and adopting views that are not part of a uniform tradition, but might stem from different, even incompatible, ideologies. In the study of ancient philosophy the term is used, often in a derogatory sense, for the appropriation of elements that do not form part of the ‘official’ set of doctrines propagated by the school one claims to belong to. The pejorative connotations usually arise from the assessment that these foreign elements are not properly and coherently integrated. This widespread modern usage is overwhelmingly associated with thinkers who did make claims of allegiance to a particular mainstream school such as the Stoa or the Academy, while it seems to leave outside its scope the establishment of a sect with a self-proclaimed eclectic agenda from the outset, an intellectual enterprise that is quite different from the progressive incorporation of ‘alien’ material into a dominant system. This type of initiative is worthy of independent study, with the understanding that a philosopher who chooses to call himself ‘eclectic’ and in addition tries to create a new group and attract a following based on precisely this agenda must be offering something more radical than a modification of one school's ideas. The information we have for one such philosophical movement in Antiquity, initiated by Potamo of Alexandria towards the end of the first century bc, is indicative of a sui generis project.