NATURAL AND NON-NATURAL MOTIONS

The student of nature assumes the reality of the natural world and conceives it as a certain arrangement of natural bodies. Within the broad compass of natural bodies is found a remarkable array of bodies. They range from the living celestial bodies performing a circular motion around the earth, to the living sublunary bodies endowed with the capacity for poreia and displaying the maximum degree of bodily complexity (perfect bodies), to the stationary living sublunary bodies (inferior animals and plants), and finally to the inanimate sublunary bodies. The student of nature is concerned with all these bodies on the assumption that they are either simple or composite bodies. Composite natural bodies are themselves composed of natural bodies. Earth, water, air, and fire are the sublunary simple bodies. They are the ultimate material principles of all the bodies that we encounter in the sublunary world, including the artificial bodies.

All these bodies are liable to undergo motion from one place to another. Consider the case of a stone: if dropped from a hand, a stone falls downwards. But why? Aristotle's view is that a stone is composed of earth, water, air, and fire in a certain ratio, and earth so predominates as to impart its own natural downward motion to the stone.

BODIES AND MAGNITUDES

By this point I hope to have established that Aristotle sees his science of nature as a systematic whole. It should also be clear that this science is seen as a systematic whole because it presents an account of a world that is similarly systematic. More directly, and more boldly, the science of nature mirrors the system of nature. Aristotle's conception of the natural world follows from the research program conducted in the science of nature. In other words, it is the study of the celestial and sublunary bodies that leads him to believe that the natural world is a causal arrangement of a certain type, and to the view that the study of the celestial world should precede, rather than follow, the study of the sublunary world. In the first two books of the DC are collected the results that Aristotle reached in the study of the celestial world. In the following chapters, I shall focus on specific parts of the DC and show how unusual Aristotle's conception of the celestial word is, especially if it is considered in its historical context in relation to his predecessors and successors.

FRIENDSHIP-FRIENDLY PHILOSOPHY

One of the merits of Aristotle's approach to ethics is that it aims to be practical and, therefore, faithful to how human beings actually are. This surely helps to explain why Aristotle devotes one-fifth of his treatise to a topic that is usually neglected altogether by contemporary moral theory – friendship. We do not often find ourselves having to make a snap decision about how to steer a runaway trolley car. It rarely happens in daily life that we are engaged in delicate surgery and must face the question of whether to carve up a patient for his separate organs, for distribution to other patients who just happen to be prepped for the operating room and waiting to receive them. But friendships and “personal relationships” constitute the very fabric of daily life. If our living well does not depend on the relationships we form with others, and how we typically treat those close to us, then it is difficult to see on what it could depend. And surely Aristotle is correct in holding that any ideal of human happiness must include within it enduring and satisfying friendships: if someone were offered every good thing – wealth, good health, pleasures, and endless life – on the condition that he would be alone, he would not accept the offer (1169b17–18).

THE PLATONIC CONTEXT

Aristotle's discussion of justice, which he regards as one among other character-related virtues, is quite different from a treatment of justice which one might find in John Stuart Mill or John Rawls. Aristotle devotes much labor, for instance, to defining justice as a “particular” rather than a “general” virtue. In order to appreciate why, we need (once again) to understand the Platonic context in which he is evidently writing.

Aristotle begins book 5 by remarking,

By the end of chapter 5 he has filled in those schemata, and he gives the following as his finished definitions:

I have said that the Ethics has the form of a search, and that a search has four distinguishable steps: formulating criteria for what is sought; identifying the field of search; examining that field; applying the criteria. Aristotle takes the first two steps in book 1. He sets down criteria which, he thinks, the ultimate goal of human life must satisfy, and he identifies in a general way his field of search, by arguing, as we have seen, that the ultimate goal of human life involves some “activity in accordance with virtue.” More precisely, he does both of these things in chapter 7, which is the pivotal chapter of the book. After book 1, he then conducts his search, by looking at the various virtues and their characteristic activities.

A word about terminology is in order. Aristotle refers to the ultimate goal of human life variously as: “the good”; “the human good”; “the practically attainable good”; “the best thing”; “the highest thing”; and “the ultimate (or ‘last’) good.” Clearly, he regards it as a kind of end point, and whether we imagine this as the end point of a vertical (“highest”), horizontal (“last”), or evaluative (“best”) sequence is irrelevant.

He also calls it eudaimonia (you-dye-mone-EE-ah) and says that people would agree in calling it this. “eudaimonia” was a popular term, not a technical term in philosophy, which meant literally to be blessed by a spirit or god (see 9.9.1169b7–8), or to be blessed as regards one's own spirit.

By the end of book 6 Aristotle has completed his examination of the virtues, both the virtues of the non-rational part of the soul that is responsive to reason (books 3–6) and those of the rational part of the soul (book 6). One would think that, at this point, he would be in a position to bring his investigation in the Ethics to an end. He had said (in book 1) that the ultimate goal of human life is some activity, or activities, of the sort that we can carry out through having the virtues. With a view to determining this, he identified and described the various virtues. Should he not now simply make a decision on this matter? Yet he does not attempt to do so until book 10, chapter 6.

For the moment, Aristotle puts on hold his search for happiness, in order to discuss three topics which he regards as closely related: pleasure, friendship, and akrasia. He discusses pleasure (7.11–14; 10.1–5), because he wishes to argue that happiness is the most pleasant as well as the best good. Friendship (books 8 and 9) is important, because relationships involving friendship are the ordinary context in which good persons exercise their virtue; moreover, since human beings are social animals, human happiness will be essentially social and therefore something that must be shared among friends, if possessed at all.

Let us recapitulate Aristotle's argument once more. He is looking to identify the ultimate goal of human life, which he conceives of as some activity, regularly repeated, which appropriately serves to organize everything else that we do, and which has the marks of Ultimacy, Self-Sufficiency, and Preferability. He argued in the Function Argument of book 1 that activity like that will be something that only a good human being can do, that is, it is activity that can be accomplished only by someone who has the “virtue” of a human being. Thus he turned in book 2 to an examination of human virtue.

But human virtue turns out to be complex; it admits of analysis; it has various “parts.” One such “part,” related to character, makes someone good at following or carrying out what he reasonably thinks he should do. It does this, Aristotle claimed, in two ways: by maintaining a person's motives in a condition of responsiveness falling between irrational and excessive extremes, and by assisting a person in crafting his action with refinement, so that it is appropriate as regards all of the various dimensions of an action. All stable conditions by which we become like this are particular character-related virtues, and Aristotle regards these as including courage, self-mastery, generosity, particular justice, and a handful of other good traits.

ARRIVING AT THE END

Perhaps the most puzzling sentence in the entire Ethics is one that Aristotle apparently thinks should be perfectly clear. It occurs at the beginning of 10.7, where he begins to give his final views on the ultimate goal of human life, happiness (eudaimonia): “If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it be activity in accordance with the best virtue” (1177a12–13). This is puzzling, because Aristotle, as we have seen, has throughout the Ethics been deliberately maintaining a kind of indecision as regards what we have called Selection and Collection. Happiness is activity in accordance with virtue – granted – but is it some single such activity (Selection) or all such activities (Collection)? As late as 10.5 he was apparently keeping the question open: “So whether there is one sort of activity or several which are characteristic of a complete and blessedly happy man, the pleasures that bring these activities to completion would in the strict sense be referred to as ‘human pleasures’ ” (1176a26–28). If anything, that passage tips toward Collection, since it speaks of the pleasures that bring these activities to completion (in the plural). Yet in 10.7 the matter is suddenly settled.

The state of Aristotle's argument near the end of book 1 of the Ethics is as follows. There is an ultimate goal of human life, namely whatever is the aim of that expertise which is required in order reasonably to govern political society. We can be assured that there is such an aim, and such an expertise, Aristotle supposes, because political society is a natural form of association for human beings and therefore has a definite purpose or goal. We can identify three (or perhaps only two) criteria which such a goal must satisfy: it must have the marks of Ultimacy, Self-Sufficiency, and (perhaps also) greatest Preferability. We can also identify, roughly, the general sort of thing that this ultimate goal is going to be: as Aristotle maintains in the Function Argument, the ultimate goal of human life involves some activity which a human being can accomplish only through his having a trait that contributes toward someone's being a good human being. Such a trait is a “virtue,” so the ultimate goal of human life is some “activity in accordance with virtue.” We can determine the ultimate goal of human life, then, by looking at activities of that sort and seeing which of them satisfy the criteria of Ultimacy, Self-Sufficiency, and greatest Preferability.

THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle tells us, is a search or an investigation (1.6.1096a12; b35; 1102a13). It poses a question at the start, looks at various possible answers along the way, and concludes with a definite judgment. The treatise therefore has something of the shape of a detective story.

What Aristotle tells us he is looking for, and what he wants us to join with him in looking for, is what he calls the “ultimate goal” of human life. Informally, we might think of this as what counts as “doing well” in life, or what it is for someone to be in the true sense “a success.” To attain our ultimate goal is to achieve “happiness.” Practically speaking, the ultimate goal in life is something toward which we would do well to direct everything else that we do. We reasonably prefer this to anything else. Our ultimate goal, we might think, is something we can rest satisfied in: when we attain it, we require nothing more.

Is there such a goal which is the same for all, and, if so, what is it? This is the basic question of the Ethics.

It is useful to think of any search as involving four basic elements. Suppose, for instance, that a detective wished to establish the identity of a person who committed a murder.

Aristotle begins examining particular character-related virtues in 3.6. He looks first at courage, then self-mastery (or “moderation”), then generosity and magnificence, magnanimity and an unnamed virtue dealing with honor, before examining various minor social virtues. He reserves special treatment for the virtue of justice, which he considers a character-related virtue as well, but which he thinks is set apart in interesting ways from the others. I shall follow his practice and consider his treatment of justice separately, in the next chapter.

Let us review the argument once again. The reason why Aristotle wishes to examine the virtues, paying special attention to the sorts of actions a virtuous person does, is that he thinks that the ultimate goal of human life is some kind of action or activity that we can accomplish only through our having virtue. As was said, this goal should be understood as taking the form of an activity, repeated at intervals, which would rightly serve to organize and direct everything else that we do. But which activity of that sort should serve as our ultimate goal? It is that activity, Aristotle has argued, which satisfies the criteria of Ultimacy, Self-Sufficiency, and (perhaps) greatest Preferability. But we cannot determine which activity satisfies those criteria until we become clearer about the activities that are indeed distinctive of the various virtues. So this now is Aristotle's task, which he carries out in 3.6–6.13. He considers first character-related virtues, and then thinking-related virtues (in book 6).