Aristotle’s Account of Moral Perception (EN.VI.8) & Nussbaum’s Priority of the Particular Thesis

Consider a contemporary retrieval of Aristotle’s account of moral perception. Drawing from EN.VI.8, Martha Nussbaum argues that we perceive moral particulars prior to ethical principles. First, I explain her priority of the particular thesis. The virtuous person perceives value in the world, as part of her moral deliberation. This perceptual skill is an important aspect of her virtuous activity, and hence also part of her eudaimonia. Second, I present her priority thesis with a dilemma: our perception of moral particulars is either non-inferential or it is inferential. If Nussbaum accepts a non-inferential interpretation, then she is committed to an unsavory view about moral epistemology –one that invites intuitionism and relativism. But if she accepts a non-inferential account, then the moral particular is no longer prior to the ethical principle. I suggest that her better option is to grab the second horn. This move avoids the problems of the first horn without sacrificing her neo-Aristotelian commitments or her overarching view that the perception of moral particulars is ineliminable to moral deliberation (and eudaimonia). At the same time, this move renders her priority thesis trivial.

External Goods and the Complete Exercise of Virtue in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

In Nicomachean Ethics 1.8, Aristotle seems to argue that certain external goods are needed for happiness because, in the first place, they are needed for virtuous activity. This has puzzled scholars. After all, it seems possible for a virtuous agent to exercise her virtuous character even under conditions of extreme hardship or deprivation. Indeed, it is natural to think these are precisely the conditions under which one’s virtue shines through most clearly. I argue that there is good sense to be made of Aristotle’s stance on external goods. Drawing on passages in Politics 7.13 and Nicomachean Ethics 3.1, I develop and defend a distinction between the “mere” exercise of virtue, and the full or complete exercise of virtue. I explain how, on his view, a range of external goods is required for the full exercise of virtue, and I show that it is only this full exercise that is constitutive of eudaimonia. I argue that, for Aristotle, the distinguishing feature of this distinction is the value of the virtuous action’s ends. An action that fully expresses virtue aims at an end that is unqualifiedly good, while an action that merely exercises virtue does not. The external goods Aristotle mentions in NE 1.8 are necessary for performing actions with unqualifiedly good ends, and so necessary for the complete exercise of virtue.

Eudaimonia as Fundamentally Good

In the ethical theories of the ancient Greeks, eudaimonia provided a grounding for the value of all other goods. But a puzzle for such views is that some things are good for us irrespective of the intervention of eudaimonia and its requirement of virtuous activity. In this article, the author considers challenges to the eudaimonist account of value on those grounds pressed by Nicholas Wolterstorff and Sophie Grace Chappell. The aim is ethical-theoretical, rather than historical. The author defends the thesis that a form of eudaimonism that is largely Aristotelian in form and content can meet these challenges.

Divinity, Noēsis, and Aristotelian Friendship

Aristotle's NE X claim that the best human life is one devoted to contemplation (theoria) seems in tension with his emphasis elsewhere on our essentially political nature, and more specifically, his claim that friendship is necessary for our flourishing. For, if our good can be in principle realized apart from the human community, there seems little reason to suggest we 'need' friends, as he clearly does in NE VIII & IX. I argue that central to Aristotle's NE X discussion of contemplation is the claim that our chief good accords with whatever is 'most divine' in us, viz. our rational nature (NE 1177b2-18). Thus, the best human life involves the excellent exercise of our rational capacities. I distinguish two ways in which human beings flourish through exercising their rationality. The first is in the activity of theoria. The second, I argue, can be found in the virtuous activity of complete friendship (teleia philia). For Aristotle the truest form of friendship is an expression of rationality. It is characterized not merely by our living together, but conversing, and sharing one another's thoughts (NE 1170b12-14). Examining Aristotle's notion of a friend as 'another self (alios autos), I argue that through friendship human beings come to better know themselves and the world in which they live. Complete friendship involves a (uniquely human) second-order awareness of oneself in another, and through this awareness our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live is enriched, confirmed, and enjoyed through the presence of other minds. Thus, the highest form of Aristotelian friendship is an intellectual activity through which we attain an analogue of the divine contemplation of the unmoved mover, thereby living with respect to what is most divine in us, but doing so in accordance with our uniquely rational-political nature.

Aristotle on Self-Sufficiency, External Goods, and Contemplation

Aristotle tells us that contemplation is the most self-sufficient form of virtuous activity: we can contemplate alone, and with minimal resources, while moral virtues like courage require other individuals to be courageous towards, or courageous with. This is hard to square with the rest of his discussion of self-sufficiency in the Ethics: Aristotle doesn‘t generally seek to minimize the number of resources necessary for a flourishing human life, and seems happy to grant that such a life will be self-sufficient despite requiring a lot of external goods. In this paper I develop an interpretation of self-sufficiency as a form of independence from external contributors to our activity, and argue that this interpretation accounts both for Aristotle‘s views on contemplation and for the role self-sufficiency plays in his broader account of human happiness.

Aristotle on the Pleasure of Courage

Aristotle repeatedly qualifies the pleasure of courageous actions relative to other kinds of virtuous actions. This article argues that the pleasure of courageous actions is qualified because virtuous activity and its pleasure is dependent upon external conditions, and the external conditions of courageous actions are particularly constraining. The article shows that Curzer’s explanation of the qualified pleasure of courageous actions by the presence of pain violates Aristotle’s commitment to virtuous actions as being pleasant by their nature.

Aristotle on the Pleasure of Courage

Because virtuous action is the fulfillment of our nature and so is constitutive of good living, Aristotle argues for a conceptual connection be-tween virtuous action and pleasure. Yet courage does not seem to conform to this account of virtuous action. Because courageous action involves confronting the fearful, which is painful, and because courageous action can fail to achieve the desired (and presumably pleasant) goal, it seems contrary to experience to claim that all truly courageous action is pleasant. I offer a defense of Aristotle’s claim that courageous action is necessarily pleasant. To do this, I give a more detailed explanation of the hierarchical, metaphysical relation between process and activity in courageous action. Virtuous activity, as instantiated in courageous actions, is necessarily pleasant because it is an end-in-itself and complete, and so requires pleasure as the full engagement of the agent in the action.

Wish, Motivation and the Human Good in Aristotle

Aristotle invokes a specifically human desire, namely wish (boulēsis), to provide a teleological explanation of the pursuit of the specifically human good in terms of virtuous activity. Wish is a basic, unreasoned desire which, independently of other desires, or evaluative attitudes, motivates the pursuit of the human good. Even a person who pursues what she mistakenly believes to be good is motivated by wish for what in fact is good, although she is oblivious of it.

The Better Part

According to Aristotle, the goal of anyone who is not simply stupid or slavish is to live a worthwhile life. There are, no doubt, people who have no goal at all beyond the moment's pleasure or release from pain. There may be people incapable of reaching any reasoned decision about what to do, and acting on it. But anyone who asks how she should live implicitly agrees that her goal is to live well, to live a life that she can think worth living. That goal, eudaimonia, is something that is sought for its own sake, and for nothing else. Anyone who asks herself how she should live can answer that she should live well. The answer, admittedly, needs further comment. Aristotle went on to suggest that ‘living well’ amounted to living in accordance with virtue, or if there is more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete. Eudaimonia, happiness, is virtuous activity over a whole life. To live a worthwhile life we must acquire and practice habits of doing the right thing, for the right reason. Equivalently, we must do what a virtuous person would, and in the way she would, for the sake of to kalon, or beauty.