The Practical Good

On the model of Grice’s account of the creation of a new kind of value at the same time as the introduction of practical agents, this chapter continues the argument that Aristotle attempted to ‘bootstrap’ a commitment to normativity from the existence of practical reason. Reinterpreting Socrates’ paradoxical claim that everyone aims at the good, Aristotle turned a tautological analysis of action—that it necessarily aims at some good—into the normative thesis that we are, as rational agents, implicitly committed to seeking the true good. Central to his vision is the belief that we can antecedently identify some agents as more practically wise than others, averting the possibility of radical collective error.

Is Aristotle an Archimedean Naturalist?

This chapter examines the evidence of the ethical treatises regarding Aristotle’s use of the appeal to human nature to provide substantive guidance or justification for the demands of ethics. The so-called function argument, the notion that human beings have a natural direction of development, and the references to natural virtue or natural justice are canvassed as possible grounds for believing that Aristotle was an Archimedean naturalist about ethics. The status and relationship of the various ethical treatises is also discussed, together with the place of ethics within the hierarchy of sciences, as necessary background to the examination of Aristotle’s views.

Nature and the Sources of Normativity

Examining Aristotle’s intellectual milieu, this chapter argues that the supposedly modern questions about the ‘sources of normativity’ are being asked by Aristotle’s contemporaries, even without the spur of the modern sciences. The challenge to traditional beliefs from materialism, awareness of cultural variations and from sophistic challengers unsettled belief in traditional piety, requiring philosophers to seek other forms of justification. Plato’s work clearly shows a felt need for metaphysical foundations of ethics. The subjectivism of the Cyrenaic school, among others, put pressure on the notion that there is a true good beyond appearances. This chapter notes that—on one reading of the justification for Aristotle’s teleology—he might reasonably have seen the appeal to human nature as an external point of appeal to justify the demands of ethics; the question is whether he did do so.

Introduction

The central argument of the volume is outlined, and the importance of the opening sentence of the Nicomachean Ethics—that every action aims at some good—is highlighted. Aristotle should not be interpreted as an ethical naturalist, drawing substantive ethical guidance from impartial study of the natural world: his considered view does not depend on viewing human nature as an external point that provides substantive ethical guidance. The Introduction notes the somewhat unusual procedure—for a work of ancient philosophy scholarship—in proceeding from questions raised by modern appropriators of Aristotle’s ethical ideas. The transmission of Aristotle’s ideas, and the incomplete state of the surviving texts, justifies us in asking questions that may not be explicit in the texts.

Aristotle’s Metaethics

Aristotle’s critique of attempts to ground ethics in metaphysical abstractions would be the logical place for him to have articulated the case for a naturalistic ethics, but he does not do so. Rather, we find, in Eudemian Ethics, a contrary case for a distinction between the natural good and the practical good. Given Aristotle’s well-known emphasis on the nature of action, and his practice of beginning normative treatises from the nature of action, we can see implicit in this focus an argument that, for rational agents, the fact that we aim at some good commits us to seeking the genuine or true good. This chapter argues that an apparent fallacy in the first sentence of Nicomachean Ethics yields—if properly understood—an insistence that rational agency requires consideration of the truly best goal.

The Case against a Naturalist Reading

Several features of the ethical works actively militate against an Archimedean naturalist reading, including the non-instrumental value placed on the virtues, the non-deductive nature of practical reasoning and the absence of a blueprint for living well. This chapter reaffirms the consensus that Aristotle’s account of practical reasoning is not restricted to means-end reasoning, against a recent critique, and suggest that the contemporary particularist reading of Aristotle may be overstated if it is taken to suggest that all considerations may change valency. Having set aside the reading of Aristotle as an Archimedean naturalist, the chapter turns to the reconstruction of his positive account of the sources of normativity.

Aristotle and the Practical Turn

Constructivism attempts to straddle the divide between two extremes: on the one hand that the practical good exists independent of human thought and choice, or on the other that ethical claims are not truth-evaluable, because they have a non-cognitivist basis or even represent outright error. Aristotle’s position is compared to the forms of constructivism that see normativity as constitutive of agency, and his strategy is located within the current philosophical landscape. Although Aristotle’s position may not be as sophisticated or as carefully articulated as modern versions, it is argued that it is no accident that some modern constructivist accounts have drawn on Aristotelian resources.

Naturalism in Aristotle’s Politics

The use of substantive appeals to human nature to justify slavery and the subordination of women, as well as to argue for the polis as the ideal form of political organization, are prominent features of Book One of Aristotle’s Politics. These appeals seem like evidence for an Archimedean ethical naturalism. I argue against this conclusion, however, on the grounds that the Politics is an early work, and does not exhibit a notion of nature that could be investigated from a value-neutral or descriptive point of view. The notion of phusis found in the Politics is out of step with that of the biological work, adhering closer to the sophistic nomos–phusis distinction, i.e. a stand-in for the notion that certain practices are legitimate and not arbitrary impositions. The chapter concludes that Politics Book One does not support the case for Archimedean naturalism.

Aristotle in the Ethic Wars

Beginning from a short history of ethics offered in Korsgaard’s The Sources of Normativity, this chapter notes the practice—dating back to Anscombe’s ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’—of offering narratives about the history of modern ethics in order to unsettle the metaphysical picture underlying the rise of non-cognitivism or subjectivism in ethics. These narratives often feature Aristotelian virtue ethics as a potential alternative, and have shaped the reading of Aristotle’s ethics. The supposed ‘gap’ separating ancient and modern ethics is questioned, and with it the claim that Aristotle was unreflective about the grounding of his ethics; the supposition is also disputed that he regarded human nature as an ‘Archimedean Point’ to ground the demands of ethics, as the work of Williams and Foot might suggest. From a survey of modern appropriations of his ideas, two research questions are isolated: was Aristotle an Archimedean naturalist, and was he metaethically naive?