Aristotle's Ethics I: The Good, the Last End, Certitude in Ethics, and Man's Own Act

Orientation #

He recalls “last time”: the first definition of good (what all want) and the dialectic whether a thing is good because wanted or wanted because good, resolved that we want it because it is good (prev. lecture). He says the “done well” part of the definition and whether man’s end is the act of reason or an act with reason are “further precision to come later on.” The next class continues Book I on happiness as activity of the soul according to reason and the general meaning of virtue.

The class, in order #

1. Recap: good, end, better, and the chief good (“Is it good because you want it”) #

Point: he re-runs the first part of the proemium — the good, the end, “better”, proportion, and the proof of a last end.

• Good = what all want; end = “that for the sake of which”, either that for which something is (chair for sitting) or is done (study for knowing, medicine for health).
• Good and end “basically the same thing” but their definitions differ; they go together because if you want something you aim at it, and you aim at it because it is (or seems) good. Metaphysics II: those who do away with the end as a cause do away with the good without realising it. Aside: modern biologists admit you can see with the eye but not that it is for seeing, “because then they’re admitting the road to God.”
• Better, most basic statement: the end is better than what is for the sake of it (health > medicine, knowing > studying). General principle: when the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause — fire hotter than the air around it, sugar sweeter than the dessert, so the end “gooder or better” than the means.
• Second basic statement: the whole is better than the part (whole computer, whole book vs. one missing pages — “very annoying”; all your arms and legs). He suggests the end-principle is more basic, since the part is for the sake of the whole.
• Proportion (a likeness of ratios): seeing : eye :: hearing : ear; if seeing is better than hearing, the eye is better than the ear. Likewise commanding art : obeying art :: higher good : lower good (pharmacist obeys the doctor because medicine is subordinate to health); one reasons from whichever ratio is more known. Aristotle will use this to guess that the political art aims at the highest good, since it commands all the others.
• Not every good is desired for a further good. Argument 1: A for B, B for C, C for D … nothing is worthwhile until you reach what makes everything worthwhile, and you never reach it — everything “in vain”. Argument 2 (“more forcefully”): if A is desired for B, you cannot desire A before B; if everything is for something else, you could never begin to desire anything. Hence some end is simply an end, the chief and greatest good; Metaphysics II again: without it there would be no end, only means. Ethics is about this end, and knowing it “will have a big weight upon life.”

2. How to proceed: the mode fits the matter (“enough will be said if it is made clear”) #

Point: the second part of the proemium — the way of proceeding, and the certitude sought, must fit the underlying matter.

• The tool must fit the matter, obvious in the mechanical arts: his brother-in-law the carpenter (hammer, saw) vs. his wife the tailor (scissors, needle and thread); neither uses the other’s tools. “Much like that” in geometry, natural philosophy, wisdom and ethics: your way of proceeding fits what the science is about.
• Thomas, opening of the Sentences: whether the mode of theology is artificialis — “artful”, not “artificial”. One should not seek more or less certitude than the matter admits; it is “equally absurd” to let the geometer persuade you and to demand demonstration from the rhetorician (trivium vs. quadrivium). His examples: nobody can demonstrate who the next Republican candidate will be; the geometer taking a poll about the equilateral triangle.
• The same holds among the mechanical arts: the carpenter cannot be as precise as the seamstress, the sculptor in marble not as the painter; recipes warn “ovens differ” — you have to know your oven. Hence Aristotle’s “just as neither in the products of the arts”, which he calls “a beautiful comparison.”

3. Uncertainty about good and just things; “roughly and in outline” (“there is much difference”) #

Point: much difference and error about good and just things forces ethics to speak roughly, in outline, and for the most part.

• Just things: his night-class exercise on taxes. Should the rich man pay more? That he can afford it is no reason it is just (a rich man is not charged ten dollars for a dollar loaf); does he get more for his money — more police around his house? Even granting he pays more: same percentage or graduated? “What’s a reason to say thirty rather than ten percent?” — “Can’t say.” Student: has “just” changed meaning, or is it a dispute over what just is? He replies Aristotle is pointing to exactly this uncertainty; “it makes some people happy” is a reason of a sort. Asides: Walter Reuther in the fifties wanting no salary above ten thousand — “arbitrary”; Bill Cosby to Larry King on ninety-nine million: “They’re willing to pay, I’m willing to take it”; Reagan taxed at ninety-seven percent, so a movie earned three percent.
• “If they seem to be by custom only”: not Aristotle’s own opinion (some things are good or bad by nature), but that some think so is a sign of the lack of precision here.
• Good things: many are harmed by them — the wealthy man’s child kidnapped for ransom (“don’t bother to kidnap my kid”); the courageous strong man who wades into a fight and gets hurt while the weak man cowers. Wealth and courage are good, but “some have perished through wealth, others through courage.”
• “Roughly” (Thomas’s comment): universal things applied to singular, changeable things apply only roughly; something bad often follows from something good done. Aside: Egypt, Mubarak’s rumoured resignation — “it’s not the first revolution that is dangerous, the second” (Kerensky, then the communists).
• “For the most part rather than universally”, from his own life: as a rule marry someone of the same faith (yet his mother Catholic, his father Lutheran), same customs (Quebecers’ different sense of humour — how live with people who don’t laugh at your jokes?), same colour (hard on the child), and the man older than the woman (he says about five years; Shakespeare married a woman older, and Twelfth Night warns to marry a woman younger; Aristotle, he thinks, says eighteen and thirty-six, because a woman ceasing to bear children and a man losing interest coincide). All these hold for the most part, with exceptions that “turned out very well”; “it’s not a geometry, where every two is half a four.”
• The educated man seeks certitude in each subject only as far as the thing’s nature admits: nobody can demonstrate what will happen in Egypt; a prophet or a persuader is what you can expect.

4. The proper hearer; the epilogue (“the young man is not the proper hearer”) #

Point: the third part of the proemium — who can hear political knowledge: not the young, not the follower of emotions.

• Each judges well what he knows; the man educated in something judges that, the man educated in all things judges simply. The young man lacks experience of the actions of life, and the arguments are from and about these. Can young men talk about marriage? “They can talk.” Kierkegaard’s banquet: men in the countryside, no women, speeches on woman only once the wine is felt — the confused young student, the experienced married man, the tailor for whom it is all fashion, the professional seducer — each sees woman from a different angle; the married man sees differently from the student. Aside: from a family of all boys he got “a slow start understanding women”; having sisters teaches more.
• Second difficulty: the follower of emotions listens in vain, since the end here is action, not knowledge; no difference whether young in age or youthful in character (“remained a child all his life”) — the defect is not by time but by living by emotion.
• Knowledge useless to him as to the incontinent. Incontinent vs. vicious: the vicious man does bad and thinks it good; the incontinent knows he shouldn’t but “can’t help himself” — the smoker who says “never start this.” Aristotle’s later example: the man who gets the doctor’s advice to lose weight and doesn’t follow it; the advice is for health, not knowing, so it is useless. Hence ethics and all practical philosophy is knowledge for the sake of doing (what should I do as a man, father, citizen, senator, king). Aside: the Oxford one-volume Basic Works listing Politics, unbeknownst to him already practical knowledge.
• To those desiring and acting according to reason the knowledge is very good; to the emotional man, “don’t waste your time … go live it up” — in fact it makes him worse, since he now knows better and continues. So two requirements: experience and desire to be reasonable.
• The epilogue (top of page three) recalls the proemium’s parts in reverse order (like recalling yesterday, then the day before): the hearer; how it should be received (the certitude); what we propose. Greek word for “pave the way” = proemium. The Metaphysics proemium recalls two things, this one three; Thomas gets help from the epilogue in dividing the proemium, but divides proemia without one too.

5. Chapter 7: Plato’s definition of a thing’s own act (“a thing’s own act”) #

Point: a more explicit road into chapter 7 is the third definition in “the poem”: a thing’s own act is the act that only that thing can do, or that it does better than other things (Plato/Socrates).

• A knife used as a screwdriver: turning the screw is not the knife’s own act (wrecks the knife, doesn’t work as well); cutting is. His letter-opener could cut bread, but not as well as a knife. Only through the eye can he see, not the ears. Front teeth bite, back teeth chew: back teeth could bite and front teeth chew, “but not so well.” “Got the idea?”

6. The large induction that a thing’s own act is its end (“make a large induction”) #

Point: as good was tied to end, so end is tied to a thing’s own act: a thing’s own act is its end, manifested first by induction.

• Shakespeare’s definition of reason as ability for “large discourse, looking before and after” gives the name: a large induction from many instances; “the stupider the audience, the longer the induction.”
• Three inductions: (1) tools — knife’s own act to cut, its end to cut; pen to write; hammer to hammer; a screwdriver made for that screw does it better than others. (2) Organs (organon, Greek for tool) — eye to see, ear to hear, front teeth to bite, back teeth to chew, heart to pump blood. (3) Occupations — teacher to teach and that is what we hire him for; cook; pianist in the restaurant; pitcher (a student first says “hit the ball”); plumber.
• Then an induction from the three conclusions: every tool, every organ, every occupation has its own act which is its end — “the grand induction”: a thing’s own act is its end.

7. Aristotle’s text: is man by nature idle? (“What’s man for”) #

Point: Aristotle reasons from occupations (flute player, sculptor, every artist) and organs (eye, hand, foot) to ask whether man as man has anything to do, or is “by nature without anything to do.”

• The good and well-being of each is in doing its act; does man, as man, have an act, as playing the violin belongs to the violinist as violinist?
• His Worcester example: stop the first man on Main Street (“not ruined by going to college”): what is a pen for? writing. A knife? cutting. The eye? seeing. What is man for? — he hesitates. This shows man’s end is less known than the eye’s or the cook’s, which is why you reason from those.
• Syllogism: if man alone has reason, the act with reason is man’s own act; a thing’s own act is its end; therefore man’s end is the act with reason. Aristotle proceeds “a little differently.”
• Second pass, more precise: the cook’s end is to cook well; they won’t hire him to play the piano because he doesn’t play well; a pen that skips, a knife that won’t cut your steak, fail their purpose; he wears glasses to see well. So a thing’s own act done well is its end; man’s end is the act with reason done well.
• Third pass: a new car that stops after one trip round the block, a pen that dies after a page — the end is for the life of the thing; so man’s end is the act with reason done well throughout life. “One swallow does not make a summer” (Aristotle’s line; his pun on the party guest taking a drink).

8. Compound syllogisms: if-then and either-or (“the if-then and the either or”) #

Point: the same result can be reached, more shortly, by the two compound syllogisms, if-then (via a proportion) and either-or.

• If-then: find what is to man as seeing is to the eye — the activity man alone or most of all has, the act with reason. Then: if seeing is the end of the eye, the act with reason is the end of man; but everyone knows seeing is the end of the eye; therefore. The same with cutting : knife, cooking : cook. Change one member and the others change: seeing well forces “act with reason done well”; seeing well throughout life forces “done well throughout life.”
• Either-or: happiness is not just living but living well — but the life of a plant, a dog, or a man? What man’s life has that the dog’s lacks is reason; same conclusion.
• A precision he leaves for later in the Ethics: he is reasoning to an act with reason, not yet the act of reason itself; understanding and reasoning are acts with reason, but so are a reasonable love, fear, walk, talk — whether man’s end consists more in the act of reason or in an act measured by reason is for later.
• Aristotle’s next paragraph is the either-or: to live is common to plants, so the nourishing and growing life is set aside; sensing is common to horse and ox; there remains the doing of what has reason — of which one part obeys or is persuaded by reason, the other has reason and thinks; and since “with reason” is said in two ways, that according to act is laid down as principal. The following paragraph adds “done well”; break taken there.

His words #

• the good: “what all want.”
• end: “that for the sake of which” — of which something is, or something is done.
• better: the end is better than what is for the sake of it; the whole better than the part; what belongs to two things because of one belongs more to the cause.
• proportion: “a likeness of ratios.”
• Wisdom, second book of [ed.: Metaphysics II].
• underlying matter: what the science is about; the tool must fit the matter.
• artificialis: “artful”, not “artificial” (Thomas on the mode of theology).
• roughly and in outline; “for the most part rather than universally.”
• educated man: seeks certitude in each kind of subject only as far as the nature of the thing admits.
• incontinent vs. vicious: the incontinent knows he should not and cannot help himself; the vicious thinks the bad good.
• epilogue: recalls the proemium’s parts in reverse order; proemium = Greek “pave the way”.
• a thing’s own act: the act only that thing can do, or does better than other things (Plato’s third definition, “in the poem”).
• large induction: an induction from many instances (from Shakespeare’s “large discourse”).
• organ: Greek organon, tool; now used for the body’s tools.
• grand induction: the induction from the three inductions’ conclusions.
• compound syllogism: if-then and either-or.
• act with reason vs. act of reason: the latter’s priority left for later.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, proemium (Aquinas’s commentary, lectio 3): handout p. 2 (“enough will be said…”, “roughly and in outline”, the educated man, the young hearer, the follower of emotions) and epilogue at the top of p. 3.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, ch. 7 (Aquinas’s commentary, lectio 10): handout “Drawing a Line Around the End of Man” — flute player and sculptor, eye/hand/foot, “to live seems to be common even to the plants” through “that according to act.”
• Handout “What Is Good & What Is Better – The Order of the Discourse”, p. 4 (the recap of segment 1).
• Handout “The First Definition of Reason”, p. 86 (Shakespeare’s “large discourse”, used for “large induction”). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics II (“second book of Wisdom”): denying the end denies the good; without a last end no end.
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences, opening articles: whether the mode of theology is artificialis; geometer vs. rhetorician.
• Thomas’s commentary on “roughly.”
• Plato/Socrates, definition of a thing’s own act (“in the poem”, third definition) — Republic I (inferred).
• Aristotle, Ethics later: the patient who ignores the doctor; “one swallow does not make a summer”; act of reason vs. act with reason.
• Aristotle on the ages of husband and wife (Politics, inferred).
• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (marry a woman younger); Kierkegaard, “the banquet”; Oxford Basic Works of Aristotle; Reagan’s autobiography.

His questions #

• Is it good because you want it, or do you want it because it is good? You want it because it is good (recalled from last time; money is wanted because it is useful).
• What is the proportion Aristotle brings out after the different arts aim at different goods? Commanding art : obeying art :: higher good : subordinate good.
• How does Aristotle show that not every good is desired for the sake of another good? Otherwise the process goes on infinitely, in vain; and you could never begin to desire anything.
• Can the carpenter be as precise as the seamstress? No, the material doesn’t allow the same certitude.
• Should the rich man pay more taxes, and at what percentage? Left open — “not clear at all.”
• Is it good to be wealthy? To be courageous? Good, but some have perished through wealth and through courage.
• Should a man marry a woman of the same faith, customs, colour, and be older? For the most part yes, but not universally; there are exceptions.
• Can young men talk about marriage? They can talk, but lack the experience.
• What good does it do the smoker to know smoking is bad? None, if he can’t give it up — knowledge here is for doing.
• What’s man for? The man on Main Street hesitates; man’s end is less known than the eye’s, so one reasons from tools, organs, occupations.
• What is to man as seeing is to the eye? The act with reason (done well, throughout life).
• Living well — the life of a plant, a dog, or a man? Man’s, which has reason.