Ethics
11. Nicomachean Ethics I.7: Drawing a Line Around the End of Man—Reason as Man's Proper Function
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[0:00] between this human virtue, then he goes to all the virtues in the middle of books, and he comes back in the tenth book to see what more precisely is the end of man. We'll look at this next time. In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly.

[0:31] Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand sure better. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. First, of all there's a whole dialectic leading up to this chapter where he defines the end of man or draws a line around as he says in Greek.

[0:54] But let's just look at the little part here on the drawing a line around the end of man. Those words, drawing a line, is a translation of the Greek word perigraphe, which means literally draw a line around.

[1:12] But to say that happiness, of course, the Greek word is eudaimonia, But to say that happiness is the best seems to be agreed upon, and it is desired that what it is be said more distinctly.

[1:30] Perhaps this will come about if what man does is taken up. That's tied up with what we saw before, right? That a thing's end or purpose, if it has its own act, is going to be in that act, right? That's what it does. yes. Yeah, yeah. For just as the flute player, and the sculptor, and every artist, and even more generally, like the long induction we made, and generally everyone for whom there is something to do.

[2:05] Okay, maybe you can say more precisely, everything that has its own what act, as Plato defined it in the Republic. Okay, so the eye has something to do, namely to see, right? And the ear is something to do, right? And then an example of the flute player, the sculptor, the cook, and the barber, and so on—they all get something to do. They all have their own act,

[2:32] and so in general, everyone for whom there is something to do and some act, the good and well-being seems to be in doing this.

[2:43] So also it would seem to be for man. Then, if there is something he does, he has his own act too. Are there then some doings and acts of the carpenter and the shoemaker? But of man, there's none. He is by nature without anything to do.

[3:04] Sometimes you wonder, right? An idle mind is a devil's workshop, right? But is he by nature without anything to do? I notice those comparisons he's made to this point are all taken from the different human occupations, right? Carpenter, shoemaker, flute player, sculptor, and so on, right?

[3:32] But perhaps the ones in the second paragraph from the fine arts, right? And then for the more practical arts, the carpenter, the shoemaker. But then the fourth paragraph, he goes to what?

[3:48] The parts of man, right? Okay. Or just as there seems to be something done by the eye and the hand and the foot, and generally by each of the parts, we call those parts organs, right? Each of the tools. Should one also lay down something that man does besides all these?

[4:19] And then he starts to say, "Well, what is that? What then will this be? " To live seems to be common even to the plants.

[4:31] But what is man's own asat huh? Seeking man's own what? End. Well, his own act now, right? To find out what his own end is.

[4:43] So the nourishing and growing life, therefore, should be set aside. My purpose in life is to feed myself and to grow. Okay, or even reproduce myself, right? Because the plants they feed themselves, right? They grow, they reproduce, right? So is that man's own act? The thing that is unique to him.

[5:06] Now higher than this would be something sensing, right? To see and to hear and to smell and to taste and touch and so on. But this also seems to be common to the horse and the ox and every animal, because animals defined by sense.

[5:26] There remains then the doing of what has what reason, right? So how is Aristotle proceeding here? Well, it is an inductively, and from the general to the particular. Yeah. What you could say is also division here, right? And he's dividing what you find in living things, right? And he's eliminating what we have in common with the plant, and even what we have in common with the animal, right?

[6:00] In order to be left with what is peculiar peculiar to man, right? So it's kind of an either-or argument, right? I think I mentioned before in the part leading up to this, Aristotle says everybody somewhat agrees upon a name for what the purpose of life is, right? And even that it means, you know, to live well and do well. Okay, but then you can say that the plants are alive, the animals are alive, right?

[6:30] The? Man is alive. What does living well mean for a man? Living the life of a plant, well. Living the the life of a the cat here, well, right? See, or does it mean living the life of a human being, of a man, well? Well, it can only be the first two, right? So you're left with the third.

[6:56] The life that involves reason. And then he makes a distinction, which is going to be a basis for the distinction of the two kinds of virtue we talked about. But of this, the one as obeying or persuading. persuaded by reason.

[7:15] So Plato represents what? The emotions partaking of what reason? Okay. He represents the emotions as, as it were, listening to or obeying what reason, right? And that's something that the emotions have to be habituated to doing, right? So Plato makes a comparison, you know, of reason as to the emotions, a bit like the man is to the horse, right? And if you've no horses, or you've seen the Western movies, when a man first gets on a horse, the horse tries to throw the man off, right?

[8:01] But if the man continues to get back upon the horse, he can maybe eventually what? Tame the horse, right? Okay. Washington Irving there in his descriptions of the West there when he came back here in 1832. Really kind of remarkable descriptions of the way they tame these horses on the prairies, how wild they seem at first, and then all of a sudden they become what very docile to the human being.

[8:27] So it's kind of proportion there, right? That reason is the emotions a bit like the man is to the what horse, right? And therefore you have to kind of train the horse to obey the man, huh? And this is what we do with the emotions. And of course it begins with your parents, really, huh? Don't want any more candy, do you? You've had enough, huh? Okay, I guess so.

[8:51] Then you're starting to listen to the reason of your parents, right? But if your emotions did not listen to the reason of your parents at all, then there may be no even less so listen to your own reason. So it's one part of a man that isn't reason. Doesn't have reason itself, right? But it partakes of reason, right? And in some sense, listens to reason, obeys reason, right?

[9:25] You see, it's very much the way Mozart represents this in the instrumental music, as opposed to Romantic period, you know, where the emotions are kind of on their own, right?

[9:36] As Austin Farrer said years ago, the one thing the Romantic would not admit is that reason, that emotion, should be subordinated to reason. Heavens knows.

[9:47] And the other is being reason, essentially, right, as having reason and thinking and so on. And this being said in two ways, the ability and the capacity to act,

[10:07] which is more principal, right? For this seems to be said principally, right. If then the activity of man, if man's own act, is the act of the soul by reason, or not without reason, right? Okay. So it's either acts by reason, like thinking or sensing, not sensing, but reasoning or understanding itself, right? Taking counsel and so on, or not without reason, because both the emotions and even more so the will can listen to reason and obey it, go along with it.

[10:46] For all we say that the act of something and its good act are the same, generically speaking, as of a harpist and a good harpist, right? And thus in all, adding that it excels by virtue. Now we talked about what virtue was, right? And the virtue is what makes a thing good, and its own act good, right?

[11:14] For it belongs to the harpist to play the harp, but to the good harpist to play the harp well. And you can do the same thing with all the different arts, right? It belongs to the cook to cook, but the good cook to cook well, right?

[11:31] Then, if this is so, and further that we lay it down that the act of man is some kind of life, and this the act of the soul and actions with reasons, but if the good man is well and fairly, and each is completed by its own act, its own virtue. If then it is thus, the human good turns out to be the act of the soul by what virtue?

[11:56] Huh? I see the word soul originally means what the cause of life within living bodies, right? So if man's inner purpose is to live well, right? It's an activity by the soul, right? But by the the plant soul or the animal soul or the the soul that has reason, right? By the soul that has reason, huh? But perfected by what virtue, right? And if there are many virtues, as we find out that there are, we talked about some of those, according to the best and most what perfect, right?

[12:35] So Aristotle would go through all the virtues, the main virtues, anyway that we mentioned, the moral virtues of what partakes of reason by listening to or obeying reason, and the virtues of reason itself in Book Six, right? And then in the tenth book of the *Nicomachean Ethics*, he'll come back to this and say, well, now the virtues aren't all equal, right? Okay.

[13:00] Just like we say what, but for the Christian, the chief virtues are faith, hope, and what charity. Okay. And of course, as our friend St. Paul tells us charity is the greatest of the three, right? Okay. But as Thomas points out in the *Disputed Questions* on hope, right? Hope is greater than faith, but you got to have faith first, right? Okay. So the virtues, even faith, hope, and charity, they're not all what equal, huh?

[13:30] Okay. In the same way for the purely human virtues, right? They're not equal. Of course, in the tenth book, the virtues of reason itself will be seen as being superior to the moral virtues, which partake of reason. But then the two chief virtues of reason are political foresight and wisdom, right? And Aristotle will speak down the two supreme happiness for man, right? The happiness which is more human, according to political foresight, the happiness of Winston Churchill, right?

[14:06] And then the happiness of the philosopher in wisdom, which he calls a more divine happiness, huh? But then on the top of page four, he adds a third part, right? Because the end of man activity in accordance with reason and by virtue for a day or a week or a month, huh? No, it's got to be through what life, right? And he quotes the old proverb, right?

[14:43] Aristotle often quotes a proverb to come back to something that's more homely and common to his audience and to people in general, right? For one swallow does not make a spring in one day, right? And thus neither one day nor a short time makes one blessed and happy.

[15:04] A line, therefore, has been drawn around the good, right? So this is not the most perfect definition of the end of man, right? But does draw a line around it and tell you somewhat what it is, right? But after we've gone through the virtues and then compared them, then we can determine more exactly what that end is, huh? Okay. He set up the target. He set up the target.

[15:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He does use that word "skopos in Greek there, you know. If you know what the end is, like a man who has a skopos the target, he can see the target. He can aim at it, right? And you know, if you are aiming at a target over there, you, you know, you've got to be pretty good aim to hit the target, right? But if you are not aiming at the target, you know, just shooting your arrow out in 360 degrees or three and sixty degrees this way, I mean, you could say that for all practical purposes, you probably would never hit the the the thing.

[16:01] huh? And Aristotle goes through the moral virtues in book two in general. Mirrors at that definition we saw of moral virtues. Let's say habit with choice, right? Existing in the middle, but the middle towards us, right, is determined by right reason, which would be the virtue of foresight or prudence in Book Six. He gets into that book. He gives a few little rules about how to become virtuous.

[16:42] I mean, generally, it's repeated acts that makes a man virtuous, right? But he gives one rule, which is that you're trying to straighten out a stick, right? And let's say it's bent, and you want to make it straight. What do you do? You just bend it back until it's straight. No, you need to go it. It's gonna, you know, you gotta bend a little bit in the opposite what direction, then you can straighten it out, right?

[17:14] So if I'm a little bit of a coward, huh, and I want to be courageous, right, then I gotta bend a little bit in the direction of being maybe foolhardy, right. Or an old Dominican was saying, you know, the the young brothers, right, in the in the you know being prepared for the Dominican Order, they tend to be a bit puritanical, he says, right. But in a sense, that's the way you have to hit the mean.

[17:42] You you can't hit it directly. You've got to bend a little bit away in the extreme that is closer, right, to the to the the virtue, right. And then he says, "Look at yourself. What are you inclined to? Right?

[18:04] Because you might be inclined, let's say, to get angry very easily, like Saint Francis de Sales. So he has to bend in the opposite direction, right? Someone else might be kind of what meek and people walk over him and so on, and he's got to bend up in the other direction, right? That's something taking into account you in particular, right?

[18:27] And what's his third piece of advice? Avoid pleasure. Yeah, be careful of pleasure. He says. Interesting. This is not a a Christian saying this, right, or a priest or like that. This is the pagan philosopher, right? Saying, you know, watch out for pleasure, right? That often leads people astray, you know.

[19:00] So what was the second one? One is in terms of the fact that the virtue itself is closer to one extreme than the other, right? So considering that fact, you have to bend usually a little bit in one direction as a rule, right? Okay, so that if you start out life being a coward, you're probably never end up being courageous, right? Sure. But if you start out life being a little bit rash, you know, like I told the story there of of George Washington, right?

[19:34] You know his first military encounters there, you know, and how exhilarating it was to be shot at, you know, so on. And of course, you know a little bit floridness there, right? And then later on, of course, in life, you know, say, well, I was younger then, you know, say, but you might, you know, straighten out, you know, and be courageous and not risk your life unnecessarily, but still be a courageous man, right?

[19:56] But you have to maybe, you know, bend a little bit that way, right? Okay. Aristotle says if you start out life being stingy, what you tend to is you get to be an older man, you tend to be more stingy because your physical powers start to decline, so you need your wealth or your money or whatever it is. In order to maintain yourself and so on. So if you're stingy when you're young, the chances of of being generous when you're old are not very good, right?

[20:25] See. But if you, you know, a little bit extravagant, right? And then of course, as you're being extravagant, you you're probably into some financial problems. Then you say, "Well, I got to, you know, watch my money a little bit more carefully," you know. Then you kind of what pull back a big extravagant, but you are truly what generous, right? And so, in terms, or as a second example of of

[21:00] moderation or temperance, right, huh? That the the virtue is closer to the defect, right, huh? Okay. So unless you bend a bit that way, you probably never will what straighten out, huh? Um. But then the second rule he gives is in terms of you as an individual. Know thyself, as the seven wise men said, right, huh? Because

[21:33] you yourself as an individual might be inclined more to one extreme than the what other, right? And therefore, you must incline a bit in the opposite direction, right? Whatever that is, in order to what? Okay. Straighten yourself out, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the third rule he gives is a different kind of rule, but watch out for pleasure. Okay. He's a. Practical man, Aristotle. Yeah. Aristotle, in your mind, is well balanced as Aristotle, you know.

[22:11] because you have, you know, these very abstract sciences like logic or wisdom, and then you have very concrete things like ethics, right, and political philosophy, and he did anatomy with animals and so on, huh? He did considerable historical research, right, into all the Greek cities, yeah, yeah, and how they changed their governments and so on, and he wrote his books on revolution, huh? Which is still useful to students of politics today.

[22:44] See, in some sense, the the best, most balanced mind in history. But can't help be Aristotle, right? Plato's supposed to come into school and said Aristotle is the mind of the school. Here's a famous guy, you know, huh? People come all over Greece to study under Plato in the Academy, and he calls this one student, you know, the mind of the school.

[23:16] It's like Albert the Great going down to Paris to defend the teaching of Thomas at the end of his life, kind of amazing thing. Or like Haydn imitating Mozart. Yeah, yeah, in his life, yeah. Yeah. Hi, Haydn's latter symphonies are so much better than his earlier ones because of Mozart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's marvelous to see that the older man, in a sense, the teacher, in some sense, the younger man, recognizes in these three cases Plato and Aristotle, apparently, Albert the Great and Thomas, and um, Haydn Mozart, um, and appreciates the excellence of the younger one and has no envy of him, right?

[24:01] I think that's all. You know, envy is such a one of capital vices, as you know, and you know, envy plays a considerable role in the Gospels there with the Pharisees and people of that sort. I mean, it's it's really it's really,

[24:22] all right. Scripture says, huh? Because the devil is envy of us in the sense that that that he tempted us, right, and sin came into our world and so on. So, envy is something

[24:39] we talked about that before with the novelists, right? How the novelists, you know, observing human friendship and just kind of ordinary friendship, see that the black mark upon human friendship is is envy, right? And to the extent that that you feel envy over your friend's greater success, much greater success than you, there's a there's a contrariety in what friendship really is. But the fact that that envy is is very frequent and easily felt, huh?

[25:09] Is a sign of how much we're inclined to that vice. In the Book of Job, it says, "Pride kills the great one, and envy the little one." Huh. Yeah. So they say that the aristocrat is more subject to the vice of of pride, huh? But the democratic times are more subject to the vice of envy. Belloc

[25:42] had that kind of humility with respect to Chesterton. One episode I remember was although they were more equals, and somebody had read to Belloc a piece of poetry written by Chesterton, and he didn't know who it was by, and Belloc said, "Who wrote that?" And they said, "Chesterton." Ah, he said, "The master."

[26:08] I think I told you that story about Deckeray's little daughter asking him, you know. Why don't you write more like Mister Dickens? You know. Out to

[26:19] bleak house you go. Like it so. So we turn to wisdom now. I'm not going to give you too much wisdom here, but Break them on here. Pass these out around. You able to get a copy here of the Proemium of Wisdom? Yeah.