L19A1 Happiness - University of St. Thomas

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Lecture #19:
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotelianism:
The Founder & the Tradition
1. Εὐδαιμονία
Eudaimonia—Happiness
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The Alternative (Classical) Project
The Foundation: Aristotelian Teleology
384—born in Stageira, Macedonia
his father was physician to King Amyntus,
grandfather of Alexander the Great
367—Aristotle went to Athens and became a student at
Plato’s Academy
A Supplement:
Aristotelianism & Monotheistic Theology
•
Aristotle’s thought was developed by medieval philosophers in all three of the
great monotheistic religions
– Islam
– Christianity
– Judaism
347—on the death of Plato, Aristotle left Athens
342—Aristotle returned to Macedonia, where he served
as tutor to Alexander
334—Aristotle returned to Athens & opened the Lyceum
322—on the death of Alexander, Aristotle left Athens in
order to avoid the anticipated anti-Macedonian reaction
322—Aristotle died
ibn-Rushd
[Averroës]
(1126–1198)
Moses ben Maimon
[Maimonides]
(1135–1204)
St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274)
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Greek Vocabulary
•
Why bother about Greek terms?
– Each language divides up a semantic space in its own way.
• There may be no sufficiently precise translation of one word, even in
a related language.
• Using the Greek terms can remind us that we are using Aristotle’s
term;
• using an English term (with its connotations from colloquial usage)
can lead us to forget that fact.
Nicomachean Ethics
Book I. Εὐδαιμονία
(Eudaimonia, Happiness)
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Τέλος (telos)
The Main Theses of Book I
1. Teleological Conception of Goodness: Goodness is formally determined by
reference to the τέλος (telos, end) of the kind of thing being evaluated
2. The Name of the Ultimate Human Good is εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia, human
flourishing, happiness)
•
•
meaning—goal, end or purpose
Aristotle & the τέλος in biology
– physiology recognizes the proper functioning of an organism (health)
• embryological development leads to a mature organism
3. The Content of that Good can be determined by identifying the ἔργον (ergon,
characteristic activity [or “function”]) of man
• various processes (respiration, perspiration, &c.) maintain health
4. A good human being is one who engages in that characteristic activity
excellently (= in accordance with ἀρετή, aretē, excellence or virtue)
•
• medicine restores it artificially
Aristotle & the τέλος in ethics
– ethics recognizes the proper functioning of human being at the level of choice
• character development is a necessary part of a child’s upbringing
So, happiness is living & acting well (virtuously) throughout one’s life
– so, there is an analogy between
• being healthy and having good character
• proper body functioning and the activity that constitutes a good human life
(εὐδαιμονία eudaimonia “happiness” or human flourishing)
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Distinctions among Ends I
The Teleological Conception of Goodness
•
Being a good corresponds with being an end τέλος (telos)
– “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is
thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been
declared to be that at which all things aim.” (I.1)
Some are products apart from the activities that produce them
– e.g., the end of flute-making is a flute
•
Some are activities
– in these, the product is more important than the activity
– “What then is the good of each action and art? Surely that for whose sake
everything else is done. In medicine this is health, in strategy victory, in
architecture a house, in any other sphere something else, and in every
action and pursuit the end; for it is for the sake of this that all men do
whatever else they do. Therefore, if there is an end for all that we do, this
will be the good achievable by action, and if there are more than one,
these will be the goods achievable by action.” (I.7)
•
•
– e.g, the end of flute-playing is (or could be) the performance itself
– here, the activity itself (not some product) is what is good
Examples
– the goods of individual human actions
• real human actions are done for a reason
– the goods of arts & inquiries
• the end of agriculture is food production
• the end of biology is understanding living things
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Distinctions among Ends I:
Difficult Cases
•
Cheerleading: The Callie Smartt Case
– Can a girl in a wheel-chair be a cheerleader?
Distinctions among Ends II:
The Hierarchy of Goods
•
– An instrumental good is a good that is good because it gets us something else that we already
recognize as good.
• E.g., medicine is good because it gets us health.
• These could also be said to have extrinsic value, because their goodness is in what they get us,
not in what they are themselves.
– A final good is a good for the sake of which something else is done.
• Final goods are good not just because of something that they will get us, but (at least partly)
for their own sake.
• These could also be said to have intrinsic value, because their goodness is not in what they get
us, but in what they are themselves.
• Is cheerleading aimed at some good external
to it?
• Or is it an activity whose end is internal to
the activity?
•
Golf: The Casey Martin Case
– Should a golfer with a circulatory disease be
allowed to use a golf cart in a professional
tournament?
• Is playing a hole after walking the course
part of what it is to play golf?
• Or is golf just a matter of playing the hole?
Distinction: Instrumental & final goods
•
A good might be final relative to one end, but instrumental relative to another.
– E.g., Victory in war is final relative to cavalry skills,
– but instrumental relative to political objectives.
•
Is there an ultimate good?
– A good that is not instrumental
The Existence of Ultimate Goods
•
•
Thomas Hobbes’ denial:
– “there is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor summum bonum
(greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral
philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an
end than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity
is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the
attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. … So
that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind
a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth
only in death.”—Leviathan (1651) I.11.
Aristotle’s defense
– Anyone who recognizes some good as instrumental must already
recognize that to which it is the means as good
• i.e., one can’t recognizing something as good for something
else until one recognizes that other thing as good.
– We do recognize some goods as instrumental
– So, we must recognize something as a final good
• there could be one or many
• they could vary from person to person
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I.3: Politics & Ethics
•
The distinction
– ethics identifies the good for an individual
– politics identifies the good for a whole community
– [Some Aristotelians add “economics” as identifying the good of a
household]
•
What politics (& presumably ethics as well) aims as
– just conduct [τὰ δίκαια, ta dikaia]
– fine conduct [τὰ καλά, ta kala]
• also sometimes translated as “the noble,” but it can also mean
“beautiful”
• “acting bravely is finer (καλλίον) and more choice-worthy than
acting temperately”—Aristotle, Rhetoric
• Aristotle sometimes contrasts τὸ καλόν with the useful & the
pleasant
Eudaimonia & the Two Criteria of
the Ultimate Human Good
What is the highest good achievable by action?
•
There is general agreement about what to call it:
– In Greek, anyway: εὐδαιμονία eudaimonia
1. Finality
– In English?
• happiness, but that has a psychological connotation the Greek lacks
(cf. I feel happy)
•
A final good is a good desired for its own sake (by definition.).
•
Eudaimonia is a good desired for its own sake.
•
So, eudaimonia is a final good.
2. Self-sufficiency
• human flourishing might be better
•
A self-sufficient good is a good which, by itself, makes a life desirable &
lacking in nothing (by definition).
N.B.: A good does not have to be a simple good; it could be a composite
containing many component goods.
•
Eudaimonia is a good which, by itself, makes a life desirable & lacking
in nothing.
•
So, eudaimonia is a self-sufficient good.
– Or note Aristotle’s phrase: living & acting (πράττειν prattein, from
praxis) well.
• But what does that mean concretely?
•
So, again eudaimonia is the ultimate human good, but we still don’t have any
substantive account of what it is.
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Money?
Aristotle’s Argument
What Kind of Life Counts as Eudaimonia?
Four Possible Kinds of Life & their Corresponding Goods
•
The Life of Wealth
Having possessions
The Life of Pleasure
Experiencing [pleasure]
The Life of Honor
Being honored
Being [virtuous]
The Life of Contemplation
[or of Friendship
or Community]
•
Doing [some activity]
“The life of money-making? … wealth
is evidently not the good we are
seeking; for it is merely useful and for
the sake of something else. And so one
might rather take the aforenamed
objects to be ends; for they are loved for
themselves. But it is evident that not
even these are ends; yet many
arguments have been thrown away in
support of them.”
Argument
– Nothing that is merely useful and for the sake of something else is the
chief end of human life.
– Wealth is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
– So, Wealth is not the chief end of human life.
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Aristotle’s Arguments against Pleasure
•
Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine Argument
“Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any
experience you desired. … All the time you would be floating in a tank
with electrodes attached to your brain.”
“Should you plug into this machine for life, programming your
life’s experiences? … What else can matter to us, other than how
our lives feel from the inside?”
(From Anarchy, State & Utopia, pp. 42–45)
Nozick’s answers:
1. “We want to do certain things, not just have the experience of
doing them.”
2. “We want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person.”
3. “There is no actual contact with any deeper reality.”
Argument:
1. If pleasure were the ultimate human good, then one would
have a sufficient reason to attach oneself to the experience
machine.
2. There is not sufficient reason to attach oneself to such a
machine.
So, 3. pleasure is not the ultimate human good.
Argument
– “ the life of enjoyment [is] a life
suitable to beasts.”
1. Pleasure is something we share with
the animals.
2. Eudaimonia is something distinctively
human.
3. Nothing that we share with the animals
is distinctively human.
So, 4. pleasure is not eudaimonia
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Aristotle’s Account of Pleasure
•
Does anyone talk about honor anymore?
“Pleasure completes the activity.”
– Pleasure is not the end to which various activities are the means.
– The activities are the ends. When they are well done, they are enjoyable (=
one experiences the corresponding pleasure).
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What is Honor?
Three Passages from The Last of the Mohicans
about the Surrender of Fort William Henry (ch. 16)
In Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Naval Treaty"
"through my uncle's influence I obtained a good
appointment at the Foreign Office, and that I was in a
situation of trust and honour until a horrible
misfortune came suddenly to blast my career."
"I turn to you, Mr. Holmes, as absolutely my last
hope. If you fail me, then my honour as well as my
position are forever forfeited."
"I begin to believe that I am the unconscious centre of
some monstrous conspiracy, and that my life is aimed
at as well as my honour"
And when the case was solved:
"Phelps seized [Holmes'] hand and kissed it. 'God bless you!' he cried. 'You have saved
my honour.'
"'Well, my own was at stake, you know,' said Holmes. 'I assure you it is just as hateful to
me to fail in a case as it can be to you to blunder over a commission.'"
•
•
•
Passage 1:
– "Our march; the surrender of the place?"
– "Shall all be done in a way most honorable to yourselves."
Passage 2:
– Munro having signed a treaty by which the place was to be yielded to the enemy,
with the morning; the garrison to retain their arms, the colors and their baggage, and,
consequently, according to military opinion, their honor.
Passage 3:
– "I have solicited this interview from your superior, monsieur," he said, "because I
believe he will allow himself to be persuaded that he has already done everything
which is necessary for the honor of his prince, and will now listen to the admonitions
of humanity. I will forever bear testimony that his resistance has been gallant, and
was continued as long as there was hope."
– When this opening was translated to Munro, he answered with dignity, but with
sufficient courtesy:
– "However I may prize such testimony from Monsieur Montcalm, it will be more
valuable when it shall be better merited."
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What is Honor?
Version 1
What is Honor?
•
•
“At its simplest, honor is the good opinion of the people who matter to us”—
James Bowman, Honor: A History, p. 4
•
The duelist’s view of honor
– “that most basic form of honor, that foundational social reflex
to let others know one is not to be trifled with”—Bowman, p. 2
• “you can’t expect that, when you get somebody, they won’t
get you back”—Bowman, p. 1
– “[Hakimullah Mehsud’s] demise sends a message that if you
kill Americans, it is only a matter of time before a missile finds
you.”—The Wall Street Journal, “A Just Drone War” (3 Nov
2013)
• Mehsud was one of the organizers of the Times Square
bombing attempt of 1 May 2010
– The Heights of Weehawken or Battersea Field as “fields of
honor”
– & Thucydides’ list of the three primary (real) reasons for
waging war—fear, honor, and interest,
• «España, la Reina y yo, preferimos honra sin barcos, que
barcos sin honra»—Casto Méndez Núñez at the
Bombardment of Valparaiso (1866)
The hobbits’ view of honor
– being the subject of epic
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The Concept of Honor
•
The Life of Honor
Fabrizio Quattrocchi
– Two more paradigms for the concept of honor
•
– Quattrocchi was guarding oil pipelines in Iraq when
he was taken prisoner by insurgents
– His kidnappers forced him to dig his own grave and
kneel beside it wearing a hood as they prepared to
film his death.
–
– Formally
• Nothing that is not proper to a man and easily taken from him is the
chief human good.
He defied them by pulling off the hood and shouting,
“I’ll show you how an Italian dies!”
• Honor is not proper to a man and easily taken from him.
– Al Jazeera refused to show the videotape of his death,
saying it was “too gruesome.”
• Many commentators have suggested that he
ruined the propaganda value of the video by
refusing to submit to his captors.
•
• So, honor is not the chief human good
Kwame Anthony Appiah (in The Honor Code)
– argues that a sense of honor plays a crucial social role in moral revolutions
• e.g., the suppression of dueling, of foot-binding, and of slavery
• Some claim this may be a reason Al Jazeera
refused to show the video.
•
Aristotle’s Argument: The Superficiality of Honor
– “Honour seems too superficial to be what we are looking for, since it is
thought to depend on those who bestow honour rather than on him who
receives it, but the good we divine to be something proper to a man and
not easily taken from him.”
– the arguments (he says) were long known
– it was a change in the feelings of what is honorable that effected a change
in practice
The Reverend Mr. Black
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What is Honor?
Version 2
Another View of Honor?
•
•
•
“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”
– US Secy. of State Henry Stimson, justifying his decision
to end funding of the State Dept.’s “Black Chamber,” the
first US code-breaking operation (1929)
Does this fit Bowman's definitions?
– “you can’t expect that, when you get somebody, they
won’t get you back”
– “At its simplest, honor is the good opinion of the people
who matter to us”
“To care for your honor is to want to be worthy of respect. If you realize you have
done something that makes you unworthy, you feel shame whether or not anyone is
watching.”—Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions
Happen, p. xviii
– A third view of honor
• Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letter No. 57: “Of False Honour, Publick and
Private” (1721):
– “True honour is an attachment to honest and beneficent principles, and
a good reputation; and prompts a man to do good to others, and indeed
to all men, at his own cost, pains, or peril.”
• Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy, IV.4 (1713).
– “Content thyself to be obscurely good.
When vice prevails and impious men bear sway,
The post of honor is a private station.”
• Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle IV (1733-34)
– “Act well your part, there all the honour lies.”
• C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943)
– “We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We
castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
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Aristotle on Honor
•
The Life of Virtue
The Life of Honor
– Not having a good name
•
What is honor?
– “Men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their goodness; at
least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be honoured, and among
those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue;
– “clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, virtue is better. And perhaps one might
even suppose this to be, rather than honour, the end of the political life.”
Aristotle’s Argument: The Incompleteness of Virtue
– Argument 1:
• Possession of virtue seems actually compatible with being asleep, or with
lifelong inactivity,
• Nothing possession of which is compatible with being asleep, &c., is (by itself)
the chief good.
• So, Possession of virtue is not sufficient as the chief good.
– Argument 2:
• Possession of virtue seems actually compatible with the greatest sufferings and
misfortunes
• &c., as above
1. Having this kind of honor depends on what others think.
2. Being eudaimōn does not depend on what other think.
3. So, having this kind of honor is not being eudaimōn.
–
Perhaps being worthy of that good name
• but that points beyond honor to the excellence (virtue) that makes
one worthy of the good name
•
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Τέλος and ἔργον
(telos & ergon)
1.7 A Clearer Account
•
“A clearer account of what εὐδαιμονία is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if
we could first ascertain the function [ἔργον, ergon] of man.”
– “Just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that
have an ἔργον or activity [πρᾶξις, praxis], the good and the ‘well’ is thought to
reside in the ἔργον,
•
– so would it seem to be for man, if he has an ἔργον.”
• examples of the word (from Liddell & Scott)
– τὰ σ’ αὐτῆς ἔργα κόμιζε = see to thine own tasks (Iliad 6.490)
– θαλάσσια ἔργα = fishing, (Odyssey 5.67); a seaman’s life (Iliad 2.614)
– ἔργον ἐστί = it is his business, his proper work
– ἔργον ποιεῖσθαί τι = to make a matter one’s business, attend to it
• Its meaning
– The distinctive act, work, or function of a thing, what it does uniquely or
best.
– The ἔργον is specific (belonging to the species), not individual
•
•
•
The key to goodness lies in the ἔργον
– It is the τέλος of a thing to perform the ἔργον of the kind of thing it is
• e.g., the ἔργον of a flautist is playing the flute.
• So, a good flautist is one who plays the flute well.
Examples of the word (from Liddell & Scott)
– τὰ σ’ αὐτῆς ἔργα κόμιζε = see to thine own tasks (Iliad 6.490)
– θαλάσσια ἔργα = fishing, (Odyssey 5.67); a seaman’s life (Iliad 2.614)
– ἔργον ἐστί = it is his business, his proper work
– ἔργον ποιεῖσθαί τι = to make a matter one’s business, attend to it
Its meaning
– The distinctive act, work, or function of a thing, what it does uniquely or
best.
Other notes
– The ἔργον is specific (belonging to the species), not individual
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The Human Ἔργον
•
•
•
Its arguments
– The occupations argument.
• Particular occupations have an ἔργον
• So, man has an ἔργον
– The physiology argument
• Any being whose parts have an ἔργον itself has one
• Man is a being whose parts have an ἔργον
• So, man has an ἔργον
Its content
– We are seeking what is peculiar to man.
– So, not the life of nutrition and growth.
• This we share even with plants
– Not a life of perception.
• This we share with horses, the oxen, and other animals.
– But an active [πρακτική, praktikē] life of a rational being
The human good turns out to be activity [ἐνέργεια, energeia, actualization] of
soul in accordance with virtue [ἀρετή, aretē]
– over a complete life
Reason & the Ἔργον of Man
•
•
Reason & action
– Reason allows us to
• put things into classes (e.g., “copying software would be stealing”)
– But several possibilities might present themselves: Is Robin Hood
stealing or recapturing things the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham
unjustly took?
• act according to rules about how to treat things in that class (e.g., stealing
is wrong).
– Emotions, by contrast move us to action by a direct resolution of emotional
forces.
A good man is someone who does a good job at acting in accordance with rational
principles.
– E.g., who consistently puts acts under the right category: e.g., who can tell
whether an action is a case of just conduct in war or a war crime.
– Whose actions follow on the rational evaluation (who does not act
emotionally)
• doing what is good
• avoiding what is bad
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Two Aspects of Human Reason
•
•
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The Excesses of Romantic Love:
Francesca & Paolo in Dante’s Inferno
(or Guinevere & Launcelot in the Arthurian legends)
Speculative Reason
– manifest in our knowledge of the world
– e.g., Euclid’s Elements or Newton’s Principia Mathematica
Practical Reason
– manifest in our choices
– e.g., The Federalist Papers
Francesca was the wife of Paolo’s brother, Giovanni. When Giovanni found out about their
affair, he killed them both. Here. Francesca describes the incident that began their affair and led
to their damnation.
“One day we reading were for our delight
Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthral.
Alone we were and without any fear.
“Full many a time our eyes together drew
That reading, and drove the colour from our faces;
But one point only was it that o'ercame us.
“When as we read of the much-longed-for smile
Being by such a noble lover kissed,
This one, who ne’er from me shall be divided,
“Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.
Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it.
That day no farther did we read therein.”
—Dante, Inferno, Canto 5
(Longfellow translation)
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The Fate of
Francesca & Paolo
“The infernal hurricane that never rests
Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine ;
Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.
“When they arrive before the precipice,
There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments,
There they blaspheme the puissance divine.
William Blake
—Dante, Inferno, Canto 5
(Longfellow translation)
Kinds of Goods
•
•
•
•
Tаtyana’s Fidelity to her Marriage Vows:
Life in accordance with Reason
in Alexandr Pushkin’s Yevgeny Onegin
Tatyana had been infatuated with Onegin as a girl, but he had rejected her. He meets
her again years later, when she is married and wants her to elope with him. These
lines constitute her reply.
Dante describes the Second Circle of Hell, where he found them.
“I understood that unto such a torment
The carnal malefactors were condemned,
Who reason subjugate to appetite.”
Anselm Feuerbach (1864)
Three kinds of goods can be distinguished
– External goods
– Internal goods
• Bodily goods
• Psychic goods [those connected with the soul]
The ends of human life are activities
– These are psychic goods
The other kinds of goods (external; bodily) are connected to eudaimonia
– Some are necessary means to eudaimonia.
• E.g., one cannot be generous if one has no wealth.
– Some are necessary conditions for eudaimonia.
• Life under torture cannot be called eudaimōn.
But they are goods of fortune
– They create an instability of attribution
– To say that someone is eudaimōn is to make a stable attribution.
“Yet happiness seemed so possible,
So near at hand!... But now the book
Of fate is shut. …
I married. Onegin, leave me,
You must, I ask you, and I know
Within you there are nobler feelings,
Your pride, and your honourable dealings.
I love you (why should I deceive you?)
But I am given to another now,
And I will eternally keep my vow.”
—Aleksandr Pushkin,
Yevgeny Onegin, Bk. VIII
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