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 Precis of talk on Aristotle by Emeritus Professor Paul Crittenden (University of Sydney)


Page 1 Lecture Notes (Précis of Lecture)

Page 9 Handout - Guide

Page 11 Additional notes & quotes

Page 15 Further references


Aristotle's Legacy


A) Life: 1) 384-367: in Macedonia
2) 367-347: in Plato's Academy in Athens
3) 347-335: Aegean coast & Macedonia
4) 335-323: In Athens: the Lyceum 323: death of Alexander
5) 322 d. Euboea, aged 62


Writings: immense scope. Metaphysics: the desire to know

3 main classes of knowledge: - theoretical, practical, productive sciences

A's contributions: Theoretical: Logic, Metaphysics, Physics, Psychology,
Biology, zoology, Botany

Practical: Ethics (N & E), Politics …Economics etc


Productive: Rhetoric Poetics lost works

B) Aristotle's Ethics: the good for human beings & how to achieve it
Nicomachean Ethics: cf. Guide - key terms, Bks I - X.

1 Focus on the nature of a thing & its development to maturity cf. Pol. 1,2
-'What each thing is when fully developed we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a human being, a horse, or a family'.

The realisation of what is best in its regard - a thing at its full pitch, Cf. biological & developmental focus - attention to young children and how they achieve excellence, virtue.

Common nature of humanity: BUT with prejudices of the time:
Women relegated inferior status … Slavery … Greek superiority … an air on occasions of aristocratic complacency

NE 1,1: Every activity, every inquiry, every practice aims at some good .. 'the good as 'that at which all things aim'. Many ends, and goods… ordered? Enough to yield the qn of an overarching good, highest good, what we aim at above all.
The good life for a human being. the concern of Political Science. The common answer:

2 The highest good: Eudaimonia BUT what constitutes happiness?
* lots of money * celebrity/fame * power * pleasure
* honour code (cf. Homer) * pract wisdom/ virtuous activity * 'theoria'
Conditions (ruling out some)
complete in comparison with other ends, for its own sake, self-sufficient
Arist.: phronesis+ virtue theoria??? + enjoyment

Approach: what is characteristic of h. beings: the kind of beings we are -
Animal species with powers of sensation, memory, imagination, curiosity, & reason; social beings, subject to emotions, apt at learning, living by art & reasoning. Åbove all: capacity for theoretical reasoning and acting for reasons

Two basic features of a good human life: * an active life of one with logos (power of reason); * h.beings as naturally social (1097b11), hence a life shared with others.

NE I, 7 (p.15/16)
Characteristic activity/ function: ERGON - Reasoning - leading to focus on virtues or excellences (connected with ergon) . [SEE GUIDE]
1095a15-8: 'If this is so, the human good turns out to be …Activity of soul … excellence/virtue. Excellence of a thing lies in capacity to perform its characteristic activity well cf. the excellence of an eye, an axe …
To reason well, to act well on the basis of reasons

Cf. Guide: SOUL as FORM of Body - the body qua living: 'the actuality of a body that has life'
Faculties/ Powers of the Soul: See NE I, 13 (1102aff): need in ethical inquiry to study the human soul & its several faculties …cf De Anima
Rational part: Mind or reason (Nous):
epistemic part : thought, understanding (universals)
cf. sense perception, imagination,memory
deliberative part: action
Non-rational part: appetitive element - desire & emotions: open to reason
(cf. the WILL: voluntariness, purposive judgment, practical reasoning).

3 Virtues: To perform the ergon: need for excellences of character (moral virtues) and of mind (intellectual virtues esp. phronesis) … Virtues as conditions of the good life, not just as means. Constitutive elements of a
good life:
a life of activity .. expressive of human powers in acc. with reason & virtues
Note: eudaimonia depends on other things, one's time, degree of luck (cf. Plato).

NE 2,5 (1106b6ff..): Definition of Virtue: their field: actions and feelings, pleasures and pains Virtue as a state involving rational choice … lying in a mean … as determined by those with phronesis

Choice: genus- voluntary action + deliberate appetition of things in our power … Conditions for a good choice: the reasoning must be true and the desire right NE 3, 3 (1113a9)/ 6, 2: 1139a25

'lying in a mean': as specific difference of virtue
Excellence concerned with (a) emotions as well as actions; (b) likes and dislikes (pleasures and pains). NOT: a disposition towards mean or intermediate emotions and actions - the Greek doctrine of moderation (to which Arist subscribed in general) but a mean or intermediate disposition: the settled state of character as lying in a mean .. acting & feeling towards such people, for such reasons, in such ways as proper.

Emotion displaying Action … Choice …
displaying mean state
Excell char. Yes Yes Yes
Self-controlled NO Yes Yes
Lacking self-control NO NO (Yes)
Bad char. NO NO NO


4 Getting things right in Ethics…. (objectivity, truth …)
Aristotle NE 2,6 (1107a9-18):
'But not every action or feeling admits of a mean; because some have names that directly connote badness, such as spite, shamelessness and envy, and in the case of actions adultery, theft and murder. All these, and more like them, are so called as being bad in themselves, and not the excesses or deficiencies of them. In their case, then, it is impossible to act rightly; one is always in the wrong. Nor does acting rightly or wrongly in such cases depend on circumstances - whether a man commits adultery with the right woman or at the right time or in the right way - because any such actions or feelings are simply wrong.'

Ethics: not an exact science like Mathematics, but more like medicine or navigation Cf. NE II, 2 1104a: general rules only, holding 'for the most part'.
BUT: SOME actions & feelings are always wrong, wrong tout court.

Also: it's the task of PHRONESIS to get to the TRUTH in matters of action: 'the truth that corresponds to right appetition' (6,2: 1139, 30).
Virtue: a disposition regulated by practical wisdom

NE 6, 13: [Consideration shows] that it is not possible to be good in the true sense of the word without practical wisdom, or to be practically wise without moral virtue

Virtue: conforms to right principle AND co-operates with it …

Cases in which no general formula applies: 'kata ton orthon logon' ? in acc. with the right rule: in keeping with good sense (in the situation)

Cf. No universal code bearing on action, how to live. Hence focus on virtue: being a person of this kind, in a position to assess, deliberate, choose.


5 PASSIONS: Feelings/ Emotions : as central to moral agency: NE II, 4 (1105b25)
the virtues are states/dispositions by which we act and stand well with reference to the passions, and hence in regard to pleasures and pains [likes and dislikes]

A life of virtue: under the guidance of logos or reason 'acc. to reason'

Vs. 'living by the passions' viz. in defiance of reason. BUT the passions in his psychology as integral parts of the human psyche: NE 3, 1(1111b):

'the irrational passions are thought not less human than reason is, and therefore also the actions that arise from anger or appetite are actions of a human agent'.

Aristotle's account of virtue: the ideal, morally mature person, Cf. 'ordinary excellence' - most fall short: NE 2, 9:
'it is no easy task to be good … goodness is both rare and laudable and noble'.

Favourite image: the appetitive element 'listens to and follows' reason as we speak of 'paying heed to a wiuse father of friend'.
But note that reason too is shaped by the emotions, shaping the way we see situations & respond:
Practical wisdom as engaged reason. Intelligent choice: 'deliberative desire' and 'desiderative thinking' Cf 3, 3: 1113a9 & 1139a23;b4-5 (6,.


6 HABIT-FORMATION and TEACHING: moral education/ development
NE 2, 1 (1103a15-17):

Intellectual virtue owes both its inception and growth chiefly to teaching, for which reason it needs time and experience, while virtue of character (ethos) comes about as the result of habit (ethos).

The nature vs nurture issue: moral virtues engendered neither by or contrary to nature: we are constituted by nature to receive them, but their full development is due to habit …

On the other hand: in the absence of a good upbringing we will be drawn to take pleasure in the wrong things POL 1337a1-2: art & education seek to fill up the deficiencies of nature.
Everything depends on early education: NE 2, 1:

It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or another from our earliest years - it makes a vast difference, or rather all the difference in the world (1103b23-25).

Practice as basic to habit-formation, being got to act… :
Excellences we get by first exercising them, as happens also in the case of the arts. For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing; e.g. people become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by performing brave acts (1103a31ff.)

There is an affective dimension: getting the right feelings: from carers; But + need for a scheme of public education: 'the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all' (Pol 1337a26-7).

Habit-formation: NOT a mindless drill exercise. ALSO: teaching and guidance from an early age … learning to make choices.
Emphasis on MUSIC in moral education, including poetry and story-telling, as having the power to form our minds, develop our emotions, and habituate us to true pleasures (Pol 1339a22-4).
But teaching alone:won't make a person good:

'just as soil has to be prepared beforehand if it is to nourish the seed, so the soul of the student has to be prepared in its habits to enjoy right things and dislike the bad'; the person not formed in this way won't listen to the argument or see its point. So, 'the character must somehow be there already with an affinity to virtue, loving what is good and noble, rejecting what is base' (1179b5-30).

7 Other topics: Pleasure … Friendship .,. Weakness of Will … Contemplation (theoria).

C) Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics
1 Survey of reception of Aristotle over the centuries … neglect?
" Logic - Organon
" Metaphysics & ethics taken up by Neoplatonists: Arist. as Platonist & Augustine
" Islamic ph'ers esp Ibn Sina from 10 C., Moses Maimonides, 12 C, then the Faculty of Arts & Theology at Paris & Oxford. Thomas Aquinas
" Attack on Aristotle at time of reformation - Luther, then in 17 C in science and philosophy: Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes. Arist hegemony over: but considerable influence remained esp in Germany and Oxford.
" Re-emergence in 19 C with Hegel, then Marx e3sp in Practical Philosophy
" Aristotole as fundamental for Heidegger in 20 C: Gadamer, Arendt.

2 Focus on Aristotle's ethics in the English-speaking world:
1958: Elizabeth Anscombe "Modern Moral Philosophy' - attack on Kantianism, Utilitarianism, emotivism broadly from a Aristotelian-Xian standpoint. Anscombe opened up space for active thinking in the Greek tradition … 'Virtue Ethics'

Philippa Foot: Oxford/USA: writing on ethics since '60s: articles, book (2001)…
Alasdair MacIntyre moral, social, pol philosophy, Marxism.. then 1981 After Virtue: critique of modern moral phil in the Anscombe spirit as confused; & attempt to recover 'an Aristot conception of morality & politics'
John McDowell: articles in Mind, Value & Reality (1998). Others: Nussbaum, Hursthouse, etc etc.

3 MacIntyre's After Virtue: moral philosophy from 18 C a failure, following rejection of Arist tradition.
Key Qn: 'Can Arist's ethics, or something v like it .. be vindicated?'(p111) - Arist without the blind spots of his time + an enlarged & amended list of virtues.
2 particular concerns:
" how to keep the teleology without the metaphysical biology?
" Arist ethics as tied to the Polis - a social order vastly different from our world.

Much of his later writing related to these concerns - along with argument for an important range of virtues:
TRUTH commitment as central to human wellbeing,
An enlarged conception of JUSTICE beyond market capitalism
INTEGRITY & CONSTANCY as components of every virtue.

MacIntyre: perhaps there is no place for Arist moral and polit phil in contemporary world? - an inclination to call for a tactical retreat.

In this situation what is most urgently needed is a politics of self-defence for all those local societies that aspire to achieve some relatively self-sufficient and independent form of participatory practice-based community and that therefore need to protect themselves from the corrosive effects of capitalism and the depradations of state power. (Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays, vol. II).

Jonathan Lear in criticism of this:
If Aristotelian ethics is to remain a live tradition, one should be able to locate it in political structures radically different from anything Aristotle experienced or imagined (LRB, 2 Nov 2006).

What is needed: a focus on 'first' nature: 'What is about human beings just insofar as they are human beings that makes them excellent?' Lear points to Foot, Hursthouse & others, and regrets that MacIntyre has not moved this way.

The criticism fails to take account of MacIntyre's Dependent Rational Animals .. Cf. the sub-title: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues


4 Framework around two large topics:
a) what human beings have in common with other intelligent animal species; and
b) (b) the importance of taking account of vulnerability and dependence.

Return to Arist view of ethics grounded in biology & develop context.

Basic Qn: what is needed for beings of this kind to do well, what is good for them? Plants, animal species.. In re hum beings, Arist stressed two things

I. A life of activity of one with logos. 2. We are by nature social beings

Taken up and developed by MacIntyre.
Argument:
(1) we begin in infancy 'at the beck and call of desire and appetite

(2) to assume responsibility for our lives we need to become independent practical reasoners - always in dependence on a social context in which we are first cared for and taught ….

More generally, he explores two sets of virtues or excellences as involved in the task of becoming independent practical reasoners…

(a) Virtues of indep practical reasoners cf. phronesis + good habits…

(b) Virtues of acknowledged dependence: domain of giving and receiving…

p,8-9: 'both sets of virtues are needed in order to actualize the distinctive potentialities that are specific to the human rational animal'.

An indep practical reasoner: one who can stand back from immed desires and evaluate reasons for action in the light of:

A degree of self-knowledge, knowledge of others, and the conditions for ensuring that things go well:

This calls for a range of intell and moral virtues: in short, practical wisdom in conjunction with virtues such as self-control courage patience honesty truthfuless about ourselves

In addition, an impt condition for becoming an indep agent with logos is the recognition of our dependence on others:

original dependence in childhood,
dependence on others in the complex practices of giving and receiving
dependence in illness or disability
dependence in old age

What we need here: the virtues of acknowledged dependence - virtues associated with giving and receiving, with being reliable and trustworthy

'Giving' virtues: love generosity and justice friendliness decency sympathetic concern esp in re distress: misericordia

'Receiving': gratitude courtesy truthful acknowl'mt of dependence

Intellectual virtue - practical wisdom: in general, the virtues that go with being a good learner and reading situations.

Also: the willingness to discuss issues with others and take advice, recognising that may have more wisdom or insight (cf Creon in Antigone)

Arist (1112b10): On important questions we call on others to help us in deliberation, distrusting ourselves as not equal to deciding'.
Importance of friendship (and proper self-esteem): 'if we are good we stand to ourselses, just as we stand to our friends, and vice versaq (1166a1-1166b29).


Finally: what sort of social and political order would best support the two sets of virtues?

Aristotle: a small city-state (polis) - writing at time that Alexander was carving out an empire and changing the world forever, without recognising that the days of the polis were numbered.

MacIntyre's response (as expressed in this text) is: (a) not to retreat, but to engage in critique of the current social and political order; and (b) to encourage developments which would strengthen a wide variety of local communities specifically in relation to the virtues of acknowledged dependence.
_________________________________________________________


ARISTOTLE'S LEGACY (Handout)
(a) Life & Writings: scope of his inquiries; (b) Aristotle's Ethics; (c) Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics.
Some references:
Aristotle: Categories; On Interpretation; Prior Analytics; Metaphysics; Physics; The Soul; On Generation & Corruption; Parts of Animals; The Heavens; Nicomachean Ethics; Politics; Rhetoric; Poetics; etc, etc
Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Christopher Shields, Aristotle (Routledge, 2007); Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Clarendon Press, 2001)
John McDowell, Mind, Value, & Reality (Harvard University Press, 1998)
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, 1981); Dependent Rational Animals (Duckworth, 1999)

From Parts of Animals I, 5: Having already treated of the celestial world as far as our conjectures could reach, we proceed to treat of animals, without omitting, to the best of our ability, any member of the kingdom… Even if some have no graces to charm the sense, yet nature, which fashioned them, gives amazing pleasure in their study to all who can trace links of causation, and are inclined to philosophy. …Every realm of nature is marvellous; and as Heraclitus, warming himself by the kitchen fire, reportedly bade his hesitant visitors to enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present, so we should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful…

Some general terms in Aristotle's philosophy: arche: first principle (in a body of knowledge); also: a starting point in inquiry… ; aitia: cause/ explanatory factor; causes as fourfold: material, formal, efficient, & (in some cases) final. (Consider a chair: made of wood, arranged in a certain design by the carpenter, to be sat upon …). Phusis: Nature as the sphere of change (kinesis, genesis); see also Essence. Categories: ways of being, or: ways of talking about being: (a) Substance; (b) properties … Substance (ousia): (1) an individual something: a this -&-a what-it-is: this human being, this gum tree…'The what it is': substance in a secondary sense, viz. substance as Form: species, genus, type, kind, sort of thing (animal, vegetable, mineral..). 'Non-substance' categories: qualities (of things), quantities…
Essence: 'the-what-it-is-to-be X': what is stated in the definition of a thing

Matter & Form (hule & morphe: hylemorphism). In analysing change, Aristotle notes that material bodies (substances) are composite in the sense of consisting of matter organised or structured in some way: a table consists of timber shaped thus-and-thus, a statue is made eg, of marble in the form of a horse, an animal consists of flesh and blood etc organised in a characteristic way. There are thus two aspects or 'parts' of things, stuff and structure - matter-and-form - in a logical rather than a physical sense, hence not as separable 'bits', but as (real) aspects of the unitary physical thing. Matter always takes some form or other (and the form it takes may change over time). The idea of matter in an abstract sense is: not-form, not-anything-determinate, but what is able to take this-or-that form: matter as potentiality. Form, in general, connotes determination, specificity, actuality (but forms exist in things, not separately from them). In the case of living things, the form is described as the soul (psuche).

Actuality: energeia/ entelecheia : actuality, activity, actualisation … Potentiality: dunamis: capacity (to do/to undergo). What a substance is or is doing constitute its actualities, what it can be, or can have are its potentialities. Energeia is the actualisation/exercise of a capacity. In addition to the capacity to undergo change, there is the capacity to effect change in oneself or in other things: active potentiality, which is itself an actuality. In ethical contexts energeia is also sometimes contrasted with change or process (kinesis), indicating an activity complete in itself: seeing is complete, cooking is a process (praxis vs. poiesis). The actuality/potentiality couple run across just about every every of inquiry; eg, the mind has no nature of its own other than being a capacity of the human organism (covering a wide range of capacities and abilities): to be speaking Mandarin is an activity, to know Mandarin an ability, to be able to learn Mandarin a capacity (a second-order ability: an ability to acquire abilities). To speak of soul is to speak of a living body with a certain range of capacities: to move, grow, reproduce, feel, perceive, imagine, think… all psycho-logical phenomena are essentially psycho-physical. What marks out human beings especially, Aristotle holds, is the ability to engage in practical and theoretical reasoning (allowing that other animals exhibit practical reasoning).

Key terms in Aristotle's Ethics
agathos: good; arete: excellence, virtue; autarkes: self-sufficient, independent; akrasia: lack of self-control; boulesis: deliberation; dikaiosune: justice, integrity; epithumia: desire, appetite; ergon: function, deed, characteristic activity; ethos: habit, custom; ethos: character; eudaimonía: happiness, acting well-going well, flourishing …; hedone: pleasure, delight, enjoyment; hexis: settled state or habit; kakia: badness; kalos: fine, noble; logos: reason; reasoning; rationality; an account; pathos: feeling, emotion, passion poiesis: making, production; praxis: action, conduct (purposive); sophia: wisdom; sophrosune: temperance, self-control; techne: art, craft, skill; teleios: complete; theoria: contemplation; phronesis: practical wisdom; prohairesis: (intelligent) choice; psuche: soul, life-power, breath.

Outline of Nichomachean Ethics
Book I: The good for human beings Book II: Moral goodness, moral inquiry, virtue
Book III: Responsibility. Courage & temperance Book IV: More moral virtues
Book V: Justice and injustice Book VI: Intellectual virtues, esp. practical wisdom
Book VII: Weakness of Will, Pleasure Book VIII: Kinds of Friendship
Book IX: Grounds of Friendship Book X: Pleasure. The best life.

The overall argument (= principles in ethics)
1. The supreme good for human beings (the end to be aimed at) is eudaimonia.
2. Eudaimonia consists in a life of activity in keeping with reason and virtue.
3. There are two basic kinds of virtue: virtues of character (moral) and virtues of intellect.
4. Moral virtues are fixed dispositions to act and feel in the right way …
5. The relevant intellectual virtues are (a) phronesis (practical wisdom); (b) sophia …
6. The task of practical wisdom is to determine what to do to achieve eudaimonia.
7. One acquires moral virtue (mainly) by habit-formation, intellectual virtue by teaching & experience.
8. The supreme human good is as in (2) above, or (?) a contemplative life (theoretical wisdom, sophia).
The human good (1098a15-18)
'[Given what is characteristic of human beings] the human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete. Again, this must be over a complete life. For one swallow does not make a summer, nor one day.'
Moral virtue (1106b16-17; 1107a1-3, 9)
'By virtue here I mean moral virtue since it is this that is concerned with feelings and actions …So virtue is a purposive disposition [a state involving choice], lying in a mean relative to us, determined by reason in the way people with practical reason would determine it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess, one of deficiency … But not every action or feeling admits of a mean …'.

Virtue as 'lying in a mean': examples
Sphere of Action
or feeling Excess Mean Deficiency
fear & confidence rashness courage cowardice
pleasure & pain licentiousnes self-control insensibility
getting and spending prodigality liberality illiberality
anger irascibility patience lack of spirit
self-expression boastfulness truthfulness understatement
social conduct obsequiousness friendliness cantankerousness ….
Six states of character (NE 7,1): heroic excellence (ordinary) excellence self-controlled
brutish/inhumane badness (given to vice) lacking self-control (weak)
Practical Wisdom (phronesis): ' a true and practical state involving reason, concerned with what is good and bad for a human being … directed to acting well. … concerned with what we can deliberate about. … deliberating well is what characterises the practically wise person … this is to aim at the best of goods for a human being that are achievable in action. Nor is practical wisdom concerned only with universals [general considerations]. An understanding of particulars is also required, since it is practical, & action is concerned with particulars'(Bk 6, ch5).
Phronesis is an intellectual virtue but cannot exist in separation from the moral virtues (else it would be mere cleverness); moral virtues at the same time need practical wisdom. Practical wisdom involves (a) cognitive capacity bearing on general truths about good and harm together with an eye for appreciating particular situations and getting things right occasion by occasion (Aristotle speaks of it as a perceptual capacity); this also incorporates (b) having the right motivational orientation: a critical element in 'reading' situations: 'having the right conception of the end is, at least, a state of one's motivational propensities' (McDowell, p.28). General knowledge in the field includes recognition of a range of absolute prohibitions relating to behaviour incompatible with moral virtue, but this does not yield a universal code or set of rules. Practical wisdom is like medical skill or navigation: there are general guidelines and things that should definitely be done or avoided, but judgment is needed in re particular situations.

Pleasure (see NE Book 10 in particular). Aristotle's basic contention is that pleasure is intrinsic to eudaimonia. So he rejects the view that pleasure is completely bad; at the same time he criticises the view that pleasure is precisely what the good is. Pleasure, in his analysis, is not a process (kinesis) but activity (energeia); more precisely, pleasure consists in a certain perfecting of activity, the consciousness of unimpeded activity. Different activities are differently enjoyable: 'pleasures are as diverse as their activities'. The worth of the pleasure turns on the activity: 'since activities differ in goodness and badness, and some are to be chosen, some to be avoided and some neutral, their pleasures can be classed similarly, because each activity has a pleasure proper to it'(1175b25-8). Moral maturity involves coming to love, enjoy, find pleasure in activity in keeping with virtue.
(Paul Crittenden < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >)


Additional notes and quotes

Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle p.1:
Aristotle died in the autumn of 322 BC. He was sixty-two and at the height of his powers: a tireless scholar, whose scientific explorations were as wide-ranging as his philosophical speculations were profound; a teacher who inspired - and who continues to inspire - generations of pupils; a controversial figure who lived a turbulent life in a turbulent world. He bestrode antiquity like an intellectual colossus. No-one before him had contributed so much to learning. No- one after him could hope to rival his achievements.

A. Kenny on Aristotle's legacy, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 1, 2004, p. 91. Summary:
- the first person whose surviving works show detailed observation of nat phenomena in re theory
- he developed the idea of a discipline and identified and classified different scientific disciplines ..
- the first (?) teacher to organise his lectures into courses and place them in a syllabus
- the Lyceum is the first research institute of which we have detailed knowledge, with investigators engaged in collaborative inquiry and documentation
- the first to build up a research library, a systematic collection for colleagues and posterity.


Aristotle : Background

Son of Nicomachus, a physician, in court of King Amytas of Macedon. Died when Aristotle was still young.
Born in Chalcide, Northern Greece, at Stagira
Married Pythias, daughter (sister?) of Hermeais 'tyrant' of Assos c. 345(?). Daughter: Pythias.


347: Candidates for headship of the Academy: Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates…
347-343: Assos, Asian Minor, Lesbos
343: return to Macedonia, at request of King Philip. Tutor to Alexander 2-3 years.
After death of Pythias, mid 330s?, lived with/married Herpyllis. Son: Nicomachus
335 Return to Athens. Establishes Lyceum - his own school
Lyceum: grove of Apollo. Formally established as a 'religious' association under Theophrastos.
323: Aristotle left Athens: a charge of impiety pending?


Writings: according Cicero: Aristotle's literary style: 'a flowing river of gold' ….


20th Century Philosophers and Aristotelian Topics:

Heidegger, Gadamer, Arendt ….

J.L. Austin, 'A Plea for Excuses' : Aristotle, NE, Bk3: on responsibility…

Donald Davidson
Actions and events reasons and causes akrasia: acting vs. own own best judgment

Phil. of Science: Physics: Time, space, motion, continuity,

Teleology in Biology (cf. Darwin)

Natural necessity, essences: Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke

Categories: Gilbert Ryle

NE & Pol. Passages

NE 1.1
Every art and every investigation, and similarly every action and practice, is considered to aim at some good. Hence the good has been rightly defined as 'that at which all things aim'.

2. 6
Virtue, then, is a state/disposition involving choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason in the way in which people with practical wisdom would determine it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess, one of deficiency [but not in every case…] (1106b35-1107a3)

Pol. 1. 2
What each thing is when fully developed we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. (1252b32f).

NE 1. 7
If this is so, the human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete. Again, this must be over a complete life. For one swallow does not make a summer, nor one day (1098a15-18).

2. 6
Let us assert then that any kind of excellence renders that of which it is the excellence good, and makes it perform its function well. For example, the excleence of the eye makes both the eye and tbhe function good (because it is through the excellence of the eye that we see well). Similarly the excellence of a horse makes him both a fine horse and good at running and carrying his rider and facing the enemy. If this rule holds good for all cases, then human excellence will be the disposition that makes one a good human being and causes one to perform one's function well.
But not every action or feeling admits of a mean; because some have names that directly connote badness, such as spite, shamelessness and envy, and in the case of actions adultery, theft and murder. All these, and more like them, are so called as being bad in themselves, and not the excesses or deficiencies of them. In their case, then, it is impossible to act rightly; one is always in the wrong. Nor does acting rightly or wrongly in such cases depend on circumstances - whether a man commits adultery with the right woman or at the right time or in the right way - because any such actions or feelings are simply wrong.

SOUL
For Aristotle, 'soul is the form of a natural body having life potentially within it' (412a20-1); or as realised: 'soul is the actuality of a body that has life' (plant or animal life). Soul stands to body as form to matter, hence as a unity:

we do not need to ask whether body and soul are one thing any more than we need to ask that question about the wax and the seal imprinted on it, or the matter of anything and that of which it is the matter'(412b6-7).

To say that the soul is angry is as if we were to say that it is the soul that weaves or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks, and rather say that it is the human being who does this with his soul' (412b11-13).

The mind can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain capacity. Thus that in the soul which is called thought .. is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.


6.5
Practical Wisdom (phronesis): ' a true and practical state involving reason, concerned with what is good and bad for a human being … directed to acting well. … concerned with what we can deliberate about. … deliberating well is what characterises the practically wise person … this is to aim at the best of goods for a human being that are achievable in action. Nor is practical wisdom concerned only with universals [general considerations]. An understanding of particulars is also required, since it is practical, & action is concerned with particulars'(Bk 6, ch 5).

6.13: [Consideration shows] that it is not possible to be good in the true sense of the word without practical wisdom, or to be practically wise without moral virtue.

3.1
the irrational passions are thought not less human than reason is, and therefore also the actions that arise from anger or appetite are actions of a human agent.

2.5
By dispositions I mean conditions in virtue of which we are well or ill-disposed in respect of the feelings concerned. We have, for instance, a bad disposition towards anger if ouur tendency is too strong or too weak, and a good one if our tendencyt is moderate. Similarly with other feelings.

2.9
.. it is a difficult business to be good; because in any given case it is difficult to find the mid-point…. So too it is easy to get angry - anyone can do that - or to give and spend money; but to feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way - that is not easy, and it is not everyone can do it. Hence to do these things well is a rare, laudable and fine achievement.

2.1
Intellectual virtue owes both its inception and growth chiefly to teaching, for which reason it needs time and experience, while virtue of character (ethos) comes about as the result of habit (ethos) … (1103a15-17).

they are engendered in us neither by or contrary to nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, but their full development in us is due to habit' (1103a23-4).

'the deficiencies of nature are what art and education seek to fill up' (Pol 1337a1-2).

It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or another from our earliest years - it makes a vast difference, or rather all the difference in the world (1103b23-25).

Excellences we get by first exercising them, as happens also in the case of the arts. For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing; e.g. people become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by performing brave acts (1103a31ff.)

10.8
Just as soil has to be prepared beforehand if it is to nourish the seed, so the soul of the student has to be prepared in its habits to enjoy right things and dislike the bad'; [the person not formed in this way won't listen to the argument or see its point. So,] 'the character must somehow be there already with an affinity to virtue, loving what is good and noble, rejecting what is base' (1179b5-30).

Further References
Aristotle: Complete Works, translation: W.D.Ross & J. Barnes, Oxford

Nicomachean Ethics:
Penguin Classics: translation by J. Thompson; Introduction: Jonathan Barnes (2004)
Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy: edited by Roger Crisp (2006)
Greek text with English translation by H.Rackham, Wm Heinemann; London, 1`962

The Politics
Penguin Classics: translated by T. Sinclair/ revised T. Saunders (1992)
J.O. Urmson, 'Aristotle on Pleasure' in J.Moravcsik (ed.) Aristotle: A Collection of Essays, MacMillan (1968)

J.O.Urmson, 'Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean', in A.O.Rorty (ed.) Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, U. Cal Press , 1980

G.E.R. Lloyd, Aristotelian Explorations, CUP 1996

Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: the Desire to Understand, CUP 1988


Paul Crittenden: publications related to Aristotle ethics

Paul Crittenden, Learning to be Moral: Philosophical Thoughts about Moral Development, Humanities Press, New Jersey/London, 1990: see in particular Chapter 4 'Aristotle: Reason and the Passions'

'Ethics and Aesthetics in Aristotle's Poetics', Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 1, 1991, pp. 15-27

'Aristotle and the Idea of Competing Forms of Life', in Philosophical Inquiry, International Quarterly, vol. XVIII, Winter-Spring 1996, No.1-2, pp.88-100

'Seeking Common Ground in Ethics', in Culture and Enlightenment: Essays for György Markus, ed. John Grumley, Paul Crittenden, and Pauline Johnson, Ashgate, Aldershot UK, pp.223-242, 2002

'Philosophy and Metaphor: The Philosopher's Ambivalence' in Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 12, July 2003, pp.27-42

'Responding to Tragedy with Feeling', in Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 15, Number 2, 2005, 153-165

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3 May, 2008