Being is Better Than Not Being: The Metaphysics of Goodness and Beauty in Aristotle 0813235464, 9780813235462

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations for Works by Aristotle
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Human Good
Chapter 2. The Good Human
Chapter 3. The Fine and Beautiful
Chapter 4. Being and Goodness
Chapter 5. Order and the Determinate
Conclusion
Appendix A. Completeness and Self-Sufficiency
Appendix B. Teleology, the Elements, and the Cosmos
Appendix C. The Honorable
Works Cited
Index locorum
Index personarum
Index rerum

Citation preview

BEING IS BETTER THAN NOT BEING

BEING IS BETTER THAN NOT BEING The Metaphysics of Goodness and Beauty in Aristotle C h r i s t o p h e r V. M i r u s

The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ∞ Illustration on page xiv: A Dragonfly, Ladybirds, and Butterflies, Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677). Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress. 978-0-8132-3546-2 (cloth) | 978-0-8132-3547-9 (ebook)

For Raymund P. O’Herron and Michael J. Loux, with whom I first read Aristotle

“Words are not wasted; lines that seem merely repetitive or summative add something. Phrases initially appearing opaque can be seen to lend themselves to highly structured argumentation. Yet the vital arguments are not always flagged or are barely flagged. The reader often has to formalize the arguments. The Greek text can frequently bear several possible readings, and occasionally a claim appears to contradict something said previously. Such obscurity, inexplicitness, and tension in the text can be viewed as intentional, serving pedagogical and other purposes. . . . The style of writing makes the treatise good for learning because the student has to fight through the text. The very form stimulates the effort to unpack the meaning and to give commentary. Without being artful dialogue quite like Plato’s, it manages to be a similarly stimulating instrument forcing confrontation of the student’s own self-understanding with the author’s treatment of its themes.” — P o l a n s k y 2 0 1 0 (xi, 25)

“The text of the Ethics, for the most part, is written with extraordinary care, in the sense that every word has a function; every word seems to be chosen over alternatives for just that particular function it can perform; and the meaning of the text (when one finally succeeds in construing it, which may be difficult) is extremely clear and precise. It seems written with as much care as any fine poem, and, consequently, it has great power and force.” — Pa k a l u k 2 0 0 5 (38)

Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations for Works by Aristotle

xiii

Introduction 1 Chapter 1. The Human Good

21

Chapter 2. The Good Human

61

Chapter 3. The Fine and Beautiful

104

Chapter 4. Being and Goodness

152

Chapter 5. Order and the Determinate

195

Conclusion 233 Appendix A. Completeness and Self-Sufficiency

239

Appendix B. Teleology, the Elements, and the Cosmos

255

Appendix C. The Honorable

263

Works Cited

273

Index locorum

297

Index personarum

313

Index rerum

317

ix

Acknowledgments

Ac k nowled gm en ts

Debts such as a human being incurs in learning to use words and discovering a world in which to use them are not to be repaid at all, and the only coin worth offering in gratitude has the likeness of the debtor on one side and the dates of his or her birth and death on the other: a life not wholly unworthy of our inheritance, or nothing. Yet words shape and express life, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge those whose forbearance, kindness, and indeed love have made this book possible. Among my teachers, Anne Carroll, Peter Westhoff, Raymund O’Herron, William Marshner, Robert Skeris, Michael Loux, Kenneth Sayre, Ernan McMullin, Phillip Sloan, and Don Howard deserve particular mention; whatever this book may be worth is due in large part to them. I took my first class on Aristotle with Mr. O’Herron, whose closely annotated copy of McKeon was an inspiration. My first two papers on Aristotle were written under the skillful guidance of Michael Loux, who knew just what they needed, and where to submit them. My work on the topic of this book arose from a challenge he set me while I was writing my dissertation with him. I am grateful also to my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy and throughout the University of Dallas. I have learned more than I can say from their conversation, and in a variety of ways this book bears the imprint of their wisdom. The ideas for this book took shape in part through a se-

xi

ries of essays published in The Review of Metaphysics (Mirus 2004, 2004a, 2012, 2013). I am grateful to the editors for their interest in my work, and for permission to publish revised and expanded versions of two of these essays as chapters 4 (2004) and 5 (2012) below. Tony Preus, who understands how much the goodness of being means to Aristotle—and how much it means in itself—read and commented on the long essay that served as the first if not the final template for the book. John Russon read an earlier version of the book itself. I am grateful to both for their encouragement and guidance. I am indebted to John Martino for guiding me through the submission process, to several anonymous readers for their challenges and suggestions, to Paul Higgins for his care and good judgment in editing the text, and to Christopher Richard for his assistance with the indices. This book would not exist without the inexpressible love of my wife, Ellen, of our parents, Barbara and Jeffrey Mirus and Annie and Garon Garrett, and—though they do not yet know it—of our sons, Jeffrey, Nathaniel, and Andrew.

xii A c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

List of Abbreviations for Works by Aristotle

L i s t o f A b b r e v i at i o n s f o r Wor ks by Ar istotle

Cat.

Categories

DA

De anima (On the Soul )

DC

De caelo (On the Heavens)

EE

Eudemian Ethics

EN

Nicomachean Ethics

GA

On the Generation of Animals

GC

On Generation and Corruption

HA

History of Animals

IA

On the Progression of Animals

Iuv.

On Youth and Old Age

MA

On the Motion of Animals

Met.

Metaphysics

Mete. Meteorology PA

On the Parts of Animals

Phys.

Physics

Poet.

Poetics

Pol.

Politics

Resp.

On Respiration

Rhet.

Rhetoric

Somn. On Sleep and Waking Top.

Topics

xiii

BEING IS BETTER THAN NOT BEING

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

“Being is better than not being”—so writes Aristotle in Generation and Corruption II.10; the claim appears also in Generation of Animals II.1.1 It is an extraordinary claim, though less surprising than it might have been had we not already seen Plato make “the good itself ” the principle of being.2 This conviction that being is good shapes the whole of Aristotle’s thought, but what does it involve? What, in particular, is the sense of the word “better” (beltion) in these two statements? Despite its importance, Aristotle has left us no treatise on the good; instead, he insists that that no single account (logos) can encompass all the varieties of goodness. Yet in one sense or another, he thinks, “being is better than not being”—in context, by the way, the claim appears quite general—and one would like to know what he means. The claim has a brief prehistory and a long subsequent one— consider, for instance, the discussion of Thomas Aquinas in 1. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. 2. Republic VI, 506b8–e1.

1

Summa theologiae I, question 5—but can Aristotle himself make good on it? Did he? How? The order of Aristotle’s extant works leaves little room for a separate treatment of the good. The dialectician whom he coaches in Topics III, like the orator who studies Rhetoric I.6–7, is limited to common opinions. The ethical and political treatises conspicuously limit themselves to the human good. The Physics tends to defer to the more particular works on nature, whereas these, by definition, lack the required scope. If being is good, finally, one might have expected the study of being as being to include a sustained and satisfying treatment of the good; in fact, however, the Metaphysics seems rather to presuppose the goodness of being than to elucidate it. Its treatment of changing beings is too general to reveal their goodness; its treatment of divine beings is too obscure. In short, Aristotle appears to be in an awkward position with respect to the good, for it ignores the disciplinary boundaries to which he so carefully adheres. The term “good,” too important to be left aside, seems at the same time too general and too unsettled to be of much use. The Republic’s “greatest and most appropriate subject,” it seems, is hardly a subject at all.3 Yet for all this, Aristotle’s basic views on the subject are well known. Although the good varies from one substance to another, it is typically found in the excellent performance of some function. When it comes to natural substances, he is most comfortable discussing the good of living things. A living thing’s function is its life in the sense of activity, and so its good is to live well its own sort of life. The activity of living is the living thing’s actuality, the fullness of its being. All this anyone knows who has taught the function argument of Nicomachean Ethics I.7. Those who have ventured into the works on nature know also that Aristotle often treats the forms of natural substances as ends, and therefore as goods; those who have dipped into his theology know that he considers eternal beings better than destructible ones.4 3. Republic VI, 504d2–3. 4. See the overview in Irwin 1980, which is not uncontroversial in its details; see also

2 I n t r o d u c t i o n

The question I want to address, therefore, is one to which many readers will already have at least a rough answer. Yet there is comfort in the fact that Aristotle’s own greatness was not itself a matter of constant restless originality. He knew better than most that there is much to be said for saying well the things we more or less know. There is room for a reasonably comprehensive discussion of how Aristotle thought about the good, and in particular of how he thought about being itself as good. The discussion at hand will draw together a handful of things that everyone knows quite well, a good number that some know and that many have at least encountered, and a few, perhaps, that have not yet been noticed. It may too offer fresh perspectives on some of the better-known material; in such an author as Aristotle, after all, the things we think we know have a way of turning out richer than we had thought them: the most thoroughly trodden ground remains startlingly fertile. At minimum, I hope, this discussion will draw its materials together in a new way, providing a helpful resource for those interested in the question it poses. Goals and Methods

My primary and decisive goal in this study is to contribute to the contemporary practice of philosophy by coming to grips, on a fairly large scale, with the achievement of a historically great philosopher. By presenting Aristotle’s metaphysics of goodness and beauty more comprehensively than has yet been undertaken, I hope above all to serve readers whose goal is not so much to understand Aristotle as to understand goodness and beauty themselves. Now this aim requires me to range across the Aristotelian corpus in a manner often restricted to introductory treatments. Yet it also requires me to offer an account of Aristotle’s ideas that is not in fact introductory, being capable of contributing in a fairly direct way to contemporary ethics, Hutchinson 1986, Witt 2003 (103–5). Halper 1995 pursues a number of analogies between Aristotle’s ethical and political conclusions and his metaphysics.

Introduction

3

philosophical anthropology, metaphysics, and even aesthetics—or at least to the work of philosophers in these fields who take the history of philosophy seriously as a matter of method. It requires me, finally, to complete this task within the limits of a relatively manageable book, in which the coherence and interest of the finished portrait, as a way of making sense of the texts, is more important than the defense of particular readings against every objection. I am indebted, in ways both large and small, to several important traditions of reading, but in the following study I will draw widely on just one. From readers influenced by Heidegger I have borrowed an interest in the close analysis of Aristotle’s philosophical vocabulary, and from those influenced by Leo Strauss I have borrowed an interest in the structures, layers, and occasional tensions built into his writings. Heideggerian and Straussian readers will recognize their influence at points, but I do not belong to either tradition. From Neoplatonic and Scholastic readers I have borrowed something deeper: first, a conviction that Aristotle belongs deeply and primarily to the philosophical tradition formed by Plato, which dominated Western philosophy from the rise of Neoplatonism until the end of the medieval period; second, a commitment to making sense of the Aristotelian corpus as a whole; third, a deeply Aristotelian philosophical orientation of my own. However, I read Aristotle not from the point of view of his later appropriations within this tradition, but, as best I can, in terms of his own distinctive voice. Despite my debts to these communities, in preparing this book I have read widely only within the tradition of reading now dominant within my own language, though by no means restricted to it. This tradition, which is by no means limited to the English language, is in important ways a successor to the historical-critical scholarship that dominated the study of ancient texts in the nineteenth century. Yet it is also deeply influenced by contemporary analytic philosophy. On the whole, the approach of this tradition tends to be piecemeal and scattershot. Really integrative projects often seem anathema, and it

4 I n t r o d u c t i o n

is easy to understand the attraction of Porphyry, Aquinas, Heidegger, and Strauss as readers. Still, mainstream authors have addressed a great many Aristotelian texts and topics with the characteristic rigor, variously, of historical scholars and of analytic philosophers. I have found this rigor useful in developing a portrait of Aristotle that will, I hope, be open to a variety of fruitful appropriations. Although important literature of this sort exists in a variety of languages, the scope of my project and the limited time at my disposal have led me to focus on recent literature in English. My goal in any case has not been to read exhaustively, but to test my own interpretations against those of others, on a variety of important points. As noted above, some of my reading strategies may be rather distinctive with respect to the literature that I have chosen as my primary point of reference. At least in outline, however, the epigraphs that I have chosen represent my approach quite well. Over the past twenty years, I have gradually arrived at the conviction that Aristotle’s extant works were often meant to be studied in more or less the form—written and extraordinarily compact—in which they have come down to us. They are meant to be difficult, and to exhibit just as much brilliance as each reader or community of readers is capable of recognizing. They are meant to improve with each reading. They do not contain hidden doctrines meant only for a chosen few, but they do reflect the paradoxical conviction that inspired Plato to write dialogues: we human beings need teachers, and yet we understand only what we have worked out for ourselves. To move beyond this generality, I want to look briefly at Aristotle’s use of language, at the structure of individual texts and textual units, and at the coherence of the extant corpus. First, what we typically think of as the technical vocabulary of Aristotelian philosophy was not, when Aristotle himself used it, an established technical vocabulary at all. It consisted of ordinary words, and of occasional neologisms based on ordinary words. This implies that Aristotle, his contemporaries, and their immediate predecessors

Introduction

5

were at every turn pressing ordinary speech into extraordinary service. Because dedicated philosophical vocabulary tends to be abstract, ordinary language concrete, Aristotle often had to rely on concrete terms to express abstract ideas. His philosophical language has its origin, therefore, in a series of metaphors. This reliance on metaphor is neither mere necessity nor mere happy accident. He admired the skillful use of metaphor, and once we have begun to recognize the metaphors on which his language is built, it quickly becomes evident that he has thought them through. As I have become more aware of the ways in which Aristotle is not merely using but transforming language, I have come to prefer—at least for the purpose of serious analysis—extremely literal and in some cases etymological translations. Such translations can remind us of the linguistic materials with which Aristotle was working, and so bring to light the thoughtful use of these materials that he required of himself and of his students.5 In this book, I have not insisted on my own preferred translations of every key Aristotelian term. I have usually, for instance, rendered archē as “principle” rather than as “source,” “origin,” or “beginning”; I typically use “contemplate” for the lighter and more flexible theōrein; and for the ambiguous poion and poson I have used not “suchlike” and “so-much,” but “quality” and “quantity” or “qualified” and “quantified.” There remain a few terms in regard to which I have been unwilling to compromise; these make up the Aristotelian vocabulary of potency and act, which is too central to the discussion that follows to be sacrificed on the altars of familiarity and convenience. Aristotle used three words to signify what we now call potency and act, or even worse, potentiality and actuality: dunamis for potency; energeia and entelecheia for act. Taken together, these terms are thoroughly and unabashedly teleological. In this and other ways, they are embedded in different, richer linguistic networks than are the traditional trans5. Translations by Joe Sachs, Mark Shiffman, and Matthew Walz (unpublished) have spurred me to look more closely at Aristotle’s language; conversations with Matthew, Scott Crider, and Dennis Sepper have pointed me to Aristotle’s use of metaphor and to the importance of the imagination for his philosophical practice.

6 I n t r o d u c t i o n

lations, which in Latin had something of the same richness but which now merely limp along, inadequate to the weight they must carry. Begin with entelecheia, a word coined by Aristotle himself to mean “having one’s end within,” or “holding oneself in completeness.” It is also a pun on endelecheia, “continuity,” so that the closest English equivalent would be “continendity”—rather less dignified, I admit, but in the spirit of a Platonic playfulness that shows through from time to time in Aristotle.6 I have settled, though, on the more workmanlike “fulfillment,” and hope to display the payoff in texts such as Physics III.1–2, where Aristotle defines motion not merely as an actuality, but as the activity in which beings of a certain sort find their fulfillment.7 Energeia, meanwhile, does not merely mean “act” or even “activity.” Unlike either, it is based on the simpler ergon, a term far too important to Aristotle’s thought to be translated differently in contexts as intimately related as Nicomachean Ethics I.1 (“product”) and I.7 (“function”). An ergon is simply a work, as in “work of art” or Works and Days; the term is sometimes strongly teleological, sometimes more weakly; occasionally the teleology fades away altogether, because a specific context will not support it (see appendix B, below). In Ethics I.1, ergon and energeia signify two basic sorts of end: the work or product of an artisan, and the “working within oneself ” or “inworking,” en-ergeia, of the one whose life is its own end. Here I insist on “inworking”; compare the hyphenated “being-at-work” in the translations of Joe Sachs. For similar if less urgent reasons, finally, I here eschew “potency,” “potentiality,” and even “potentially.” Despite the occasional awkwardness, dunamis appears here in richer and more human terms: usually “ability,” but sometimes “power.” I turn now to the issue of structure. Aristotle employs a variety of 6. The possibility that entelecheia is modelled on endelecheia “continuity” is compatible with the certainty that it is from entelēs + echein, entelōs echein, en (heautō) telos echein, or en telei echein, for which see Johnson 2005 (88). 7. See pp. 225–32.

Introduction

7

literary structures, some constantly and others occasionally. For example, he often sets particular arguments apart from their immediate context by a simple inclusio, stating his thesis at the outset and repeating it at the end.8 The enclosed argument, by the way, often moves away from its conclusion rather than toward it, thus gradually revealing the conditions under which we might reasonably accept the conclusion. Sometimes, however, the inclusio appears more sophisticated. For example, he encloses Physics II between an opening consideration of nature as a beginning (archē) and a concluding discussion of nature as an end (telos). More importantly, Nicomachean Ethics VIII.1 and IX.9–11 enclose Aristotle’s discussion of friendship between an initial and a concluding discussion of why we need friends. In IX.9, however, he explicitly reverses a methodological restriction imposed in VIII.1, and this reversal calls for reflection. I have only recently begun to notice devices of this sort, and my attention to them—like, I suppose, Aristotle’s use of them—is no doubt somewhat sporadic. In reading the corpus as a whole, finally, I adopt what might be called an integrative dialectical approach. First, I grant that if a systematic thinker must always proceed from first principles, and even more if such a thinker must attempt to derive all knowledge from the same principles, then Aristotle is not a systematic thinker. He denies that all things have the same principles (see, e.g., Posterior Analytics I.6–7), and his inquiries often begin with a deep sense of uncertainty as to what the correct principles might be. Their aim is pedagogical, and so they often begin not with principles but with appearances and opinions. Their method, in other words, is typically dialectical rather than demonstrative. In every other respect, however, the Aristotle who has come down to us is as systematic as a thinker can well be. In particular, his extant works so apparently belong to a unified course of studies that only a large and unmistakable body of evidence—for example, a long catalogue of clear and significant inconsistencies— 8. For two further cases of inclusio or ring composition in Nicomachean Ethics (hereafter EN) see Lockwood 2014. For EN, Eudemian Ethics (hereafter EE), and Plato see also Barney 2010; for ring composition in general see Douglas 2007.

8 I n t r o d u c t i o n

could justify treating them as anything else. Composing such a list of inconsistencies, however, is not as easy as it may look. The works themselves are often tremendously difficult, and an interpretation of one passage or another may simply be mistaken. A thoughtful dialectician, moreover, may well choose in one context a form of expression that might be misleading in another.9 Similarly, a rigorous thinker may choose to restrict the scope of an inquiry by means of a method or of principles that prevent him from saying all that might have been said.10 Good teachers, finally, often have the sense to be content with half-truths that are, at a particular moment, likely to bring their students closer to understanding than would a misguided attempt to include every nuance.11 To sum up, I take Aristotle’s works to be remarkable not only for the demands they make of their readers, but also for the care with which they have been written and the coherence of the vision that they articulate. I am far from supposing that their author never nods, but I have come to think that in each case there is much to ponder before proclaiming his chin upon his chest. As accessible as I might wish to have made the following discussion, finally, the size of my topic has made it necessary to presuppose at least some background in the reader. I assume, therefore, that the reader has had the equivalent of a serious undergraduate introduction to Aristotle, in the context of a serious undergraduate education in the history of philosophy. This reader has studied and reflected upon the basic outlines of Aristotle’s thought, including the best-known 9. For example, in De anima (hereafter DA) II.5 he emphasizes that sensation is not alteration in the strict sense, but in Physics (hereafter Phys.) VII.3 he has good reasons for treating it as alteration in an extended sense. 10. For example, according to the Metaphysics (hereafter Met.), primary substance appears to be form, whereas in the Categories (hereafter Cat.) it is the concrete particular. Cat., however, approaches reality almost exclusively through the Socratic medium of language, whereas Aristotle’s notion of form depends on that of matter, and so presupposes an inquiry that proceeds phusikōs, in the manner of a naturalist. 11. For example, in EN I.6–7 Aristotle insists that we are looking for an agathon prakton, a good that somehow involves action, but in VI.5 and 13 he relegates action in the strict sense to a subsidiary role in our attainment of the good. Every teacher of beginners does much the same.

Introduction

9

conclusions of his natural science. I assume further that the reader has made it through the Nicomachean Ethics more or less in its entirety, and has either studied it carefully (as in an undergraduate or graduate course devoted specifically to this work) or is prepared to do so now.12 Finally, I assume that he or she has read the middle books of Plato’s Republic. I shall not do much with the Platonic roots of Aristotle’s understanding of the good—in this book, as I have just explained, it is better to let Aristotle speak for himself—but some points of contact are essential. At the other end of the spectrum—well, I hope the book will be useful even to the most seasoned readers of Aristotle, but that is for them to decide. O v e rv i e w

I begin, not without trepidation, with the Aristotelian work most often discussed by contemporary readers: the Nicomachean Ethics. Taken together, the two chapters that I will devote exclusively to the Ethics have a pair of complementary goals. I want to explore, first, Aristotle’s attempt to exhibit the human good as the good of a certain sort of substance, and second, his attempt to present this good as that of a thinking being precisely as such—as a good, therefore, internal to thought or reason. That is, I want to explore the human good not only as something existing in the world, but also as something existing within the horizon of a certain sort of subjectivity, the sort Aristotle calls nous. Because the human good is rational activity just insofar as it is rational, the first of these perspectives naturally invites the second. The two perspectives suggest, moreover, corresponding ways in which Aristotle can propose an understanding of the good that embraces the human good without being exhausted by it. First, other things have in themselves attributes analogous to those by which a good human life is good. Second, knowledge of these objects can fulfill contemplative thought in a manner analogous to the fulfillment of practical thought 12. For a brief, lucid, sympathetic discussion of EN in light of its central idea—the supremacy of reason in human life—see Nagel 1972.

10 I n t r o d u c t i o n

by the knowledge of one’s own good as something achievable, or already achieved, through action. Before sketching the argument of chapter 1, I want to draw out the significance of this claim concerning contemplative thought. It seems to me that as contemporary readers, we often fail to take Aristotle’s claims about contemplation as seriously as he himself did. We instinctively—and, I suspect, incoherently—reject the claim that there is anything special about the life of the mind apart from its practical and perhaps its ethical aspects. If we often find ourselves taking pleasure in a simple act of understanding, we chalk this up to a psychological quirk. Aristotle’s conception of the mind is quite different. He connects our capacity to think, and above all our capacity simply to understand, with the existence of a cosmic first principle that he describes as god and as sheer thinking. When he observes, therefore, that the objects of contemplative thought are pleasant and indeed beautiful to think, he thereby assigns them a value that cannot be relativized to the subjective preference of some individual or even of a whole species. The beauty of the thinkable to thought is relative, if you will, to nothing less than the first principle of reality as a whole—which is to say that in another sense, it is not relative at all. The conception of goodness that I propose to investigate is precisely this goodness or beauty of the thinkable to thought. That is why the human self-understanding that emerges from the Nicomachean Ethics—the self-understanding of a certain sort of thinker—is so important to my argument. I will begin, then, in chapter 1, by exploring two analytical strategies that help Aristotle to understand the nature and unity of the human good. Halfway through Ethics I.6—the chapter in which he so famously dismisses the Platonic Form of the Good—he pauses to ask whether the things human beings seek as good might instead be so called by deriving from or contributing to a single, central good (that is, by homonymy pros hen); and again, whether they might be called good by some sort of analogy. Both of these unifying strategies turn

Introduction

11

out to play important roles in his argument. The lesson they teach, moreover, is that the good we are seeking is the good of a certain sort of substance insofar as that substance is the very thing it is. I will spend the first chapter, then, exploring Aristotle’s quiet use of these strategies to focus our attention on the human good as the good of the human substance. This connection between substance and good is one way in which his understanding of the good tracks his understanding of being. Aristotle is not content, however, to present the human good as the good of a certain sort of substance: this would be considerably too loose. Over the course of the Ethics, he gently draws us from thinking of the human good as something we merely have, to recognizing it as the good that, when our lives go well, we simply are. In chapter 2, I shall explore how he sharpens the insight that the human good is no mere possession, but the very life of the substance to which it belongs. In particular, I shall consider excellence in character as perfecting the actions and affections by which the human substance is defined, and situate the human good as a good not merely served by but internal to reason. Above all, I shall examine how his discussion of friendship concretizes the human good in the person of a good friend, and how it sharpens his earlier sketch of the human substance by presenting that substance as one whose very being is to perceive and to think. By thus sharpening the terms of our self-understanding insofar as we are substances of a certain sort, he also refines our understanding of the good that we can be insofar as we are substances of this sort. In these first two chapters, we shall also have occasion to consider the status of the Nicomachean Ethics as a work of practical philosophy. While accepting that the work as a whole unfolds within a practical perspective—that is, within the perspective of a life to be lived—I will nevertheless suggest that as it unfolds, a contemplative perspective emerges naturally within it. It emerges in the form of self-knowledge on the part of a perceiving and thinking being, and it becomes explicit when we realize that in complete friendship, the desire to do good is

12 I n t r o d u c t i o n

inseparable from the desire to contemplate it. As this contemplative perspective emerges, it offers a new and more adequate vision of human life, giving context to the practical project within which it has emerged and overcoming the narrowness of that project as we had previously understood it. If, moreover, as I wish to claim, Aristotle does have a reasonably unified understanding of the good—an understanding that embraces in one way or another all the spheres in which he is willing to speak of something as good—then this understanding must in the first place embrace both the practical sphere of human life and the contemplative or theoretical. To grasp how his understanding of the good in fact accomplishes this, I shall turn in chapter 3 to his conception of the kalon, the fine or beautiful, which even within the Ethics itself serves both as a motive for action and as an object of contemplation. Now the term kalos, though crucial to Aristotle’s philosophical project, is in no way a technical term. To establish the flexible context within which its philosophical significance emerges, therefore, I shall first look briefly at the other terms with which, in the Ethics at least, it is most often coupled. Against this background of associations, and still focusing on the Ethics, I shall then look more carefully at the fine as a motive for action and as an object of contemplation. These two roles of the fine will turn out to be analogous, in that the fine motive for action stands toward practical thought as the fine object of contemplation stands toward contemplative thought. This analogy is the pivot around which our study as a whole will turn. If, that is, not only practical but also theoretical thought aims at the kalon, then we should expect the kalon to play a significant role in Aristotle’s accounts of the theoretical sciences as well. At this point we shall leave the Ethics behind, turning instead to the most important passages in which he describes as fine or beautiful the objects of natural science, of mathematics, and of theology. Throughout our exploration of the Ethics, then, the relation between action and contemplation, the practical and the theoretical,

Introduction

13

will cast its long shadow over our considerations. I will address this difficult topic at various points, concluding that although Aristotle considers the highest objects of contemplation finer and more honorable than the actions of practical excellence, he also holds that we should not disdain the many fine things that, though inferior in themselves, are closer to the human estate. Like the unity of our study as a whole, this assessment depends on the analogy or proportion between the fine as motive for action and the fine as object of contemplation; it will take shape through a comparison between Ethics IX.9, which will be crucial to chapter 2, and Parts of Animals I.5, which will figure significantly in chapter 3. I said a moment ago that the analogy between the fine as object of practical reason and the fine as object of theoretical reason is the pivot around which this study as a whole will turn. In the remaining two three chapters, then, and in the three appendices, our focus will remain squarely on the good in Aristotle’s natural science and metaphysics, and, in particular, on the claim that being itself is good. I shall examine the connection between being and goodness most directly in chapter 4. Here our first task will be to reflect on the most important passages in which he identifies either the form or the activity of a natural substance—that is, its being, in the primary sense of actuality—as its good. This identification of actuality rather than potentiality as the good is a second way in which his understanding of the good tracks his understanding of being. In keeping with the proportion between the fine and reason established in chapter 3, this initial survey will emphasize Aristotle’s persistent description of form as logos—that is, as the principle in virtue of which a natural being can be thought—and his presentation of a thing’s function or activity as that by which we define it. By emphasizing these points, I hope to head off any possibility of imposing on Aristotle a deflationary understanding of natural goods. On the contrary, the good at which he takes nature as such to aim coincides with the fine, where the fine is recognized and appreciated not by the natural substance itself but by thought itself.

14 I n t r o d u c t i o n

The fine or beautiful that we contemplate in nature is not, of course, the ethically fine, but it is satisfying to contemplative thought as the ethically fine is satisfying to practical thought. This recognition of form and function as principles of thinkability, and therefore as fine or beautiful to thought, draws together the two overarching goals that I articulated for chapters 1 and 2. It displays the goodness of being as the goodness by which beings satisfy the intrinsic demands of thought. This connection between being and thought may well have significant implications for Aristotle’s conception of god as an eternal act of thinking. Yet every book must end somewhere, and I have chosen to leave these implications largely unexplored. Although I shall dip into Aristotle’s theology on several occasions, in the course of making more general points, I shall not attempt a systematic discussion. It is worth noting that as a result of this decision, there is a significant asymmetry between the first part of my argument, which concerns the human good, and the second part, which concerns the good in general. Whereas I argue at length for the unity of the human good as a single reality—the activity of thinking in general and of contemplative thinking in particular—I do not similarly discuss the good in general insofar as this is a single divine principle toward which all beings tend: the unmoved mover of Physics VIII.10, or the single principle of the cosmos as a whole briefly mentioned not only in Metaphysics XII.10 but also in Generation and Corruption II.10. In discussing the good in general, I will be concerned with the sense in which Aristotle considers each being intrinsically good, good in its own right. Hence in this book the phrase “the good,” used absolutely, typically refers to the good in general rather than to a separate supreme good. I insist on the unity of the human good for the two reasons I have already mentioned: to provide a concrete model for the general principle that each being’s good is found in its activity, and to establish in contemplative thought the perspective from which beings can be called good. In focusing on the sense in which beings in general can be called good, I do not mean to deny that Aristotle recognizes a single, separate

Introduction

15

good for the cosmos as a whole: he does. My decision not to tackle his theology is merely pragmatic. Nor do I mean to exclude the existence of goods to which many distinct beings contribute, which therefore cannot be reduced to the separate goods of individual substances. In the second part of chapter 4, in fact, I shall explore the two passages in which Aristotle explicitly states that being is better than not being. I will emphasize the cosmological scope of these passages, arguing that he affirms the intrinsic goodness of reality as a whole, not merely the existence of things that can be called good from the perspective of this or that particular substance. To conclude the chapter, finally, I shall turn from natural science to first philosophy, taking a brief look not only at actuality as good in Metaphysics IX.8–9, but also at Aristotle’s insistence throughout the Metaphysics on finding a way to treat the good as a cause just insofar as it is good. By the end of chapter 4, I hope to have set the human good as the good of the human substance within the broader context of Aristotle’s conviction that being itself is good. Not only does his conception of the human good track his conception of the human substance, but his conception of the good in general tracks his conception of substance in general. I hope further to have shown that the goodness of being depends ultimately on its intelligibility. Thought delights in its own objects, and it is the perspective of thought itself—thought occupied with its own concerns, contemplative thought—that Aristotle aspires to occupy. However, this conclusion alone merely forces upon us the question of why thought—however definitive its perspective may be—in fact takes certain things to be good. Grant that thought delights in actual being, whether as form or ultimately as activity; what is it about being in this sense that meets the requirements of thought? The heart of Aristotle’s answer, which I shall explore in chapter 5, lies in his conviction that being is ordered and determinate. The objects of natural science, for example, are “ordered and determinate works of nature,” and indeed for natural substances, to be at all is to exhibit some sort of order. Aristotle contrasts the ordered and determinate

16 I n t r o d u c t i o n

works of nature with the effects of chance, which occur accidentally; and it is no coincidence that he also identifies the accidental as falling short of being in the full or central sense. This is a third way in which his understanding of the good tracks his understanding of being. After considering the order proper to natural substances in the first part of chapter 5, I shall next turn to the determinate—more literally, the bounded or demarcated—by examining Aristotle’s claim that any limited number of causes will give rise to some sort of order. This will lead to a more general consideration of the ways in which he sees limits or boundaries as giving form and identity to the things that are, and hence as sources or principles of being. We shall find that what is determinate in itself and a source of determinacy in others is thereby thinkable in itself and a source of thinkability in others. Because the thinkable is beautiful to thought, determinacy links being to goodness. When I began work on this book I envisioned a sixth chapter, taking its bearings once more from the Nicomachean Ethics. In the Ethics, the two most important general criteria of goodness are finality or completeness and self-sufficiency. Both criteria appear also—precisely as criteria of goodness—in Aristotle’s natural science and theology. His use of these criteria, moreover, can be integrated with the metaphysical portrait of the good that I develop in the following pages. Above all, self-sufficiency concerns the ability of a given substance, whether individually or in community, to fulfill its own being by accomplishing its own characteristic work. When I attempted to write this chapter, however, I found on the one hand that there was less to do than I had thought, and on the other that two other tasks, similarly unsuited for whole chapters, had appeared along the way. First, writing a book about the goodness and beauty of being in Aristotle required me to say a good deal about Aristotle’s natural teleology, and yet the organization appropriate to the former topic produced quite a scattered discussion of the latter. Even at the end, moreover, I had a bit more to say about teleology as it concerns the sublunary elements and the cosmos as a whole. Second, it seemed appropriate, in a book

Introduction

17

about the goodness and beauty of being in Aristotle, to say something about his striking use of the term “honorable” in his natural science and first philosophy. For these reasons I offer no fewer than three appendices, which have when taken together approximately the weight of a chapter. T h e P l a c e o f M e ta p h y s i c s i n A r i s t o t l e ’ s Practical Ph i losoph y

But let us return for a moment to the beginning—to a question that I have already raised, but that requires further discussion before we can begin. It is well known that Aristotle’s ethical thought has a metaphysical dimension insofar as it turns on his identification of the human good as the complete actuality of the human substance. The topic with which I began writing this book, moreover—the understanding of goodness and beauty reflected in Aristotle’s natural science and metaphysics—becomes rather more compelling if it can be shown that this understanding is at work in his ethical thought as well, shaping its deepest roots and providing essential nourishment to trunk, branch, and leaf. Yet because Aristotle so clearly and persistently respects the distinction between one form of knowledge and another (see for instance Posterior Analytics I.7, Metaphysics VI.1, Nicomachean Ethics VI.1–8), it is not easy to say how we ought to understand the presence of metaphysical themes in a practical work such as the Ethics. As should be obvious by now, I have come to think that the Nicomachean Ethics not only happens to contain certain metaphysical themes, but is deeply and deliberately metaphysical. I do not mean, however, that Aristotle has structured the Ethics as a demonstration or series of demonstrations using principles drawn from theoretical science, or that his readers are meant to have mastered the principles of first philosophy before addressing themselves to the question of how they ought to live.13 The Ethics is about the good that can be 13. I owe this insistence on the autonomy of Aristotle’s ethical treatises in a particular way to Ron Polansky, who expresses it for example in Polansky 2014a (4–5). At minimum,

18 I n t r o d u c t i o n

achieved through action in the course of a human life, and it unfolds within the experienced reality of the lives its readers are already living.14 It presupposes only that we do have a certain experience of life, that we are able to command our passions sufficiently to think about how we should live, and that we have a basic, pre-reflective appreciation for virtues such as bravery, temperance, generosity, and justice. Aristotle does not, then, develop the Ethics as a practical application of his theoretical works.15 The text instead unfolds dialectically, relying on theoretical premises only insofar as the plausible opinions from which it begins precede any strict distinction between the practical and the theoretical. At the same time, Aristotle does not merely take advantage of this ambiguity so as to put a few pieces of popular metaphysics to exclusively practical use. If this were so, then his discussion would proceed to exclusively practical conclusions from less exclusively practical starting points. In fact, however, the Ethics progresses from a rigorously practical beginning to an explicit endorsement of theoretical knowledge and of a contemplative way of life. Above all in chapter 2, therefore, I hope to show that Aristotle has so constructed the Nicomachean Ethics that the theoretical point of view emerges gradually within—not before, or even merely alongside—the practical perspective that governs his inquiry as a whole.16 Although this emergence is anticipated in book VI, in particular in VI.12–13, its key moment occurs neither in book VI nor even in book X, but rather in book IX, toward the end of his discussion of taking EN as a free-standing work challenges us to read it on its own terms and to discover the integrity of its approach, should such there be. 14. Nussbaum 2014 shows that appeals to human nature within EN are concerned with how we ethical inquirers conceive of our own identity, and that they typically belong to the larger Greek project of locating beings of our own sort in relation to beasts and gods; see also Achtenberg 1995. 15. There are therefore questions to be asked about Irwin 1980’s claim that the argument of EN is only plausible when read against the background of DA and ultimately of Met. It may be that Aristotle’s “ethical theory is based on his psychology and therefore on his metaphysics” (50), in the sense that the psychology and metaphysics ultimately help to ground and motivate the ethics. Yet in their original dialectical context, the arguments of EN are perfectly plausible on their own; indeed, EN is propaedeutic to theoretical philosophy rather than presupposing it. 16. Compare Broadie 1991 (387) on EE.

Introduction

19

friendship. Here contemplation emerges quite naturally, in the form of an awareness of oneself and of one’s friends that is no longer merely practical, but that is obviously crucial to happiness. Aristotle deliberately presents this knowledge in terms of being, insisting with some urgency that the life of perception and thought is our very being, who and what we are. This insistence is undeniably metaphysical; it is crucial to Aristotle’s argument that it be metaphysical; and yet it does not take us even a step beyond the practical perspective that governs the inquiry as a whole. In friendship, Aristotle thinks, we enter with particular depth into the reality of our own existence as perceivers and thinkers. Friends who are good delight in contemplating each other’s actions. To contemplate a human action as good is to become aware of its roots in the agent’s inner life: the life of perceiving and thinking. In friendship, therefore, we deepen our self-awareness as perceivers and thinkers; indeed, we become aware of ourselves as beings for whom perceiving and thinking the good is already something pleasant. In not only performing but also delighting in good actions, we have begun to lead a contemplative life, and we stand on the brink of realizing that other objects of contemplation may also delight and fulfill us. This beginning of an appreciation for the contemplative life is the perspective that Aristotle means his readers to have attained by the end of the Nicomachean Ethics. Like any dialectical inquiry, however, the Ethics guides us only gradually toward the knowledge—in this case, the self-knowledge—that we are seeking. It begins just where it finds us: dominated by practical concerns, a swim in the sea of things that people call good. Never losing its practical focus, it undertakes to transform our vision of the practical, proposing as the end of our striving nothing less than repose in delighted contemplation of the things that are most truly good. This being his goal, it is hardly surprising that Aristotle allows an increasingly perceptive sketch of what it is to be human—of what it is, as he would say, for a human to be—to carry the burden of his thought.

20 I n t r o d u c t i o n

The Human Good

1

THE  HUMAN  GOOD

Appreciating the metaphysical dimension of the Nicomachean Ethics is a matter neither of identifying extrinsic premises for the work as a whole nor of mining the text for scattered theoretical fragments. Rather, we must come to appreciate how Aristotle gradually focuses our attention—quietly, but with great intensity—on the goodness of the human substance as one who perceives and thinks. We can do so in two main stages. In the present chapter, I shall examine how he confronts the bewildering multitude of goods that human beings in fact pursue, so as to identify just one of these as “the human good.” In that which follows, I shall consider how his discussion of friendship transforms our search for the human good into an awareness of ourselves as good. In

21

short, we shall see our bewilderment at the complexity of human endeavor yield to a quiet appreciation of the goodness of the human substance, who stands at the heart of this endeavor. The thesis of the present chapter is straightforward: in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle deploys the twin analytical structures of analogy and pros hen homonymy to order our understanding of the goods that human beings pursue. His methods and audience do not permit their explicit, thematic use, but they are no less clearly at work; and in I.6—a complex chapter that functions on two levels—he carefully brings them to the interested reader’s attention. On the surface, this chapter argues simply that “the good itself ” discussed by Plato and his followers is neither real nor relevant to practical philosophy. At the same time, it subtly suggests that philosophical discourse concerning the good is deeply problematic, and it suggests resources for addressing the problem. The problem is that we call an enormous number of things good, despite the complete impossibility of providing an account of the good that will fit them all. It seems to follow not only that human life is fundamentally fragmented—aimed shard by shard at goals that have nothing in common—but also, consequently, that these goals are incommensurable: they cannot be placed on a common scale and weighed. This situation—call it the problem of many goods—threatens to render our hope of living by reason tenuous at best.1 Readers of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, especially of IV.2.1003a33–b19, VII.1, IX.6.1048a25–b9, and XII.4–5, might well suggest some ways of addressing this problem, for in these chapters Aristotle sketches and deploys two strategies for avoiding the conclusion that things called by the same name, yet having no common account or definition, are so called by sheer equivocation—in Aristotle’s Greek, “homonymy.” Notice, by the way, that Aristotle calls the named items rather than the names themselves “same-named” or homonymous. 1. Segvic 2004 observes that “Aristotle starts from the striking variety of particular goods and kinds of good that people pursue” (152); in Segvic’s view, however, Aristotle opposes any attempt to unify these many goods.

22

The Human Good

First, two things may be called X insofar as they are diversely related to some one thing, in such a way that each must be defined in terms of that thing. For example, we call exercise healthy because it produces health, but laboratory results healthy because they are signs of health. In the same way, we call colors beings because they are attributes of substances, which are beings in the principal sense. In such cases the two Xs are indeed same-named or homonymous, for there is no common account or definition of the healthy insofar as it includes both living bodies and their nourishment, nor—at least in Aristotle’s view—can we define being so as to include both substances and their qualities. The Xs are not, however, completely unrelated, being instead same-named by reference to one of them ( pros hen). Second, two Xs may both be called X because some third thing is to its X as yet a fourth is to its X. An artifact such as a saw, for example, is to its own form as a natural substance like an elephant is to its form. The elephant’s form is a nature orienting the animal as a whole toward its own characteristic activity; the hammer’s form subordinates the hammer as a whole to the productive activity of a human being. What it is for something to be a form is different in these two cases, yet there is a proportion between them.2 So also, Aristotle calls both a statue’s shape and a worker’s working an activity or actuality, for as the worker is to the activity, so is the material to the form. This is sameness by proportion—in Greek, “analogy”—as opposed to sameness in species or genus.3 2. See Phys. II.1; Met. VIII.2, XII.4–5. 3. The classic (though by no means definitive) modern studies of Aristotle on pros hen homonymy are Owen 1957, 1960, 1965 (all reprinted in Owen 1986); on analogy, Lloyd 1966 (362– 80, 403–14), 1996 (138–59). For homonymy see also Shields 1999, Ward 2008; for both homonymy and analogy see Wilson 2000, Beere 2009 (33–40, 178–89), and the assorted reflections in Silverman 2013; for analogy in De caelo (hereafter DC) in particular see Leggatt 1995 (21–22). As a form of rigorous analysis, analogy or proportion may seem more problematic than pros hen homonymy: as Lloyd 1996 asks (145–47), why does Aristotle think that in certain cases we can proceed as if we were dealing with a common nature, when in fact no such nature is to be found? Shields (10n3) tries to head off the difficulty by suggesting that Aristotle does not consider analogues to be homonyms at all, but his argument is weak: in EN I.6 Aristotle contrasts analogy not with homonymy in general but only with homonymy pros hen. Wilson distinguishes two sorts of analogy in Aristotle. In Aristotle’s biology, he thinks,



The Human Good

23

Now in Ethics I.6, Aristotle does in fact ask whether one or both of these strategies might help us understand why we call such a multitude of different things good. Although he goes on to dismiss this question as “more appropriate to another branch of philosophy,”4 it seems clear that what he means to exclude is not the use of these strategies, but only an explicit discussion of their role in unifying the good. In the following pages, we shall examine how he in fact uses these tools to map the terrain of human endeavor, and to set what he calls “the human good” at the summit of that terrain.5 The Problem of Many Goods

Our first task, however, is to root the foregoing suggestions in Aristotle’s text through a brief, selective reading of Ethics I.1–6.6 I shall first look at I.1 and the beginning of I.2, considering them in light of his later remarks on homonymy; I shall then turn to I.6 itself. What will emerge from this reading is his determination to focus on what is good (agathos) in the category of substance as the standard and measure of all human goods. This conclusion will prepare us to consider his proposal regarding the human good in I.7. analogy involves not homonymy but what we would call multiple realizability (87, 98); Wilson’s analysis thus appears sensitive to the concern of Shields (66, 203–7) that Aristotle sometimes treats as homonyms attributes that are in fact only multiply realizable. In Aristotle’s metaphysics, however, analogy involves a similarity among items that belong to different categories, and so do not admit of a common real (as opposed to nominal) definition (182). Wilson argues that analogy of the second sort constitutes a rigorous form of analysis only when grounded in some other connection between the analogues, such as a pros hen connection (see the examples at 185–86, 193–94). In certain contexts, at least, this seems correct; see for example note 19. However, Aristotle’s explicit discussions of analogy betray little worry about its legitimacy, allowing it to stand on its own as a distinct form of analysis. 4. EN I.6.1096b31. 5. For the phrase “the human good” see EN I.2.1094b7, 7.1098a16, 13.1102a15. 6. Natali 2010, developing the preliminary sketch in Natali 2007 (376–80), elucidates the argumentative structure of book I as a whole. Drawing on “the model of investigating definitions described in the second Book of the Posterior Analytics” (304–5), Natali shows how Aristotle establishes the human good’s existence, gives it a nominal definition, articulates some of its attributes, uses these attributes to establish its real definition through a dialectical demonstration, and finally confirms this definition by comparing it with common opinions.

24

The Human Good

Homonymy and Analogy in Nicomachean Ethics I.1–2

A careful reading of I.1 reveals at least three significant lines of thought, each of which elaborates the proposal that we should begin our inquiry by considering the good as an end (telos). First, the good is an object of thoughtful effort. The four subjects of Aristotle’s opening sentence—art, inquiry, action, choice—are chosen to insist on thoughtfulness. Yet Aristotle also chooses to connect these thoughtful, thoroughly human practices to an endoxon or reputable opinion according to which the good plays a much broader role, as “that at which all things aim.”7 Nor does this broader assertion fall outside his own intention, for at certain key points—most notably in the function argument of I.7, but also, referring to this same endoxon, in VII.13’s discussion of pleasure—he will set human striving and the human good alongside those of other animals.8 Second, human life encompasses a bewildering plurality of distinct practices and goods, a plurality that poses a significant challenge to rational inquiry. Throughout the Ethics, however, Aristotle will attempt to show that the goods at which we aim can be made to form, not a system perhaps, but at least a rough network. In these opening lines he sketches and illustrates the first and most obvious principle of unity and order: some practices serve others, and when this is the case, there is an ordering of their ends as well.9 Third, ends differ in their relation to the practices through which they are achieved, some being distinct products (erga, works), others the activities (energeiai, inworkings) themselves.10 Although Aristotle 7. EN I.1.1094a1–2. I see no reason to assume, as do Broadie 1991 (9), 2002 (262), Reeve 1992 (107), 2012 (228), Lear 2004 (15), that “that at which all things aim” is already meant to be a single supreme good. If each thing aims at one good or another, then the good in general is that at which all things aim: thus Natali 2001 (127), Pakaluk 2005 (49), Lawrence 2007 (39). It is best to see the notion of a single supreme good emerging gradually across EN as a whole: I.7 is an early high point, but to understand the final unity of the human good, we must make it to X.7–8. This reading strategy tends to avoid saddling Aristotle with stronger claims than he either needs or can render plausible at a given point in his argument. 8. EN I.7.1097b22–1098a17; VII.13.1153b25–32. 9. EN I.1.1094a6–16; for this challenge as permeating book I, see also Weller 2001 (104). 10. EN I.1.1094a3–6.



The Human Good

25

here observes that works distinct from the actions that produce them are naturally better than these actions, hindsight will show that he is above all interested in the case of activity or inworking as its own end. In the function argument and elsewhere—most notably in his discussion of magnificence in IV.2—we shall see him using separate, tangible works as images of the less tangible inworking that he identifies as the human good. These opening lines, then, introduce and briefly elaborate a general conception of the good as end. They balance the recognition that human life encompasses an enormous plurality of goods with the recognition that these goods can be classified and ordered in certain basic ways. The next twenty lines (I.2) of Aristotle’s opening discourse (I.1–3) are considerably more ambitious.11 They begin thus: “If, therefore, there is some end of the things we do that we wish for because of itself, and the others because of this; and we do not choose all things because of something else (for thus they go on without limit, so that desire is empty and vain): it’s clear that this would be the good and the best.”12 This opening conditional accomplishes two things. First, it sharpens the earlier distinction between ends of architectonic practices and subordinate ends by assuming that some ends are pursued because of themselves, others because of these. Resuming this line of thought in I.7, Aristotle will allow that certain ends may fall into both classes.13 For the moment, he presents a simple dichotomy between ends that considered in themselves are unintelligible as ends and those that render the former intelligible. Second, the conditional hypothesizes the existence of “some end” capable of rendering human life intelligible. The argument does not require that this end have a high degree of unity, but the language—“some end,” “the good,” “the best”—suggests that Aristotle is searching ultimately for a single good capable of con11. Natali 2007 (370) briefly discusses I.1–3 as Aristotle’s “preamble.” 12. EN I.2.1094a18–22. 13. EN I.7.1097a30–34.

26

The Human Good

ferring intelligibility not only on particular lines of striving but on life as a whole.14 Now Aristotle approaches the problem of many goods in a variety of ways throughout the Ethics, especially in its early chapters. In doing so he is careful to remain engaged at first hand with particular human goods, avoiding the kind of higher-level reflection that might form an obvious bridge between practical and theoretical philosophy. In I.6, for instance, where the prevalence of Platonic speculation about “the good itself ” has forced him onto metaphysical grounds, his strategy is first to show that the Platonic hypothesis glides too easily past the problem of many goods, and then to insist that in any case, a hypothetical “good itself ” is “not something a human being can do [  prakton] or acquire.”15 Just before dismissing the good itself as irrelevant, moreover, he declines to pursue two explicit strategies for bringing order to the ways we can speak of something as good: 14. Santas 1989 (78–79). Nothing I want to say depends on any particular interpretation of this much-maligned argument, for the earlier literature on which see Vranas 2005. Some of the burden can be shifted to the following argument, in which Aristotle observes that there is a single “most authoritative and especially architectonic” capacity (1094a26–27), whose end must therefore be the best good: thus Roche 1992 (63–68), Reeve 1992 (110–11), Natali 2001 (128–29), Natali 2010 (305–6). Yet we cannot shift all the weight to the argument from politics without running into a difficulty raised by Ackrill 1974: if the first conjunct of the opening conditional’s protasis (“there is some . . . because of this”) is purely hypothetical, as it is for Roche (56–57, 61–62), then the function of the second conjunct (“we do not . . . empty and vain”), which might otherwise have been taken to establish the first, becomes unclear. A better way to reduce the pressure on the first argument is to suggest that Aristotle is not yet claiming more than a purely nominal unity for the supreme good, the real unity of which begins to emerge only with the function argument of I.7, as for example in Kraut 1989 (205). Lear 2004 (32–34, 37) argues that Aristotle’s “scientific conception of an end” (34) precludes the existence of a plurality of genuine ends desirable independently of each other, even if some of these ends are also desirable for the sake of one most final end. Perhaps so, but it is another question whether Aristotle thinks himself entitled to this conception of an end at the outset of EN. In general, I worry that Lear tries to make the early chapters of EN yield conclusions that are more determinate, and in many cases more thoroughly Aristotelian, than Aristotle himself intended. EN is meant to be transformative, beginning with conceptions of the good and happiness that are much more widely accessible than is Aristotle’s finished view. 15. EN I.6.1096a17–b26, b31–1097a13; quotation at 1096b33–34. The Platonic hypothesis was first introduced at 4.1095a26–28.



The Human Good

27

The good is not, therefore, something common through one Idea; but how then is it spoken of ? For it’s not like things that have the same name by chance. But is it by being from one thing, or all contributing to one end [  pros hen hapanta suntelein]? Or rather by proportion? For just as sight is to the body, so mind [nous] is to the soul, and something else indeed to something else. But perhaps we should let these things go for now, for to make them precise would be more appropriate to another branch of philosophy.16

Clear as this dismissal may seem, however, it does not sit well with I.1 and the beginning of I.2, nor with the opening passage of I.7, which takes up the same ideas. For by the time Aristotle has introduced “the good and the best” in the first sentence of I.2, he has already made obvious use of both strategies, suggesting not only that ends are proportionate to the practices by which we aim at them, but also that whereas some things are called good because we wish for them in themselves, others are so called only because they contribute to these. Thus it would seem that Aristotle forgoes discussion of homonymy pros hen and of analogy not because they are out of place as strategies for negotiating the problem of many goods, but because in a practical course of study they operate more appropriately and more effectively below the surface: there is no need to point out, for instance, that health and excellence are “proportionately the same,” as ordinarily the analogy speaks for itself.17 This implies also that their dismissal is not quite sincere, but is instead a subtle apophasis (the rhetorical technique of calling something to mind by feigning to dismiss it).18 Nothing in the anti-Platonic argument requires that Aristotle mention these modes of analysis at all, and most readers would not 16. EN I.6.1096b26–31. For an introductory discussion see Broadie 1991 (27–29). 17. See for example II.2.1103b34–1110b3. For the formulation “proportionately the same” see History of Animals (hereafter HA) I.1.487a17–19. For Aristotle’s use of bodily things as images of the soul, see O’Rourke 2006 (160–62). 18. Roche 1988 takes the dismissal as evidence that Aristotle “has a distinctly negative attitude toward using metaphysical (or physical) doctrines to support ethical conclusions” (53); see also the similar but more nuanced Wilson 2000 (195). I would say, rather, that Aristotle wants the inquiry to unfold within a perspective that is consistently practical and dialectical, and that his use of metaphysical and physical principles is constrained by this goal.

28

The Human Good

even notice their absence. In effect, Aristotle is saying that whereas the goals of a practical treatise advise against highlighting this sort of analysis, it is there for those who wish to pursue it.19 It is not that analysis in terms of pros hen homonymy or analogy dictates the terms of his inquiry, providing its motive or its deep structure; only that we should be prepared to recognize such analysis when it occurs. “The Good through Itself ” vs. “the Good in the Through-itself ”

More could be said about Aristotle’s introduction, but for present purposes it is perhaps best to move on. His next task is to collect and briefly examine the most common opinions regarding what he now calls “the highest of all the goods for which we can act.”20 For beyond the general agreement that we should call this exalted good happiness (eudaimonia), and that happiness is something like “living well and doing well,” what we find is a range of opinions nearly as broad as the range of human ends.21 Toward the beginning of his discussion, in fact, Aristotle observes that our conception of happiness is often dictated by needs and desires that vary wildly from one moment to the next.22 Within this flotsam of opinions, however, certain views— those for which there is really something to be said (echein tina logon)—tend to float to the surface; these opinions appeal to a number 19. Citing Berti 1971 (170) and Menn 1992 (551n11), Wilson 2000 observes concerning the passage from I.6 that “Since Aristotle does not provide a solution . . . here, we should not immediately take the disjunction, ἤ, to imply that only one or another of the techniques of unification is correct, nor even that they are exclusive” (197). Here Wilson’s insistence on combining analogy with other forms of analysis is deeply insightful: “Aristotle also makes clear that the analogy [among crafts and their ends] is not sufficient in itself, or at least that it must be framed by some further form of commonality. For all the crafts derive their ends from the political craft, connected by end-means focality. Similarly among the per se goods, a simple analogy without some framework would result in incommensurability of ends, and would be no guide for a rational life” (200). 20. EN I.4.1095a16–17. 21. EN I.4.1095a17–23. For the translation “happiness” see Reeve 2012 (226–27). Any translation ought to reflect not only Aristotle’s finished conception of eudaimonia, but also the nearly complete open-endedness of the term at the outset of EN. 22. EN I.4.1095a23–26.



The Human Good

29

of people and shape entire lives.23 Aristotle chooses three of these lives as particularly noteworthy: the life of pleasure, the life of honor or excellence, and the life of contemplation or consideration (theōria).24 His remarks regarding each are preliminary and inconclusive; even his contemptuous dismissal of the life of pleasure is only the first move in a dialectical investigation of pleasure that will last the entire work.25 Yet before this hasty winnowing of the harvest of human goods, Aristotle has already mentioned another, potentially more powerful response: the Platonic hypothesis of “the universal best [beltion],” “the good itself ”: “yet some think,” he writes, “that beyond these many goods there is another, through itself [kath’ hauto], which for all these too is responsible for their being good.”26 This is an extraordinary hypothesis—a winnowing fan indeed, capable of clearing the floor in a single stroke and then, to change the metaphor, readmitting all claimants to goodness by due application to a central authority. As we have already noted, Aristotle’s response appears at first glance to be merely dismissive. Yet we have also noted that he uses this response as occasion to introduce two strategies for bringing order to the ways we speak of things as good, strategies that he declines to discuss explicitly yet employs amply elsewhere in the text. It would, moreover, be unwise and out of character for him to aim at the Platonic hypothesis considerations to which his own understanding of the good is equally unresponsive. For example, he argues that because there is no one understanding (epistēmē, art or science) of the good, there must not be any one “idea” thereof.27 Yet the Nicomachean Ethics is a long refusal 23. EN I.4.1095a29–30, 5.1095b14–16. 24. EN I.5.1095b16–22, b22–1096a2, a4–5, respectively. With the homely but flexible “consideration,” cf. Broadie 1991: “ ‘Theōria’ covers any sort of detached, intelligent, attentive pondering, especially when not directed to a practical goal” (401). In contexts where “contemplate” seems too strong, I will sometimes suggest “consider” as a more accurate alternative. 25. By “dialectical” I mean here that Aristotle proceeds not by unfolding the consequences of fixed first principles but by introducing and defending principles that are more and more adequate. This process culminates in X.4–5. 26. EN I.6.1096a11, 1097a9, 4.1095a26–28. 27. EN I.6.1096a29–34.

30

The Human Good

to let the human good be governed by an irreducible plurality of distinct forms of understanding or conflicting opinions.28 Like Socrates in the Republic, that is, Aristotle will propose a good capable of bringing order and intelligibility to human striving. He has even given a name—politics—to the understanding or science of this good. Unlike knowledge of the Platonic Good, however, politics will not itself confer understanding of every human good; rather, it will direct from above the many distinct forms of understanding by which these goods are known and pursued.29 Aristotle means to exclude, therefore, not the possibility of a supreme good—or at least of a supreme human good—but the possibility of its conferring goodness on other things as a universal form present in them all. Even his language in I.2—“the good and the best,” “the human good”—suggests that he is setting up a rival to the Platonic “good itself ”: a good capable of bestowing on human life, though of course in a different manner, something like the unity and order Plato had sought for reality as a whole.30 Against this background, consider the arguments with which his critique of the Platonic form begins, which occur immediately before the argument regarding unity of understanding: Those who introduced this opinion did not posit Ideas for classes within which they recognized priority and posteriority; because of this they did not set up an Idea of numbers either. But we speak of the good [in multiple categories, such as] in what-something-is, in quality, and in relation; and the through-itself, or substance, is prior in nature to the relative (for this is like an offshoot and an accident of what is): hence there would not be an Idea common to these. Further, since we speak of the good in as many ways as [we speak of ] 28. For the plurality and comparability of goods as a concern of book I, and for the role of I.6 and the beginning of I.7 in particular, see also Pakaluk 1992 (esp. 125–29). 29. EN I.2.1094a24–b11. 30. For a more analytic discussion of I.6 as a tacit attempt to replace the Form of the Good with happiness see Weller 2001 (98–102). Though her style is very different, the first part of Weller’s conclusion is roughly the same as my own: I.6 is meant to support the conclusion that “eudaimonia is the cause by which human goods are good” (92; see 102). See also Lear 2004 (5).



The Human Good

31

being—for we speak of it in the what, such as god and mind;31 in quality, the excellences; in quantity, the moderate; in relation, the useful; in time, the opportune; in place, a dwelling and other such things—it’s clear that there would not be any one common universal; for then it would not be spoken of in all the categories, but in one only.32

These arguments are closely related, although at first glance the former seems rather to build on the latter than conversely: it is one thing to say that the good is spoken of in all the categories, and something further to observe that one of these categories is prior to the others. Seen from another angle, however, the second argument builds on the first, adding a more systematic correlation between the ways we speak of the good and the ways we speak of being.33 In the first argument, which in principle is quite broad, Aristotle focuses concretely on the distinction between the goodness that belongs to what is “through-itself ”—note the Platonic language—and the goodness that belongs to what is relative to (  pros) something else. The second argument, notice, provides an instance of the latter: what is good in the sense of being useful is good not through itself but in relation to something else. Within this general class, we might add, falls the useful person: the artisan or craftsman, for instance, who is judged 31. Menn 1992 (551–53) argues that in the phrase ho theos kai ho nous the kai is epexegetic, so that the phrase as a whole names god as what is good in the category of substance. It is not necessary to follow Broadie 1991 (29), Long 2011 (101), Reeve 2014 (212) in taking the phrase to refer to human thought as divine; if we want to understand something this specific, we would do better to think of the god pursued in Met. XII, as only a divinity so conceived can serve as a standard of goodness for the category of substance as a whole. 32. EN I.6.1096a17–29. Aristotle’s sumbebēkos, traditionally “accident,” might better be rendered “incidental feature” or “incidental.” “What-something-is” and “through itself ” refer to the category of substance. 33. Shields 1999 (198) takes the argument of the second paragraph to fail because it depends on Aristotle’s claim that being is said in many ways, which Shields finds unconvincing. He asks why we should suppose “that being and goodness march in step at all” (198). Wilson 2000 likewise concludes that “the fact that good falls into all the categories is not relevant to Aristotle’s theory of the good. . . . The categorial organization of good does not reveal the nature and function of the term, and in fact disrupts the fundamental relation of means and ends” (205). Aristotle’s examples suggest a reply: the qualities, quantities, and relations of a teleologically organized, goal-seeking entity must be judged good or bad by reference to its essence.

32

The Human Good

good not through what he is but in view of his product. In contrast with useful persons and things, though, stands the substance—in this case the human being—for whom they are useful; and in contrast with the goodness of the artisan as artisan stands the goodness of the artisan as what he is, namely human. If this seems too much to read into the text, compare the terms in which Aristotle will later distinguish friendship of the good from friendship of utility or pleasure: those who love because of what is useful or because of pleasure, he writes, do so “not insofar as the one who is loved is, but insofar as he is useful or pleasant; these friendships, then, are through something accidental, for the one loved is loved not insofar as he is just who he is.”34 The second argument takes up the universality that was present but undeveloped in the first. In so doing it replaces what Aristotle considers the clumsy universality of the Platonic “good through itself ” with the unifying and organizing power of the good spoken of “in . . . the through-itself ” in his own sense, namely substance—the priority of substance, remember, is already in place from the previous argument.35 Excellence, that is, renders us good; moderate amounts are good for us; the useful and the opportune serve our interests; a dwelling keeps us and our property safe. Note also, by the way, how Aristotle chooses the instance of “what-something-is,” namely “god and mind,” whose goodness seems most apparent. If we pause to think through the substitution of one “through itself ” for another occurring in these lines, we may find them quietly suggesting that “god and mind” will prove quite broadly to be the source and cause of the good as Aristotle understands it. These two arguments, then, have the effect of suggesting in a preliminary way that we can sometimes bring unity to a plurality of goods by asking about the substance to which they pertain. From a practical point of view, this is of course what Aristotle has been doing all along: we are looking for the single, primary human good among 34. EN VIII.3.1156a16–18. For VIII.3 see O’Connor 1990; for the connection between I.6 and the three kinds of friendship see Pakaluk 1992 (129). 35. With the description of substance as “the through-itself,” cf. Met. VII.1.1028a23.



The Human Good

33

the multitude of things that human beings pursue as good. It is precisely this multitude that the Platonic “good itself ” fails to unify. This is true even, Aristotle asserts later in I.6, if we restrict our attention to things we consider good because of themselves, excluding the merely useful. Even of the former alone—of being prudent, of seeing, of certain pleasures and honors, for instance—there are “distinct and differing accounts just insofar as they are goods.”36 This is an important comment, for it implies also that if “the good and the best” can bring substantial unity to human life, this unity cannot be achieved simply by reducing all other goods to the status of mere instruments, means to an end. In fact, the words just quoted come immediately before the passage with which I first introduced I.6, a passage that left the connection between the good and other goods—are they from one thing? do they all contribute to one end? are they one by proportion?—almost completely open. Analogy : Th e Human Good

But what is the human good? In the second part of I.7, the so-called function argument, Aristotle develops his answer to this question through a series of three proportions or analogies—more precisely, three classes of proportion.37 In each case, he suggests that we humans stand toward a particular function or work, the human one, just as things of some other sort stand toward a corresponding sort of function. The human good, meanwhile, stands toward the human function as do the goods of these other things toward their own functions. He thus situates the human good within a larger schema—thing, func36. EN I.6.1096b8–26; quotation at 24–25. Wilson 2000 notes the language of focality at 1096b8–14: “The means are described as ‘those which tend to produce (ποιητικά) or preserve (φυλακτικά) these [ends] somehow or to prevent their contraries’ and they ‘are called so [good] by reference to these (διὰ ταῦτα λέγεσθαι) and in a different sense.’ These are the standard formulae of Met. Γ.2” (197; within Met. IV.2 see esp. 1003a35–36, b17). 37. EN I.7.1097b22–1098a17. For the role of the function argument in EN see Kraut 1989 (322–45), Achtenberg 1989, Lawrence 2001; for its relation to the criteria of finality and self-sufficiency see Roche 1995, Kraut 1995.

34

The Human Good

tion, good—that invites a variety of comparisons.38 His use of analogy at this crucial moment is, I think, neither a concession to his audience nor an admission of philosophical defeat. Analogy lives, to be sure, on the small shifts in meaning that undermine a good definition, but then again, nothing guarantees that human beings will turn out to have either function or good in quite the same sense as does anything else.39 By adopting a broad, comparative approach, moreover, he encourages us to look at ourselves from the outside—in the third person, as it were. Stepping away from what I already consider good and best, I am able to see what sort of being I most deeply am, and to reconsider from this more balanced perspective the question of what is good.40 There is another advantage to his use of analogy. His argument culminates by returning to the first class of proportions, from which he selects one instance in particular as a crowning metaphor—for proportion is one of the four sources of metaphor that he distinguishes in Poetics 21.41 Aristotle’s use of metaphor is not, perhaps, one of the most prominent themes in contemporary philosophical commentary, but his analogical account of the human good emerges from just the kind of comparison on which, he thinks, the most valuable metaphors rely.42 In Plato’s dialogues, at least, such proportions are to 38. Barney 2008 (298–302) discusses Aristotle’s omission of the functions of instruments, which figure prominently in the function argument of Republic I.352e2–354a9. 39. Applying his earlier observation that multiple realizability does not imply homonymy, Shields 1999 argues that even if we “identify the good of a functional kind with its end,” and “note that the ends for different functional kinds vary not only in range but in kind” (207), the good will still not be homonymous. Shields presupposes that what it is to be the end of a functional kind is always the same—that plants, animals, and human beings, for example, have ends in exactly the same sense. This is so far from being obvious that it has often been asked whether it is coherent to attribute ends to plants at all. 40. Sparshott 1994 (42, 53). Santas 1989 (84–87) suggests that in the function argument Aristotle moves from considering the good as object of desire to considering it as perfective of human nature. Although Santas takes this shift to be required by the objectivity of ethical theory, it might also, and more urgently, arise from the moment of self-doubt in which I ask whether the things I in fact desire are likely to make me happy—or, for that matter, whether in pursuing them I appear trivial or ridiculous to others. Both types of self-doubt are capable of bringing to light the value of a more universal perspective on our own lives. 41. Poetics (hereafter Poet.) 21.1457b6–9. 42. Rhetoric (hereafter Rhet.) III.10.1410b36–1411a1. For metaphor in Aristotle see



The Human Good

35

be questioned; indeed, the juxtaposition of realities at once alike and unlike is at times a direct challenge to the reader—take for example the argument in Republic I, based on the analogy between excellence and art, that the just person is a kind of thief.43 Aristotle knows more about how to read a Platonic dialogue than he often lets on, and in Rhetoric III.2, commending metaphor to prose speakers and writers in particular, he suggests not only that “metaphor, especially, brings clarity,” but also that “metaphors speak in riddles.”44 In proposing metaphors, a naturally talented writer—one whose ability “to consider [or ‘contemplate’] what is alike” is beyond the ordinary—asks us to think for ourselves; the same must be true of the preeminent source of metaphor, analogy or proportion.45 The first class of proportions proposed in I.7 sets human beings O’Rourke 2006, the extensive bibliography to which includes a number of items on Aristotle and many more for which Aristotle’s account provides an important point of reference. O’Rourke exaggerates Aristotle’s distaste for the use of metaphor in philosophy (169–70); commenting on O’Rourke, Patsioti-Tsacpounidi 2006 (179) helpfully observes that while the use of metaphors in definitions and deductions is deeply problematic, leading to lack of clarity (Topics [hereafter Top.] VI.2.139b34–35), in other contexts metaphor is a powerful source of clarity and learning (Rhet. III.2.1405a8–9, 10.1410b10–13). In the function argument Aristotle uses not metaphor in the strict sense but simile, which is nearly identical to metaphor (Rhet. III.4.1406b20) but trades metaphor’s superior power to arrest and compel thought for a mode of expression that is, strictly speaking, more accurate (10.1410b15–21). I mention metaphor because Aristotle’s esteem for and careful reflection on the sort of reasoning and teaching displayed in the function argument emerges most forcefully in his discussions of metaphor. Given the importance of metaphor for rhetoric, moreover, it is not surprising to see this sort of reasoning playing important roles in EN; for some other rhetorical dimensions of EN see Natali 2007. Both O’Rourke and Patsioti-Tsacpounidi, finally, rely in part on earlier studies by Lloyd, especially Lloyd 1996 (138–59, 205–22). I am not sure that Lloyd is right to distinguish merely metaphorical analogy from analogies of other sorts; Aristotle’s discussion seems to indicate that analogical metaphor presupposes a proportion, not that the proportion can be reduced to a metaphor. Kahn 1985, for example, takes what he considers the metaphorical language in Aristotle’s account of the prime mover’s causality to reflect a serious inductive method of “supporting and clarifying the role of his theoretical principles for the explanation of large and remote processes by the example of similar cases with which we are familiar” (201). Halliwell 1998 takes the view that “metaphor, although it can be regarded as a stylistic ornament alongside other types, is valued by the philosopher as a unique means of expressing certain perceptions” (349). 43. Republic I.333e3–334a9. 44. Rhet. III.2.1405a8–9, b3–4. 45. Poet. 22.1459a5–8, quotation at 8; see Moran 1996 (386–87, 395–96).

36

The Human Good

as such alongside artisans: flautists and sculptors, to begin with, and then also carpenters and cobblers.46 It draws its power, moreover, from the fact that every artisan is himself a human being: the art that separates Pheidias from the nonsculptor, for instance, presupposes the humanity they share. Every art, in other words, presents itself as “like an offshoot and an accident” of what it is to be human, and every artisan has his own work and action (ergon ti kai praxis).47 In asking rhetorically, then, whether unlike these artisans the human being has no work of its own, Aristotle is therefore asking whether it is possible that human beings should engage in such a variety of actions, and produce such a variety of works, yet possess as human no underlying dynamism, no orientation to action, capable of accounting for them. The proportion is therefore between a class of contingent, particular instances of the human work and the work itself in its generality. A moment’s reflection, however, reveals that it is not thereby a comparison between genus and species. In one respect, of course, to exercise an art is to be active as a human being. Yet it is also to produce something for human beings, and therefore to subordinate oneself to the human good as to something distinct from one’s own work.48 Indeed, Aristotle has already told us not only that every particular art must be governed by knowledge of the human good (I.2), but also that knowledge of the human good does not confer knowledge of any particular art (I.6). Taken together, these claims imply that the artisan’s good, and indeed his very being as an artisan, are separate from and relative to those of the human being as such. Aristotle gives us no reason to think, moreover, that the human good is similarly relative; 46. For the first two classes of proportion see the discussions in Sparshott 1994 (42), Pakaluk 2005 (76), Reeve 2012 (238–41). 47. EN I.7.1097b26; see also I.6.1096a21–22. 48. Whiting 1988 (36) points out the importance of this distinction for the success of the function argument; more generally, she provides a robust defense of the argument against the objections then common in the literature. Barney 2008 (309–18) discusses and defends at length the possibility of taking the works of artisans as instances of the human work, claiming however that because art involves reason, the exercise of art must count as at least an imperfect exercise of rational virtue. Whiting elucidates the difficulties inherent in this claim, according to which skilled thievery is an exercise of rational virtue.



The Human Good

37

and if it is not, then what it is for an artisan even to have a work or a good is distinct from what it is for a human being. Yet if they are distinct—if the comparison is indeed analogical—then they are distinct in such a way that the work and good of the artisan point toward and illuminate those of the human being.49 Notice, finally, the variety contained under the term “work.” The sculptor, carpenter, and cobbler all produce works that are clearly distinct from their actions; in the case of the flautist, however, the distinction is not as clear. The second class of proportions, by contrast, sets human beings alongside their own bodily parts: eye, hand, foot, and so forth. In every such case, what Aristotle calls the organ’s work is simply an activity—seeing, grasping, walking—and so does not qualify as a work at all as this term is used in I.1. This shift in meaning, while remaining within the ordinary range of the word ergon, establishes the possibility of using separate, tangible works as analogues and images of the less tangible human work; this possibility will bear fruit above all in IV.2, where Aristotle discusses the excellence of magnificence. All this is thoroughly obscured, by the way, by translating energeia (literally “inworking”) as “activity,” and ergon (“work”) as “product” in I.1 but “function” in I.7. With the partial exception of “function,” which unlike ergon in I.7 always implies contribution to a larger whole, each English term is a good translation in its immediate context. Taken together, however, they dissolve a linguistic framework that helps carry the burden of Aristotle’s thought. In any case, the relation between living beings and their instrumental bodily parts is clearly different from that between human beings and artisans. In discussing this new comparison, therefore, Aristotle’s rhetorical question regards the whole animal insofar as it lives—precisely as a body composed of organs—an intelligibly and determinately ordered life. The order that shapes such a body is not static: the organs are not present merely for their structural or aesthetic contributions; each of them has something to do. The animal is continually doing, acting, living in each one 49. Cf. the observation of Wilson 2000 discussed in notes 3 and 19 earlier.

38

The Human Good

of its parts: what, then, of the whole?50 As in the case of human and artisan, moreover, the work and the good of each organ are relative to those of the whole to which they belong. The first two classes of proportion neatly set up the third. Although an artisan’s actions are themselves distinctively human, they are subordinate to the demands of human life as a whole. An animal’s organs, likewise, both embody and serve the life of the whole animal. Taken together, therefore, they focus our attention on life itself as an activity, and in particular on human life. It remains for the third proportion, which sets human beings alongside the other broad kinds of living things—plants and nonhuman animals—to make this theme explicit. It is a mistake, therefore, to read the third proportion independently of the first two, each of which suggests that we need to make sense of human activity considered precisely as a whole.51 The activities of nutrition and growth and of sensation, taken by themselves, fail to do this; more promising is “a certain [life] of action of that which has reason,” “an inworking of soul according to reason or not without reason.”52 Aristotle’s language here is tentative and open-ended: “a certain [life] of action . . . according to reason or not without reason.” He is clearly aware how problematic it would be to reduce human life to the activity of thinking. Just as clearly, however, he intends to set reason at the heart of human life. If our good is truly to be inferred from the 50. See also On the Parts of Animals (hereafter PA) I.5: “Since every instrument is for the sake of something, and each of the parts of the body is for the sake of something, and that for the sake of which is some action: it’s apparent that the body as a whole [sunolon] too is put together for the sake of some complex [  polumerous] action. For sawing did not come to be for the sake of [charin] the saw, but the saw for sawing, for sawing is its use. Hence also body is in some way for the sake of [heneken] soul, and its parts for the sake of the works for [  pros] which each naturally occurs” (645b14–20). Aristotle’s move from part to whole was the target of a misguided criticism by Hardie; for discussion, see for example Hutchinson 1986 (58–59). 51. Reeve 2014a (25–28). It is therefore unnecessary to suppose—as does Broadie 1991 (35)—that Aristotle has already demonstrated the unity of the human good, and so is licensed to assume that human beings have a function corresponding to that good. The unity of human activity and of the human good emerges gradually in I.2, 7, and beyond. 52. EN I.7.1098a3–4, 7–8.



The Human Good

39

nature of our life, then reason itself must be our standard of goodness. To live by reason will not, then, be merely the means to our end; it will itself be our work and our end. To articulate clearly what this means will take us some time; for now, we can point to Aristotle’s later claim that good people not only choose actions “according to the right reason,” but choose these actions “because of themselves.”53 In what exactly does the proportion among different forms of life consist? In On the Soul II.2–3 Aristotle observes that the life of reason presupposes that of sensation, the life of sensation that of nutrition and reproduction. Perhaps, then, it is this continuity that allows us to consider such different activities under the common heading of life. In this case, life would be proportionately one insofar as each form of life presupposes or incorporates the previous.54 This sort of connection, however, is not enough, for analogy is not ultimately a matter of presupposition or inclusion but of likeness and unlikeness. In the function argument’s first two proportions, for instance, the connections between human and artisan and between part and whole are such as to ensure that the proportionate terms, without belonging to a single genus or being one a species of the other, are at once alike and unlike. If the three forms of life are to be truly proportionate, therefore, then reason must presuppose sensation and sensation nutrition 53. EN II.2.1103b32, 4.1105a32. Segvic 2004 (170) suggests that practical reason’s task is to set the various goods that we pursue within the context of our life as a whole, and to evaluate them from this perspective. This is clearly correct, but gives insufficient emphasis to the status of rationality itself as a distinctive sort of good. 54. My discussion to this point is indebted to that of Wilson 2000 (208–24), who worries that without the “serial order” and “definitional inclusion relations” among souls (214), the analogy among them would be “pure metaphor” (213). Although I find Wilson’s analysis insightful, I also worry lest a misguided concern for rigor prevent us from recognizing how important analogy is in its own right. Shields 1999, meanwhile, despite contending that Aristotle should not have considered homonymous the good conceived of as an end, describes living things as intentional systems and allows that intentional systems are so-called homonymously (189). Relying on pros hen homonymy, he suggests that other living things are so called by reference to god, the primary intentional system and, Shields thinks, the formal cause in an extended sense of other such systems (190). Between pros hen homonymy and analogy, however, the latter seems better suited for cases in which genuine homonyms directly resemble one another.

40

The Human Good

in such a way as to ensure an appropriate likeness among the three. In the function argument, of course, Aristotle is primarily interested in differences among living things. Yet these differences become instructive only against a background of resemblance. Human being, nonrational animal, and plant all stand over against their surroundings by directing their own complex activity from within. They are—each in its own way, not in virtue of what they share but precisely as rational, as perceptive, or as self-nourishing—independent centers of agency in ways that neither their own parts, nor artisans as artisans, nor nonliving things can match. By making the human work a kind of life, Aristotle sets it firmly within the category of substance. In On the Soul II.1, for instance, he identifies a living thing’s activity as its complete actuality or fulfillment (entelecheia)—its first and incomplete fulfillment being its soul, which is its substance in the sense of form.55 This implies that what Ethics I.7 calls life in the sense of activity is the expression and fulfillment of what the living thing is—of its substance. Although the term “substance” needs to be imported from On the Soul and from Ethics I.6, the idea itself does not: we have just seen that each of Aristotle’s first two proportions compares the work of a human being as such with some other, more limited work that nevertheless points toward it: the flautist and the carpenter are humans first, and serve the human good; eye and hand serve the living whole. The whole series of proportions is orchestrated to highlight one central theme: the active life of a human being as such. As a result, Aristotle can affirm that the human good—the good that shapes and contextualizes all other goods that we may wish for—is “superiority through excellence” in the exercise of the human work.56 Yet despite his obvious intention to locate the human good in the complete actuality of the human substance, we have no good reason to think that he thereby intends his readers to derive their ethical 55. DA II.1.412a19–28. 56. EN I.7.1098a11.



The Human Good

41

conclusions from his own theoretical philosophy.57 The principles of the function argument were, in their original context, perfectly plausible dialectical premises; Republic I ends with a similar argument, even identifying living as the function of the soul.58 Aristotle does not, of course, shy away from the obvious connection between his version of the function argument and his theoretical philosophy: if a reader is equipped to notice this link, he must have thought, then so much the better. In itself, however, his argument is a masterful version of what must by the time it was written have become a dialectical commonplace. The argument ends with a final proportion, drawn from the first class: just as the work of a good harpist is to play well, so that of a good human being is to live with excellence. Is this choice of analogy significant? It is intriguing, at least, that whereas the flautist or aulist mentioned earlier could sound no more than two notes at once, the harpist or citharist played an instrument of seven or eight strings. Likewise, Aristotle will later observe that “our nature is not simple, but there is in it one thing and another.”59 Unlike the simpler lyre, 57. Pace Irwin 1980, Hutchison 1986 (24, 46, 51), Halper 1995 (6), Hill 1995 (105–6), Sim 1995a. The fact that Aristotle might have derived certain ethical premises from his own theoretical conclusions provides evidence that he wants the reader to rely on these conclusions only if the ethical premises in question would have been implausible on their own, as dialectical starting points. Nor can one infer simply from the subject matter of the metaphysical, physical, and ethical treatises that the latter are subordinate to the former, as does Hill 1995 (105–6), because the distinction between theoretical and practical inquiries might easily override the obvious connections in subject matter. Halper also employs, however, a weaker model of the relation between Aristotle’s practical and theoretical works, according to which there are analogies between the two that may help us understand the practical works better (1–2, 23). This model is compatible with the methodological autonomy of the practical works. Likewise, Hill offers a formulation that bears reflection: “The Nicomachean Ethics draws on the conclusions from the physical and metaphysical works and shows the connection between the conclusions of those works . . . and the conclusion regarding human flourishing as viewed from the perspective of the agent” (106–7). This is surely correct as a description of Aristotle’s procedure in composing EN, even if it fails as a description of what he expects on the part of the reader. The pitfalls of assuming too close a connection between EN and Met. may be seen, for example, in Sim 1995a. 58. Republic I.352d8–354a5; Natali 2010 (314–15) provides a similar example from Isocrates. Though congenial to specifically Aristotelian commitments, the schema does not depend on them: see also Roche 1988 (59), Bolton 1991 (23), Gómez-Lobo 1991 (54). 59. EN VII.14.1154b21–22.

42

The Human Good

moreover, the cithara was a challenging instrument typically reserved for professionals.60 Even if we consider the harpist simply as a musician, finally, Aristotle’s choice of a fine art that produces no separate work is particularly apt: note that in the Politics he will treat music as exemplary of the things that we should study “not as useful, nor as necessary, but as free and fine.”61 Here, using his two musical metaphors to enclose the discussion as a whole—his first class of proportions, remember, opens with the flautist—he asks us to dwell on the beauty of a good human being at work within himself.62 Homonymy : Other Human Goods

To identify “activity of soul according to excellence” as the human good is, however, only a partial solution to the problem of many goods. It is a solution insofar as it provides us with at least the beginning of a reason for assigning a privileged status among our ends to the activity of thoughtful living itself. It is partial insofar as it leaves our other desires as so many loose cannons whose continual recoil threatens to make thoughtful living difficult indeed. Excellent activity is not all we want, and calling it happiness does not change this fact. To fulfill its promise, therefore, excellent thoughtful activity must govern a territory filled with other powerful ends. Toward the end of the Ethics, however, in X.8, Aristotle emphasizes that the excellences of character are bound up with the body and with external goods. This implies that thoughtful action does not stand apart from other goods as a competitor; rather, it incorporates them into itself. 60. Sparshott 1994 (50–51) also discusses the musical analogy. 61. Politics (hereafter Pol.) VIII.3.1338a30–37; quotation at 31–32. For discussion, see Nightingale 1998 (37–38). 62. Irwin 1991’s distinction between activities prescribed by virtue and those merely regulated by it makes sense only if we take paradigmatically virtuous actions to exhaust the realm of actions prescribed by virtue. This is implausible as a reading of Aristotle, who clearly takes both the excellences and the excellent actions that he discusses to be exemplary rather than exhaustive. Every reasonable action chosen qua reasonable as a result of the agent’s character is prescribed by excellence, and Aristotle’s discussion of the minor social excellences is designed in part to exhibit just this.



The Human Good

43

What I.7 implies, however, and what X.8 reiterates, is that reason is not therefore merely instrumental. Rather, it elevates and dignifies bodily and external goods by its correct and beautiful ordering of life as a whole. In the remainder of this chapter, I will first survey the territory that the human good must govern by sketching the two major classifications of human goods found in the Nicomachean Ethics. According to the first of these, every human good is an external good, a good of the body, or a good of the soul; according to the second, every human good is desired insofar as it is fine, pleasant, or useful. I will then briefly address the problem of how bodily and external goods such as health, prosperity, and family contribute to the best life as Aristotle understands it. Our goal will be to understand more deeply the place of thoughtful activity within a good human life, thus preparing for a closer look at thoughtful activity itself in chapter 2 and at the fine as a good internal to thought in chapter 3. Dividing the Good

The Nicomachean Ethics presents two main ways of classifying the goods with which human life is concerned. The first, drawn from both popular and philosophical discourse, highlights what we might call the location of each good relative to the human being who enjoys it: goods are either internal or external to their possessor, and internal goods belong to either the body or the soul. Excellent activity, of course, is a good of the soul.63 The second division, in contrast, highlights the manner in which each good serves as an end for those who pursue it—the nature of its motivational force. Because the good is essentially an end, this division of goods is an important structural principle of the Ethics. It appears in two versions, the first of which may be treated as an early 63. EN I.8.1098b12–20. Aristotle sometimes uses a simpler division that treats goods of the body as external: see Cooper 1985 (294–95).

44

The Human Good

approximation of the second. In II.3, as he begins to discuss excellence in character, Aristotle writes that “the objects of choice are three and those of aversion three: fine, advantageous, pleasant, and their contraries, shameful, harmful, painful.” In VIII.2, as he begins his discussion of friendship, he observes that “not everything seems to be loved, but the lovable, and this is good, pleasant, or useful.”64 The division in II.3 reflects a popular perspective according to which the fine or noble may be in tension with the advantageous, and both may be in tension with the pleasant. In VIII.2, however, Aristotle is preparing to argue that our true interest always lies in the fine. This conclusion reduces the advantageous but neither fine nor pleasant to the merely useful.65 Because the useful is not good in itself, it also reduces the good, as distinct from the merely pleasant, to the fine. “Good” also fits Aristotle’s discussion of friendship better than “fine,” for in Greek a friend whose habits and actions are fine would be called not “fine,” which would imply physical beauty, but “good.” By the time we reach the end of the books on friendship, therefore, the divisions of II.3 and VIII.2 amount to an assertion that we love or seek things insofar as they are pleasant, or useful, or good not merely in the sense of being pleasant or useful but in the sense of being fine. In each passage, Aristotle adds to this basic structure a further element that tends ultimately to isolate the fine as the central type of good. In II.3, he posits a general connection between pleasure and the other two goods, observing that pleasure “accompanies every object of choice, for both the fine and the advantageous appear pleasant.” This suggests that pleasures should be assessed in light of the fine and advantageous goods to which they are tied.66 In VIII.2, he similarly highlights the dependence of the useful on the fine or good and on the pleasant: “the useful would seem to be that through which some 64. EN II.3.1104b30–32; VIII.2.1155b18–19. 65. For the sumpheron as distinct from the chrēsimon see Cooper 1996 (95–97); Crisp 2014 (234–35) rejects the distinction. For Aristotle’s gradual rejection of the view that one’s own advantage sometimes conflicts with the kalon, see Tutuska 2013. 66. EN II.3.1104b35–1105a1; for specific examples see III.11.1119a18, IV.6.1126b28–1127a6.



The Human Good

45

good or pleasure comes to be; hence both the good and the pleasant would be lovable as ends.”67 Taken together, these clarifications concerning the pleasant and the useful turn the distinction between three ways of being an end into a steady focus on a single type of end, which Aristotle calls the fine in II.3 but simply the good in VIII.2. They also imply that pleasure in the useful is in fact pleasure in the anticipation of a good that is not merely useful, whereas pleasure in the fine is pleasure in a genuine end. In short, the fine is the central good with which a good human life is concerned. The centrality of the fine emerges also from the classifications of pleasure found in III.10 and VII.4, within Aristotle’s closely related discussions of temperance and of continence or self-control. Although these classifications are closely related, only VII.4 explicitly mentions the fine.68 Developing the suggestion of II.3 that pleasure accompanies other types of good, VII.4 classifies not pleasures themselves but “the things that produce pleasure.” The primary distinction is between sources of pleasure that are “necessary” and those that are rather “choiceworthy in themselves,” “fine and excellent [spoudaiōn],” 67. EN VIII.2.1155b19–21. The basic structure of this progression does not require the various stages of the analysis to be kept rigorously apart, as Aristotle must be attentive at various stages of the work to the role of pleasure in a number of different lives. In any case there is no need to follow Annas 1980 in identifying certain passages as “surprising,” or to see Aristotle as “wavering” between his considered view of pleasure and views that he rejects (290–92). For a recent overview and assessment of Aristotle’s understanding of pleasure as a human good see D. Frede 2006. 68. I am not persuaded by the argument of Lorenz 2009a that VII.4 contains two parallel arguments (A = 1147b23–1148a22 and B = 1148a22–b14), the second of which was intended to replace the first. (1) At minimum, Lorenz’s A has been edited to bring it into line with the discussion of temperance in III.10, for A begins by identifying the necessary sources of pleasure in terms not of touch and taste generally but of food and sex in particular. (2) A’s inclusion of heat and cold among the painful things with which incontinence (akrasia) is concerned can be explained by the fact that Aristotle has not yet clearly distinguished incontinence from softness; such progressive refinement is typical of a dialectical thinker. (3) In VII.7’s assertion that the pains with which softness is concerned arise from appetite (1150a26–27), the term “appetite” (epithumia) does not indicate that such pains result from unfulfilled positive desires, but distinguishes pains at the level of epithumia from those at the level of spirit (thumos) or wish (boulēsis).

46

The Human Good

“choiceworthy by nature,” or “naturally fine and good.”69 The former include for example food, drink, and sex; the latter include honor, wealth, and family. This distinction between the fine and the necessary occurs in other passages as well.70 It is not quite the same as that between the fine and the useful, for although Aristotle clearly holds that wealth is a useful good, he presents it in VII.4 as “fine and excellent” rather than as necessary.71 Although wealth is essentially useful, its possession moves us beyond mere subsistence to a concern for the finer things in life, and in this respect it belongs to the sphere of the fine rather than to that of the necessary.72 That Aristotle treats wealth both as fine and as merely useful reveals, as clearly as anything in the Ethics, his sensitivity to ordinary perceptions of the good and his refusal simply to reject them in favor of his own theory. It is tempting, of course, to resolve the tension by suggesting that wealth is fine by courtesy insofar as it is useful for what is truly fine, and this proposal is no doubt nearly correct. The distinction between the fine and the necessary appears to be equivalent to that between merely living and living well, and this suggests that what is useful, or good instrumentally, might also be divided into what is useful for living, such as nourishment, and what is useful for living well, such as wealth.73 Yet I suspect that treating wealth only as 69. EN VII.4.1147b24–25, 1148a23–24, 29–30. 70. See p. 107. 71. For wealth as useful see I.5.1096a7, 7.1097a26–27. 72. Reeve 1992 (100–101) suggests that Aristotle must have in mind two different kinds of wealth, but there is no textual support for this. Nor is the use of “fine” in VII.4 explained by EE VII.15.1248b34–1249a16, where Aristotle says that natural goods such as wealth, good birth, and power are fine only for the good, as only they possess such goods worthily. For there he explicitly says that “the things that are not naturally fine, yet are naturally good, are fine for them” (1249a4–5), whereas in EN VII.4 he refers to these same things as “naturally fine and good.” We must recognize, I think, that Aristotle does not attempt to regiment his uses of the term kalos, but rather to put it to helpful and interesting uses in particular contexts. As he does so, certain larger themes emerge. Lorenz 2009a does not catch the significance of the distinction between the fine and the necessary in VII.4, but includes some helpful observations (84–86) concerning profit as fine and serious. 73. Broadie, in Broadie and Rowe 2002, similarly suggests that “ ‘desirable in themselves’ . . . must mean that their desirability is not a mere matter of biological necessity, but engages our distinctively human nature” (56).



The Human Good

47

useful sells Aristotle subtly short. Usefulness is only one way of tying two goods together, and we are about to find that Aristotle’s conceptual resources are considerably richer. Let us turn, then, to his explicit analysis of how lesser human goods are related to the human good itself. The Problem of Loose Goods

Aristotle clearly holds that happiness requires goods other than thoughtful activity; these include external goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul. It is sometimes debated whether he takes these goods to be parts of happiness or rather to support it from the outside, but we need not get stuck on this question here. Excellent activity has at least a privileged status within the human good; indeed, Aristotle first identifies such activity with happiness, and only afterward suggests that happiness requires other goods as well.74 Our question here is not what the term “happiness” signifies, but whether and to what extent Aristotle succeeds in unifying the field of human endeavor by portraying less central goods as integrally related to excellent activity.75 If he can show that excellent activity goes best with other goods, and indeed that it is the most natural point of reference for assessing their goodness, then it will make little difference what happiness technically includes. For the sake of convenience, however—including, to tip my own hand, convenience in handling the texts—I will use the phrase “the human good,” and occasionally also the word “happiness,” to refer to excellent activity itself.76 74. EN I.7.1098a16–18, 8.1099a29–32, 10.1101a14–16. 75. Lawrence 1997 rightly attributes to EN “a theory of focal value which employs a double focality” (72), the first focus being excellent activity in general and the second theoretical activity in particular (focality here is simply pros hen homonymy). For similar readings see Devereux 1981 (257), Halper 1995 (13–14), Tuozzo 1995a (130n4), Wilson 2000 (199–200). According to Annas 1989, 1993 (364–84), however, Aristotle’s view of the relation between happiness and external goods is deliberately unstable. Berti 1971, Robinson 1971, summarized in Wilson 2001 (195), discuss pros hen homonymy in EE. 76. Heinaman 2007 (221–22) provides an impressive list of quotations from EN, EE, and Pol. asserting that happiness just is a certain sort of activity; he reads EN I.8–12 as a defense of

48

The Human Good

I will have little to say in this section about two goods—excellence itself and the good person’s pleasure in excellent activity—whose tight connection with this activity sets them apart. I shall touch on excellence in chapter 2, and on pleasure in excellent activity in chapter 3. Here, however, I shall focus on goods less tightly connected with excellent action—typically, bodily and external goods that go beyond what is strictly necessary. Aristotle discusses these goods above all in I.8–11 and in X.7–8. The discussion in book X, however, compares the two main sorts of excellent activity with regard to their reliance on external goods. There Aristotle takes for granted the basic dependence of human happiness on other goods, going on to qualify and restrict this dependence in the case of contemplative activity. We shall therefore focus here on the earlier discussion. Aristotle’s remarks in these chapters are compressed, and the issues they raise difficult. Rather than offering a complete discussion, I will sketch a plausible reading that reinforces the centrality of excellent activity without treating bodily and external goods as merely useful goods, desirable only as means to an end. Chapters I.8–10 contain three similar, two-part assertions regarding the relation between happiness and other goods. In I.8 the reference is to external goods, but “external” appears to be used loosely so as to include goods of the body as well—physical beauty is explicitly mentioned. I.9 refers to goods other than happiness or excellent activity, and I.10 to good and bad fortune. Here are the texts: (I.8) It is these [best activities]—or one of them, the best—that we say happiness is. Happiness nonetheless appears to need external goods in addition, just as we said. For it is impossible, or not easy, to do fine things when one is unequipped for them, for [8A] we do many things through friends, wealth, and political power as through instruments. And [8B] blessedness is tarnished in those who are deprived [tētōmenoi rupainousi] of certain things, such as good birth, good children, or beauty. For one who is thoroughly ugly this identification. Cooper 2003 (283–87) uses the appeal to self-sufficiency in EN I.7 to show that happiness just is excellent (in particular, contemplative) activity.



The Human Good

49

in appearance, or ill-born, or solitary and childless, is not an altogether happy sort of person—let alone one whose children or friends are completely bad, or are good and have died. (I.9) We said that [happiness] is some sort of activity of soul according to excellence. Of the remaining goods, [9A] some necessarily belong to it, and [ 9B] some are its natural coworkers, and useful to it as instruments. (I.10) Living well or badly is not a matter of fortune; but human life needs fortune in addition, as we said, whereas activity according to excellence is decisive for happiness. . . . If many great things go well, they make life more blessed; for [10A] they naturally help adorn it, and [10B] one’s use of these things is itself fine and excellent. But when things turn out otherwise, they oppress and injure one’s blessedness.77

Despite their similarity, I am not convinced that these three passages make the same distinction. The passage from I.9 uses the logical phrase “necessarily belong” (huparchein anankaion) to distinguish goods without which excellent activity cannot exist at all from those that merely enhance it. Goods of the first sort are easy to list, including for example life, excellence itself, and the pleasure a good person takes in excellent activity.78 The passages from I.8 and I.10, in contrast, are concerned only with goods of the second type.79 They expand and 77. EN I.8.1099a29–b6, 9.1099b26–28, 10.1100b8–10, 25–29. 78. The ready availability of such a list undermines the argument of Roche 2014 (52–53) that the phrase “some necessarily belong” must refer to external goods considered as intrinsic components of happiness. Heinaman 2002 (134) also wants to affirm the necessity of external goods, which he considers extrinsic to happiness itself. He therefore takes “some necessarily belong” to mean that although virtuous activity is identical to happiness, it is so “only when the circumstances of life in which it occurs are good” (138). On this reading, “necessarily belong” is elliptical for something like “necessarily belong to happiness as conditions that, while remaining extrinsic to happiness itself, nevertheless determine whether the activity that we want to identify as happiness in fact counts—though without itself being any different—as an instance of happiness.” It is more straightforward to take Aristotle to mean simply that excellent activity itself—which he has already identified as happiness—cannot exist at all without certain other goods. In this case, the distinction between 9A and 9B corresponds to the distinction at PA I.1.640a33–b4 between (A) arguments that an animal cannot exist at all without a certain part and (B) arguments that a given part is beneficial, though not strictly necessary. 79. Kraut 1989 (253) notes that the distinction between 9A and 9B echoes the phrase “impossible or not easy” of I.8. Irwin 1985 (5) identifies 9A with 8B and 10A; I do not think he has taken seriously enough the logical phrase “necessarily belong” (huparchein anankaion),

50

The Human Good

improve on the brief formulation of I.9 by distinguishing two ways in which goods that are not strictly necessary for excellent activity enhance human life: first, by serving as instruments of excellent activity, and second, by adorning the life whose essential happiness is secured by excellent activity. On Aristotle’s view, I will argue, 9B is a reasonable approximation of the fuller account that includes both 8A/10B and 8B/10A; hence there is no tension between the passage from I.9 and those from I.8 and 10.80 Now given that all three texts highlight the good person’s ability to make use of external and bodily goods in performing excellent actions (8A, 9B, 10B)—and that it is reasonably clear what Aristotle means by this—the focus of an adequate interpretation must be the capacity of such goods to “adorn” a life of excellent action by their presence (10B), and tarnish it by their absence (8A).81 How might words like “adorn” and “tarnish” be meant to function? To adorn something is to enhance its beauty through the addition of decorative elements; to tarnish or defile is to prevent an underlying beauty from shining through.82 By way of analogy, therefore, we might begin by considering the decorative elements of a building. The decisive elements for excellence in architectural design are for which I.10’s “adorn” would not be a helpful equivalent. Likewise, Reeve 1992 (163–64) asserts with little argument that 8A is identical to 9A; Reeve 2012 (120–21) expands briefly, but without attention to the context of each passage. 80. If Aristotle has a longer and a shorter account, then Cooper 1994’s appeal to VII.13.1153b17–19 is not decisive. 81. Cooper 1994, followed by Brown 2007 (231–32), argues that clauses 8A and 8B must be taken to support the previous clause (“for it is impossible . . . unequipped for them”), so that the goods mentioned in 8B all turn out to be required for excellent activity. They differ as to the nature of the connection: Brown suggests that a good person’s grief at the absence of such goods is at least partly crippling (234–44)—see also Cashen 2012, Kraut 1989 (255– 59)—while Cooper suggests that such goods confer a range of opportunities helpful for the performance of great actions (298–99). Neither suggestion has direct support in the text, and Cooper appeals instead to the ancient commentators (301–2). Roche 2014 discusses the implausibility of such readings (48–51), making a strong case that in both I.8 and I.10 the role of external goods goes beyond their instrumental contribution to excellent activity (46–51, 53–55). Perhaps, then, the first and second instances of “for” (  gar) in I.8 should be taken as coordinate, the first giving a shorter and the second a longer version of Aristotle’s answer. In I.9 we have only the shorter version. 82. Kraut 2013 (235) notes that Aristotle’s aesthetic language throughout I.10 colors his use of “fine” in our present passage, telling in favor of an aesthetic interpretation of the fine.



The Human Good

51

function, structure, and their adaptation to the human and natural setting. Decorative elements should reflect and express these decisive ones, and when cheapness, bad taste, or poverty render this impossible, something has been lost. When, conversely, elaborate decoration adorns a flimsy or dysfunctional building, the effect is in a way less pleasing than if the underlying inadequacy had been more honestly represented. So also, we might speculate, the good person’s life is more pleasing when its essential beauty, achieved through excellence, is expressed and reflected in a commensurate use and enjoyment of bodily and external goods. Perhaps then, Aristotle thinks of the connection between the human good itself and bodily or external goods in terms of a fitting proportion between the two—and indeed there are a number of places in which he refers to just such a proportion. Earlier in I.10, for example, he writes of those who “are good, and who chance to have a life corresponding to their worth,” and in II.7 he praises the person who “is pained by those who do well unworthily.”83 These and similar formulations present the relation between an excellent life and other goods in terms of something like justice.84 The proportion or balance characteristic of justice—along with the beauty of excellent action, which is here the proportion’s decisive term—helps explain the aesthetic approach taken in I.8 and 10. Politics III.12, moreover, contains an example of distributive justice that fits our present need perfectly. In a distribution of flutes, we read, the best flautist—however poor or ill-born—should receive the best flute.85 If we combine this example with the image of the good person as musician that we have found in Ethics I.7, we find that those are most worthy of bodily and external goods who can make, as it were, the most beautiful music with them. 83. EN I.10.1100a24–25; II.7.1108b3–4; see also IV.1.1120b17–18, 3.1125a25–27. 84. See also Rhet. II.9.1387a26–b2: “Each good is not deserved by just anyone, for there is a certain proportion and something that is fitting [or “harmonious,” harmotton], as splendid arms [hoplōn kallos] are not fitting for the just but for the brave, and distinguished marriages not for the newly rich but for the well-born.” Similarly, perhaps, wealth in general befits those who have the general faculty of using it well, generosity (see IV.1.1120a4–8). 85. Pol. III.12.1282b31–1283a3.

52

The Human Good

These would be, of course, the persons who deliberate best concerning the use of such goods, and these in turn would be persons equipped with excellence. This solution achieves two things. First, it places the excellent use of bodily and external goods at the center of the discussion, as Aristotle himself does throughout the text: the basic way in which bodily and external goods are connected with excellent actions is that good people use the former to accomplish the latter. This connection is achieved, however, not by reducing the value of such goods to their utility, but by setting up a proportion between their power to enhance human life and the good person’s ability to use and enjoy them well. When this proportion is achieved, the result is beautiful: excellent action, we might say, is realized in fitting materials; rationality becomes visible on a fitting scale. A moment ago, I expressed the proportion between thoughtful activity and bodily or external goods by suggesting that when the two go together, excellent action is realized in fitting materials. The metaphor of an artist’s materials reveals, I think, the kind of goodness Aristotle attributes to bodily and external goods as human goods. Such materials may well have a beauty of their own, that is, but this beauty is nothing compared with what can be achieved in and through them.86 They are transformed and ennobled through rational use and enjoyment, as body is ennobled by soul. As with an artist’s materials, however, their misuse can ruin the work. Our final task is to explore this ambiguity, which is in fact a recurring theme in the Ethics. To express the ambiguous status of goods other than excellent activity itself, Aristotle often describes them as “good simply.” This means that when we refer to them in general terms, without further context or qualification, we must speak of them as good rather than as 86. Cooper 2003 (302–4); for similar analogies to matter and form see Halper 1995 (9), Polansky 2014 (4). Roche 2014 defends a similar position, but insists that external goods are part of happiness strictly speaking. Roche refers helpfully to Pol. VII.12.1332a7–27, which says that calling external goods the causes of happiness is like calling the lyre rather than the musician’s art the cause of beautiful music (42).



The Human Good

53

bad or neutral. Because the most obvious of these goods are also those with which justice is concerned, a number of these passages come in book V.87 Aristotle introduces the phrase in V.1 as follows: Since the unjust person is greedy, he is concerned with goods—not all goods, but those subject to good and bad fortune. These are always good simply [speaking], but for a given person they are not always good. Now human beings pray for these and pursue them, yet they should not. They should pray rather that what is good simply will also be good for themselves, but they should choose what is good for themselves.88

In V.6 the phrase occurs twice in passing.89 In V.9, Aristotle has a bit more to say: Justice is found among those who share in the things that are good simply, but who admit of excess and deficiency with regard to such goods. For some persons, such as the gods, perhaps, no excess is possible. For others, who are incurably bad, not even the smallest portion is helpful; everything does harm. But for others, such things are good up to a point. Justice is therefore something human.90

Now in these passages the phrase “good simply” cannot mean absolutely or definitively good, for according to V.1 the goods with which justice is concerned are “always” good simply, while according to V.9 they are good for human beings only “up to a point.” Rather, things that are good simply in this sense are what we might call “loose goods”: though promising in themselves, they continually call for integration into a life that is good as a whole, and without this integration they often prove destructive.91 In X.8, for example, Aristotle notes that external goods can sometimes be hindrances to a life of contemplation.92 87. Kenny 1978 (64–66) associates the phrase “good simply” with the argument of EE in particular, to which EN V–VII may originally have belonged. At least in their present form, however, these books are clearly integral to EN as well. 88. EN V.1.1129b1–6. 89. EN V.6.1134a34, b4. 90. EN V.9.1137a26–30. 91. See Irwin 1991 (389). 92. EN X.8.1178b3–5.

54

The Human Good

To call goods of this sort good simply, then, is to view them in light of their prospective integration into a fine life rather than in light of their destructive potential. This seems to involve two commitments. First, as Aristotle repeatedly insists, the measure of all human goods is the good person.93 Because the good person uses loose goods well, their destructive potential is for him marginal. In addition, however, there ought to be something about the goods themselves that leads the good person to view them primarily as “coworkers, and useful,” rather than as destructive or neutral. They are genuinely if not decisively good, and if possible a good life ought to include them.94 It is easy enough to see how this is the case, although their manner of being good differs from one to the next.95 Some goods, such as natural excellence and cleverness, contribute directly to excellence in the full sense. Others, such as health, fitness, strength, and beauty, are good conditions of the animal body as such; they are to the body what excellence is to the soul. Others are the pleasures we take in our senses and in recreational activity; these are desirable in themselves as pleasures, they complete and adorn activities that are natural to us, and they refresh us for acts of excellence.96 Some constitute our external “substance” or livelihood (ousia), whereby we rise above mere 93. EN II.3.1104b30–34; III.4.1113a22–b1; X.5.1176a3–29. 94. Cf. Broadie 1991 (376) on EE. Some treatments, like that of Cooper 1975 (127–30), seem to read “good simply” as “good for the good person.” The passages I have just quoted do not seem to support this reading, as things that are “simply always good” are not in fact always good—good in just any amount, circumstances, and so forth—for the good person. Irwin 1985 (228) reads the phrase as I have, as does Broadie and Rowe 2002 (159, 337). 95. Cf. Wilson 2000 on goods desirable for their own sake: “Each of the per se goods is not just a means to εὐδαιμονία in some vague sense, but also enters into a very precise relationship with εὐδαιμονία and with the terms in which εὐδαιμονία is defined. . . . In general, then, the per se goods may be said to contribute to a single end through a variety of focal relationships without being means to that end” (199–200). This diversity of relations between the human good itself and other human goods preserves, I think, what is insightful in the assessment of Segvic 2004: “The plurality and variety of goodness is a datum too robust to be explained by any single factor account” (154). 96. Aristotle assumes the desirability of pleasure in II.3.1104b30–31 and throughout EN; he defends pleasure against its detractors in VII.11–14 and X.1–5. For pleasure as completing and adorning natural activities and as refreshing us for acts of excellence see X.4–6.



The Human Good

55

subsistence in a way that is both useful and fine.97 Some enlarge and strengthen the individual through relationships of honor or love. In short, the things that are “good simply” are the already rich palette from which each of us must form a beautiful life. For many readers of the text, of course, such a sketch is interesting only insofar as it opens into a detailed, practical assessment of each distinct good and of the places it may reasonably occupy in a human life.98 The analytical tools or schemata of analogy and of pros hen homonymy, however, provide interested readers with another avenue for reflection. It is true that the goods we seek, including those that are “good simply” for human beings, have “distinct and differing accounts just insofar as they are goods.”99 It is nevertheless possible to live thoughtfully and indeed reasonably in light of the various ways in which these goods are intertwined. Precisely as fine, pleasant, or useful, for example, each good is proportionate to the way in which we desire it. Goods and pleasures of the body, moreover, are proportionate to those of the soul (II.2, 4); and it is not too unreasonable to extend this proportion to external goods and the pleasures of ownership, as we live in and through such goods. At the same time, useful goods as such are called good in view of fine and pleasant ones. Finally, most of the things we call good are in fact loose goods: materials for living well rather than the thing itself. As loose goods, such things admit of excess and deficiency, that is, of enjoyment in the wrong amount, at the wrong time, in relation to the wrong person, and so forth.100 Yet they also admit of the mean— of becoming, through proportionate contributions to the work of living, coworkers of a beauty greater than their own. Through their relation to one good, therefore—the thoughtful inworking of a good human being—such things become simply bad or good in another 97. See pp. 124–25 for Aristotle’s use of this ambiguity of the term ousia. 98. Concrete attempts to distinguish the relations of particular other goods to excellent activity itself may be found for example in Roche 1989 (117–18), Crisp 1994. 99. EN I.6.1096b24–25. 100. See for example EN II.6.1106b14–28.

56

The Human Good

and more final sense.101 We find this second sense in VII.11, where Aristotle explains that one who seeks political wisdom must study pleasure and pain, as he “is the architect of the end by referring to which [  pros ho blepontes] we call each thing simply bad or good.”102 In these words, without technicalities or distractions, Aristotle uses the language of pros hen homonymy to point toward a single end as the one good through which other human goods are good.103 T owa r d t h e H u m a n G o o d

Human beings do, therefore, pursue many goods of which no common account can be given. Yet most of these are loose goods, and loose goods cease to be good when pursued in the wrong way. Such 101. I want to affirm with Kraut 1989 (162–70, 212n10) that things other than excellent activity may be good in themselves, and with Lear 2004 (41n67) that they are finally good only insofar as they are ordered to excellent activity. Certain physiological functions and sensual pleasures, for example, may be good in themselves for the human being qua animal, but not for the human being qua human except insofar as they are informed by reason. 102. EN VII.11.1152b2–3. The adverb “simply” should be read differently here than in the passages cited earlier. In book V Aristotle needed a way to characterize the goods with which justice is concerned as basically good (“good simply”) despite the fact that in particular cases they can be harmful. In VII.11 he needs a way to characterize such goods as finally and definitively good (“good simply”) through their proper relationship to the human good. For happiness as setting an appropriate limit on the goods of fortune see also Reeve 1992 (121–22). 103. Recent major discussions of pros hen homonymy require a causal relationship between the core or primary and the dependent or secondary homonym. Thus Shields 1999 requires that the dependent homonym stand in one of Aristotle’s four causal relations to the core homonym, either as cause or as effect thereof (113, 124–25). Ward 2008 (79–86) modifies this account by substituting exemplary for formal causality (following Cajetan) and requiring that the core homonym be causally prior to the dependent (85). Ward’s subsequent discussion, however, seems to explain away the requirement of causal priority in terms that move her closer to Shields. The requirement of a causal relationship between goods is clearly met whenever an excellent action has a complex structure in which one good serves as an extrinsic means to another. Consider, however, the rather different case in which the temperate person eats a fig for enjoyment. Here the fig-as-pleasurable need not be an extrinsic means to some further good; it may simply be given a reasonable place in a human life. The resulting relation between pleasure and the act of temperance is remarkably like that between matter and form in Met. VII.17–VIII: the rationality involved in eating temperately is the cause of a potentially reasonable pleasure’s being actually reasonable. This too implies a means-end relation, insofar as the potential is for the sake of the actual.



The Human Good

57

goods are good simply in the sense that taken in themselves they are best thought of as promising rather than perilous, but they are not good simply in the sense of being determinately good in every case. When they are determinately good, moreover, they derive this goodness from their connection with a single good, the one that Aristotle identifies in I.7 as the human good. If this were not the case, finally, it would be considerably more difficult to insist on the privileged status of the human good: that other things are called good in view of one central good (  pros hen) solidifies the status of this good as the human good itself. Now up to this point, I have avoided referring to the special status of contemplative activity within Aristotle’s account of the best life. Rather, I have been attending first to his general description of the human good as excellent activity, and then to the ways in which other things are spoken of as good with respect to excellent activity as it would ordinarily be understood. This approach echoes Aristotle’s own decision to postpone discussing the life of contemplation until book VI, and then to set it aside once more until the end of book X. Although this strategy has created significant difficulties for readers, it also enables him to exhibit and encourage a concern for the life of reason in the form in which this concern is most likely to prove attractive.104 When he finally draws back the curtain in X.7–8, we find that he has meant this concern to be in an important way subversive. What exactly, though, are the manner and the result of the subversion? At this early point in our inquiry, we can at least say that contemplative activity is not merely one of the goods that serve as practical reason’s raw materials in crafting its own work, a human life. Contemplation is, rather, the one actionable good greater than good action itself.105 Whereas most other goods, not being rational in their 104. Cf. Broadie 1991 regarding the state of affairs in book VI: “more conceptual analysis of our current notion, vague as it is, of practical wisdom is not going to reveal that practical wisdom stands in the suggested relation to thēoria” (207). Broadie does not recognize that the ground is already shifting within VI itself, but she is right that the consequences of the shift are not revealed and established until book X. 105. Cf. Broadie 1991 (377) on EE.

58

The Human Good

own right, must be informed and ennobled by practical reason to form part of a good human life, practical reason must in turn serve the life of wisdom.106 What does this service imply? First, Aristotle cannot mean that the life of contemplation subverts and overthrows the life of practical reason. The nature of prudence itself renders this impossible, for choices that fail to respect the centrality of wisdom to a good human life are not prudent choices. Neither, therefore, are they brave, temperate, generous, magnanimous, or just.107 This might, of course, be only a Pyrrhic victory for these ordinary excellences, for the centrality of wisdom might reshape them beyond recognition. At the end of the day this does not appear to be Aristotle’s view, for when he says in X.8 that the philosopher “chooses to do the things corresponding to excellence” of character, he appears to be reassuring us that the philosopher remains a decent and trustworthy person. As a matter of principle, however, the final shape of the ordinary excellences will depend on the wise person’s assessment of the various goods, other than wisdom itself, with which these excellences are concerned. This assessment is itself, of course, a matter for practical reason: the practical reason of one who considers not just human affairs but all things natural and divine. Our question, then, may be put as follows. If it is to serve wisdom at all, prudent deliberation must be informed by a keen awareness of contemplative activity as a human good.108 Nor does this awareness suddenly render all choices elementary, for contemplation itself is in an important sense a loose good: if we philosophize today to the neglect of income and health, we shall not be philosophizing tomorrow. It is unlike other loose goods in the respect already noted, namely, that it is a good of reason in its own right, not merely through the ennobling power of prudence.109 Indeed, contemplation itself confers 106. EN VI.13.1145a6–11. 107. EN VI.13.1144b32–1145a2. 108. Cooper 2003 (304), 2010 (261–62). 109. Price 2011 claims that “eudaimonia’s primary role is as the final and inherent end of



The Human Good

59

dignity on other loose goods by providing them with their noblest end.110 Contemplation cannot, however, exist without prudence. How, then, will awareness of contemplation as the highest human good reshape the prudent person’s assessments of the goodness of prudence itself and of the many other goods with which prudence is concerned? To answer this question—among others—we now need a closer look at the human good. Until now we have been considering this good mainly by way of comparison, through analogy and pros hen homonymy. We have compared it with the works of artisans, organs, and other living things, and we have singled it out as the good through which, as its instruments and adornments, other human goods are called good. We must now consider this good in its own right, attending more closely to the end that is thoughtful activity and to its status as the human good. each deliberate human action” (41), so that “any choice, or chosen action, ipso facto aims at eudaimonia” (39). This description sets us the task of understanding how contemplative activity might serve as the most perfect fulfillment of a purpose inherent in the act of choosing as such: it is not enough to say with Price that contemplation is a kind of happiness simply because it is contemplation (71; for Price’s attempt to make sense of the place Aristotle assigns to contemplation see also 76–80). In the next two chapters I shall explore how Aristotle prepares us in EN IX.9 (see also IX.12) and X.4–5 to understand the place of contemplation in a life initially defined by a commitment to excellence in character. 110. Cooper 1975 (134–35, 140–43) appears to say that according to EE the activity of wisdom is the only loose good irrelevant to determining which actions are morally virtuous; see however the gradual reconsideration in Cooper 1987 and 2003.

60

The Human Good

The Good Human

2

THE GOOD HUMAN

Aristotle specifies in Ethics I.6 that the good we seek must be “something a human being can do or acquire.”1 Yet this requirement is too liberal, for an acquisition or possession (ktēton) is typically distinct from the one who acquires or possesses it. Farm animals and land are possessions, for instance, but they are straightforwardly distinct and hence easily separable from the one who owns them. In contrast, happiness is “something abiding, and in no way easy to change.”2 The human good is not, in fact a possession in the ordinary sense at all: it is not merely the good that a human being can have, but is rather the good that a human being can be.3 1. EN I.6.1096b34. 2. EN I.10.1100b2–3. 3. This point emerges with particular clarity throughout Garver 2006,

61

This result is already implicit in the claim that happiness is a certain kind of life, but it comes into its own only gradually.4 At the heart of its maturation is Aristotle’s discussion of friendship in books VIII–IX, which reframes the human good in two important ways. First, it concretizes this good in the person of a good friend, which in turn makes it possible for knowledge and love of the good to become knowledge and love of oneself as good. Second, it turns I.7’s claim about the human work from a dialectical commonplace, albeit one grounded in experience, to an incisive self-portrait of the human substance as one whose very being is to perceive and think. This selfportrait also forms an important step in Aristotle’s discussion of the life of contemplation. Books VIII–IX depend thoroughly, of course, on the account of excellence that occupies books II–VI. I shall therefore begin by considering how Aristotle’s general account of excellence in character situates the human substance in terms of affections and above all actions that are deeply, intimately its own. I shall then examine how, through excellence in character, human reason renders our affections and actions rationally determinate. Because this rationality is its own end, Aristotle’s account of excellence in character already points to the human good as a good internal to reason itself,5 and this conclusion will gain weight and substance as we turn to practical reason and its excelalthough Garver focuses not on the relation between being and having but on that between being and doing good. 4. It has sometimes been asked (Glassen 1957, Wilkes 1978) whether the function argument establishes what is good for a human being or merely what a good human being is, where these need not be the same. Remember, however, that the function argument is designed in part to build on the common and plausible view that happiness is living well and doing well (I.4.1095a19–20, 8.1098b20–22). That living a certain kind of life may be good for us is plausible on the face of it; the difficulty comes only with the specification that this life involves acting consistently according to excellence. As Crisp 2014 (242) points out, making this account of the good life attractive is largely a task for Aristotle’s conception of the fine or noble; contrast the view of Hutchinson 1986 (68; see also Irwin 1978, esp. 260–62), according to which Aristotle defends his candidate for the good life by appealing to the objectivity of the human good as established in his philosophy of nature. 5. Hutchinson 1986 rightly describes this as a form of rationalism (51; see also 66–72); see also Irwin 1978, esp. 260–62.

62

The Good Human

lence. Considering human life as good insofar as it is rationally determinate will also prepare us to explore not only the fine or beautiful in chapter 3, but also determinacy as an aspect of the goodness of being in chapter 5. Following this brief discussion of practical reason, finally, I shall consider how Aristotle’s presentation of human beings and their work develops and matures through his discussion of friendship. Excellence i n Ch aracter

Aristotle’s account of excellence in character is well known, and we require only a selective treatment. I shall first consider the actions and affections with which excellence of this sort is concerned, focusing on their connection with the substance to which they belong. I shall then turn to the account of excellence itself found in II.6, focusing on the way in which excellence renders human living, and hence the human substance, a well-formed, determinate reality. Substance, Action, and Affection

Immediately before attempting in II.5–6 to define excellence in character, Aristotle pauses in II.4 to reflect on what it means to act temperately, for example, or justly. He does so by examining more closely the proportion between excellence and art, and in particular the connection between the good person or the artisan and each one’s work. Regarding the artisan he makes two points: first, to be an artisan one must produce a work of the right sort through one’s own knowledge; second, “things that come to be through the arts have their goodness [to eu] in themselves; it suffices then that these come to be in a certain condition [  pōs echonta].”6 In short, to be an artisan is to produce through knowledge works whose goodness can be assessed quite independently of one’s own connection with them. We call an artisan good, therefore, not because of who or what the artisan is, but because 6. EN II.4.1105a23–28.



The Good Human

63

he is reliably connected with something else that we consider good: the artisan as artisan is a useful or beneficial good, a good not in the category of the what-it-is, or substance, but of relation (to pros ti). It is deeply important, therefore, that excellence in character is in this regard so different from art. Here is the relevant passage: But the works that come about through excellence are justly or temperately done not just because the works themselves are in a certain condition [  pōs echēi], but because in addition the one who does them is in a certain condition when he acts. First, he knows what he is doing. Second, he chooses to do it, and chooses it for its own sake. And finally, standing firm and unchanged, he acts.7

The connection between a good human being and his activity is so intimate that the quality of the action depends on the condition of the agent in performing it. In III.5, struggling to express what it means to act by choice, Aristotle selects another comparison: “a human being,” he writes, is “a begetter of actions just as of children.”8 His discussion of parenthood in VIII.12 fills out the metaphor: “Parents are fond of their children as being something of themselves,” for “what comes out of something belongs [oikeion] to that from which it is—as tooth, hair, and the like to the one that has them.”9 Yet II.4’s three conditions for excellent action reveal how badly both the direct and the indirect metaphor— action as child, action as growing from one’s own flesh—limp. A good human being’s knowledge, at the moment of choice, of a thoughtfully chosen action is perhaps the most intimate form of self-knowledge conceivable.10 As chosen, such an action flows by way of deliberation from a wish that corresponds to one’s own conception of the good (III.2–4).11 As chosen for itself rather than for its consequences, it flows from a conception not merely of the good that one can possess 7. EN II.4.1105a28–33. 8. EN III.5.1113b17–19. 9. EN VIII.12.1161b18, 22–23. 10. See the fuller discussion in Garver 2006 (32–36). 11. Meyer 2011 (24–27).

64

The Good Human

or enjoy as a result of one’s action, but of the good that one can be through one’s own inworking. Such an action is chosen, finally, because one’s character has been deliberately formed on the basis of just such a self-conception. In short, the agent puts into such a choice— and, if things work out, into the action itself—nothing less than himself.12 The human good is the good that I am when I am, in complete fulfillment, the very thing that I am.13 Although excellence is primarily a matter of action (  praxis), Aristotle specifies in both II.6 and III.1 that “excellence has to do with [both] affections and actions.” In II.5, moreover, he contrasts affection or feeling (  pathos) itself with the mere power (dunamis, dunasthai) to be affected (  paschein), thereby setting up affection too as a kind of activity or inworking. Excellence is therefore concerned with two ways of being active, pathos and praxis.14 Whereas excellent actions are directly chosen, however—according to II.6, excellence in character is “a condition for choosing [hexis proairetikē]”—we are affected or have feelings “unchoosingly.”15 An affection, then, is something that 12. Broadie 1991 (84–90), Garver 2006 (57–60). 13. Cooper 2013 (269) denies that Aristotle considers adult human beings responsible for what they do in ways that children and animals are not. Cooper also rightly insists that Aristotle’s theory of responsibility is a theory of “the causal responsibility of agents for the actions that they do, and therefore cause” (273). If both claims are correct, it is perplexing that in EN VI.2 Aristotle states that “sensation is a source of no action,” adducing as support the fact that “beasts have sensation, but have no share in action” (1139a19–20). Likewise, in EE II.8 he writes that nonhuman animals “do not have reason and contrary desire, but live by desire; but in a human being there are both, at a certain age, at which also we assign them actions [to prattein]. For we do not say that a child acts [  prattein], or a beast, but that which has reached the point of acting by calculation” (1224a26–30). At minimum, therefore, adult humans and children or beasts are agents in different senses. It is true that much of what beasts and children do is hekousion (the translation “voluntary” is misleading), but this does not imply that everything hekousion is produced in the same way or that the agent is responsible in the same manner. For stronger views of moral responsibility in Aristotle see Irwin 1980a, Broadie 1991 (124–28), Meyer 2011 (19–24), Bobzien 2014. 14. EN II.6.1106b24–25; III.1.1109b30; II.5.1105b19–25. Leighton 1982 provides an excellent overview of Aristotle on pathos. For the cognitive role of the affections see also Fortenbaugh 1978, Burnyeat 1980; for the emotions and excellence see Sherman 1995. More recently, Dow 2011 analyzes affection as intentional, representational pleasure or pain; see also Dow 2014 and the earlier work in Cooper 1996a. 15. EN II.6.1106b36, 5.1106a3. For discussion of the former see Lorenz 2009 (196).



The Good Human

65

happens to us rather than something we do; we choose our feelings only indirectly, by choosing the corresponding actions and so gradually choosing excellence or vice, which are conditions for feeling as well as for action.16 Aristotle’s account of excellence is thus concerned primarily with what we do—happiness is “a certain [life] of action”— but secondarily with how we are affected by the things that make up our lives.17 Note that for Aristotle, it is not simply a matter of experience that a good human life involves both acting well and being affected well, for natural substances in general are defined both by their actions or works and by their affections. Thus in On the Heavens III.8 he writes that “the decisive differences among bodies are found in their affections, works, and powers—for everything that exists by nature, we say, has its works, affections, and powers.”18 Because powers are either for acting—that is, for some work or effect—or for being affected, Aristotle’s understanding of the nature of the elements turns out to be proportionate to his understanding of the human soul. It is by acting and being affected, then, that human beings inhabit the world as substances of a certain sort.19 Making Life Determinate

Action and affection are intimately linked. Precisely as a condition for choosing, therefore, excellence in character must also be a condition by which the soul is disposed well or badly with respect to its proper affections and to the pleasures and pains that accompany them.20 16. See the fuller discussion in Kosman 1980 (109–15). 17. EN I.7.1098a3. Rorty 1994 provides a similar contrast: whereas character “sets a pattern of activity that does not require any further external causal intervention . . . the motivational force of πάθη derives from changes brought about by external causes” (69). 18. DC III.8.307b19–22. 19. See the excellent discussion in Kosman 1980 (103–5, 115); see also Reeve 2012 (140– 41), 1992 (102–3). Heidegger 2002, summarized in Oele 2012, may not be entirely reliable as a guide to Aristotle, but provides an intuitive sense of the ontological significance of pathos. 20. For affection see EN II.5.1105b26–27, for pleasure and pain II.3.1104b3–28 with 5.1105b21–23.

66

The Good Human

That, however, the soul even needs to be put into a good condition for being affected is from a certain point of view puzzling. Affections orient us toward striving and flight through pleasure and pain, yet human pleasure is an odd case, as Aristotle observes in X.5: Each animal seems to have its own pleasure, as also its own work; its pleasure is the one that corresponds to its inworking. . . . The pleasures of animals different [heterōn] in form themselves differ [diapherousin] in form, and it is reasonable to expect that the pleasures of the same animals will not differ [adiaphorous]. Yet in the case of human beings, at least, we find no small variation. The same things delight some, yet pain others, and what is painful and hateful to some is pleasant and beloved to others.21

This variety in human tastes entails that for us, unlike other animals, pleasure is not even in general a reliable guide to well-being.22 Whereas other animals attain their good by nature, needing only to secure what is pleasant and avoid what is painful, human beings manifestly do not. Many animals, of course, rely also on imitation and experience to secure their well-being; indeed, there is often much to be learned about what is pleasant and painful and about how best to secure the one and avoid the other. Yet although nonhuman animals are like us in that they “share in things that are good simply, but admit of excess and deficiency in these,” they are typically able to avoid the problem of loose goods simply by pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.23 If human beings are to live well, in contrast, we must address the problem for ourselves by reflecting in light of experience on the nature of the good; we must then create through our choices the healthy ways of being affected that we lack by nature.24 From this rather negative point of view, the problem to be solved by excellence in character resides in the indeterminacy of the materials that make up a human life, and in the indeterminacy of our natural 21. EN X.5.1176a3–5, 8–12. 22. II.3, 9.1109b7–12. 23. See for example HA VIII.1.589a5–9, as well as the rather ambiguous EN VII.13.1153b25–32. 24. Pol. I.2.1253a7–18, EN III.3.1113a2–4.



The Good Human

67

responses to these materials. This indeterminacy has at least three aspects, each of which is well known to readers of the Ethics. First, human beings desire a large number of diverse goods (the problem of many goods). Second, these goods can be desired, pursued, and chosen in various degrees and ways (the problem of loose goods). Finally, the lives into which these goods must be incorporated unfold in changing circumstances over which the individuals concerned often have little control.25 Aristotle’s proposal for dealing with these three indeterminacies is also well known.26 First, he presents one or more excellences to govern each of the goods—and one excellence, bravery for the bad things— regarding which human beings most often go wrong.27 These excellences are as follows: for the bad, bravery (III.6–9); for pleasure in the basic necessities of animal life, temperance (III.10–12); for wealth, generosity and magnificence (IV.1–2); for honor, magnanimity, moderate ambition, and mildness (IV.3–5); for life with others, the three minor social excellences (IV.6–8), justice (V), and friendship (VIII– IX).28 Second, each of these excellences is meant to govern the degree to which we desire and delight in the good—or avoid and are pained by the bad—with which it is concerned.29 Finally, this shaping of desires and pleasures, aversions and pains, is accomplished by linking our habitual ways of being affected by the good or bad in question with the rational power, cultivated through experience and reflection, to perceive this good or bad as a potential constituent of particular concrete situations within the context of one’s life as a whole.30 All this is summarized in the definition of excellence that Aristotle pro25. EN III.3.1112a18–b11; VI.1.1139a6–8, 5.1140a30–b4, 7.1141b8–14. 26. For a similar sketch see Curzer 1996 (130). 27. Reeve 1992 (169–70), Sparshott 1994 (145), Reeve 2013 (97). 28. See also the overview in II.7; Curzer 2012 offers a reading of EN that emphasizes Aristotle’s treatment of particular virtues. 29. II.2.1104a11–27, 6.1106a26–b35, 7.1108a14–16, 8.1108b11–26, 9.1109a20–30. Losin 1987 provides helpful guidance for avoiding simplistic interpretations of the mean; see also Urmson 1973, Broadie 1991 (95–103), Curzer 1996, Hursthouse 1999, Müller 2004. Gottlieb 2009 offers a reading of EN as a whole that emphasizes the mean. 30. See III.2–3; VI.5, 7.1141b8–23, 8.1142a11–30.

68

The Good Human

poses in II.6: “excellence is a condition for choosing, being in a mean with respect to us determined [hōrismenēi] by reason and as [hōs] the prudent person would determine it.”31 According to this definition, the task of reason in shaping character is to “determine” or “mark out” (horizein) a balanced response to the goods and bads, pleasures and pains, by which the soul is naturally affected. Intriguingly, moreover, Aristotle is not content to present the doctrine of the mean in purely psychological or practical terms; rather, he highlights its origin in the Pythagorean table of opposites and hence also, by implication, its connection with Platonic dialogues such as Philebus and Statesman:32 There are many ways to go wrong—for the bad [to gar kakon] belongs to the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans guessed, the good to the limited—but only one way to go right. It follows that the one is easy, the other difficult: it is easy to miss one’s target, hard to hit it. For these reasons as well, then, excess and deficiency belong to vice [kakias], the mean to excellence: for people are “noble simply, but bad in every which way.”33

Because, that is, excess and deficiency cover a limitless range of possibilities, whereas the mean is limited, anyone who shares a certain Pythagorean intuition will want to identify them as bad and good respectively. At first glance, Aristotle’s version of this intuition may seem a bit shaky. To be sure, if one has already selected a certain action, outcome, or condition as good, lumping its alternatives together as bad, then the former will appear limited and the latter limitless. The same would result, however, from any other selection of one alternative as good. Perhaps, then, the intuition is rather that when we do find ourselves—on whatever grounds—dividing a certain set of alternatives into the good and the bad, we tend to find that the range 31. EN II.6.1106b36–1107a2. I read hōs with the manuscripts rather than hōi with Aspasius; however, most manuscripts also have hōrismenē (modifying “condition”) rather than hōrismenēi (modifying “mean”). 32. For these dialogues see notes 195n2, 215n59, and 220n76; for the importance of means in Aristotle’s natural science see Reeve 2012 (95–96). 33. EN II.6.1106b28–35.



The Good Human

69

of alternatives we judge to be bad is open-ended and multiform by comparison with its contrary.34 In the present case, Aristotle specifies only that the good is marked out by reason as exercised by one who is prudent. He is confident that when presented with a reasonably determinate, concrete question about how one should feel or act, such a person will mark out a reasonably determinate, concrete answer as correct and good. He is confident moreover that the response given by this person will, as rational, stand on a different footing than do all other possible responses, which will then appear to form a kind of shapeless miscellany by comparison. It is important to keep in mind, finally, that the rationality distinctive of the good choice is not merely instrumental. Happiness is not found through the use of reason to secure something we take to be good on other grounds; rather, happiness just is the activity of a rational being according to the excellence proper to reason. Because this activity is happiness, the good person chooses it because of itself—because, that is, of the rationality that makes it good and sets it apart from other possibilities.35 Return, then, to the situation of human beings with regard to loose goods—the goods that are raw materials for a reasonable human life. Without reason as a guide, our desires for these goods have exactly the unlimited character that Aristotle attributes to vice. They tickle our fancy to one degree or another, depending on a set of more or less random variables such as parentage, upbringing, culture, youthful impressions, mood, setting, and the desires and tastes of our immediate associates. A purely instrumental reason would not change this; instead, the variability of human affections implies that a purely instrumental reason would end up serving an infinite miscellany of 34. Sparshott 1994 (98). 35. See the discussions of the function argument (34–43) and of II.4’s comparison between excellence and art (63–64); see also Kraut 1989 (326–27). Rogers 1994 (299) makes a similar point in terms of the noble (kalon), drawing on EE and Pol. In the passages that Rogers considers Aristotle appears to use kalos more restrictively than in EN, but I see no underlying difference in doctrine; see 47b72 for his happy failure to regiment his uses of this term.

70

The Good Human

human whims. Human nature simply does not have the determinacy required to order human life on its own. As a result, we must choose between crafting a life in which reason itself truly “rules and leads” and submitting to the blind tyranny of chance.36 What I have presented in negative terms as the problem of loose goods thus turns out to be the opportunity cost of rationality. The randomness and malleability of human affection creates the space within which reason can and must become a principle—and not just a subordinate principle. If the human good is to exist, reason cannot live as a mere coworker to unrationalized affection; rather, our affections must take their cues from reason, which must rule on its own terms. For Aristotle, of course, the primacy of reason does not imply any opposition between reason and nature, except insofar as “nature” can signify the particular set of inclinations with which a given human being happens to be born. This is not, however, nature in the primary Aristotelian sense, according to which nature is always opposed to chance.37 Nor does the required primacy of reason imply that human reason, at least, is independent of experience, or that it has nothing to learn from the nature and affections of the human animal. This is clear from Aristotle’s more general understanding, expressed within the Ethics itself, of pleasure in animals. In both VII.13 and X.2, he argues for the basic goodness of pleasure by appealing to the fact that “all, both beasts and humans, pursue pleasure,” and to the endoxon from I.1 that “that at which all things aim is good.” In both cases, however, he insists on placing the pursuit of pleasure within a broader context. Here are the lines in question, followed by an excerpt from On the Soul II.4 for comparison: (VII.13) Since neither nature nor the best condition either is or seems to be the same for all, neither do all pursue the same pleasure—although all pursue 36. For reason see EN X.7.1177a14–15; for chance cf. Met. XII.10.1075a19–23. 37. For the former sense see EN VI.13.1144b1–17; VII.5.1148b15–31; X.9.1179b7–11; and discussion in Annas 1996 (esp. 734–37). For the latter see I.9.1099b21–22, along with Phys. II.1, 4–6, 8.



The Good Human

71

pleasure. Yet perhaps they do pursue the same pleasure, even if it is not the one that they themselves suppose or would say. For all things have by nature something divine. (X.2) If only unthinking beings strove for pleasures, there might be something in what is said [namely, that pleasures are not good]; but if those with forethought do so as well, what is there left to say? Yet perhaps even in the lowly [  phaulois] there is some natural good, superior to [what they have] through themselves, which pursues its [or “their”: tou] own good. (DA II.4) The most natural of works for living things (those that are complete, and not disabled, or spontaneous in their coming-to-be) is to produce another like themselves—an animal an animal, a plant a plant—so as to share, as far as they are able, in the eternal and divine. For all things strive for this, and do for the sake of this whatever they do by nature.38

The passages from the Ethics are mere hints, but both suggest that although pleasure may be psychologically ultimate for a given animal or human being, pursuit of pleasure also serves a higher or more absolute end. This end is presumably agreeable to reason, so that reason can rule in part by bringing to completion what nature has begun. Our affections, being naturally amenable to reason, provide a rough framework within which practical reason can work.39 38. EN VII.13.1153b29–32; X.2.1173a2–5; DA II.4.415a26–b2. For questions about the interpretation of the first passage see Rapp 2009 (225–29). 39. It is sometimes asked whether the function argument alone is capable of grounding Aristotle’s more specific conclusions about excellence or whether the latter depend on a more robust and therefore more suspect metaphysical teleology: see Lawrence 2001 (466–67). According to Annas 1993 (143–48), Aristotle fails to explain the ethical role of nature, although he has “all the materials needed to produce an account such as the Stoics were to produce, in which humans develop from mere nature to the ideal which is natural for them, by a process of development which it is itself natural for humans to go through” (148). This failure may be a function of his rather un-Stoic refusal to subordinate natural science and metaphysics to ethics. EN brings us to the point at which wisdom can emerge as the highest good, but only those committed to the life of wisdom can acquire the understanding of nature, of soul, and indeed of being that would enable them fully to explain the role of nature in the life of excellence. At the same time, Aristotle’s ethical works surely assume as plausible any number of particular claims about the nature of the human animal. If he takes nature to be normative only insofar as it conforms to the intrinsic requirements of rationality and can be thoughtfully subordinated to rational activity, then he can admit such claims without going beyond the function argument.

72

The Good Human

Practical R eason

Aristotle’s presentation of the human good as internal to reason bears emphasis, for it is crucial to his presentation of this good as the inworking of the human substance. This is not to deny that the human good consists of actions, that these actions involve affections, or that the actions are often external. It is rather to affirm that what makes human actions and affections good is, quite simply, “right reason.”40 Although this conclusion is implicit in the function argument, and although Aristotle’s account of excellence in character includes an initial discussion of deliberation in III.3, he reserves his major discussion of reason for book VI. Several key points from books II–IV help set the stage for this discussion, bridging the gap between the rough outline established by the function argument and the more sophisticated account of reason’s work that we shall find in VI.2. We have already seen that in book II Aristotle insists on two premises that point toward rationality itself as the decisive good in human action and affection: first, the good person chooses excellent actions because of themselves (II.4); and second, what makes excellent actions excellent is “right reason” (II.2).41 In books III and IV—especially in his treatments of bravery, generosity, and magnificence—he adds that a good person acts for the sake of to kalon, the fine or beautiful. Right reason is not merely good in the sense of being correct, then; it is also attractive. By appealing to the fine, which I shall discuss at length in chapter 3, Aristotle puts back into play the musical and artistic images found in the function argument. Indeed, the music of I.7’s harpist may well find an echo in the opening lines of book VI: Since we ended up saying earlier that one should choose the mean, not the excess or the deficiency, and the mean is as right reason says, let us determine 40. For this phrase see especially II.2.1103b31–34; VI.8434, 13.1144b21–28; for discussion see Natali 2001 (16–19). 41. EN II.2.1103b31–34; see also 6.1107a1–2.



The Good Human

73

this mean. For in all the aforementioned conditions [hexesi], as in the others, there is a target looking to which the one who has reason tightens and relaxes [epiteinei kai aniēsin], and there is a boundary [horos] of the means that we say are between excess and deficiency, being in accordance with right reason.42

Although the primary metaphor here is that of a bowstring, the mean’s Pythagorean origin makes it hard to avoid the tuning of harp strings as a secondary image. Indeed, one meaning of horos is the note that bounds a musical interval.43 At minimum, calling good actions fine—rather than, say, beneficial or useful—solidifies in language the non-instrumentality of practical reason. Aristotle’s musical metaphor, whether present in VI.1 or only in I.7, implies not only that practical reason’s concern is to craft a fine life, but also, as we have seen, that such a life is intimately connected with the act of crafting it. For a human action, to be fine is to be finely chosen, to express a reason that reason at its best can affirm. Yet this conclusion leads to a difficulty, which first appears in III.2–5 and then reemerges in book VI: Aristotle explicitly and persistently associates prudence and prudent deliberation not with the agent’s end but with choosing the means to an end. For example: (III.3) We deliberate not about our ends but about the things that are ordered to [  pros] our ends. . . . Our actions are for the sake of other things, for what we deliberate about is not the end, but the things that are ordered to our ends. (III.5) What we wish for is the end, but what we deliberate about and choose are the things that are ordered to the end. 42. EN VI.1.1138b18–25. 43. For the metaphors see Reeve 2012 (131–32), 2013 (94–95). The target to which Aristotle here refers will turn out to be contemplative activity (as in EE VIII.3): compare these opening lines of VI with its conclusion at 13.1145a6–11, and see Cooper 2003 (302), Pakaluk 2005 (228), Reeve 2012 (135–37), 2013 (98). Such a target is necessary, for the account of excellence in character prior to book VI is determinate enough to reveal what the excellences are, and to render them attractive, yet indeterminate enough to raise serious questions about the shape of a good life.

74

The Good Human

(VI.12) Further, the work is brought to completion through prudence and excellence in character, for excellence makes the target right, prudence the things that are ordered to this. (VI.13) The choice will not be right without prudence, nor without excellence [in character], for the one gives us a practical concern for [  poiei prattein] the end, the other the things that are for the end.44

These statements are all the more striking in that Aristotle also continues to affirm the status of good actions as themselves ends: (VI.5) Prudence would not be . . . an art, since of action and of production there is something other in kind [allo to genos praxeōs kai poiēseōs]. . . . For the end of production is something distinct, but that of action is not, for acting-well is itself an end.45

In VI.12, moreover, he carefully distinguishes prudence from mere cleverness, thus emphasizing that prudence is not simply excellence in instrumental reasoning.46 This in itself is not problematic, for prudence might involve instrumental reasoning that earns the name “prudence” by serving a good end. The difficulty is rather that prudence is said to be both constitutive of good action as an end and concerned with means to an end rather than with the end itself. The resolution of this difficulty only solidifies the human good as a good internal to reason.47 We may grant that, as Aristotle will insist again in X.7, the actions of excellence in character serve ends other than themselves.48 They are concerned, that is, with securing, enjoying, and using what I have called loose goods, among which the activity of wisdom, to which we shall return in a moment, is set apart from 44. EN III.3.1112b11–12, 33–34, 5.1113b3–4; VI.12.1144a6–9, 13.1145a4–6. For an alternative translation of poiei prattein see Reeve 2013 (263). 45. EN VI.5.1140b1–4, 6–7. 46. EN VI.12.1144a23–b1. 47. Moss 2012 develops from passages such as those just quoted a quasi-Humean interpretation that Moss rightly identifies as an outlier (157–58). For insightful discussions of the role of reason in constituting excellence in character see Natali 2001, 2014 (180–81, 198–99), Lorenz 2009. 48. EN X.7.1177b4–15.



The Good Human

75

the rest as supreme. Nevertheless, Aristotle clearly holds that apart from this one case, what is crucial for happiness is not our success in securing these goods but the manner in which we pursue them: the end of acting well is more important than all but one of the goods we can secure through this action.49 We have already seen, moreover, that it is impossible to sacrifice practical rationality for the sake of what practical reason itself recognizes as the highest human good. The actions by which we pursue wisdom, so long as we pursue it in accordance with its true worth, are necessarily expressions of prudence, and therefore of good character; they are thus goods of practical reason, choiceworthy in themselves as such. If acting well were not an end in itself, then excellence in action would in fact be purely technical, a matter for art rather than prudence. It would not be excellence in action as Aristotle understands action, but excellence in production. If, however, prudence is concerned with action rather than production, if a good action is its own end in the manner just sketched, and if such an action is aptly portrayed as fine or beautiful, then the task of prudence is to answer a very particular sort of question, one that differs essentially from questions such as “How shall I become healthy?” or even “How can I rescue my father from the slaveraiders?” Its general form is rather, “How can I perform the finest action at present available to me?” In such a case, as in music, the means are constitutive of rather than distinct from the end. 50 The 49. We may therefore read Aristotle as presenting a solution to the Socratic difficulty explored, with reference to Plato’s Euthydemus, in Annas 1993a. It is important to notice that III.3 presents deliberation as reasoning about how to achieve a given end of any sort; deliberation is therefore neutral between action and production. 50. Grönroos 2015 (65) suggests that it is awkward to think of action as a means to the end of acting virtuously. Perhaps so, if one’s model of practical reasoning is based only on cases in which reason is purely instrumental. The puzzle that we are now considering, however, is created by a set of claims that forces one to question the adequacy of such a model. As Irwin 1991 (388) notes, the solution that I adopt is widespread; it has inspired various models of deliberation in Aristotle: Cooper 1975 (19–22, 81–82), Wiggins 1980, McDowell 1980, Nussbaum 1986, Hutchinson 1986 (101–2), Louden 1991, Broadie 1991 (239–40), Reeve 1992 (82–84), Annas 1993 (88), Natali 2001 (45–49), Russell 2014 (205). For dissent see Price 2011 (209–20), Fortenbaugh 1991. I do not imply that excellence in character provides no more

76

The Good Human

best will in the world will not enable me to perform a fine action without prudence. I may value bravery, temperance, and generosity above all external and bodily goods. I may value them precisely for their rationality. I may even value them as ordered to the activity of wisdom, valuing this activity above all else. Yet I may still fail to act well. Wanting to choose a reasonable course of action is not the same as knowing what it is.51 For the same reason, unscrupulous cleverness must be an essentially different form of rationality from prudence, as it is not and cannot be constitutive of a beautiful action. A clever but unscrupulous person who turns to a life of excellence will need time and experience to become prudent.52 Acting well (eupraxia) is therefore an end, but it is not and cannot be our only end: to act well is always to aim in a reasonable manner at goods other than acting well.53 Frequently, in fact, to choose an action is also to choose some productive activity, which as productive may well be governed by an art. One might choose the activity of writing a tragedy, for example, both for the sake of the finished play and for than a vague orientation toward the fine—see Price 2011 (211n23); instead, this orientation involves a variety of distinct affections, formed at length by experience, which define the spheres of the various excellences. 51. Smith 1996 (64–72) makes this point well: “to be motivated by, or to follow, reason is nothing as specific as to be guided by [practical] wisdom” (69). See also Broadie 1991 (249–50). 52. Sherman 1989 (113–17), Natali 2001 (49–61); for another attempt to secure the role of reason in constituting the end of virtue see Sorabji 1980. 53. Broadie 1991 (44–49). As a way to begin wrestling with these issues, however, the vigorous critique of Aristotle in Broadie 1988—along with the judicious response in Richardson 1988—remains valuable. It is unlikely that Aristotle would have thought it possible to specify a general conception of eupraxia from which, with the help of empirical premises, particular good actions could be deduced; instead, the materials with which practical reason must work surely require diverse forms of practical rationality. It might be helpful to think of good actions as proportionate to each other rather than as sharing a single form: what this action achieves in these materials is analogous to what that achieves in those. We would then have a practical syllogism applicable to every case—“Fine actions are to be done; this action is fine; therefore etc.”—but a syllogism whose middle term is one only by proportion. This would imply that the fine is recognized by some sort of rational perception rather than by deduction from genuine universals, but also that we can analyze particular ethical cases in detail by comparing them with other cases. For ethical perception and the particularity of good actions in Aristotle see for example Broadie 1991 (225–29), Louden 1991, Nussbaum 1999.



The Good Human

77

the sake of acting well within the context of one’s life as a whole.54 In any case, and leaving aside contemplative activity for a moment, good actions and the further goods at which they aim are constitutive of each other as goods, but their roles are neither identical nor equal. Loose goods and bads, together with the affections that bear on them, are the materials without which action would have no content. Prudence and its activity are the formal principles through which these materials become a coherent, rational whole.55 What happens, though, when we go on to place wisdom at the head of excellence, contemplation at the head of the human work?56 Obviously, this development puts some pressure on the structure I have just tried to articulate. Unlike other loose goods, contemplation is in its own right a fully formed work of reason. It can therefore claim to be part of the human good independently of the formative role of prudence: it is the elephant in prudence’s council chamber.57 Aristotle will argue, moreover, in both VI.7 and X.7–8, that contemplation is a greater work of thought than is any act of prudence: the elephant’s leash, it seems, has been cut. In fact, however, as we began to see in 54. See Broadie 1991 (208–9). 55. See Meyer 2011a, although Meyer takes pursuit of the kalon merely to “regulate” or “constrain” the good person’s pursuit of other goals, providing “a norm that is external to the pursuits it recognizes” (54–59, building on 50–51; quotation at 59). She attempts to defuse the criticism already leveled at this sort of view in Lear 2004 (38), but Lear is right: the mere regulation of activity A by goal B does not involve A’s being for the sake of B. On the view proposed here, the relation between rational activity for its own sake (that is, for the sake of the fine) and activity for the sake of other goals is like that of form to matter, where each instance of prudence can exist only as embodied in its own materials. Garver 2006 (15–46) offers a marvelously sensitive portrait of the emergence of complete practical rationality, as the fulfillment of a rational being aware of itself as such, through reflection on the pursuit of goods other than rational activity. 56. Aristotle begins to place wisdom at the head of excellence within book VI itself, which ends with the claim that prudence gives orders for the sake of wisdom. Broadie 1991 (185–90, 198–202), for instance, is too confident that Aristotle proposes no such target for prudence in book VI, although she is right to imply that the exercise of wisdom is not a “P whose nature guarantees that producing P is always a good thing to do” (210). For insightful suggestions as to the actual relation between wisdom and excellence in character see for example Tuozzo 1995 (141–50), Lear 2004; with Tuozzo see also Curzer 1991 (61–65), Kraut 1989 (88–92). 57. Lear 2004 (119–20).

78

The Good Human

chapter 1, the leash is tougher than it looks. Imagine, for the sake of discussion, an elephant whose bulk is so vast, whose worth so disproportionate to everything else in the room, that we ought to humor it at all costs. If this is indeed our elephant, then our executive’s best course of action—the only course open to prudence as prudence—is to feed everything else in the room to the elephant. To humor the elephant at all costs is, therefore, the end of practical reason as such, which has in no way whatsoever capitulated to the elephant. In fact, to make our hypothetical council-room even stranger, the elephant turns out to be itself a work of practical reason. Every act of human contemplation is chosen, chosen as an action, and chosen because it appears to practical reason as practical to be the best action available. This is a necessary truth about human happiness as Aristotle conceives it: contemplation cannot appear in human life at all unless it appears not only as good in its own right, as contemplation, but also as a good action, whose goodness as an action is determined by practical reason.58 This implies that not only does prudence lead to wisdom by directing our steps thereto, but that wisdom is materially constitutive of prudence. The horizon of practical reason is, for human beings, inescapable.59 One might think this small comfort to the desires and loves on which the elephant is so delightedly trampling, though presumably repeated denial will bring them into line with practical reason’s executive decision.60 The more serious question, though, regards the actual size of the elephant. Better, the question might be put in two ways. First, is the elephant in fact disproportionate to everything else in the room? Second, what does the elephant think of its companions, anyway? Does it find them trifling annoyances—hunger, for instance, a bothersome child in the back seat, to be satisfied and then ignored? In this form the question limps, as the elephant is not an instance 58. Cooper 2010 (262–63), Reeve 2012 (215, 239–40). For the articulation of this broad sense of action in Pol. VII.3.1325b16–21 see Roochnik 2008 (724). 59. Broadie 1991 (389, 392–93, 414). 60. Cooper 1975 (101).



The Good Human

79

of practical thinking. Despite its impracticality, though, the elephant does have its pleasures—or so, at least, Aristotle argues in book X. So if ever the elephant should turn its attention to the rest of human life, does it take pleasure in what it finds there? These are, however humorously formulated, the real questions; but they are not our questions yet. Prudence, then, gives rise to actions that are themselves ends insofar as they fulfill our desire for the more general end of acting well or reasonably. Because prudent deliberation sets its sights on the fine, moreover, it proceeds by conferring a pleasing form on the materials of a human life—a form more or less austere, depending on one’s conception of wisdom’s place within the whole. Even this, however, is not enough to secure at the deepest level the rationality of the human good; in addition, our desire for the fine must itself be rational. If this desire instead comes to reason from without, then in the end it is not reason that rules and leads; it is not reason that constitutes our actions as good.61 Now in VI.2, Aristotle observes that every choice proceeds from desire and practical reason together. As a result, “the reason must be true and the desire right, if the choice is excellent.”62 What, then, is the desire that must be right if our choices are to be good? Despite its close connection with excellence in character and hence with affection, right desire cannot be in the first instance a matter of affection. 61. Richardson 1992 argues that the account of animal motion in DA III gives primacy to the good itself rather than to desire as moving the animal; this enables Aristotle to make room not just for desire but also for discernment of the good (rational or subrational) in his explanation of motion. My point here is that different types of discernment elicit different types of desire. 62. EN VI.2.1139a24–25. Olfert 2014 (which includes a review of recent literature) argues that practical truth is simply “the truth about what is unqualifiedly good for a particular person when all of her particular circumstances are taken into account” (219, emphasis removed). This conclusion yields an attractively tight analysis, implying not only that what makes practical reason true—namely, that such and such is in fact good for one—is also what makes desire right (221–27), but also that practical truth is directly and intrinsically motivating (228–29). Although Olfert focuses on the opening of VI.2, her analysis also fits Aristotle’s definition of prudence at VI.5.1140b4–6.

80

The Good Human

First, in III.2–5 Aristotle calls our desire for the end “wish” (boulēsis), the term he uses in On the Soul to contrast desire in the rational part with the appetite and spirit characteristic of the irrational.63 This is reasonable, for if the fine is constituted as such by right reason, then the part of the soul to which love for the fine belongs must be capable of recognizing reason as right.64 Second, Aristotle considers it possible 63. For EN see especially III.4, but also 2.1111b19–30, 5.1113b3, 11–14; Korsgaard 1986 (261). For DA see III.9.432b4–7; see also On the Motion of Animals (hereafter MA) 6.700a22, and the further references and comparisons in Reeve 2013 (117). For an excellent introductory discussion of boulēsis see Reeve 2012 (25–28); see also Cooper 1989, Johansen 2012 (250). However, Aristotle’s explicit discussions of rational desire are sketchy enough to leave plenty of room for disagreement. My reasons for insisting on the essential rationality of love for the fine will become clearer at 88–99 and 115–34 below, but the topic is ripe for further discussion, and it may be useful to review some recent analyses here. At one extreme, the quasi-Humean version of Aristotle in Moss 2012 finds support in earlier treatments such as Hutchinson 1986 (86, 101), according to which Aristotle attributes reasoning to one part of the soul and desire to another; see also Wood 2011. Other authors recognize more clearly that Aristotle’s psychology includes genuinely rational desires, but do not recognize a distinct source of desire proper to the rational part: Broadie 1991 (67–72, 106–7, 215–18), Tuozzo 1994, Deslauriers 2002 (104–10). Note that Deslauriers is mistaken to find in DA III.9–10 just a single faculty of desire, for Aristotle’s goal in refusing to “break up” the desiderative part of the soul (432b4–7) is simply to let desire in general (orexis) emerge as the distinctive form of psychological activity required to account for animal motion. Once this has been achieved, he can and does follow Republic IV in finding distinct sources of desire within the human soul (10.433b10–13). Aristotle does sometimes contrast orexis with thought or reason, but Lorenz 2009 (182–84) shows that in such passages orexis does not include boulēsis. If Charles 2006 is correct, moreover, then rational desire is not an activity distinct from practical knowledge itself: instead boulēsis, like proairesis (choice), “can equally be described as a form of cognition (of a distinctive desire-involving type) or as a form of desire (albeit one which essentially involves rational sensitivity to the good). However, strictly speaking, it is neither (nor yet a compound of the two). It is rather a distinctive sui generis type of activity” (35; see also 32). If boulēsis and proairesis as such do belong essentially and entirely to the rational part of the soul, how should we characterize the good at which they aim? Grönroos 2015 argues that Aristotle sometimes uses boulēsis to name not just any rational desire, but a primitive desire for the human good: see also Cooper 1996, 2010, White 1989 (218–29). But we shall find that Aristotle does not simply postulate a primitive desire for the human good as a convenient explanation for human behavior. Instead, there is boulēsis simply because every cognitive power naturally takes pleasure in its own proper object. 64. Coope 2012 (155–56). Coope points out that according to EN IX.8 the good person “gratifies what is most authoritative in himself ” (1168b30), so that the thinking part of the soul must have preferences and aversions of its own. She also points to EN IX.9 and X.4, for which see 92–99 and 128–34 below.



The Good Human

81

not only to do the right sort of action through affection, without any desire for the fine, but also to desire and do what is fine without the help of affection. Merely spirited people, for example, like spirited beasts, appear brave, yet they act “not because of the fine nor as reason directs, but because of an affection.” The self-controlled or continent, in contrast, act according to right reason but against their affections.65 The place of reason in Aristotle’s moral psychology thus requires the existence of a desire proper to practical reason itself, a desire that impels us toward the fine and that motivates us to reshape our affections in its service.66 The preceding observations—that Aristotle’s preferred term for good actions, “fine,” highlights their attractiveness; that the life of reason is both the good person’s end and the means to this end; that desire for the end arises within reason itself and aims at the excellence of reason’s work—all underscore and amplify the basic claim, first articulated in I.7, that the human good is thoughtful activity just insofar as it is thoughtful. To appreciate even more deeply the significance of this claim, it may be helpful to reframe it briefly in terms more proper to On the Soul. There Aristotle maintains that actual thinking or knowing is identical to the object known insofar as it is known, that “the soul never thinks without an image,” and indeed that it “thinks the forms in the images.”67 Recast in these terms, Aristotle’s commitment to the beauty of rational action implies that a good person chooses good actions because the form that he or she “thinks in the image” of such an action is attractive, indeed beautiful. This form, moreover, just is the activity of practical thought: it is the 65. For the first point see EN III.8.1117a8–9; for the second see VII.1–10, esp. 9.1151b23– 28, along with Gould 1994 (181), Cooper 1996 (84–85). 66. Locating love for the fine in the rational part need not undercut the centrality of the affections. I am inclined to suggest that just as noēmata (concepts) “are not images, but not without images” (DA III.8.432a13–14), so rational desire or love for the kalon is neither an affection nor without affection: irreducible to the affections as such, it exists in and through them. For affection and imagination see Korsgaard 1986 (275–76), Sherman 1989 (44–50), 1995, Sihvola 1996, Abizadeh 2002, Dow 2009, 2014, Pearson 2011. 67. For the identity of knower and known see DA III.4–5 and 7, esp. 7.431a1–2, b17. For the role of images see III.7–8, esp. 7.431a16–17, b2.

82

The Good Human

knowledge that results from deliberation and brings practical thinking to rest. This analysis may help us understand, moreover, why Aristotle suggests in Ethics I.10 that the good person will not only do but also simply contemplate excellent actions: “for he will always or most of all do and contemplate the things that correspond to excellence.”68 This contemplation of fine actions will reemerge as characteristic of the good person in Aristotle’s discussion of friendship. Friends hip

We have seen that according to II.3 there are three objects of choice, the fine, the advantageous, and the pleasant, and that VIII.2 echoes this distinction by identifying three objects of love, the good, the pleasant, and the useful. Nor is this the only way in which Aristotle’s treatment of friendship opens by echoing his earlier discussion of excellence in character. Immediately after identifying the good as an object of love, he distinguishes between what is and what merely appears good, just as he did in III.4 with reference to the objects of wish.69 In both cases, the theme echoed is important enough to suggest a deliberate recapitulation and reframing of earlier ideas as the foundation for an understanding of friendship. This reframing turns out to be crucial for his presentation of the human good in terms of being rather than having, for through it he depicts this good as a concrete human being—a friend—rather than as a possession, an abstract ideal of excellence, or even merely a series of concrete actions.70 This concretization of the human good is a turning point in the Ethics, not only because the right sort of friend provides us with a concrete vision of the good, but also because Aristotle seems to envision friendship as the context within which healthy self-knowledge—the good person’s awareness of himself as good—may blossom.71 This reflection on 68. EN I.10.1100b19–20. 69. EN VIII.2.1155b21–27; III.4.1113a15–b2. 70. Rorty 1980a (389–91), Stern-Gillet 1995 (47–48). 71. Sparshott 1994 (265).



The Good Human

83

self-awareness is the last step in his exploration of good character and the first in his turn from practical matters to the life of the mind itself. Embodying the Human Good

Before turning more directly to the text, consider the probable outcome of concretizing and indeed personalizing the human good through contemplation of one’s friends. As social animals, we humans take greater pleasure in and make greater use of each other than we do anything else (see VIII.1). To appreciate a fine action, moreover, is always to perceive it concretely as a reasonable response to particular circumstances, chosen for its own sake by a particular rational being with certain conditions of character.72 In short, our inclinations to the pleasant, the useful, and the fine all reach their highest human pitch in our relations with others. When I love another as useful, pleasant, or good, moreover—when I steadily prefer this person to others and wish him or her well73—this love may become reciprocal.74 The good that I seek to incorporate into my life acquires a voice; it is as capable of loving or rejecting me as I am of loving or rejecting it. In reflecting on my friendships, therefore, I must ask not only what good I see in those whom I call friends, but also what good they see in me. In the case of complete friendship—the friendship of good people as good—such reciprocity can effect a new and transformative integration of my own self-image. Heretofore, perhaps, I have held myself accountable to a certain ideal, striving for good or even great things through my choices. Yet the very act of choosing sets the action chosen over against the one who chooses, as effect stands over against cause. Yes, choice renders the connection between agent and action so intimate that it calls for the metaphor of parent and child, but it can also be alienating. The more reflective and less instinctual the choice, 72. For the circumstances see EN II.2.1103b34–1104a10; VI.7.1141b14–23, 8.1141b23–30, 11.1143a32–b5; for the agent see II.4.1105a28–33. 73. EN VIII.2, 3.1156b25–32. 74. EN VIII.2.1155b28, 32–34.

84

The Good Human

the more the action to be chosen seems to stand over against the one who must choose, so that to choose an action is almost like choosing an external good—barley or wheat at the market, this street rather than that for my journey. Choosing a good action is one thing, therefore; seeing oneself as good is another. From an outside perspective, however, action does not typically stand over against agent as something to be chosen or rejected; rather, other people just are for each of us what they say and do. In friendship between good people (or those who are becoming good75), this difference in perspective can be transformative. When a person whom I love as good and whose judgment I therefore respect loves me similarly in return, I learn to encounter myself integrally as good. Rather than seeing my actions as contingent realities to be chosen by myself, I come to see myself as the living being whose life these actions are. In this way, love of the fine can become self-love through friendship. That Aristotle understands friendship to be transformative in this way is not explicit in the text. Consider, however, the following. Within the Ethics as a whole, self-love and self-knowledge become prominent themes only within the discussion of friendship, and indeed relatively late in that discussion, in IX.4 and 7–9. While they emerge as themes through the claim that “the attributes of love [ta philika] toward one’s neighbors . . . seem to have been taken from those toward oneself,” Aristotle has not chosen to introduce love for others on the basis of self-love, but rather conversely—as if self-love, despite its centrality and importance, were harder to see, to understand, and indeed to practice well than love for another.76 We can 75. See EN IX.12.1172a10–14. 76. EN IX.4.1166a1–2. It might seem that according to this passage and IX.8.1168b5–6, friendship arises from self-love: Kahn 1981, Pakaluk 2005. IX.4, however, seems to observe only that the marks by which we define friendship look as though they might have been taken from self-love: see Annas 1989a (1–2), Kraut 1989 (131–32). The backward reference at IX.8 does seem to interpret IX.4 as describing the psychological origins of friendship (Pakaluk 2005, 276n9); yet the context in IX.8 is aporetic, and even if the look backward expresses Aristotle’s own view, there are ways of understanding the psychological claim that do not require one to have a mature sense of one’s own identity before developing friendships: Pakaluk 2005 (280). Nor is VIII.7.1159a11–12 as telling as it seems to Annas 1989 (2), 1993 (254); here



The Good Human

85

understand his choice readily if, as he says, “we can consider [or ‘contemplate’] our neighbors better than ourselves”; for we can better love a person whose goodness we can better see.77 In his remarks on honor throughout the Ethics, finally, Aristotle demonstrates an awareness of the human need to secure self-regard through the regard of others.78 Indeed, it might be instructive to compare the self-conception of the great-souled person, whom Aristotle describes on the assumption that honor “is the greatest of external goods,” with the self-conception of the excellent person portrayed in books VIII–IX, where this assumption is explicitly abrogated in favor of friends.79 One might, of course, simply attribute the replacement of one endoxon by another to the dialectical requirements of the two passages, but this merely forces the question of what these requirements are. Understanding what each stage of Aristotle’s discussion demands might well be served, then, by reflecting on the difference between one who manages to honor himself because he is honored by others, and one who learns genuine self-love within the more intimate and fulfilling context of friendship, where reality tends to trump perception, and where the self-knowledge gained is thereby so much more secure. I do think it can be argued, then, that Aristotle intends books VIII–IX to secure a major advance in our understanding of the human good, first by attaching excellent action more firmly to the substances whose good it is, and then by incorporating into our perspective the self-knowledge and self-love that become possible through friendship. His discussion of friendship recasts the human good, that is, not only as the good that a human being is, but as the good that I myself am. Yet however one understands his intentions, the books on Aristotle’s point is not that one loves oneself first, but that one wishes the greatest goods for oneself—and in any case, the sense in which he ultimately (IX.8) takes even this to be the case is highly unexpected. 77. EN IX.9.1169b33–34. 78. EN I.5.1095b26–30; VIII.8.1159a22–24. 79. EN IV.3.1123b20–21; IX.9.1169b9–10; see also VIII.8.1159a25–27. I owe this observation to Sachs 2002 (67n86, 153n240, 175n272). Reeve 2014 (334) suggests that the claim of IX.9 is not in Aristotle’s own voice.

86

The Good Human

friendship do in fact shift our perspective in these ways. This shift is reflected in two linguistic and conceptual developments. First, recall that in III.4 Aristotle has specified that we wish for what we consider good. In I.7 he has observed that the good is that for the sake of which we do what we do, and throughout books III– IV he has insisted that a good person acts for the sake of the fine.80 In books VIII–IX, by contrast, beginning in VIII.2, he repeats that good people “wish good things to their friends, for the sake of these [hoi boulomenoi tagatha tois philois ekeinōn heneka].” This sets up the further claim, which emerges in IX.4’s discussion of self-love, that the good person wishes and does good things “for himself ” and “for the sake of himself.”81 Elsewhere, finally, Aristotle observes that that for the sake of which (to hou heneka) is twofold, being either a beneficiary or a benefit.82 Whereas, then, the early and middle books of the Ethics focus on the human good as a benefit to be attained and enjoyed, the books on friendship focus on the subject or beneficiary of the human good, namely the good person.83 A related development occurs in Aristotle’s use of the personal pronoun autos. In his first seventeen chapters on friendship (VIII.1– IX.3), love is invariably love for another person, one’s friend. Although it is clear that friends for utility or pleasure love not for the sake of their friends, but “insofar as there comes to be from each other something good for themselves,”84 Aristotle does not explicitly frame this sort of relationship in terms of self-love. In IX.4, however, his discussion of friendship and self-love sets up a parallel between self and other as objects of love, leading to a paradoxical phrase in which “self ” 80. EN III.4.1113a15–24; I.7.1097a18–22. 81. EN VIII.3.1156b9–10 (cf. VIII.2.1155b31); IX.4.1166a14–16. 82. DA II.4.415b20–21; Met. XII.7.1072b2–3. 83. Rogers 1994 is therefore mistaken to assert that “to make nobility one’s motive is to commit oneself to organizing one’s activities so that they exhibit the correct order. . . . It is to focus one’s attention not on anyone’s good or interests per se . . . but on [the activities’] underlying structure” (298). Because fine activities are truly such only insofar as they proceed from choice, they cannot be considered adequately except as the good of an agent; hence the unity between admiring another’s excellence and wishing him or her good things. 84. EN VIII.3.1156a11–12.



The Good Human

87

and “other” are combined: the decent person “stands toward [  pros] a friend just as toward himself, for the friend is another himself [allos autos].”85 This awkward displacement of the pronoun from its ordinary use, blurring the distinction between self and other, is a matter of deep philosophical importance, though one so often discussed—and so natural to those who are friends—that we tend to lose sight of how radical it is. Precisely by questioning the distinction between self and other, Aristotle’s phrase makes us aware of ourselves as selves in a new and urgent way. I Think, That Is, I Am

In this same chapter, IX.4, Aristotle begins to draw on the integration of action and agent made possible by his discussion of friendship so as to propose a new, startlingly clear understanding of happiness.86 This understanding requires that the human being’s identity as human come into sharper focus: that each of us be able to say, with certainty, what constitutes our very self.87 The probing of selfhood implicit in the phrase “another self ” belongs, therefore, to a broader and deeper exploration initiated earlier in the chapter: [The decent person] is of one mind with himself, and desires the same things with all his soul. And indeed he wishes for himself good things and ones that appear such, and does them (for it is belongs to the good to labor for the good), and for the sake of himself: for he acts on behalf of his thinking part [tou dianoētikou], which is just what each one seems to be. And he wishes himself to live and to be preserved, and above all that by which he is prudent [  phronei]. For to be is good for the excellent [spoudaiōi]; and each wishes goods for himself. No one chooses to become someone else, so that what he 85. EN IX.4.1166a30–31. 86. I shall argue that IX.4–9 exercise a protreptic function, encouraging us to locate our identity in the activities of perceiving and knowing, and thereby preparing us for Aristotle’s final portrait of happiness in X.7–8. The earlier discussion of prudence and wisdom in book VI plays a similar function, for which see the excellent discussion in Lear 2004 (93–122). 87. For EN’s progressive refinement of our conception of what it is to be human, see also Reeve 1992 (131–37).

88

The Good Human

becomes may have all things (for god does, even now, have the good). Rather, [one chooses to have the good] while being whatever he is. And each would seem to be, or to be most of all, that which thinks [to nooun].88

This is an extraordinary line of thought: for a human being to be is, in the first instance at least, for an individual thinking thing (to dianoētikon, to nooun) to be.89 The identification is partial, providing us with a primary rather than a complete identity; but it is meant to be decisive.90 My status as a distinct thinking being provides the encompassing and orienting perspective within which all else that I am must take its place.91 This implies that the task of excellence in character is to harmonize with thought, and with the intrinsic requirements of thoughtfulness, all that belongs to the thinking being. As Aristotle puts in in IX.8, “the decent person in fact does the things he should 88. EN IX.4.1166a13–23. 89. For discussion see Kosman 2004 (140–41, 153–54); Kosman discusses corresponding ideas from EE at greater length. Annas 1989a (4) rightly observes that the passage’s more striking expressions admit of common-sense interpretations, while Pakaluk 1998 (170) just as rightly wonders whether the passage is “an unwarranted intrusion of an unexplained philosophy of mind,” concluding that there is more going on here than the immediate context requires. In fact, Aristotle is aiming at a new understanding of the self, an understanding that grows naturally out of the concern for excellence and for the kalon inculcated in earlier books. 90. For the role of this identification in shaping Aristotle’s understanding of excellence see Salmieri 2014 (110–13), as well as Sparshott 1994 (288). Reeve 2000 (182–88) explores the nature of the identification in some detail. Whiting 1986 (85–90) shows that EN X does not identify human beings exclusively with theoretical nous. 91. We only glimpse this conception of the self in IX.4, but even here it forms an obvious new beginning. Price 1989 (105–10) suggests that Aristotle’s account of friendship relies on a notion of the self as a “persona constructed by forming desires and making choices,” which Price opposes to the self understood as “the living physical substance that is a man” (105). The notion of self as constructed persona enables him to answer the objection that Aristotle conflates loving another for his own sake with loving him for his virtue, a mere quality. In fact, however, Aristotle belongs in his own way to the tradition of thinking about the self that leads from Plato through Plotinus and Augustine to Descartes, Kant, and Husserl. He recognizes that so long as I conceive of myself externally, as a “living physical substance,” the question of happiness cannot be addressed in a satisfying way; instead, this question must ultimately be about the concerns of the self that I experience myself as being. Because living is homonymous, however, he can claim that the internal perspective of thoughtfulness is in fact constitutive of the “living physical substance that is a man” (see for example Pol. I.2.1253a9–18). He thinks of good character, finally, not as a new persona but as the thoughtfully developed ability to be on particular occasions, directly and spontaneously, what the human being most truly was all along.



The Good Human

89

do, for all mind [nous] chooses what is best for itself, and the decent person obeys his mind.”92 To place this line of thought in perspective, it may be helpful to compare Aristotle’s approach to the activity of reason in IX.4 and 7–9 with the approach that we have already seen in I.7. In the earlier discussion, his approach to the human work was decidedly thirdpersonal, placing this work alongside those of artisan and organ, plant and animal, before the objectifying, external gaze of the dialectician. Book IX’s perspective, by contrast, is philosophically—if not always grammatically or literarily—first-personal: the human work unfolds within and for an individual human being’s thoughtful selfconsciousness. To live as a human being just is to think; and to think is not merely—to be slightly facetious—for thought to be present in a being that I have good external grounds for identifying with myself. My thinking is me, for the substance that I am exists only through the self-awareness that accompanies thought.93 As you and I converse, moreover, our thoughtful awareness of self and other as thinking beings becomes the horizon within which our shared life unfolds: “for in this sense, it would seem, we speak of living together in the case of human beings.”94 In claiming that each human being “would seem to be, or to be most of all, that which thinks,” Aristotle begins to move toward the unsettling intellectualism that reaches its full expression in X.7–8.95 Yet the identification of human and thinker must be handled with care, for it belongs to a more complex sentiment that points in two directions at once: “Each wishes goods for himself. No one chooses to become someone else, so that what he becomes may have all things (for god does, even now, have the good). Rather, [one chooses to have 92. EN IX.8.1169a16–18. Homiak 1981 likewise considers the good person through the lens of EN IX, reconsidering the virtues of bravery and temperance in this light. 93. For self-awareness see the discussion of IX.9 below, along with DA III.2.425b12–17, 4.429b6–9, b26–430a3. 94. EN IX.9.1170b12–13. 95. Kahn 1981 also emphasizes the thread that ties IX.4, via IX.8–9, to X.7.

90

The Good Human

the good] while being whatever he is. And each would seem to be, or to be most of all, that which thinks.” Here we have three thoughts. First, the good for a human being is above all the good of “that which thinks.” Second, god is already in complete possession of the good. Because god will be identified in X.8 as living an exclusively contemplative life, the good that god has is similar to the human good: it is good of “that which thinks.” Third, no sane human being would wish to possess this good completely on condition of becoming god, thereby ceasing to be “whatever he is,” namely a human being.96 If we expand our gaze a bit further, moreover, we find that the good person “wishes himself to live and to be preserved, and above all that by which he is prudent [  phronei]. For to be is good for the excellent.” In context, nestled between tou dianoētikou and to nooun, the verb phroneō stands out. Source of the noun “prudence” (  phronēsis), it signifies not only human thinking but the imaginative forethought of animals that lack nous in the strict sense.97 Its subject in this passage is specifically the person of good character, ho epieikēs or ho spoudaios. It is chosen, therefore, to capture the self-regard of the practically thoughtful person as such,98 a self-regard that has no counterpart in god. In noting the incoherence of wanting to become god in order fully to possess the highest good, then, Aristotle is also pointing toward a coherent alternative: a practical, human concern for the thoughtful element within us.99 As his argument continues to 96. Reeve 2014 (327), though, identifies god in IX.4 with human nous. 97. On Sleep and Waking (hereafter Somn.) 2.455b13–25; the word phronēsis or phronimos occurs also at HA I.1.488b15; IX.1.608a15, b2; 5.611a16; 6.612a3, b1; 10.614b18; 29.618a25. 98. Despite the practical focus of IX.4–8 and even 9, there is no need to restrict nous in these chapters to practical nous. It would serve Aristotle better to write of nous without differentiation, realizing that although his readers will still be thinking of it primarily in practical terms, his insistence on self as nous will also create an opening for contemplative activity. 99. See the discussion in Lear 2004 (204–7) of gods and human beings in X.8. The ideal proposed in book X will be the greatest possible consideration of divine things on the part of one who is aware of being human: see Lawrence 1993, as well as the concrete portrait in Reeve 2012 (269–73). As Sherman 1989 (94–103) sympathetically argues, it is quite coherent for Aristotle to think that our human estate ought to shape and even to constrain our desire to philosophize—and that we ought to accept this constraint with good will, not wishing to be



The Good Human

91

unfold, this will turn out to imply that although our end, eudaimonia, is in one sense simply the activity that we share with god, we can attain this end only as part of a broader and more distinctively human good. Human eudaimonia is exercise of the divine activity neither eternally and necessarily, nor yet by chance, but “due to excellence and some sort of learning or practice.”100 This by no means secures the need for excellence of character in the forms we might have expected, but it certainly requires the direction of practical reason and the cooperation of the affections. The process of clarification that begins in IX.4 and continues in IX.7–8 reaches its conclusion in IX.9. In fact, Aristotle’s treatment of friendship as a whole culminates in IX.9, insofar as IX.10–11 serve as footnotes to IX.9, and IX.12 serves as a final reflection that shifts the discussion from friendship itself to the activity in which good friends share their lives. IX.9, however, completes the main arc of discussion by revisiting the topic with which Aristotle began: friendship as part of the happy life. Having begun in VIII.1 with a dialectical argument that human beings need friends, Aristotle ends in IX.9 with a principled assessment of the same claim.101 Intriguingly, moreover, IX.9 also revisits and reverses a methodological constraint imposed in VIII.1. There, after a series of practical arguments, Aristotle observes that “people inquire also from a higher point of view, one that pertains more to nature [anōteron . . . kai phusikōteron].” After providing several instances, he dismisses this approach in terms reminiscent of I.6: “let the impasses that pertain to nature, then, be set aside, for they are not appropriate to the present inquiry.”102 In IX.9, however, again after several initial arguments that happiness requires friends, he continues as follows: “For those who look into it from the point of view of nature [  phusikōteron d’ episkopousin], an excellent [spoudaios] beings of another sort than we in fact are—while nevertheless making philosophical activity determinative of the life of practical virtue as a whole as its ultimate end. 100. EN I.9.1099b15–16. 101. For the opening argument, see EN VIII.1.1155a4–31. 102. EN VIII.1.1155b1–2, 8–9.

92

The Good Human

friend seems choiceworthy by nature to the excellent.”103 He then reworks and expands, from the point of view excluded in VIII.1, the first and longest of his preceding arguments. In fact, he spends twice as long on this final, expanded argument as on the three previous combined. It is at the heart of our inquiry, and is worth quoting at length: We have said that what is good by nature is good for the excellent person and pleasant in itself. Now living is defined [or “determined,” horizontai] for animals by a power of perception, and for humans by a power of perception or thought [noēseōs]; power is traced back to inworking; and the decisive factor is found in the inworking; it seems, then, that living in the decisive sense is perceiving or thinking. Now living is something good and pleasant in itself (for it is determinate, and the determinate is of the nature of the good; and what is good by nature is also such for the decent); that is why it seems to be pleasant to all. One ought not consider a wretched, ruined life, nor one beset by pain, for this sort of life is indeterminate, just like its attributes; this will be clearer in the discussion of pain to follow. Now if living itself is good and pleasant (as appears also from the fact that everyone strives for it, especially the decent and blessed: for their lifestyle is most choiceworthy to them, their life most blessed); and if one who sees perceives that he sees, one who hears that he hears, one who walks that he walks—and so, in general, there is something to perceive that we are inworking,104 so that when we perceive, we perceive that we perceive, and when we think, we perceive that we think; and if perceiving that we perceive or think is perceiving that we are (for being, we said, just is perceiving or thinking); and if perceiving that one lives is something pleasant in itself (for life is by nature a good, and to perceive the good present in oneself is pleasant); and if living is choiceworthy, and is especially such for the good, because being is good for them and pleasant (for in co-perceiving something good in itself, they are pleased); and if the excellent person is disposed toward his friend just as he is disposed toward himself (for the friend is another himself ): then, just as one’s own being is choiceworthy to each, so too, or nearly so, is one’s friend’s being; and being, we said, is choiceworthy insofar as one 103. EN IX.9.1170a13–14. 104. For perceptual self-awareness in DA III.2 see for example Johansen 2006 with the response in Kosman 2006.



The Good Human

93

perceives that one is good; and this perception is pleasant in itself. One must, therefore, co-perceive also that one’s friend is, and this would occur in living together, and in sharing speech and thought.105

This is an extraordinary passage in its own right, and indeed the piling up of conditionals signals that Aristotle himself considers the argument and its conclusion to be of some importance. Why, though, does he permit himself such an excursion into the study of nature? Why, moreover, does he set his readers up in VIII.1 to notice the excursion as a methodological transgression?106 In reflecting on this question, we should first notice that the views of nature cited in VIII.1 are all strikingly metaphorical; indeed, this may be something Aristotle wants us to notice, for of the three authors named, he places the poet Euripides before the philosophers Heraclitus and Empedocles. All three are cited as anthropomorphizing nature in a way that Aristotle himself, despite his modern reputation, tends to avoid: parched earth and rain-filled heaven are passionate for each other, all things come to be through strife, and so forth. Once nature has been thus anthropomorphized, though, it is harder to discern and appreciate the distinctively human. In IX.9, by contrast, Aristotle focuses on one sort of natural being, the living; on one sort of living being, the animal; and on one sort of animal, the human. Hovering in the background is his conviction that being and living do not mean the same thing in every case, but must rather be understood by proportion: for living things—but not for the nonliving—to be simply is to live; for animals—but not for plants—to live simply is to perceive. As he writes in On the Soul II.2, “since living is spoken of 105. EN IX.9.1170a14–b12. Note that Aristotle does not beg the question by assuming that the good person has friends; rather, he analyzes the experience of those who are in fact good. This approach fits his understanding of the good person as a kind of measure: see Whiting 2006 (294–95). 106. Maher 2012 (778) notices the reversal, observing that naturalist’s perspective has reappeared, and been dismissed again, at VIII.8.1159b19–24. A portion of book VII is also identified as proceeding phusikōs (3.1147a24–25): see Bolton 1991 (20–23). The specific connections between VIII.1 and IX.9, however, provoke a question about Aristotle’s choice of method in this particular instance.

94

The Good Human

in several senses, we say that a thing is alive even if just one of the following is present: thought, perception, motion and rest with regard to place, and motion with regard to nourishment, whether withering or growth.”107 In IX.9, then, Aristotle is interested in beings whose nature is to perceive and think—beings, in other words, with respect to whom the study of nature naturally unfolds in the first-person plural.108 Through this proportional understanding of life and of being, Aristotle reveals not only how the easy metaphors of earlier thinkers fail as attempts at natural science, but also how their vision of nature fails to illuminate happiness or friendship. Once we realize, however, that to live as human beings is something quite specific—it is, namely, to perceive and think with the awareness that we perceive and think— we find that a contemplative or theoretical awareness of human life can no longer be excluded from practical philosophy. Instead, we must recognize that to be human is always and everywhere to consider or contemplate (theōrein) human life; it is, in perceiving and thinking, to perceive and think also ourselves.109 The richness of this passage, and its importance to the Ethics as a whole, would be hard to overestimate. Quite aside from answering the immediate question about friendship, it simultaneously accomplishes at least four goals. First, it identifies the human form of life in terms of perception and thought, thus establishing this life as naturally contemplative or theoretical in orientation. Second, in its appeal to determinacy—which echoes II.6 on the good and bad as limited and 107. DA II.2.413a22–5. 108. The study of nature popularly conceived, and hence as including first philosophy; see PA I.1.641a32–b10 for a more restrictive view. The homonymy of life implies that Whiting 1988’s assimilation of happiness to the good of other living things is exaggerated (40–43); see especially Whiting’s rejection of analogy in favor of “the general notion of εὖ ζῆν” (40–41). Her sensitive account of the details, however, largely obviates the difficulty. 109. Hence IX.9, building on IX.4, 7–8, follows a pattern identified by Natali 2007 (371–72): it introduces the life of contemplation quietly while discussing another topic, thus preparing us to encounter the arguments of X.7–8 more receptively. As we shall see at 128–34, X.4–5 develops the theme of cognitive pleasure in a way that anticipates the requirements of X.7–8.



The Good Human

95

unlimited—and in its explicit contrast between power and inworking, it provides theoretical grounds for treating life in general and perception or thought in particular as good. Third, in noting that perceiving and thinking—together with activities such as walking that involve perceiving or thinking—imply self-awareness, it establishes that we are immediately aware of our own perceiving or thinking precisely as our own good; this explains why perceiving and thinking are not only good but pleasant as well.110 Finally, it anticipates both of the major theoretical developments that Aristotle requires to bring the Ethics to a close: his final account of pleasure in X.4–5, in which he in fact returns to the study of nature, and his account of contemplation as highest happiness in X.7–8, through which he finally brings the function argument to a close. IX.9’s long final argument demonstrates, therefore, the relevance of natural considerations to the task of living well, and it compactly anticipates the themes that will drive the rest of the Ethics. Within the structure of IX.9 as a whole, moreover, this theoretical argument develops organically if quickly out of the practical considerations that precede it. Here is the chapter’s first argument, on which its final, theoretical argument builds: At the beginning we said that happiness is a sort of inworking; and it is clear that an inworking comes to be, rather than belonging to one like a sort of possession. Now if being happy is found in living and inworking; and if the inworking of the good person is excellent and pleasant in itself, as we said at the beginning; and if that which is one’s own is also something pleasant; and if we can consider [or “contemplate”] our neighbors better than ourselves, and their actions than our own; and if the actions of the excellent who are friends are pleasant to those who are good (for they have both the attributes that are pleasant by nature): then, the blessed person will have need of such friends, since he chooses to consider actions that are decent and his own, and those of the good person who is a friend are such.111 110. For these first three accomplishments, see also respectively EN IX.4.1166a23–27, IX.7.1168a5–9, and (for the connection between life and pleasure) X.4.1175a10–21. 111. EN IX.9.1169b28–1170a4. According to Cooper 1977 (345), Sherman 1989 (143),

96

The Good Human

I noted earlier that in I.10 Aristotle identifies the good person as one who “will always or most of all do and contemplate the things that correspond to excellence.”112 Here in IX.9—building on earlier, less compressed remarks in IX.4 and 7113—he highlights the second activity: the good person takes pleasure in contemplating decent actions, especially if these actions are his own or those of a friend. Indeed, the example of walking in the theoretical argument to follow will suggest that our pleasure in doing good actions is itself contemplative, as it is pleasure in the perception of our own thoughtful activity. The life of excellence is not, then, a mechanical, lifeless performance of certifiably good behaviors; it is a work of art in whose very being the good person delights. To the extent that one is good, therefore, one already lives a contemplative life.114 And if to seek excellence is to seek, to this Broadie and Rowe 2002 (62–64, 426), Kosman 2004 (136), Osborne 2009 (350), and others, this passage is like Magna Moralia II.15.1213a20–24 in arguing that we need friends as means to self-knowledge. Kosman and Osborne resist this interpretation of the corresponding argument in EE, but there is no reason to adopt it even for EN. Aristotle’s point is not that we observe our own decent actions mirrored in our friend’s, but that our friend’s actions just are our own: the payoff of friendship is delight in the human attainment of those whom we love. According to Price 1989 (123; cf. Price 2001, 221–22) the observed actions are one’s own in the sense of being cooperative, but Price’s discussion of cooperative activity (116–20) fails to show that it is an important theme in EN prior to the present passage. There is also no reason to follow Pakaluk 1998 in taking oikeios to mean “familiar” at 1169b33 and 1170a3 but “our own” at 1169b35 (206), nor to assume that considering our friends’ actions is a means to improving our own (207). Pakaluk 2005 reinterprets the argument more or less as I have here; see also Whiting 2006 (295), Reeve 2014 (334–35), Maher 2012 (775–76). Whiting, Reeve, and especially Maher all emphasize the passage’s contemplative orientation, and Maher is particularly helpful on the meaning of oikeios. 112. EN I.10.1100b19–20. 113. EN IX.4.1166a23–27, 7.1168a9–19. 114. Rorty 1980a (386) discusses contemplation of the practical life at some length, suggesting however that “the energeiai that compose the virtuous life are not contemplated in their particularity but as instantiations of human ends defined by the essential properties of the species”; see also Curzer 2012 (394–401). I would prefer to bring prudence itself and the appreciative consideration of good actions even closer together: those who can choose particular fine actions for their own sake can also delight in contemplating them. The discussion of contemplation and practice in Garver 2006 (189–224) is particularly excellent; among other things, Garver argues that good character puts us in a position to realize that we are not the best things in the world, and therefore that the life of practical excellence is not the best life; see also Cooper 2010 (261), Hill 1995 (106, 110).



The Good Human

97

extent at least, a life of contemplation, then the methodology of the Ethics not only may but must expand.115 That the role of contemplation in a good and self-sufficient life first emerges concretely in Aristotle’s consideration of friendship, and that the object of this contemplation is human action, is significant in another way as well.116 Aristotle tells us that in considering the good actions of our friends we encounter not one but two sources of pleasure: not only are such actions the inworking of good people, and so worthy of serious consideration or contemplation in their own right, but they are also our own.117 One’s own actions need not always, of course, be a source of pleasure; according to IX.4 the thoroughly wicked are sometimes so pained by their own lives that they do away with themselves.118 That a good object of contemplation should be one’s own does, however, increase our pleasure in it, and this implies that it is not always most pleasant to contemplate what is best in its own right: our interest in considering what is our own can balance our interest in what is “excellent and pleasant in itself.” Together with the distinction between humans and god that we encountered in IX.4, this tension may well give further shape to the life of contemplation that will emerge as the human good in X.7–8. In chapter 3, in fact, we shall find Aristotle using a similar observation to justify his interest in the lower animals and in the human body itself. It is just as crucial to recognize, however, the presence in friendship of a deeper and more universal source of pleasure. It is, to be 115. Along with 1096b30–31, which I considered earlier (28–29), Roche 1988 appeals to VIII.1.1155b8–9 as evidence that Aristotle is unwilling to base ethical conclusions on physical or metaphysical principles that are not independently reputable for the purposes of ethical inquiry. Although both pieces of evidence have turned out to be problematic, the integrity of ethical inquiry remains important. I would add only that what counts as reputable is bound to evolve over the course of any lengthy inquiry, so that the metaphysics and psychology deployed at a given point need only be plausible to those who have arrived at that point. 116. The importance of contemplation begins to emerge in book VI, but by providing us with accessible, human objects of contemplation, book IX puts us in a position to ask about the place of contemplation in a life that we would experience as happy. 117. Whiting 2006 (300–301). 118. EN IX.4.1166b11–18.

98

The Good Human

sure, more pleasant to consider our own good actions and those of our friends, but in fact the action of any good person is good and pleasant in its own right. This universality reflects and consolidates the understanding of the fine that Aristotle has just developed in more practical terms in IX.8.119 This chapter, which I shall discuss further in chapter 3, is itself a high point in the Ethics: it completes Aristotle’s portrait of excellence in character, and so clears the way for a serious discussion of the life of contemplation. In it, he suggests that if everyone strove to maximize the fine for himself, society would be perfectly harmonious. There would not even be competition for the opportunity to perform fine actions, as it is often finer to enable others to perform such actions than to perform them oneself.120 In such a society—as among friends who are good—the fine would constitute a common point of reference, a good that because of its universality could be shared by all. The argument in IX.9 helps translate this practical insight into theoretical terms.121 Perceiving and Think ing the Fine

By the end of book IX Aristotle has prepared us—subtly, yes, but so definitely as to render what follows almost inevitable—for the developments that will bring the Ethics to a close. What portrait, then, has he painted of the human good? 119. The object of fully practical knowledge is, of course, always particular. The fine is nevertheless universal by varying with circumstances in genuinely rational ways, so that it (a) depends on principles that hold always or for the most part (see also VI.7.1141b14–23), and (b) can be appreciated even in its particularity by any good person familiar with the situation. For Aristotle’s ethical use of principles that hold for the most part (epi to polu) see Reeve 1992, G. Anagnostopoulos 1994, Winter 1997. 120. EN IX.8.1168a8–10, 32–34. 121. It is therefore a mistake to ask, as does Whiting 2002 (94–116), whether Aristotle’s excellent person ultimately performs good actions because they contribute to his own happiness or because they are fine. For an action to be good just is for it to be reasonable, and hence perfective of the rational agent who performs it. Yet it is also common to all reasonable beings, for in perceiving it as fine they perceive it not only as the action they themselves would have chosen in the circumstances, but also as the action they would have had the actual agent perform, both for his benefit and for their own.



The Good Human

99

The human good is the being of a good human. For humans, to be is to live; to live is to perceive and think; and perceiving and thinking in the principal sense are inworking rather than mere power. Perceiving and thinking occur in both acting and contemplating; indeed, thoughtful actions are themselves fitting objects for contemplation. Recall now that good actions, as good, are limited rather than unlimited, and that as good, perceiving and thinking are determinate rather than indeterminate. When we consider a good action, therefore, the limitedness of the action coalesces with the determinacy of thought and perception,122 because, as On the Soul III.7 would have it, “understanding in the sense of inworking is the same thing as the reality [understood].”123 In fact, we may continue in terms of On the Soul without straying far from the themes of Ethics IX.9.124 If “thinker and what is thought are the same,” and likewise “the inworking of the perceptible and of perception is the same and one, though their being is not the same,” then the good action that we consider and our contemplation of this action are two sides of the same coin, so that to be aware of one is to be aware of the other. Thought, that is, “is itself thinkable just as its objects are”; likewise, one must “perceive by sight that one is seeing.”125 Although the exact function of the verb “co-perceive” (sunaisthanomai) in IX.9 is a matter for conjecture, it appears to express a similar point: when we perceive, we also “co-perceive” our own perceiving.126 The thinkable and the perceivable are, then, the other side of the coin by which human goods are measured. With regard to perceiving, 122. This point about determinacy is explicit at EE VI.12.1245a1–10, however exactly one reads this passage; for an excellent discussion, see Kosman 2004 (142–46). 123. DA III.7.431a1–2. 124. For a variety of reasons—first so as to let EN speak for itself, later so as to focus on the goodness of being itself rather than on our apprehension of this goodness—I have chosen to banish DA to the margins of my discussion. The discussion of Aristotle’s ethics in Reeve 2012, for example, is much more thoroughly informed by DA and the other theoretical works. Although one is sometimes tempted to wonder whether Reeve takes EN to form a distinct work at all, his observations are almost always illuminating. 125. DA III.4.430a3–4, 2.425b26–27, 4.430a2–3, 2.425b13. 126. For discussion see 142–43, esp. 142n140.

100

The Good Human

moreover, Aristotle states in On the Soul III.7 that “to be pleased or pained is to be inworking through the percipient mean with respect to what is good or bad as such”: perceiving the good as good is pleasant by nature. Moreover, “avoidance and desire are the same” as being pained and pleased, “and what desires and what avoids are distinct neither from each other nor from what perceives, but their being is other.”127 If thinking the good is analogous to perceiving it—and in fact, by the end of Ethics IX.9 Aristotle has begun using “perceive” to mean something like “perceive thoughtfully” or “perceive with understanding”128—it follows that the power by which we contemplate the fine is not distinct from that by which we love it and strive for it, even if their definitions are distinct.129 In his final discussion of pleasure in X.4–5, Aristotle continues the inquiry into nature begun in IX.9. In particular, his analysis of pleasure in X.4 implies that if the human good is to be most pleasant, it must involve perceiving and thinking the finest, strongest (kratiston), and most excellent of perceptible and thinkable things.130 When the things we perceive and think are good, that is, and when we perceive and think them as good, our perception and thought are themselves both good and pleasant.131 The opening lines of X.7, finally, complete Aristotle’s portrait of happiness in similar terms: If happiness is an inworking according to excellence, it makes sense that it would be according to the most powerful excellence [tēn kratistēn]; and this would be the excellence of what is noblest [tou aristou]. Whether, then, it be thought or something else, that seems to rule and lead by nature, and to have a conception of things beautiful and divine, and whether it is itself also divine, or rather the most divine element within us: the inworking of this, according to its own excellence, would be complete happiness—and we have 127. DA III.7.431a10–14. 128. See for example VI.11.1143a35–b5, which ends by observing that “the universals are from the particulars; one must, then, have perception of these, and this is thought [nous]” (b4–5). 129. See again Charles 2006. 130. For discussion see 128–34. 131. See the brief remarks on pleasure in Lear 2010 (359).



The Good Human

101

said that this inworking is contemplative. This would seem to agree both with the foregoing and with the truth, for this inworking is the most powerful—for thought is the most powerful thing within us, and the most powerful objects of knowledge are those with which thought is concerned.132

I shall return to X.4 in the following chapter; for now, we need only observe how book X takes up the account of what it is for a human to be that is already explicit in IX.9. In X.7–8, of course, Aristotle locates the fullness of human happiness in the contemplation of realities finer and more divine than human actions. Yet the text never leaves these actions behind. Although there may be great pleasure in contemplating the highest things, IX.9 recognizes that the pleasures of perceiving and thinking depend not only on the goodness of their objects but also on the relation of these objects to ourselves. The human realm is ours, our own actions especially so. Chosen by us, these actions exist through our conception of the good and our deliberation about how best to achieve it. The thinkability we find in our actions is the thoughtfulness we have put into them.133 132. EN X.7.1177a12–21. 133. In this context it is worth suggesting that the distinction between practical and contemplative nous in EN can be exaggerated, as in Wood 2011. (For the grounds of the distinction, see for example Whiting 1986, 83–85.) The psychology deployed in EN is deliberately elementary (see I.13), and in DA practical and contemplative thought do not require distinct parts of the soul: see Price 2011 (77), Johansen 2012 (224–26, 248), Reeve 2012 (56). Lear 2004 (96–99) spends several pages problematizing the distinction between practical and contemplative thought before finally defending its cogency. Note also that the nous with which X.7 opens appears to be undifferentiated: it has both practical and contemplative functions (1177a14–15), even though the excellence proper to it as nous is contemplative: see also X.8.1178a22, Broadie and Rowe 2002 (441). It is sometimes argued that in 1177a14–15 Aristotle assigns “ruling and leading” to contemplative thought as such, which rules the best life as its end; see however Broadie and Rowe (441), and especially the comparison with earlier passages in Reeve 2014 (345). In contrast, Whiting 2002a (186) argues that practical reason is simply a more complex form of imagination. This conclusion depends on her identification of to aisthētikon with to orektikon, which depends on her understanding of DA 431a8–14 and of the language of perception in Aristotle’s ethical works (154–55, 188–92). One difficulty with this reading involves the status of boulēsis: how can a desire belonging to the sensitive part of the soul direct us toward theoretical nous, and do so because the latter’s objects are superior to those of practical thinking?

102

The Good Human

We began our investigation of the good with Aristotle’s recognition that human beings pursue many goods of which no common account can be given. Most of these are “good simply” in the sense that taken in themselves, they ought to be thought of as promising rather than perilous; they are not good simply in the sense of being determinately good in every case. Whenever they are determinately good, they derive their status as goods from their connection with a single good. As the discussion stands at the end of IX.9, this good centrally involves human actions whose rationality renders them pleasing to thought. Such actions are the good of the human substance as such, for they are our very being, our life in the sense of inworking. They are ours through choice and, in more general terms, through conscious perception and thought. As a matter of perception and thought, finally, this life of action appears to be closely connected with the activity of contemplation: to begin with, fine actions are themselves pleasing objects of contemplation. Because the word “good” has turned out to be such a blunt instrument—though capable of great refinement in particular contexts—it is important to articulate these results more carefully in terms of Aristotle’s distinction between three types of good: the fine, the pleasant, and the useful. Human beings, then, use and enjoy many fine, useful, and pleasant goods. In many cases, in fact, the human good itself just is the rationally determinate pursuit, use, and enjoyment of other goods. The excellent use of other goods, whether fine, useful, or pleasant, is itself something fine, and is pleasant to the good person just insofar as it is fine. In short, what is choiceworthy in the sense of being fine stands at the heart of Aristotle’s account of the good. To complete our search for the good that a human being can become, therefore, we must begin again and attempt to elucidate the fine.



The Good Human

103

The Fine and Beautiful

3

THE FINE AND BEAUTIFUL

Despite its centrality to his conception of the human good, Aristotle nowhere in the Ethics explicitly defines the kalon.1 In Rhetoric I.9, he suggests without discussion that “the fine is whatever, being choiceworthy for itself, is praiseworthy, 1. For the translation of kalos see the beautiful reflections in Kosman 2010 and the equally fine response in Lear 2010. The rejection of renderings with aesthetic connotations (Irwin 2011, Tutuska 2013, Crisp 2014) is problematic for at least two reasons. First, the visibility and attractiveness of good actions are central both to Aristotle’s conception of their goodness and to his cultural context; no serious reader can be misled for long by translations that recognize this. Second, the present study requires a term or terms that can be used in nonethical contexts as well. In many contexts I am inclined to prefer “beautiful,” not because it is perfect but because it puts the right sort of pressure on our own notion of beauty, forcing us to ask what concept could have been enough like that conveyed by “beauty” to justify the translation, while remaining capable of the ethical work Aristotle needs it to do. I shall start out, however, with the weaker “fine,” the near blankness of which suits it to its task in another way.

104

or whatever, being good, is pleasant because good.”2 These formulations, which belong to his treatment of deliberative rhetoric, are meant to be plausible to politicians and to political assemblies (see I.1–4); it is therefore unsurprising that his use of “fine” in the Ethics conforms to both. At the same time, his continual references and appeals to the fine in the Ethics quietly shape a concept whose significance transcends the dialectical context of rhetoric and indeed practical philosophy itself.3 By serving as both a motive for action and an object for contemplation, the fine unites the two lives that Aristotle counts as happy. The unity is one of proportion: although the criteria of fine action are proper to practical thought, the fine in action is to practical reason as the fine objects of natural science, mathematics, and theology are to contemplative reason. By uniting action and contemplation, therefore, the fine also unifies the Aristotelian corpus. As correlative to reason, finally, whether practical or contemplative, the fine helps to anchor the human good in the life of that which thinks. In exploring the fine, I shall first examine the Ethics itself to see how Aristotle develops a conception of the fine that transcends the practical sphere. We shall then see how his intimations of the fine as an object of contemplation are fulfilled in his contemplative or theoretical works. An I niti al S k etch of th e Fi ne

Because the Ethics offers no focused discussion of the fine, much less an explicit definition, there is no one obvious passage with which to begin. I shall therefore begin with the text as a whole, sketching the most prominent contrasts and connections by which Aristotle provides the fine with a real if vague identity.4 This initial sketch will 2. Rhet. I.9.1366a33–34. 3. Rogers 1993, Tutuska 2013, Crisp 2014 all consider typical uses of kalos outside Aristotle. This is a helpful starting point, but we need to discern as well the substantive philosophical proposals reflected in his own uses of the term. 4. Mendell 1989 (349), commenting on the view of Owens 1981 that to kalon is equivalent to to deon and expresses moral obligation, calls for a more inclusive study of the terms Aristotle



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

105

prepare us to examine the fine more closely, first as a motive for action and then as an object of contemplation. What the Fine Is Not

We have already seen Aristotle contrast the fine with the pleasant and the useful, and also with the necessary. I shall therefore begin by returning to these contrasts, turning afterward to the terms that complement or amplify his references to the fine. Before taking up these contrasting goods, however, we should first look briefly at the sort of badness that is contrary to the fine. Throughout the Ethics, the typical contrary of the fine is the ugly or shameful (aischros). The opposition occurs first in II.3, where Aristotle lists the three objects of choice and the corresponding objects of avoidance. In III.1, he considers cases in which one might choose to endure something shameful in hope of securing something fine.5 This implies that although a good person always prefers to avoid what is shameful, there are nevertheless cases in which one must choose to do or endure something shameful. An action need not, then, be unreasonable in order to be called shameful, although in most contexts this is clearly implied (as for example in III.5). The contraries kalos and aischros are sometimes, moreover, applied to things other than actions: honor and disgrace, or physical beauty and ugliness.6 In IV.9 Aristotle discusses shame (aidōs), the feeling that ought to be elicited by one’s own shameful actions. Finally, aischros has as its original if not its most common meaning physical ugliness. Together, kalos and aischros inevitably present good and bad actions as perceptibly attractive and repulsive. associates with or dissociates from the fine. Crisp 2014 offers similar advice, suggesting that “we approach Aristotle’s uses of καλός with the openness of the concept at the front of our minds” (232), taking our cues from the context in each case. Pakaluk 2005 (153–56) provides another sort of preface, considering four Platonic passages concerning the kalon. Note that despite its limitations, Owens’s discussion is more sensitive than the above summary would suggest. 5. EN II.3.1104b30–32; III.1.1110a4–b1. 6. EN III.8.1116a29–30; VIII.8.1159b16.

106

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

In addition to contrasting it with its contrary, Aristotle also contrasts the fine with three other ways of being desirable: the beneficial, the pleasant, and the necessary.7 I shall begin with the necessary, which does not fit the threefold division of goods in II.3. A distinction between the fine and the necessary occurs repeatedly in Aristotle’s discussion of excellence in character. 8 The brave person, for example, stands firm not out of necessity (that is, due to compulsion) but because it is fine to do so, whereas “the many” are typically moved by necessity rather than the fine.9 The generous regard giving rightly as fine, but taking rightly as merely necessary; hence not every reasonable action is fine.10 Sources of pleasure, we have seen, are either necessary or fine;11 friendship, for its part, is both necessary and fine—but more necessary in misfortune, and finer in good fortune.12 In general, the contrast between necessary and fine seems to emphasize the freedom and independence of good people by presenting fine actions not as compelled—whether by force or as means to a desirable end—but as attractive.13 Of the three objects of choice distinguished in II.3, it is the beneficial (ōphelimon)—or advantageous (sumpheron), or useful (chrēsimon)—that Aristotle in the end dissociates most sharply from the fine. The magnanimous man, for example, exhibits self-sufficiency in possessing fine things rather than beneficial ones.14 The fine and the advantageous are distinct criteria for judging when one ought to give 7. Irwin 1986 (125) begins his discussion of the fine by contrasting it with the necessary and the useful; see also Irwin 2011 (246). 8. Lear 2004 (135). 9. EN III.8.1116b2–3; X.9.1180a4–5. 10. EN IV.1.1120b1; hence Crisp 2014 is mistaken to assume that “all morally right actions (τὰ δίκαια) are noble (καλός)” (232). 11. See the discussion of VII.4 at 46–48. 12. EN VIII.1.1155a28–29; IX.11.1171a24–26. 13. Rogers 1994 (297). Nightingale 1998 (46–50) explores the connection between uselessness and freedom, suggesting that “the fact that an individual or an activity does not aim at utility is what identifies each as free” (47). Something like the distinction between the necessary and the fine also structures the argument of DA III.12–13; see 434b22–25, 435b19–21. 14. EN IV.3.1125a11–12.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

107

pleasure to others.15 Most people wish for fine things but choose beneficial ones; similarly, those who truly love themselves choose what is fine, whereas others choose what “seems advantageous.”16 Those who confer benefits see something fine in their work, whereas those who receive see only the expedient or useful.17 In view of these contrasts, we might say that to prefer the beneficial to the fine is to clench one’s fist around one’s own interest narrowly conceived. As Aristotle emphasizes in his discussion of generosity (eleutheriotēs, “freedom”), there is something particularly admirable about disregarding what seems expedient so as to extend one’s interest to others. Consistently choosing the beneficial over the fine, by contrast, separates us from what we admire and praise in others; it thus undermines the freedom of spirit (eleutheriotēs) that comes from considering our own good in view of something greater.18 The relation between the fine and the pleasant is, for its part, at the heart of the Ethics. For those who are not, or not yet, secure in excellence, the pleasant tends to distract from the fine.19 Good people, however, take pleasure in both doing and contemplating fine actions,20 which are pleasant in themselves or by nature.21 Indeed, there are contexts in which “pleasant” seems to amplify “fine” rather than introducing a contrast, as in the claim that most people “have no notion of what is fine and truly pleasant.”22 One of Aristotle’s most challenging yet most helpful statements 15. EN IV.6.1126b28–33, 1127a2–5. 16. EN VIII.13.1162b35–36; IX.8.1169a5–6. 17. EN IX.7.1168a10–12, 15–18. 18. Tutuska 2013 (175–77) shows that Aristotle considers it possible to pursue the fine in excess, unduly neglecting the beneficial and the necessary. But this excess, I would suggest, almost certainly involves (a) various fine things other than fine actions (see 46–48, 115–19), and (b) actions that are fine for the most part but not in this particular instance. When circumstances call for the necessary or advantageous—which are themselves ultimately for the sake of the fine—the fine action that one might otherwise have performed is simply unavailable. 19. EN II.3.1104b9–11; IV.1.1121b9–10; cf. III.1.1110b14–15, 4.1113a33–b2, 11.1119a16–20. 20. EN I.8.1099a17–18; II.3.1105a1; III.1.1110b12–13; IX.7.1168a9–11, 17, 8.1168b27–34, 1169a21–23, 9.1169b22–1170b19. 21. EN IX.9.1169b32–1170b15. 22. EN X.9.1179b15.

108

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

regarding the fine and the pleasant comes in III.4’s discussion of wish, where he writes that “there are fine and pleasant things proper to each condition.”23 To be sure, he goes on to explain that only the good person “sees what is true in all cases,” adding that for many people “the deception seems to come about because of pleasure, for things that are not good appear good.”24 Yet the initial statement is telling: although the verb “appear” pervades the surrounding discussion—in fact removing any possibility of misunderstanding—Aristotle still chooses the blunter, potentially misleading statement that certain things simply are fine to each sort of person. He thereby forces us to reflect on the relation between being fine and being perceived as fine. To be fine is to be attractive, that is, so that those who can see clearly experience the fine as pleasant, and those who cannot take what they experience as pleasant to be fine. It is not clear, in fact, at any point in the Ethics, that Aristotle is interested in separating the fine from the good person’s perception thereof.25 What the Fine Is

The fine is contrary, then, to the shameful; among goods it is distinct from the necessary, the beneficial, and even—though pleasant by nature and hence also to good people—the pleasant as such. That the fine is pleasant to good people, finally, reveals something of its own nature. I now turn to three other associations that may prove helpful: Aristotle often pairs the term “fine” with the phrase hōs dei and its variants, and also with the adjectives “just” and “great.”26 23. EN III.4.1113a31; cf. I.3.1094b14–16; III.7.1115b21; IX.7.1168a10. 24. EN III.4.1113a32, 34–b1. 25. Dover 1974, summarized in Crisp 2014 (232n2), observes that in common usage kalos was unlike agathos in connoting a reaction or response to the quality at issue; see also Ford 2010. Ford’s emphasis on honor and his depiction of the good person as “acting with an eye to the eyes of others” (400) are only partially correct, since the good person prefers love to honor and seeks not so much to be loved as to be love. 26. Aristotle often connects the fine with the praiseworthy: see Irwin 1986 (126), Rogers 1993 (358–60), Cooper 1996 (104). In EN, however, the direct and explicit connection between the two concepts is not so pronounced as to require separate discussion. Irwin 1986



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

109

Above all in his discussion of particular excellences, Aristotle consistently associates acting finely with acting hōs dei: “as one should,” or “as one must.”27 This phrase is regularly clarified by similar, more specific versions such as “what one should,” “when one should,” and “to whom one should”; the result is a list of requirements for excellent action in a given sphere.28 In III.1, Aristotle anticipates these requirements by providing a general list of “the particulars in which and about which action occurs,” ignorance of which may lead to acting badly without meaning to.29 In II.9, moreover, he has already identified the work of finding the mean with the work of adjusting one’s affections and actions to just such particulars, thus developing his earlier contention that the mean should be determined “with respect to [ pros] us.”30 Because the mean is determined by right reason, therefore, the phrase “as one should” turns out to be equivalent to “according to right reason.” This connection is made explicit in III.7: “as one should and as reason [determines], for the sake of the fine.”31 By way of phrases like “as one should,” therefore, Aristotle maintains a close and persistent connection between the fine in action and right reason.32 On several occasions, Aristotle uses the phrase “fine and just” or “just and fine” to describe the things with which politics, and prudence in general, are concerned.33 In I.8, moreover, he discusses an uses this connection to undercut the important resonance between the ethically fine and the fine in other spheres; Irwin 2010, 2011 offer a more nuanced view. 27. See EN III.6.1115a12, 7.1115b12–13, 11.1119a17–18, 12.1119b16–17; IV.1.1120a27–28, b4, 1121a1, 4–5, 6.1126b28–29; IX.2.1165a21–24, 11.1171b15–16. Kraut 2006a recommends the translation “should,” demonstrating that dein should not be taken to convey any special notion of duty or morality, but only that one has good reason to do or to avoid something. 28. EN II.9.1109a28; III.12.1119b17; IV.1.1120a28, 34, b4; 4.1125b9. 29. EN III.1.1110b33–1111a1; list at 1111a3–6. 30. EN II.9.1109a24–29, 6.1106a26–b7. 31. EN III.7.1115b12–13. 32. In X.8, Aristotle sums up practical reason’s attention to these particulars by stating that people acting with excellence of character are “observing what is fitting” (1178a13). Outside the discussion of magnificence, however, the term “fitting” (to prepon) does not play a significant role in EN, and I have chosen to express the idea behind it in other ways. Rogers 1993 (esp. 356–57) discusses this and related aspects of the fine. 33. Politics: EN I.3.1094b14–15, 4.1095b4–6; prudence: VI.12.1143b21–23, 1144a12.

110

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

inscription that connects the just and the fine all the more forcefully in that its author considers what is most just to be finest, but denies that this is either best (lōiston, which Aristotle interprets as ariston) or most pleasant. This suggests a view according to which the fine, though admirable and praiseworthy, is not always the most sensible choice.34 Given Aristotle’s own use of the phrase “fine and just,” it is striking that although he presents the justice that coincides with excellence as a whole as extraordinarily beautiful (though without using the term kalos35), the fine is noticeably absent from his discussion of the justice that is a part of excellence. Within this discussion he describes as fine only the act of taking less than one is entitled to, almost as if justice were a necessary minimum, the fine being found not in strict justice but in generosity and friendship.36 Nevertheless, his consistent pairing of fine and just in describing the concerns of politics and prudence establishes a kinship between the fine itself and the right ordering of communities, where this order includes respect for what is strictly due to others. His pairing of fine and great is even more persistent. The good of a city, for instance, is “greater and more complete . . . finer and more divine” to attain than that of an individual.37 Happiness is “the greatest and finest” of goods, and one shaken from happiness by extreme misfortune must do “great and fine things” to recover.38 A natural sense of what is good would be “the greatest and finest thing”; war 34. EN I.8.1099a24–29; see also VIII.13.1162b35–36, as well as the sardonic IV.1.1120a15–23. For the significance of Aristotle’s attitude toward the inscription—with which he opens EE—see Salmieri 2014 (112). 35. EN V.1.1129b25–1130a1. 36. EN V.9.1136b20–22; see Sachs 2002 (90n122, 97n136). There is one other instance of the term in V, when at 8.1135b25 the adverb kalōs is used to describe an act of judgment. In EN this adverb is typically used to indicate approval of an ethical opinion or judgment, but this may just be a function of the subject matter, and in any case it is the weakest use of kalos available (cf. the constant use of kalōs in Top. to indicate a correctly articulated statement). 37. EN I.2.1094b8–10; EN is thus concerned with civic and not merely individual happiness. Cooper 2010 (212–30) shows that Aristotle’s concern for the well-being of the political community persists after the discussion of contemplative happiness, leading directly to Pol. 38. EN I.9.1099b24, 10.1101a13.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

111

is “the greatest and finest danger”; and the magnificent person produces works that are great and fine.39 Dying for friends or fatherland is a “great and fine action,” so that those who choose to die in this way gain “something greatly fine [mega kalon]” for themselves.40 The actions of politics and war are particularly fine and great, yet greater and finer actions require more external goods.41 Aristotle appears to consider greatness a distinct component of the fine, to the extent that he discusses two excellences, magnificence and magnanimity, that include “great” in their names and are distinguished primarily by the scale on which they operate (IV.2–3). In introducing the latter, he even says by way of analogy that small people can be pretty and well-proportioned, but not beautiful.42 One of the most important aspects of greatness, however, is its persistent association with concern for others, and especially with civic action on a large scale. It would not be going too far, I think, to suggest that Aristotle’s primary objection to selfishness is its smallness or pettiness: the good of many is greater and finer to achieve than the good of one.43 As we have begun to see in IX.8, moreover, concern for the fine instills a universality of outlook that lends itself to concern for the common good and hence opens the path to greatness. Greatness in action, then, requires a certain expansiveness or universality of vision: an ability to see beyond the limits of one’s own individual good. More generally, the fine requires greatness just because it is something to be seen or contemplated. Aristotle’s most explicit discussion of this point comes in Poetics 7: The fine, whether a zōion or any pragma that is constituted of certain parts, must not only have order among its parts but also have some magnitude, 39. EN III.5.1114b9; III.6.1115a30–31; IV.2.1122b16. 40. EN IX.8.1169a24, 26. 41. EN X.7.1177b17, 8.1178b2–3. 42. EN IV.3.1123b7–8. 43. This is the basic difficulty with the conclusion of Irwin 2011 that “the property [Aristotle] picks out in moral contexts through his use of ‘kalon’ is moral rightness” (252). In Aristotle the concern for others characteristic of the good person is a matter not so much of moral rightness as of greatness.

112

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

and not just any. For the fine depends on magnitude and order, so that a fine zōion could be neither too small (for then our consideration [or “contemplation”] is confused, as the time it takes is almost imperceptible) nor too large (for then our consideration never comes together, but for those who consider, the one and the whole vanishes from consideration, as it would if a zōion were a thousand miles long). Therefore, just as bodies and zōia must have magnitude, and this magnitude must be easily seen together, so stories must have length, and this length must be easily remembered.44 . . . The intrinsic and natural limit [horos] of the pragma is this: the greater [story] is always, so long as it is really clear, finer in magnitude.45

In this passage I have left two ambiguous words untranslated. First, zōion can mean either an animal or a picture of any sort, not necessarily of an animal. In Categories 1 it provides a paradigm of homonymy,46 and in Poetics 7 its ambiguity is particularly to the point, since it points both to nature (cf. Parts of Animals I.5, discussed at 136–43 below) and to mimetic art, with which the Poetics is concerned.47 Second, pragma is Aristotle’s general term for a thing or reality, as opposed to the knowledge or perception thereof;48 in Poetics 7 the phrase “any pragma” suggests a similar generality. Most literally, however, a pragma is something done; the word is closely related to praxis, “action,” which is what a tragedy represents, and Aristotle uses pragmata in the plural to designate the occurrences from which a story or plot (muthos) is composed.49 In any case, the striking point of the passage just quoted is that 44. Davis 1992 (51–52) suggests that this sentence has itself been crafted as an orderly magnitude in speech; Whalley 1997 (56) judges it “anything but eusunopton,” and so, perhaps, didactically ironic. 45. Poet. 7.1450b34–1451a6, 9–11. 46. Cat. 1.1a1–6. 47. Commentators tend to assume that the only meaning is “animal” or “living thing”; Lucas 1972 (112) expressly rejects “picture.” This is understandable given Plato’s use of a similar comparison at Phaedrus 264c, but in view of Cat. 1 we should assume that Aristotle endorses the ambiguity. See Gallop 1990 on zoological models—“comparisons of poetic works not only with animals but with likenesses of animals” (146)—in Poet. 48. See for example Cat. 5.4a34–b10, 7.7b24–25, 12.14b18–22. 49. As for example at Poet. 6.1450a4–5, 15.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

113

the fine is relative to the possibility of contemplating it. To transfer this insight from imitation to life, we might conjecture that a greater action is always finer, provided it remains within the compass of practical reason. This inference is supported by Aristotle’s discussion of the size of cities in Politics VII.4, in a passage that echoes the Poetics in practical terms: human power, he explains, does not extend to the ordering of an unlimited multitude; as a result, “the best limit [horos] of a city” is “the greatest excess of multitude that is easily seen together with a view to self-sufficiency of life.”50 Likewise, the ideal territory for a city is “easily seen together,” that is, easily defensible.51 That Aristotle uses the term “easily seen together” (eusunoptos) to delimit both beautiful objects of contemplation and spheres of reasonable action is significant, providing another perspective on his insistence in Ethics IX.9 that what is worth doing is also worth considering. Again, the fine is something to be seen and known.52

50. Pol. VII.4.1326b23–24; here is the passage as a whole: “Law is a certain order, and so good law is necessarily good order, and too excessive a number cannot partake of order—for this is the work of a divine power indeed, even the power that encompasses this universe. Since the beautiful usually comes to be in multitude and magnitude, it follows necessarily that the most beautiful city is that which has, along with magnitude, the aforesaid defining limit [horos]. There is a measure of a city’s magnitude, just as of all other things—animals, plants, tools. For none of these either will have its proper [hautou] power when it is either too small or excessive in magnitude. Sometimes it will lack its nature entirely, sometimes have it badly—as a ship a handbreadth long will not be a ship at all, nor one of a quarter mile, whereas at other magnitudes it will sail poorly, being either too small or excessive” (1326a29–b2). For discussion see Kraut 2013 (235–36). 51. Pol. VII.5.1327a1–3. See also EN IX.10, where Aristotle asks whether there is a limit to the number of good friends as there is to the size of a city: “There is, then, a determinate multitude of friends as well, perhaps the most with whom one could live together” (1170b33– 1171a2). 52. See Lear 2004 (129–30) and 123–34 below; for Poet. note the assessment of Lucas 1972 (113): “It is not clear that A. ever completely separates aesthetic satisfaction from the perception of functionally harmonious development in which the realization of the form consists. . . . Accordingly, although beauty is mentioned as a quality of a good play or poem, we need not regard the achievement of beauty as a separate end of the poet; both in a picture and in a play τὸ καλόν includes intelligibility.”

114

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

Th e Fi ne , Action, and C o n t e m p l at i o n

In light of this initial sketch, we must now consider more carefully the status of the fine both as a motive for action and as an object of contemplation. We begin with action, to which most of the Ethics is devoted; our immediate goal is to discern more clearly what Aristotle means when he says that actions according to excellence are both fine and for the sake of the fine. The Fine in Action

Actions according to excellence are fine, and for the sake of the fine: this is the refrain around which Aristotle’s discussion of excellence in character unfolds.53 At minimum, then, “fine” is what we might call a term of moral approbation and what Aristotle would call a term of praise.54 Every fine action must therefore conform to right reason, and rationality is key to rendering an action fine. Even more, the fine provides practical reason with its identity, for it is concern for the fine that anchors human action in the sphere of reason. As we have seen, a spirited defense of home or family is not excellent when it is “not because of the fine nor as reason [determines], but because of an affection.” So too wasteful people, “because they do not live with a view to the fine, fall off toward pleasures.” In general, “the many . . . living by affection [rather than reason] . . . have no notion of what is fine.”55 “Fine” does not, however, simply mean “correct in action or 53. To collect just the most explicit statements regarding action (  praxis, prattein, praktikos, as well as particular actions such as giving) and its motive (heneka, dia, anti, epi, hoti, para, pros, skopos, telos): I.8.1099a18–22, 32; 9.1099b32; 10.1101a2; II.3.1104b11; III.1.1110a1, 21–23, 1111a28; 5.1113b9–12, b25; 7.1115b12, 23, 1116a11, 15; 8.1116b3, 31, 1117a8, 17; 9.1117b9; 11.1119a18; 12.1119b16; IV.1.1120a12–14, 23–30, b1–4, 1121b1–4, 10; 2.1122b6, 1123a25; 3.1125a26; 6.1126b29–32, 1127a5; VI.12.1144a26; VIII.1.1155a15; IX.8.1168a33–34, b27–29, 1169a6–12, 22–35; X.6.1176b8; 7.1177b17; 8.1178b3, 13, 1179a5, 11, 29; 9.1180a5–10. 54. EN I.12.1101b31–32. 55. EN III.8.1117a8–9; IV.1.1121b9–10; X.9.1179b13–15. Achtenberg 1989 (44–46) discusses reason as opposed to mere affection as the motive of excellent action; it is striking how often the beautiful occurs in the passages she adduces.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

115

affection” or even “according to right reason”; we have already seen ample evidence of this. On the one hand, in VII.4 Aristotle considers sources of pleasure that are “fine and excellent” or “fine and good,” yet regarding which it is possible to go wrong.56 Here and elsewhere, for example, he consistently treats honor as fine; just as importantly, in VII.4 he includes children and parents as fine.57 On the other, we have seen also that although the good person desires to perform fine actions whenever possible, not every correct action counts as fine. Some reasonable actions, such as taking money rightly, are merely necessary. In short, some fine things are not correct actions or affections, and some correct actions are not fine. What, then, of the fine as a motive for action? If not everything fine is a correct action, what does Aristotle mean when he says that good people act for the sake of the fine? Is the fine restricted to correct action in these statements at least, so that acting for the sake of the fine simply means choosing to perform fine actions because of themselves? If so, the specter of ethical egoism would seem to loom large over the Ethics. If, however, the fine that motivates a good person extends beyond his own actions, then the shadow recedes, allowing a more attractive portrait of excellence to emerge. The good person does, of course, always select fine actions at least in part because they are fine. The question is simply whether this exhausts the good person’s motivation by the fine, or whether Aristotle has in mind a broader set of motives. That he calls parents and children “fine and good” is promising, for surely it is possible to be moved both by love of a parent or child and by a desire to do the right thing. Already in I.2, moreover, he appears to be aiming at a nuanced view according to which fine actions are frequently associated with fine results. “Even if [the good] 56. See 46–47 for references and discussion. 57. Crisp 2014 again assumes an identity that the texts do not support: “The καλὸν . . . in moral contexts is what is morally praiseworthy or morally admirable” (233). For honor as fine, see for example III.8.1116a28–30.

116

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

is the same for a single person and for a city,” he writes, “still that of the city [it] appears greater and more complete both to acquire and to preserve; for though it is worthwhile even for one alone, it is finer and more divine for a people and for cities.”58 This sentence contains a mild amphiboly, as its two central pairs of adjectives—“greater and more complete,” “finer and more divine”—can be taken to modify either “that of the city” or “both to acquire and to preserve.” Most likely both readings fall within Aristotle’s intention, as part of the single thought that it is fine to achieve a fine good. Consider, moreover, his discussion in III.1 of actions that are simply involuntary, though voluntary in particular circumstances. Here he specifies that it is sometimes praiseworthy to submit to “something shameful or painful in return for things great and fine,” adding that “it is sometimes difficult to discern what sort of thing should be chosen in return for what and what endured in return for what.”59 It is not always clear, in other words, whether submitting to something bad is praiseworthy and hence fine. Now if the fine in return for which one might consider submitting to something shameful is the action of submitting itself, then reasoning about such cases is patently and problematically circular: in order to determine whether submitting to the shameful is fine, one must already know just how fine it is. Aristotle must mean, therefore, that submission to the shameful is fine and praiseworthy only when done to secure some further fine thing—for example, when one undergoes some moderate humiliation in order to secure greater honor, or even better, the lives of one’s parents and children.60 This discussion in III.1 is closely related, moreover, to Aristotle’s account of bravery in III.6–10, for bravery involves deliberately risking something that one considers bad, and hence performing an 58. EN I.2.1094b7–10. 59. EN III.1.1110a21–22, 29–30. 60. Nielsen 2007 refutes the view that Aristotle endorses a “dirty hands” theory: although shameful acts chosen for the sake of the fine are undesirable simply, they are choiceworthy under the circumstances (280–81). See also Gottlieb 2009 (115–33), Pakaluk 2011.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

117

action that is simply involuntary but voluntary in certain conditions.61 It is probable, moreover, that the brave person’s motivation as described in III.7 has the same structure as we have just seen in III.1. Consider the following passages: The brave person . . . will endure [fearful things] as he should and as reason directs, for the sake of the fine; for this is the end of excellence. The end of every inworking is that which corresponds to one’s condition [hexin]. Now bravery is fine, to the brave person as well; such then is its end too, for each thing is determined by its end. For the sake of something fine, then [kalou dē heneka], the brave person endures and does the things that correspond to bravery.62

Now given Aristotle’s frequent insistence that excellent actions are fine and that the good person acts for the sake of the fine, it would be easy to conclude that the end to which he refers in the second passage is the brave action itself. Three considerations, however, give reason for pause. First, the second passage does not quite conclude by reiterating the first passage’s claim that the brave person acts “for the sake of the fine” (tou kalou heneka); instead, this person is said to act for the sake of “a fine thing” or “something fine.”63 The absence of the article in this phrase is almost unique in the Ethics; in fact, the only other such instance comes in III.8, when Aristotle is discussing those who risk death in battle for the sake of honor. These, he says, are like the truly brave in that they stand firm “because of a desire for something fine [dia kalou orexin].”64 Second, if kalou dē heneka does refer to the action itself, then Aristotle’s discussion of bravery never mentions the fact that—as he has recently argued in III.1—risking something very bad is not in fact fine unless some proportionate further good 61. EN III.6.1115a8–9, 9.1117b7–9. 62. EN III.7.1115b10–13, 20–24. 63. This is often missed by translators; see for example Irwin 1999 (41, 212), Broadie and Rowe 2002 (134, 323–24). Crisp 2014a has the more ambiguous “what is noble” (49). 64. EN III.8.1116a28.

118

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

is on the table.65 Finally, Aristotle has argued in III.6 that war is the finest circumstance in which to face death. This is partly due to the soldier’s opportunity for prowess, but partly because death in war is itself fine.66 It would be strange if this were not at least in part because the soldier fights to secure a great and fine good, the welfare of his city. This reading ensures that the truly brave risk their lives for a good, greater than honor, that is capable of rendering their actions fine. In doing so, it also opens the way to Aristotle’s explicit statement in IX.8 that a good man “does many things for the sake of friends and fatherland.”67 On balance, therefore, it appears that Aristotle’s identification of family, friends, and city as fine plays a significant role in his assessment of which actions count as fine, and that this emerges most clearly when he considers cases in which the good person must suffer some harm in order to secure the good of others. A moment’s consideration, however, reveals that this conclusion leaves the centrality of fine action itself perfectly intact. For throughout the Ethics, Aristotle makes it clear that a good person’s concern for others is aimed above all at their excellence. The good that fine action most aims to secure for others, in other words, is fine action itself.68 Quite apart from the motivational structure of brave actions and 65. Pears 1980 (171, 174–76, 184–87) takes the requirement of an “external goal” such as victory, distinct from the “internal goal” of acting nobly, to be implicit in Aristotle’s focus on warfare. Pears agrees that assessing the nobility of a brave action—its “internal goal”—depends on weighing this external goal against the “countergoal,” or object of fear. In claiming that Aristotle recognizes the external goal as fine, I mean to suggest a tight connection between the value of the external goal and that of the internal goal; see also Garver 2006 (29–30, 47–48). 66. EN III.6.1115a29–b6. 67. EN IX.8.1169a18–19. Taylor 2006 (181) translates kalou dē heneka “for the sake of the fine,” that is, for the sake of expressing a fine state of character, but acknowledges that if his reconstruction of the argument is correct, it does not require the premise that “each thing is determined by its end.” 68. See for example EN I.9.1099b29–32; IX.3.1165b19–20; X.9. This point complements the insightful comments of Annas 1993 (259–60). Cooper 2010 (239–48) aptly describes Aristotle’s conception of the city as community under the heading “The moral life as communal product.”



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

119

of simply involuntary actions in general, Aristotle consistently associates the fine in action with concern for a good greater than one’s own. Looking beyond one’s private interest seems, in fact, to be the essential condition of fine action.69 To the instances we have already considered—the turn to politics in I.2, the implicit concern with the city in III.6–9, the generous person’s disregard of his own advantage in IV.1, and the glowing description in V.1 of justice as complete excellence—we may add the magnificent person, who is “a spender not on himself but on things that are common.”70 This theme reaches its climax, paradoxically, in IX.8. Here Aristotle argues that the good person loves himself most of all, in the sense that he “always keeps for himself what is fine.” Such a person “assigns to himself the things that are finest and most of all good, and gratifies what is most authoritative in himself.”71 In fact, to quote a passage toward which we have already glanced: “Everyone approves and praises those who are exceptionally serious [spoudazontas] about fine actions; and if all were to compete for the fine, and stretch out to do the things that are finest, the community would have all it needed, and each person individually would have the greatest goods, since excellence is such.”72 Now throughout much of the discussion in IX.8, the good person seems rather self-centered: in sacrificing money, honor, office, and even life for “friends and fatherland,” he aims to secure an even greater good for himself. Yet Aristotle’s description concludes with a 69. Irwin 2011 (250–51). Tutuska 2013 shows that in III–V Aristotle admits the popular view, for which see Rhet. I.9, Irwin 1986 (127–28), Reeve 2012 (124), that the fine involves sacrificing one’s own interest for the good of others. In IX.8, however, anticipated by V.9.1136b21–22, he insists that one who chooses the fine secures for himself the greatest good. Although Tutuska correctly avoids forcing IX.8’s perspective on the earlier books (172), which represent an earlier stage of moral reflection, the transition from one understanding of the fine to the other is not as abrupt as he suggests (171). Instead, it flows from the new understanding of what it is to be human that Aristotle begins developing in IX.4. In any case, the fine’s association with concern for others is constant throughout EN. 70. EN IV.2.1123a4–5. 71. EN IX.8.1168b27, 29–30. For the fine as beautiful in this and related passages see Kraut 2013 (239–42). 72. EN IX.8.1169a6–11.

120

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

twist: “Yet it’s possible that one give up even actions to a friend, and that becoming responsible for a friend’s action should be finer than acting oneself.”73 This conclusion is even richer and more subtle than it first appears, for strictly speaking, it implies further that to allow one’s friend to defer fine action to oneself is even finer than oneself deferring such action to one’s friend. This both seems and is slightly ridiculous, but it is also a matter of common experience: it is not much more gracious to insist on deferring to others than to insist on taking the lead.74 The point is that as soon as I realize that acting well may involve letting someone else take the lead in acting well, I have become part of a community in which it is of little concern which of us actually does what. The “I” and “you” of a nascent friendship have yielded to a genuine “we.” In short, the finest achievement of excellence in character is not to give up one’s possessions or opportunities, or even merely one’s life. It is to give up one’s very self as one who must always be first—even first in what is fine—so as to rediscover oneself as a part of an intimate community.75 This is possible only through 73. EN IX.8.1169a18–19, 32–34. Aristotle’s statement does not require responsibility for a friend’s actions in any strong sense, being designed in part to diffuse concerns that he is advocating a fight over opportunities for virtue. Nor must we read IX.8 in terms of a more salutary “moral competition,” as does Kraut 1989 (115–19); see also Price 1989 (112–13), Annas 1993 (257). Kraut’s reading puts too much weight on the chapter’s rhetoric, which turns on the substitution of one object of competition and one sort of advantage for another. As Annas 1989a rightly observes, competition for the fine “is not really competition at all” (8). 74. Here Aristotle implodes the distinction between egoism and altruism, which bedevils even some of the most recent work on the kalon: see for example Crisp 2014 (237–41); Madigan 1985 is more insightful. Price 1989 (111–14) sees the regress as problematic. The response in Pakaluk 1998 (199) is misguided, for at issue is not a logical nuisance but a beautiful everyday occurrence—which of us, for example, will hold the door?—and in its resolution something morally significant occurs. 75. Politis 1993 (153–59) argues that one ought to love oneself more than others, but the passages cited are inconclusive: VIII.7.1159a11–12 is provisional, IX.8.1168b9–10 is not in Aristotle’s voice, and IX.8.1169a34–b1 may state only that one should choose the finest course of action available to one. It may be helpful, however, to distinguish two ways in which one might love oneself most: by considering oneself and one’s own good more important, and by choosing to exercise greater responsibility for one’s own good. If the human good is a certain sort of activity, then even if the first way of loving oneself is most often irrational, the second is inescapable. Politis explores similar ideas (165–69, 173) but saddles himself with a starker than necessary contrast between our inability to “offer . . . virtue and practical wisdom” to



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

121

a concern for the fine, the common appeal of which draws friends together as one.76 In the thought that it is fine to be responsible for a friend’s attainment of the fine, we again see that fine action aims at the good of others precisely by aiming at the fine. The fine action of a child or friend is for the sake of itself as a benefit, we might say, and for the sake of the one who performs it as beneficiary. It is essential to the structure of excellent action that both benefit and beneficiary be good, and indeed that they be inseparable precisely as good. Fine action is the good of a human being: the good that renders a human being good. Aristotle’s understanding of the fine in action, then, involves a set of closely related commitments that form as it were an expanding circle—excellent action is fine and for the sake of the fine. The fine for the sake of which a good person acts extends beyond the action itself. Central to this broader sphere of the fine are friends, family, and city. What the good person desires for these is above all fine action itself. As fine, the actions of others must likewise be directed toward a common attainment of the fine. In short, fine action orients each individual toward the common good, where this good is first and foremost a common, active concern for the fine itself. Now rationality in action, we have seen, consists largely in the rational pursuit, use, and enjoyment of what I have called loose goods. We have also seen, however, that the enjoyment of such goods is not therefore the primary end of practical reason. Reasonable actions are rather, as reasonable, their own ends. It is they that transform loose goods into truly human goods, not the other way round. What Aristotle’s conception of the fine adds to this basic schema is concern for a good greater than one’s own: taking rightly, remember, is reasonable others (169) and our ability to “offer” these goods to ourselves; in fact it is a matter of more and less. 76. Pakaluk 2005 (279–80). Understanding the relation between self-love and love of others in EN depends on understanding the universality of the fine. Carreras 2012 fails entirely; Engberg-Pedersen 1983 draws, from the idea of the kalon as the attractive to reason, a Kantian reading of Aristotle.

122

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

only because necessary; giving rightly, by contrast, is fine. Because this greater good consists above all in the fine actions of a community, we can say that in seeking it, practical reason seeks the fine as a good that transcends the particularity of individual human existence. Love for the fine in action is practical reason’s love for its own activity on the largest scale that that falls within its compass.77 In the preceding discussion I have for the most part tried to avoid anticipating what the Ethics has to say about the fine as an object of contemplation. From I.1 through IX.8, this aspect of the fine is for the most part only implicit, and I have thought it better to let the practical aspects of the fine emerge on their own terms. We have seen, however, that what renders the excellent person exceptional, his actions fine, is the comparative universality of his outlook. In loving the fine, that is, practical reason expands toward a larger and more universal version of its own good. This ability to seek the fine for others implies, of course, the ability to take pleasure in the fine wherever it may be found. This ability, we saw in chapter 2, grounds the argument of IX.9 in which fine action becomes an object of delighted contemplation. The Fine in Contemplation

Beginning early in the Ethics, Aristotle presents the human good as beautiful. After several passing references to the fine or beautiful in I.2–4, he begins and ends his account of the good in I.7 with proportions involving the fine arts, especially music. In I.10, where we 77. According to Irwin 1986, for an action to be fine just is for it to aim at the common good. I have argued instead that actions aiming at the common good are fine insofar as they exhibit practical rationality on a large scale; see the nearly identical criticism in Lear 2004 (134–36). Hence there is no need for Irwin’s suggestion that concern for the common good is rational insofar as the good of one’s community includes one’s own—a proposal that might be made to fly if handled properly, but too easily suggests that only what ultimately serves one’s own private interests is rational. Kraut 2013 (247) takes the beautiful and the beneficial to be distinct ends; of the beautiful, the beneficial, and the pleasant, he takes only the beneficial to be “a necessary factor” in the justification of actions, the beautiful and the pleasant being icing on the cake. I have tried to draw the beautiful and the beneficial to others much more closely together; we shall come to the pleasant shortly.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

123

have seen him write that good fortunes “help to adorn” a good life, his presentation of this life as beautiful becomes subtly more insistent. His reference to Priam, for example, suggests that we consider the fortunes of a good man as if we were listening to Homer or taking in a tragedy. We then see that a fine life “shines through” great misfortunes, and that in general, a good person “will bear his fortunes most beautifully [kallista] and in all ways altogether melodiously [emmelōs].”78 Aristotle’s use of sensible beauty as an image of fine actions comes into its own, however—or so I shall argue—in his discussion of magnificence. In IV.2, I want to suggest, Aristotle presents the rich, visible works of a wealthy person as images of the human work itself. I do not mean that his discussion of magnificence is an allegory: magnificence is a genuine excellence, with its own distinctive identity. Precisely as the excellence of spending large sums fittingly, however, it is particularly suited to serve up visible images of fine action, and this may help explain its prominent place in the Ethics.79 This is nowhere explicit in the text, any more than the significance of I.7’s musical images is explicitly noted. Image and metaphor are the bones of ancient texts, and we may grasp the revolutionary character of Aristotle’s extant works as scientific philosophy without denying him altogether the forms of writing that still dominated his world. Consider, for example, this passage regarding the prodigal or “unpreservable” person, which occurs early in the IV.1’s discussion of generosity: “The unpreservable [asōtos] is someone who has one vice in particular, destroying his substance [ousia—an ordinary word for wealth or livelihood]. For one who perishes because of himself is unpreservable, and the destruction 78. The reference to Priam is at EN I.10.1101a7–8, the quotations at 1100b30–31, 20–21. The adverb “melodiously” carries a deliberate if somewhat routine metaphor, which is spelled out as a simile in IX.9 (1170a8–11) and appears in IV.2 as well. Kraut 2013 (236) drives home the aesthetic implications by referring to Pol. VIII.5–6, where Aristotle recapitulates the Republic’s claim (III.398c–400e) that beautiful melodies and rhythms train us to recognize beautiful characters and actions. 79. This reading resolves the difficulties raised in Irwin 2010 (392–95) regarding the kalon in IV.2.

124

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

of one’s substance too seems to be a certain perishing of oneself, insofar as one’s living is through these things.”80 Given the meaning and importance of the term ousia in Aristotle’s philosophy, it is hard to read his dry observation that “the destruction of one’s substance too seems to be a certain perishing of oneself ” except as a touch of humor, a small wordplay inscribing the serious conceit of wealth and its uses as an external image of the self. In his account of “great-befittingness” or magnificence, then—in discussing, that is, the excellence of those whose substance equips them for great things—Aristotle writes as follows: The magnificent person [literally “the great-befitting”] is like one who understands, for he can consider [or “contemplate”] what is fitting, and make great expenditures melodiously. For as we said at the beginning, a condition [hexis] is determined by its inworkings and by the things with which it is concerned; the expenditures of the magnificent, then, are great and fitting. Such then are his works as well, for thus will the expense be great, and befitting the work. Hence the work should be worthy of the expense, the expense of the work, or even exceed it. The magnificent will make such expenditures for the sake of the fine, for this is common to the excellences. . . . And he would be more concerned with making the work as beautiful and fitting as possible than with keeping the cost to a minimum. The magnificent person is necessarily generous as well, then, for the generous person too will spend what he should and as he should; and the greatness [mega] of the magnificent—the magnitude [megethos], as it were—is in expenditures, with which generosity is concerned. From an equal expenditure, moreover, he will produce a more magnificent work. For the excellence of a possession and that of a work are not the same: the most valuable [timiōtaton] possession is the one that is worth most, such as gold, the most valuable work the one that is great and beautiful. For the contemplation of such a thing is wondrous, and the magnificent is something wondrous. And excellence in a work [ergou aretē], magnificence, is found in magnitude.81

80. EN IV.1.1119b34–1120a3. 81. EN IV.2.1122a34–b18.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

125

This passage resonates, of course, with the discussion of magnitude or greatness (megethos) that we have considered from the Poetics, forming a perfect example of the connection between fine and great that permeates the Ethics as a whole. How, then, might the works of the magnificent person serve as images of excellent action? First, the magnificent person is responsible for certain works— the adornment of a temple, for instance, or the performance of a chorus—and Aristotle has presented the good person’s life as his work. Like excellent actions, moreover, magnificent works are beautiful and are produced because they are beautiful. Indeed, to produce such works one must be like an epistēmōn, “one who understands,” and according to II.6 every epistēmōn “flees excess and deficiency, but seeks the mean and chooses it.”82 Magnificent works require attention to what is fitting, and such attention, Aristotle tells us in X.8, is a mark of good character.83 Finally, because a magnificent work is great and beautiful, it is, like great and beautiful actions, a suitable object of contemplation and not merely of production.84 In fact, the magnificent person is set apart precisely by his ability to contemplate what makes a work great and beautiful. If Aristotle does intend to present the works of the magnificent person as images of excellent action, then the conclusion of the passage I have quoted is an important moment in the unfolding of the 82. EN II.6.1106b5–6. In these contexts epistēmōn and epistēmē have a particular reference to art (compare II.6.1106b5–9 with technitai, technēs in b13–15), but serve to locate art within the broader sphere of intellectual attainment as a whole: art is a more obvious and less controversial form of understanding than is prudence. 83. EN X.8.1178a13. 84. Crisp 2014 would have it that although some “some καλά are purely aesthetic objects, such as sculptures,” and although, like such objects, noble actions are admirable, nevertheless “allowing for this connotation does not require us to import any purely aesthetic value into Aristotle’s ethical account through the notion of the καλόν. That is, the value being ascribed to actions and persons here is moral, and the praise—although a reaction of an ‘observer’—is moral rather than aesthetic” (232–33). I doubt that a distinction between (what we would call) the moral and (what we would call) the aesthetic is particularly helpful for understanding Aristotle or his contemporaries; Crisp’s description of interpretations such as Lear 2006 and perhaps Kraut 2013 as “purely aesthetic” (233n7) seems tendentious as well.

126

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

Ethics as a whole. By considering the proper valuation of external works—which can apparently be measured by wealth, and which bring honor (timē) to their sponsors—Aristotle in fact undermines wealth as a standard of value (also timē).85 In doing so, he reorients human life toward the achievement and contemplation of great and beautiful things.86 It is in the following chapter, by the way, that we find the provocative claim that the great-souled man is “such as to possess things fine and fruitless more than things fruitful and beneficial, for this belongs more to one who is self-sufficient.”87 Building on the preceding discussion of magnificence, this statement provides a fleeting glimpse of the great-souled man as occupied with the leisured contemplation of beautiful things. Whether or not Aristotle intends to present magnificent works as images of excellent action, the passage we are considering does a great deal to clarify his conception of the fine. In the case of magnificence, at least, acting for the sake of the fine clearly involves acting for the sake of a beautiful external work. Notice, moreover, how Aristotle’s reasoning parallels his discussion of the end of bravery. Just as in III.7 “the end of every inworking is that which corresponds to one’s condition . . . for each thing is determined by its end,” so, here, “a condition is determined by its inworkings and by its objects.”88 If magnificence as a condition is to be beautiful, that is, then both magnificent actions and the works they produce must be beautiful. This reinforces the reading of III.7 proposed earlier. It suggests, moreover, that excellence in character is concerned not just with fine actions but with beauty quite generally—and hence also that the beauty of an excellent action should be understood by analogy with other beautiful things. As Aristotle puts it in IX.9, “the excellent person [spoudaios] as excellent enjoys actions according to excellence and disdains those due to vice, 85. Cf. the use of timiōtaton in EN IV.2.1122b16. 86. Kontos 2014 discusses the “visibility of goodness” in Aristotle’s ethics, arguing specifically that his accounts of friendship and magnanimity form “a praise of visibility” (234). 87. EN IV.3.1125a11–12. 88. EN III.7.1115b20–22; IV.2.1122b1–2.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

127

just as the musical person takes pleasure in beautiful melodies and is pained by bad ones [or ‘trite ones,’ tois phaulois].”89 Now I have already considered the passages from IX.9 in which the delighted contemplation of fine actions leaves the realm of image and becomes an explicit part of Aristotle’s understanding of the human good. In doing so, I touched briefly on the role of X.4 as a bridge from IX.9 to X.7. To finish bringing the fine into focus as an object of contemplation, therefore, we now need to consider X.4 more carefully.90 Aristotle’s topic in this chapter is the nature of pleasure, and after concluding that pleasure is not a motion or a becoming he continues as follows: Since every sense is at work with respect to the sensible, and completely so when it is well-disposed with respect to the finest of things that fall under the sense (for complete inworking seems to be this sort of thing above all; and it should make no difference whether one says that the sense is at work or that in which the sense is found): in each case, then, the inworking of what is most nobly [arista] disposed, with respect to the most powerful [kratiston] of things under it, is best [beltistē].91 This inworking would be the most complete and the most pleasant, since for every sense there is a pleasure—and likewise too for thought and contemplation—and the most complete is most pleasant, and that of the well-conditioned with respect to the most excellent of things under it is most complete. . . . That a pleasure occurs for each sense is clear, for we say that sights and sounds are pleasant; and it’s clear too that they are especially pleasant when the sense is most powerful, and is at work 89. EN IX.9.1170a8–11. 90. In assessing X.4 I have found Burnyeat 2008, Shields 2011 (200–202), Strohl 2011 particularly helpful; see also Polansky 1983, Broadie 1991 (esp. 331–33, 337–38, 344–46), Wolfsdorf 2013. Following Strohl, I would define pleasure according to X.4 as something like the immediate possession, through a given form of awareness, of this very awareness as a good instance of its kind, or the experiential awareness of one’s own cognitive activity as fulfilling one’s capacity for this activity. For the assumption that pleasure always belongs to a cognitive activity see the otherwise problematic Heinaman 2011 (8). For pleasure and the fine see also Lear 2004 (133–37) on Rhet. I.9.1366a33–34, keeping in mind Tutuska 2013 on the respect in which the view of Rhet. is modified over the course of EN. 91. “What is . . . disposed” translates a neuter participle, which has replaced the feminine noun “sense” and signifies either the corresponding organ or an unspecified subject of sensation. The pronoun “it” is feminine, and must refer either to the sense or to the inworking.

128

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

with respect to what is such. . . . As long, then, as the thinkable or sensible is as it should be, and what discerns or contemplates it as well, there will be in the inworking its pleasure.92

Now this passage clearly takes up the thread of IX.9, and in discussing the inworking of thought with respect to its finest objects it just as clearly anticipates the opening of X.7.93 It aims at an account of pleasure that is universal, but not, I think, by defining a genus or species. In X.5 Aristotle is quite clear that pleasures differ from one another in form or species (eidos), and he gives no indication that he takes them to belong to a common genus.94 Rather, pleasures are as much alike as the activities to which they belong, and Aristotle almost certainly considers sensation and thought to be related not as species of a genus but by proportion.95 Granted, for instance, that both sense and thought are receptive of certain forms (eidē), it is highly doubtful that “sensible forms” are forms in the same sense of the word as are the forms that we think, or that “to be inworking through the percipient mean with respect to what is good or bad as such” belongs to the same genus as the good person’s inworking through the mean determined by prudence.96 This suggests that X.4 also operates by proportion: pleasures are proportionate to the activities they complete, and—what is more to the point for our present inquiry—the fine is 92. EN X.4.1174b14–23, 26–29, 33–1175a1. 93. For the connection with X.7, see Broadie 1991 (346–53, 363). 94. EN X.5.1175a21–28. 95. Cf. Aristotle’s example of proportion at I.6.1096b28–29: “as sight is to the body, so mind is to the soul.” For pleasures as differing in kind see also Broadie 1991 (338); Wolfsdorf 2013 (133–38) offers a taxonomy of pleasure. If the unity of the kalon is indeed a matter of proportion, then the contention of Lear 2010 (359–60) that kalos means the same thing when applied to melodies, human bodies, and human actions, and indeed that it signifies a “property,” cannot be quite right. Irwin 2011 offers a more nuanced view: “moral and non-moral kala are kala in the same sense, even though the properties that make them kalon are different” (244, departing from Irwin 2010). Irwin takes this to be a case of synonymy, but his formulation is hard to distinguish from Aristotle’s understanding of analogy or proportion. 96. Aristotle refers to sensible forms at DA II.12.424a18; III.8.432a5 (cf. 431b28), and to intelligible forms at III.4.429a28–29, 7.431b2, 8.432a2 (cf. again 431b28). The quotation is from III.7.431a10–11.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

129

proportionate to the sense or the form of thought under which it falls.97 This proportion between forms of the fine and forms of apprehension is subtly reflected, I suspect, in Aristotle’s selection of superlatives to describe the best object of each sense or form of thought. Like the opening of X.7, the passage just quoted is practically swimming in superlatives. At one point, Aristotle contrives to use in a single short sentence all three superlatives commonly in use for agathos: aristos (best-noblest), beltistos (best), and kratistos (best-strongest).98 He uses three different superlatives, as well, for the best object of each cognitive power, describing such an object once as “finest” (kalliston), twice as “best-strongest” (kratiston), and once as “most excellent” (spoudiaotaton).99 The adjective spoudaios, the original meaning of which is something like “serious,” is often read as a generic word meaning “good” or “excellent.” In Categories 8, Aristotle himself states that a person with excellence happens to be called “serious” rather than by a name derived from the word “excellence” (aretē); hence the translation “excellent” adopted here.100 Nevertheless, it is significant that among Aristotle’s most common terms for good and bad persons and actions are words whose root meanings are “serious” and “trivial” (  phaulos). Ap97. It is thus impossible that Aristotle should consider pleasure and the kalon respectively to be the objects of epithumia and thumos, the two forms of nonrational desire, as argued in Cooper 1996; see also Lear 2004 (138–45), Pakaluk 2005 (155). As noted in Irwin 2011 (247), at III.8.1117a4–9 Aristotle explicitly distinguishes acting because of thumos from acting because of the kalon. It is tendentious to suggest, as does Cooper 2010 (217), that the thumos in question simply has not been tutored by reason to love the fine. Note that if Cooper is correct, desire for philosophical contemplation would be boulēsis insofar as contemplation is good, epithumia insofar it is pleasant, and thumos insofar as the object contemplated is fine. Cooper 2010 does give reason a crucial role (112–13), and Pakaluk elsewhere treats the fine as a distinctively rational good “attained by and appreciated by” the thinking soul (279). If a properly rational desire for the kalon is in and through the affections without being reducible to them (see 82n66 earlier), then this desire would still require the moral training central to Cooper’s account (110–14). 98. EN X.4.1174b19–20. 99. EN X.4.1174b15, 19, 29, 22–23; see Broadie and Rowe 2002 (435–36). The role of the object undercuts the claim of Dow 2011 (60–61) that pleasure in X.4 is not pleasure in an object; in fact, cognitive activity just is its own object in the latter’s full actuality as an object. 100. Cat. 8.10b7.

130

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

plied to an object of sense or thought in particular, spoudaios probably means “good” by meaning “worth serious attention”; at minimum, this connotation hovers in the background.101 Likewise, it is probably significant that Aristotle twice describes the finest object of sense or thought as kratiston, and once extends this term to the sense itself: the finest object is that whose power to be sensed or thought is greatest, and the sense is in its best condition when its power to perceive is at its height. Aristotle’s language appears to reinforce, therefore, a conclusion already implicit in the proportion between the forms of the fine and the powers by which we apprehend them. Sensible or thinkable objects are fine, that is, precisely on the basis of their relation to sense or thought.102 The finest object of each sense or form of thought is the one that brings sensing or thinking to its highest point, demanding and rewarding our attention through its exceptional power to be sensed or thought by just this kind of sensing or thinking. Such objects would also, of course, be those that make us most fully aware of ourselves as perceiving and thinking beings, for what is perceived or thought through inworking is the same as the perceiving or thinking of it.103 The explicit point of Aristotle’s discussion is, of course, that the most powerful perceiving and thinking—or the most powerful objects, perceived and thought—are pleasant, and that this pleasure, far from being a discrete reality looped round the activity “like a sort of 101. H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with supplement, electronic edition by Logos Bible Software, s.v. spoudaios, sense II.1; Sparshott 1994 (50–53). 102. See the perceptive discussion of the kalon, appearance, and being in Kosman 2010 (353–57), as well as Halliwell 1992 (246) on Aristotle’s “objectivist and cognitivist” conception of aesthetic pleasure. According to Kraut 2013 (237–38), “there is a way of being kalon that does not require beauty, and virtue is kalon in that way. This is entirely compatible with my thesis that there is a way of being kalon that does require beauty, and that virtue is also beautiful in that way.” It would be better to adopt a broader, more flexible approach to beauty: for example, Kraut’s claim that a praiseworthy athletic feat is kalon but not beautiful (218) strikes me not only as tendentious but as dangerous, both for the athlete and for the aesthete. 103. On “degrees of realization” in activity, see Wolfsdorf 2013 (131).



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

131

necklace,”104 is proper to the perception or thought and completes it. This intimate connection between the fine and the pleasure it gives us is the final element in his solution to the problem of many goods. Pleasure need not stand over against the fine in competition with it, for the fine is indeed “whatever, being good, is pleasant because good.”105 Not everyone, of course, is in the best condition for perceiving or thinking; not everyone finds the finest object most pleasant. The fine’s proportionality to its own form of apprehension, however, ensures that there are no extrinsic criteria for identifying the fine in any sphere. In each sphere, rather, the fine just is what such and such a form of perceiving or thinking, whenever it exists and acts most completely on its own terms, identifies as fine: “The excellent person differs most in seeing what is true in all cases, being as it were their rule and measure.”106 This account of pleasure in the fine, and of the activities that such pleasure completes, bears directly on the good person’s contemplation of fine actions as discussed in IX.9. To see just how it does so, however, we need to begin a bit farther back. In VI.1, Aristotle divided the part of the soul that has reason into two further parts, “one by which we contemplate all those among beings whose principles [ta toiauta tōn ontōn hosōn hai archai] do not admit of being otherwise, one by which [we contemplate] those [whose principles] do admit of it.” These he calls the epistēmonikon, the understanding part, and the logistikon, the calculating or reckoning part.107 Now in the sentence just quoted, the phrase tōn ontōn, “among beings,” is not strictly required. It serves to make us aware that this division of the rational part is based on a division of being as a whole, toward which the rational part is oriented. Also significant is the verb “contemplate,” which governs both clauses of the distinction. On the one hand, the consideration 104. EN I.8.1099a16. 105. Rhet. I.9.1366a34. 106. EN III.4.1113a32–33. 107. EN VI.1.1139a6–8, 11–12. At VI.5.1140b25–28 the second part is called doxastikon, “opinion-forming.”

132

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

or contemplation of things with variable principles is proper to beings who live by action.108 For such beings, Aristotle has all along insisted, the goal of excellence is not merely to contemplate fine actions but above all to act.109 Nevertheless, as in the case of magnificence, so in general the ability to act finely implies the ability to consider what is fine; indeed, it implies the ability to take pleasure even in actions over which one has no control. The logistikon, therefore, necessarily has a contemplative dimension. Hence in IX.9, having concluded his discussion of excellence in character, Aristotle can lay the groundwork for discussing the life of contemplation by highlighting the logistikon itself as contemplative.110 His discussion of pleasure in X.4, then, provides him with the conceptual resources to articulate the profound unity between the life of action and the life of contemplation: they are unified by the beautiful, and by reason’s pleasure in the beautiful.111 Delight in the beautiful belongs to reason through itself,112 for the beautiful proportionate to each power of apprehension just is what most fulfills that power as the particular power it is. Whereas sight, however, is of color, and hearing of sound, Aristotle has indicated in VI.1 that reason or thought is of being in its various forms. This implies, we shall see, that the most beautiful object of thought as a whole is the first being, which is in the fullest possible way.113 It implies also, however, that 108. EN VI.1.1139a12–14, 4.1140a1–2; see also III.3.1112a21–26. 109. EN I.3.1095a5–6; II.2.1103b26–31. 110. Lear 2004 approaches the similarity between practical and theoretical reason by way of book VI itself; one of Lear’s many valuable observations is that in both spheres, “reasoning is more truthful to the extent that it is precise about the good in its sphere of inquiry” (105). Influenced by Lear, Cooper 2003 (302n53) suggests that the exercise of prudence may “mirror in some suitable way the excellent processes of excellent contemplative thinking” (304). 111. The excellent discussion of the beautiful, action, and contemplation in Wood 2011 is hampered by the conviction that the ethical kalon is, strictly speaking, an unchanging object of theoretical reason; this is combined with an unnecessarily sharp distinction between the calculative and scientific parts of the soul (see 102n133 earlier), and with a restriction of desire to the “irrational-appetitive” part. 112. See Posterior Analytics I.4.73a37–43. 113. Lear 2004 rejects the possibility that practical and contemplative intellect are related “merely by analogy” (89), a relation too weak for her purposes because it does not entail the



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

133

what is most beautiful to the logistikon is that whose presence within it constitutes its complete inworking.114 The finest actions, then, just are the actions that fulfill practical reason as such.115 To choose such actions consistently is to align one’s affections more and more with what is reasonable, and therefore fine to reason. It is thereby to cultivate the capacity for unimpeded contemplation and enjoyment of reason in action as such.116 It is—or at least it can be—the first step toward a life of contemplation.117 T h e F i n e o r B e au t i f u l i n A r i s t o t l e ’ s C o n t e m p l at i v e W o r k s

Scattered through the Ethics we find a series of comparisons between fine human actions and other fine things. Most often the comparisons are drawn from human life, in particular from the arts.118 Another important comparison is between the human and the divine: the discussion of wisdom and prudence in VI.7, for instance, turns on a comparison between the fine actions at which politics aims and the superiority of contemplation. My purpose, however, is precisely to emphasize the proportional similarity between the two activities, as does Lear later in her discussion (93–115). Lear suggests that the exercise of practical reason is good by homonymy pros hen, being for the sake of contemplative activity not instrumentally but by “teleological approximation”; that is, contemplation is the model that practical reason strives to approximate (41n47). 114. I therefore hesitate to agree with Lear 2004 that “for Aristotle, a thing is beautiful because it is good, rather than that it is good because it is beautiful” (125n4). The beautiful that ought to rule human life is what fulfills reason just insofar as it does so; this makes the beautiful fundamental rather than derivative. Granted, the beautiful in action—that is, the beautiful proportionate to practical reason as such—is beautiful in part because it is ordered to contemplative activity; yet the latter, we shall see, is itself good insofar as its own objects are beautiful. The primacy of the kalon does not make Aristotle an aesthete in any ordinary sense, for the kalon corresponds not merely to sentiment but to nous understood as oriented toward being as a whole. 115. See the important discussion in Lear 2006 (129–31). 116. See also EN VII.12.1153a12–15, 20–23. 117. The conclusion of Owens 1991 (151) that “the study of moral goodness is epistemologically a radically different undertaking from the study of transcendental goodness” thus requires considerable qualification. 118. In addition to the beautiful melodies of IX.9.1170a8–11, for instance, there is also the fine sandal of I.10.1101a4–5, which I shall consider briefly in the introduction to chapter 4.

134

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

objects of contemplation that X.7 will describe as “fine and divine.”119 In the function argument and at least two other passages, moreover, Aristotle compares human goodness with the goodness of nature. One of these passages is also from VI.7, and in context is best read as a comparison with the divine rather than with the natural as such: “there are other things much more divine in nature than a human being—such as, most apparently at least, those from which the cosmos is put together.”120 Here the heavens, most divine of visible realities, serve as a point of entry to theology. Much earlier, though, in I.9, the comparison is with nature as such: If human beings receive any gift at all from the gods, it’s reasonable that happiness too should be god-given—and it above all, inasmuch as it is the best of human things. Now this is perhaps more suitable to another investigation. But even if it is not god-sent, but comes about due to excellence and some sort of learning or practice, still it appears to be something particularly divine; for the prize and end of excellence seems to be the noblest thing of all, divine and blessed. Yet it would also be quite common, for it could belong to all who are not disabled with respect to excellence, through some sort of learning and attention. Now if this is better than becoming happy by fortune, it is reasonable that it be the case. For things that are due to nature naturally come to pass in the most beautiful manner possible, and so also those due to art, and to every cause, above all the noblest.121

However exactly one reads this passage—the structure of the first lines is unclear, as is the identity of the “noblest” cause122—it sets the 119. EN VI.7.1141a20–22, a33–b3. 120. EN VI.7.1141a34–b2. 121. EN I.9.1099b11–23. 122. The quotation opens with two consecutive men clauses (“If human beings” and “Now this is”) followed by a de clause (“But even if ”). If “the noblest” (tēn aristēn) refers to excellence, the argument must be not that happiness comes about through excellence, but rather that because happiness is a matter of excellence it should not come about through fortune. “The noblest” might also refer to a hypothetical divine cause (a better candidate for noblest cause, at least absolutely speaking), in which case the final phrase would imply that such a cause is better thought of as bestowing its gifts through learning and attention than through fortune. Note that the phrase I have rendered “naturally come to pass in the most beautiful manner possible” (hoion te kallista echein, houtō pephuken) might instead be translated “are naturally in the finest condition.”



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

135

process of becoming happy alongside processes of two other sorts, the natural and the artistic, asserting that both art and nature act as beautifully as they can.123 Although the argument has a practical purpose, therefore—to elicit the learning and attention to which it refers— it depends on considering the human work alongside the works of nature. The Ethics aims at happiness, then, and it understands happiness partly in terms of the beauty of human actions. It compares beautiful actions with the objects of contemplative thought—of natural science and theology—and it asserts that complete happiness depends on contemplation as well as action. All this suggests that Aristotle’s commitment to the life of contemplation turns on the beauty of contemplation’s objects; and in fact, he has left us passages associating with the pursuit of beauty each of the three “contemplative [or ‘theoretical’] philosophies” distinguished in Metaphysics VI.1: natural science, mathematics, and theology. In each of these philosophies, moreover, the object of knowledge stands forth as beautiful not accidentally, but in virtue of the principles by which it exists and through which it can be known. We now turn to these passages, beginning with natural science.124 The Beautiful in Natural Science

To approach the role of the beautiful in Aristotle’s natural science, we shall hardly find a better path than his encomium to the study of animals in Parts of Animals I.5. Here he praises zoology for the beauty of its objects and the pleasure they provide us, insisting that far from being a happy byproduct of the search for truth, the zoologist’s delight in animals is strictly bound to his capacity for understanding. Corre123. For the analogy between art and nature in Aristotle, see for example Broadie 1990, Charles 1991. 124. With the following discussion cf. the brief comments in Lawrence 2006 (68); for the three theoretical sciences see Cleary 1994. For an intriguing perspective on love of the beautiful or something very like it in Aristotle’s philosophical methodology, see Reeve 1998 (250–52) on euphuia.

136

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

spondingly, the beauty of living things is rooted in the principles by which they exist as substances in the first place. Here, then, is the text. Among all the substances constituted by nature, some are for all eternity ungenerated and imperishable, whereas others share in generation and perishing. Now it happens concerning the higher, honorable and divine as they are, that the contemplation to which we attain is less. For of the things on the basis of which we might inquire, and of those too that we long to know, very few are apparent to sensation. When it comes to the perishable, both plants and animals, we are better equipped for acquaintance: we have, as it were, grown up together, and whoever wants to put in the work may grasp many of the attributes of each kind. Yet each group has its attraction. Even if we grasp the former but a little, still, getting to know them is, through the honor it involves, more pleasant than the knowledge of all that are near to us. Isn’t catching the slightest glimpse of those whom we love more pleasant than seeing with accuracy many other great things? And yet the latter—since we get to know more of them better—take over the preeminence in understanding.125 Being more neighborly to us, moreover, and more at home with our nature [tēs phuseōs oikeiotera], they offer something to set in balance with the philosophy of things divine. Having finished our course on those higher things, and said how things seem to us there, it is left to speak of animal nature, leaving out nothing in our power, less honorable or more. For even in those unattractive among them to sensation, the nature that crafts them offers, again126 through contemplation, pleasures no craftsman could contrive to those who can get to know their causes, and are natural lovers of wisdom. It would be unreasonable and incongruous, after all, to delight in contemplating their images, because we co-contemplate in these images [suntheōroumen] the art that crafts them—drawing, for instance, or sculpting—and not to be fonder still of contemplating the things themselves, constituted by nature—for us, at least, who are able to catch sight of their causes. So one should not be childishly 125. “Take over the preeminence in understanding”: lambanei tēn tēs epistēmēs huperochēn. Cf. Pol. IV.11. 1296a31: “they take over preeminence in the constitution as the prize of victory” (tēs nikēs athlon tēn huperochēn tēs politeias lambanousin). 126. I follow Balme 1972 (123) in preferring the homoiōs of the mss. to Bekker’s homōs, and take it to pair the contemplation of animals and plants with contemplation of the heavens.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

137

averse to investigating the less honorable animals, for in everything natural there is something wondrous. And just as Heraclitus is said to have remarked to the travelers who wished to meet him, who were going in but stopped, seeing him warming himself at the stove—for he bade them come in boldly, “for even here there are gods”127—so also one should enter in unabashed to the inquiry concerning each of the animals, there being in all of them something natural and beautiful. For what is not by chance but for the sake of something is present above all in the works of nature; and that for the sake of which they have been constituted, or have come to be, has taken up the post of the beautiful. If someone has supposed it dishonorable to contemplate the other animals, he must think in the same way of himself as well. Not without much disgust, after all, can one see the things of which humankind is constituted— blood, flesh, bones, vessels, and parts of this sort. In the same way, one should suppose that the discussion of this or that part or implement is not about taking notice of the material, nor for the sake of this, but rather the whole shape. Housebuilding, we might say, is about a house, not bricks, clay, and timbers, and the study of nature is about the composition and the substance as a whole, not the parts, which are never found separate from their substance.128

In this lovely panegyric, the assertion on which I most want to focus our attention comes almost at the end: “the study of nature is about the composition and the substance as a whole.” Before turning directly to this claim, however, it may be helpful to explore two points of connection—one quite solid, the other intriguing if a bit more tenuous—with Ethics IX.9.129 127. For interpretations of this otherwise unknown story see Gregoric 2001. 128. PA I.5.644b22–645a36. For the protreptic function of this passage see Shiffman 2005; for its function within PA, see Lennox 2010 (75–77). Balme 1972 (122–23) comments on Aristotle’s prose: “The sentences run easily for reading aloud—they fall into parts that are convenient in length, and balance each other, and lead to a natural conclusion both rhythmically and syntactically. The diction is very slightly elevated (for example, 644b27 ποθοῦμεν, ‘we long for,’ and the rather stately presentation of the argument), but it is nearer to ordinary than to purple language. . . . It is in fact very beautiful natural Greek, similar to the best parts of the Politics, well deserving the compliment that Cicero paid to Aristotle’s writing (to the surprise of later readers of the treatises)—‘a golden river of discourse,’ flumen orationis aureum (Cicero, Acad. II. 119).” 129. Of the conclusion in Irwin 2010 that this passage is not obviously intended “to

138

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

First, in comparing eternal and destructible natural beings Aristotle is weighing against each other the two things “pleasant by nature” that we have seen him identify in Ethics IX.9: what is good and excellent in itself, and what is one’s own (to oikeion).130 Pleasure in beauty thus has the same basic parameters in natural science as it does in human affairs: some things are more pleasant to contemplate in virtue of their greater nobility, others in virtue of their nearer relation to ourselves. In Parts of Animals, however, the distinction found in Ethics IX.9 is connected with a further contrast. In themselves, to be sure, eternal beings are worthier of contemplation, but our understanding of them is decidedly inferior to our understanding of things nearer ourselves. We are faced, then, with a decision: should we embark on an exclusive project to contemplate only the highest things, thereby consigning ourselves to a form of contemplation that in other respects is markedly inferior? Or should we make allowances for our own place in the universe, recognizing that “even here there are gods”? Together with the passage we are now considering, the whole extant corpus testifies to Aristotle’s answer. His concern with the divine and beautiful is inclusive rather than exclusive.131 He aspires to knowledge of god because nature and human life already manifest the divine, and his conviction that the whole of things is somehow anchored in an eternal act of contemplation increases rather than undermining his sensitivity to changeable beauties. Together with the reflections on human identity that shape book IX of the Ethics, moreover, this inclusive approach to the life of contemplation has clear and decisive implications for the relation between contemplation and action in a good human life. The concerns that undergird Aristotle’s serious attention to the guts of animals apply as well to ordinary human extend our awareness of beauty in nature” (388) there is little to be said. Irwin does, however, flirt with the idea that Aristotle’s various uses of kalos work by some sort of analogy (388–89); see also 129n95. 130. EN IX.9.1169b30–1170a1. In PA, leaning on the phrases dia to suntrophon (“we have . . . grown up together,” 644b29) and dia to plēsiaitera hēmōn einai (“being nearer / more neighborly to us,” b37–38), I have opted for a very literal translation of tēs phuseōs oikeiotera. 131. Reeve 2012 (268–69).



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

139

realities, even in the particularity of their actual existence: to household and polis, friendship and commerce, fear and daring, hunger and thirst. An Aristotelian life of contemplation, then, corresponds not simply to the requirements of thought as such but to the nature and limits of the human thinker in particular. For this reason, if for no other, its form is inclusive. Such a life not only permits but encourages by example a sensitivity to the particular beauties corresponding to the circumstances of one’s own life. As Aristotle insists in the early going of the Ethics, moreover, the only true knowledge of such beauties is practical.132 There are forms of goodness that call only for contemplation, but there are also forms—and not those most remote from us—that call for action.133 Indeed, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that contemplation—the elephant, recall, in prudence’s council chamber—is quite aware of this fact. According to Aristotle’s contemplative works, at least, the distinctions between particular and universal, moved and unmoved, always and for the most part, are all themselves universals. They belong to the unchanging structure of the world, within which the practical virtue of prudence thus finds an eternal place.134 As a roundabout way of returning to Parts of Animals, it may be worth noting the extent to which the Nicomachean Ethics is aimed at the politician or would-be politician who is tempted to make politics and warfare the pinnacle of human achievement. Despite identifying 132. EN I.3.1095a5–6; II.2.1103b26–31. 133. Cooper 2010 (215): a purely theoretical understanding of the human good is no understanding at all, involving a failure to grasp the good precisely as good. Note also the suggestion of Meyer 2011a (61–62) that the best person’s commitment to contemplation regulates practical activity by shifting his attention away from the practical and toward the contemplative, not by undermining his commitment to excellence in character when action is called for. 134. A few concluding references regarding eudaimonia: Gurtler 2003 presents X.6–8 as returning to the three lives of I.5 and preserving the truth in each of them. Contemplation thus crowns and shapes the best life without monopolizing it: see also Walker 2011, Irwin 1991 (390–91). Cooper 1987 (esp. 208–12) observes that the term eudaimonia connotes divine favor and a divine way of life (see I.9.1099b11–13). Hence excellent rational activity as a whole counts as eudaimonia insofar as it is—in the more perfect of its two forms—the activity of a god: see also Broadie 1991 (77–78), Long 2011.

140

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

his own inquiry as political, Aristotle begins and ends his assessment of the political life with sarcastic remarks about the typical politician.135 Aspiring not so much “to do fine things” as to “rule earth and sea,” such a politikos fails to “gratify what is most authoritative in himself.” He aims instead at “positions of power and honors,” seeking to be assured by others of a goodness and importance in which he has no deep confidence. In the worst case, perhaps, he even “makes enemies of his friends,” desperate to secure his own self-importance by overcoming others.136 Now politics and warfare, undertaken with excellence, are in fact the pinnacle of practical human achievement.137 To allow them to parade as the highest good, however, would be to deprive the politician of the perspective that might keep him from destroying himself and others.138 This is, for Aristotle, the realization that politics is an expression of human need as much as of power, that we can be at our most godlike only when political work has been set aside, and that if the political realm proves disappointing—as well it may—the beauties of nature are eternal. I do not know, of course, for what audience or audiences exactly Aristotle composed Parts of Animals I. In book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, however, we encounter not only his own passion for wisdom but also his conviction that we would all be better off if politicians could be brought to a sense of themselves, and indeed of their own godliness, not bound up with political activity. A young man of wealth and good birth brought to value bravery and generosity more than pleasure and honor is a fine work for his parents and teacher. One who develops in addition an unselfconscious and uncomplicated delight in the parts of animals may be—though in such things there is no guarantee—even finer. 135. EN I.5.1095b22–31; X.7.1177b12–15. 136. EN X.8.1179a4–5; IX.8.1168b30; X.7.1177b13; I.5.1095b22–29; X.7.1177b11. 137. EN X.7.1177b16–17. 138. Broadie 1991 (422–24). Roochnik 2008 shows that according to Pol. VII.2, only the commitment to philosophical leisure keeps the best city from aspiring to unlimited political power, thus securing the possibility of virtue as a whole.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

141

Second, the verb “co-contemplate” (suntheōrein) in Parts of Animals I.5 is intriguingly similar to the “co-perceive” (sunaisthanesthai) of Ethics IX.9. In the Ethics, “co-perceive” seems first to describe our simultaneous perception, as we perceive or think some object, of our own perceiving or thinking; Aristotle adds that such co-perception is a perception of our very being. He later extends this concept by observing that in order to delight in a friend’s goodness, one must “co-perceive also that one’s friend is.”139 If this use builds on the previous, it may mean that in perceiving a friend’s words and actions, we co-perceive his or her inworking as a perceiving, thinking being. Not only would this yield an important if undeveloped claim about awareness of other minds; it also creates a striking parallel with our present text.140 In Parts of Animals, Aristotle suggests that we are delighted by works of art because in contemplating them we “co-contemplate” the art that crafts them.141 Such co-contemplation is very like coperceiving a friend’s thoughtfulness in his or her words and actions.142 Something similar happens, he continues, when we attend to the works of nature: in contemplating them, especially as we get to know their causes, we co-contemplate the nature that has crafted them.143 139. EN IX.9.1170a29–33, b4–5, 10. 140. In EE VII.12 sunaisthanesthai (1244b25), sungnōrizein (1244b26), and suntheōrein (1245b4–5) refer to cognitive activity shared by friends: Kosman 2004 (147–52), Osborne 2009, Whiting 2012, Reeve 2014 (337). The two instances of sunaisthanesthai in EN IX.9 are at (1) 1170b4 and (2) 1170b10. If (2) has the same sense as in EE, it must mean (2a) sharing one’s friend’s perception of his own being: Pakaluk 1998 (208), 2005 (284–85). Otherwise, it might mean (2b) perceiving one’s friend’s being alongside one’s own: perhaps Reeve 2014 (337). Either might seem safer than (2c) the interpretation I have proposed; Broadie and Rowe 2002 (64, 428), for instance, adopts (2b) and cautiously gestures toward (2c), which Broadie takes to imply (2a). Especially given the use of sun- in PA I.5, however, interpreting (1) as referring to shared perception—as do Kosman, Maher 2012 (779)—seems forced: at (1) Aristotle requires perception neither (1a) by two distinct subjects nor (1b) of two distinct lives, but rather (1c) of one’s own life perceptual life. If (1c) is correct, then (2c) may also be correct. Note that EE VII.12 revolves around the notion of living together: Whiting 2012 (94). Its sun- verbs, therefore, typically have as their subject those who live together as such. EN IX.9, however, adopts the perspective of good persons as individuals. 141. PA I.5.645a12–13. 142. For perceiving a friend’s being, see further Flakne 2005. 143. PA I.5.645a8–10, 13–15. It is correct to call phrases such as “the nature that crafts

142

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

This awareness not just of the work, but also of the art or nature itself, is the cause of our delight.144 This insistence on the principle that forms and enlivens the animal brings us directly to our central point: to discover the beauty of a natural substance is nothing other than to grasp its causal structure as a substance. The direction we must look to catch sight of nature’s beauty, as it were, is the direction we must look in any case to discover its being. Aristotle can therefore observe—conspicuously merging the aesthetic and the causal—that “the discussion of this or that part or implement is not about taking notice of the material, nor for the sake of this, but rather the whole shape.” Otherwise put, “the study of nature is about the composition and the substance as a whole.”145 This connection between being and beauty—which we shall encounter again in his presentations of mathematics and of theology—is at the heart of our inquiry. Though we do not yet have the tools to explore it deeply, its place in Aristotle’s defense of zoology is clear. An animal’s deepest beauty is by no means accidental to its being; instead, the animal is beautiful precisely as a living whole: as a substance.

them” metaphorical, but problematic to dismiss them as merely metaphorical. The animal’s nature is not an artisan and does not act by reason, but it exhibits genuine rationality in the sense that its works are deeply intelligible. As noted in Henry 2013 (230–31), this is a general truth about Aristotelian natures. This truth invites a further question about the ultimate principles and causes of natural beings. 144. Halliwell 1992 notes two other uses of suntheōrein, suggesting that in each case the prefix means “at the same time” (243, 257n11). Yet even if the sense were always temporal, we would still need to know what occurs simultaneously in each case. For instance, there may be a joint object (Prior Analytics II.21.67a37) or subject (EE VII.12.1245b4–5) of contemplation. 145. PA I.5.645a30–35. Lear 2004 takes this passage to support her claim that beautiful order in nature is always “arrangement of parts with reference to or for the sake a common end” (126) where the end is a good distinct from the order itself. Lear acknowledges (127n7), however, that the text in fact seems to identify the beautiful in animals with their end and good. The beauty of human practical activity surely does lie at least partly in its subordination to contemplative activity, because the beauty of anything that is naturally for the sake of an end must lie at least partly, and perhaps entirely, in its subordination to this end: Lear 2004 (32–34, 37). The kalon is not, however, restricted to cases of this sort.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

143

The Beautiful in Mathematics

Among the many impasses (aporiai) proposed in the Metaphysics is a cluster of difficulties about the scope and unity of wisdom.146 One question is whether “the nature of the good” is suited to be a universal principle, as Plato had proposed. As with many of the impasses, book III contains a longer version, and book XI a shorter. In III, Aristotle first raises a general problem and then illustrates it with a brief discussion of mathematics: There are many beings to which not all [the principles] belong. For how could a principle of motion, or the nature of the good, belong to something unmoved? For everything that is good through itself and by its own nature is an end, and serves as a cause insofar as other things both come to be and are for the sake of it; and the end and that for the sake of which is an end of some action; and all actions involve motion. Hence this principle is not to be found among the unmoved, nor can there be any “Good-itself.” Therefore in mathematics too nothing is shown [deiknutai] through this cause, nor does any demonstration [apodeixis] appeal to the fact that something is better or worse: it never occurs to anyone to say anything of the sort. As a result some of the sophists, such as Aristippus, used to cast aspersions on mathematics. For the other arts, even the manual ones like carpentry and cobbling, constantly appeal to the fact that something is better or worse, but mathematics gives no account of what is good or bad.147

The version in XI.1 raises only the general problem: Nor should we suppose that the science we’re looking for is about the causes mentioned in our writings on nature. For it is not about that for the sake of which; for such is the good, and this is present in things done and in beings 146. Met. III.1.995b4–25, 2.996a18–997a34; XI.1–2. Comparing III with XI.1–2 reveals that the distinction between impasses concerning first philosophy itself and impasses concerning its objects can be overstated. Questions that III asks directly, such as whether the first principles are kinds or constituents (III.3), XI presents as questions about the subject matter of wisdom (XI.1). Madigan 1999 (34–35, 148) writes as if Aristotle must be attempting in these texts to construct arguments of which he approves; in fact, one ought to expect aporiagenerating arguments to be flawed. 147. Met. III.2.996a21–b1.

144

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

in motion, and it is the first mover—for such the end is—but there is no first mover among the unmoved.148

Aristotle resolves this difficulty for the case of the unmoved mover itself in XII.7;149 he considers the good as a cause in mathematics, however, in XIII.3: Since the good and the beautiful are distinct (for the one is always found in an action, whereas the beautiful is also found in unmoved things), those who say that mathematical forms of understanding [epistēmai] say nothing about anything beautiful or good are deceived, for they speak about and show [deiknuousi] them most of all. For if they fail to name them, and yet show their works and their accounts [logous], it is not the case that they do not speak about them. For the chief aspects of the beautiful are order, proportion, and the determinate [taxis kai summetria kai to hōrismen­on], which mathematical forms of understanding especially show.150 And since these—I mean order, the determinate, and such—appear to be responsible for many things, clearly one could say that such a cause [aitian] as the beautiful is in a certain way responsible [aition].151

Now given the central thesis of Aristotle’s theology—that the ceaseless unchanging motion of the first heaven is caused by an unchanging being that serves as an object of thought and desire and hence as a cause for the sake of which (see XII.6–7)—the importance of this aporia in its general form is clear enough. Aristotle’s response 148. Met. XI.1.1059a34–b1. 149. For discussion of the resolution see Menn unpublished, §IIIγ1 (11–19). 150. In line with her overall interpretation of the kalon, Lear 2004 (128–29) interprets symmetry or proportion in terms of subordination to an end. None of her examples is mathematical, and although the parts of an animal or of a city are surely proportionate when their size serves the interest of the whole, her explanation of mathematical order in terms of subordination to an end in an extended sense is speculative and strained. We shall see later (202–6) that Aristotle associates order and determinacy, the other aspects of the kalon in XIII.3, primarily with nature’s ends rather than with the things that serve these ends. Although the kalon is in fact sometimes a matter of effective subordination to some further end, in general it is a way of being good rather than of being for the good. 151. Met. XIII.3.1078a31–b5. Cooper 1996 (105–9) assumes that this passage is directly relevant to understanding the ethical kalon. This appeal to the objects of contemplative thought further undercuts Cooper’s claim that the kalon as such is the object of a nonrational desire (see 130n97 above).



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

145

in XIII.3 shows that he is also interested in defending mathematics, which in context amounts to defending the life of contemplation as a whole. The target named in III.2, Aristippus of Cyrene, was founder of a school that denigrated as useless not only mathematics but also natural science and logic.152 By appealing to the beautiful, Aristotle not only suggests that something like the good is indeed a universal cause; he also provides a reason for pursuing forms of understanding not aimed at utility.153 This concern for contemplative as opposed to merely practical understanding may explain why in in III.2 and XIII.3 Aristotle allows such a strong connection between the good and action.154 In XI.1, by contrast, he locates action within the broader class of beings in motion, specifically mentioning natural science as concerned with the good. It is also significant that in XIII.3 he treats the beautiful as wider than the good, whereas for most of the Ethics the opposite is the case. Within the sphere of action, it would seem, the beautiful stands alongside the useful and the pleasant as one sort of motive for action, and hence as one sort of good. Once we broaden our perspective to include contemplation, however, the beautiful as motive and end of action takes its place within the wider sphere of the beautiful as object of contemplation.155 Something similar, in fact, seems to be implicit in Parts of Animals I.5, where that which structures the life of an animal as its own end and good has in addition a more universal significance: by “taking up the post of the beautiful,” as Aristotle puts it, the good of this or that animal becomes a fitting object of contemplation for those who do not share the animal’s practical concerns.156 The beauty 152. For citations see Ross 1924 (228). 153. Cf. Met. I.1.981a19–20. 154. For another suggestion see Crubellier 2009 (54–55). 155. Allan 1971 (64–65), discussing EE and Met., treats the agathon as narrower than the kalon in just this way. Ross 1924 (418), Cleary 1995 (340–41) find the distinction in XIII.3 surprising, yet the choice of a term connoting beauty for that which can be appreciated but not achieved is quite intelligible. Ross finds a “trace” of the distinction at MA 6.700b25, which is in fact a fairly clear parallel; see also EE I.8.1218b4–7. 156. PA I.5.645a25–26. Gotthelf 1989 tries to naturalize the good in Aristotle, taking the

146

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

of this object is not the beauty of a human action, for the animal’s good is not a human good. Rather, it becomes a matter of concern to human beings through our capacity for contemplation. Not only in natural science but in mathematics as well, the realities we contemplate do not merely happen to be beautiful. Rather, the beautiful is in a real sense their constitutive cause. In discussing mathematics, Aristotle expresses the connection between causal order and beauty through a delightfully ambiguous use of the verb deiknumi. In III.2, he uses this verb in conjunction with the related noun apodeixis to mean “show” in the sense of “prove” or “demonstrate.”157 In XIII.3, he suggests that to show or demonstrate a mathematical conclusion is to show or display the beautiful without naming it, by displaying its works and its logoi.158 Mathematical discourse does not typically name the beautiful, I suspect, because the beautiful belongs to its subjects, mathematical or not, by analogy. Each form of understanding contemplates the beautiful in terms appropriate to its own object, and often “beautiful” itself will not be one of these terms. Mathematics, for instance, reveals beauty rather than discussing it because grasping the proportion through which both mathematical and nonmathematical objects can be called beautiful is not itself an act of mathematical understanding. It belongs rather, as we might say, to philosophy of mathematics, which Aristotle subsumes under first philosophy.159

function argument to imply an analysis of the good in terms of the prior notion of an end as something that is simply given. There is, then, no answer to the question “But why should this be the human end?”—and no answer, beyond subjective satisfaction, to the question “Yes, but why should I pursue this end?” (49–50). Yet within his natural science itself, in PA I.5, Aristotle cultivates a point of view from which he can reflectively endorse nature’s ends in terms of their beauty. 157. Met. III.2.996a29–30. 158. Met. XIII.3.1078a34, 36, b1–2. 159. Much of Met. XIII–XIV concerns the status of mathematical objects. The XI version of the impasse we have been considering leads to a series of questions about wisdom and mathematical objects (1059a38–b21); the series concludes by assigning the task of “puzzling about the material of the mathematicals” to first philosophy (b14–21; quotation at 15–16).



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

147

The Beautiful in Theology

In addition to its implications for mathematics, the impasse concerning the good that Aristotle presents in III.2 is of no small importance to the project of first philosophy as a whole. At the heart of this project is his ambition to show that the source of being is not “chaos or night,” as he puts it in XII.6, but an eternal principle of intelligibility.160 Aristotle is a conscious and creative heir to the Platonic tradition, accepting its fundamental conviction while questioning the first forms in which that conviction was expressed. Consider, for example, the reflection on Platonism with which he ends Metaphysics VII.1–16, just before the new beginning in VII.17: Those who speak of the forms speak . . . not rightly, insofar as they call the one over many a form. The reason is that they cannot tell us which substances of this sort—the indestructible ones, beyond the particular and perceptible— there might be. They make them, then, the same in form as the destructible, for these we know: human-itself and horse-itself, adding to the perceptible substance the word “itself.” And yet even if we had not seen the stars, nonetheless, I think, would there be eternal substances beyond the substances that we had seen. So now too, if we do not know what they are, it is presumably still necessary that there be some.161

Aristotle is searching, then, for one or more invisible unchanging beings to serve as causal principles for visible things. When he finally uncovers such a principle—the central object of his third contemplative or theoretical science, theology—he describes it in terms reminiscent of Parts of Animals I.5 and Metaphysics XIII.3: There is something that moves without being moved, being eternal, a substance, an inworking. Now what is desired and what is thought cause movement in this way: they move without being moved. The first of these are the same. For the object of appetite [epithumēton] is what appears beautiful, and the first object of wish is what is beautiful.162 Now a thing does not seem how 160. Met. XII.6.1072a8. 161. Met. VII.16.1040b27–1041a3; cf. III.2.997b5–12. 162. With this observation cf. the discussion of wish above (80-82); note also the

148

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

it does because we desire it; rather, we desire it because of how it seems, for thinking [noēsis] is the principle. Now mind [nous] is moved by the thinkable, and one column is thinkable in itself, and in this substance is first, and of substance that which is simple, and is substance by way of inworking. . . . But surely the beautiful too, and that which is choiceworthy in itself, is in the same column, and the first is always noblest [ariston], or proportionate thereto.163

Here the term “column” evokes the Pythagorean arrangement of principles into two coordinate columns, the other of which Aristotle always characterizes as privative.164 In his adaptation of this arrangement, therefore, the first column contains principles thinkable in themselves as positive realities, whereas the privations of these are thinkable only through their opposites. According to Metaphysics IV.2, finally, the two columns “are traced back to being and nonbeing.”165 Aristotle’s contention in XII.7, then, is not only that the beautiful belongs to the first column, but that the beautiful tracks or can be traced back to the thinkable, at least to the extent that the first among thinkable things is thereby the first and noblest of beautiful things. The thinkable, for its part, tracks being.166 What most fully is, precisely as such, is the most thinkable, and the most thinkable as such is also the most beautiful. This sequence is just what Ethics X.4 entails, provided that the object of thought as a whole is being as such: whatever most fully is, is most thinkable, and hence is most pleasing to think.167 connection between wish, or rational desire—for which see further Reeve 2000 (194–97)— and the kalon. 163. Met. XII.7.1072a25–b1. 164. Met. I.5.986a22–26; IV.2.1004b27; XI.9.1066a15; Phys. III.2.201b25. For discussion and references see Ross 1924 (376), Reeve 2000 (197). 165. Met. IV.2.1004b28. 166. Laks 2000 (224–26) makes the question of identity among various elements of the series more—and I hope unnecessarily—complex. 167. For further discussion see Menn unpublished, §IIIγ1 (3–4, 9–11, 13–14). Menn writes (14): “What the heaven desires is ‘choiceworthy on account of itself ’; it is also called ‘καλόν,’ which seems to differ from ‘αγαθόν’ in implying that the object is objectively admirable, and not simply suited to filling some need of the agent (food, or the act of eating, would



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

149

The beautiful returns to prominence in XII.9, where—continuing a discussion begun later in XII.7—Aristotle considers god not simply as thinkable but as thinking. Among the questions raised by this notion of the divine, he writes, is “whether its thinking the beautiful or any chance thing makes any difference or none.”168 His response is that divine thinking is a pure inworking that “thinks itself, since it is supreme [kratiston].” To the objection that “understanding, perception, opinion, and thought [dianoia] appear to be always about something else, and of themselves only secondarily [literally “as a by-work,” en parergōi169],” he responds that the object of thought as such—in productive understanding “the substance without material and the whatit-is-to-be,” in contemplative understanding “the logos”—is simultaneously the reality (  pragma) and the thinking.170 God is, then, the unchanging, undivided thinking of some reality or realities that are separate from matter at least “in logos,”171 a conclusion that may well be intended to set up XII.10’s metaphor of god as general or head of household.172 Finally, note that as Aristotle moves from considering god as an object of thought in XII.7 and 9 to considering god as the not be called καλόν; ‘καλόν’ is often restricted to what is perceived as valuable by sight or hearing, modes of perception which do not consume the object or fit it into our bodily gaps). And what is καλόν and choiceworthy on account of itself is supposed to be ontologically grounded in what is in the positive συστοιχία, headed by substance and especially by simple and purely actual substance. The implication seems to be that what the heaven desires is good in the category of substance, good because of the substance it is and not simply because of a quality it has, much less because of a relation it has to a particular agent.” 168. Met. XII.9.1074b23–24. Because Aristotle identifies the first being as beautiful insofar as it is an object of wish (XII.7) and of its own thought (XII.9)—not insofar as it is a thinker—it is unlikely that in calling it fine he means that its thinking is fine insofar as the object of that thinking is good, so that good is the prior evaluative notion, as in Lear 2004 (128). 169. With “by-work” we may wish to compare the “co-perceive” of EN IX.9. 170. Met. XII.9.1074b33–36, 1075a1–3. 171. For this phrase see for example Met. VIII.1.1042a29. 172. Met. XII.10.1075a11–25. I have read XII.9 conservatively, leaving it quite openended, but see 154n6. Menn unpublished, §IIIγ2 (8–9, 24), argues that outside Met. VI.1 Aristotle restricts theoretical understanding to immaterial objects, so that physics is in a certain sense productive rather than theoretical; contrast, however, Reeve 2000 (35–36), Lloyd 1996 (29–30), Lennox 2001 (128–29). This leads Menn to the Plotinian conclusion that divine thought thinks only itself; see also Brunschwig 2000, Reeve 2000 (219–30). Kosman 2000 (323), Norman 1978, De Koninck 1994 resist this conclusion.

150

T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

end to which all things are ordered in XII.10, the word kalos abruptly disappears in favor of agathos.173 As a reading of Metaphysics XII.6–10 as a whole the preceding paragraphs are of course woefully inadequate; yet the following conclusions seem reasonably certain. First, Aristotle presents the first principle of being as a whole as the best-noblest of beings. Second, he suggests that this being is best because it is most thinkable, and most thinkable because it most fully is. Third, when discussing this being as an object of thought and of thoughtful desire, he consistently describes it as beautiful; in discussing it as that toward which all things tend, the unthinking as well as the thinking, he uses “good.” Finally, this dependence of beauty on thinkability and of thinkability on being is consistent with his discussions of mathematics in XIII.3, of natural science in Parts of Animals I.5, and of perception and thought in Ethics X.4. It seems safe to conclude, therefore, that the beautiful in natural science, in mathematics, and in theology is proportionate to the beautiful in human action. Each form of thoughtful apprehension— prudence, wisdom, natural science, or mathematics—is set over one or another kind of being. The principles through which things of each kind exist constitute these things as thinkable in the appropriate way, and hence also as pleasing to think. The shift to first philosophy, meanwhile, provides the altitude needed to see over the walls that divide one form of thought from another; from this perspective the proportion among them emerges.174 Only then, moreover, beyond the natural, the mathematical, and even the human, does the first and most beautiful inworking, on which they all depend, come into view. 173. Met. XII.10.1075a12. Sedley 2000 (327) shows that XII.10 ties together XII as a whole by turning from the prime mover’s activity to its status as “unifying final cause.” For discussion of XII.10 see also Reeve 2000 (230–37). 174. This shift also constitutes a more rigorous return to the initial, undifferentiated perspective from which the various sciences first emerged. Dialectic, through which the principles of each science become manifest, is subject-neutral (Top. I.2.101a36–b4, Met. IV.2.1004b15–26); it reflects the original openness of the thinking being to all that exists.



T h e F i n e a n d B e au t i f u l

151

Being and Goodness

4

BEING AND GOODNESS

Every power of apprehension, then, has its own object, and the object that most fully activates it is most beautiful to it. While this holds of both thought and sense, only thought grasps the things it encounters as what they are: as products of art, as human actions and institutions, as natural substances, as quantities separated in thought, as beings.1 It is the beauty of the things we think, therefore—not that of the sensible as such—that dominates Aristotle’s thought. Delight in the beautiful motivates and sustains both action and contemplation, the beautiful in one sphere being proportionate to that in the other. 1. All these are objects of sensation only accidentally: through their color, sound, or taste, their size, shape, or motion (DA II.6).

152

What we have just seen in the cases of theology, mathematics, natural science, and prudence can easily be verified, by the way, for art as well. I have already touched on two arts, tragic poetry and music, that provide us with objects of contemplation; for the arts of the useful we may return briefly to Ethics I.10, whose emphasis on beauty I have already noted. There, considering how a good person will bear misfortune, Aristotle writes: “One who is truly good and sensible [emphrona], we think, bears all fortunes elegantly, and does always the finest things his circumstances allow—just as a good general uses in the most warlike manner [  polemikōtata] the army he has, and the shoemaker makes from the hides given him the finest sandal, and in the same way all other artisans.”2 As with everything that has a work, the excellence of a useful artifact is its ability to perform its work well.3 And although we often simply make use of such an artifact, without considering how it accomplishes its work, we may also delight in its own beauty as an excellent work of art. We have seen this for imitative art in Parts of Animals I.5, and for admiration of the useful arts we have Metaphysics I.1: “At first it was reasonable that one who found out any art at all . . . should be wondered at by human beings, not only because there was some use in the things found, but as wise and distinguished from the rest.”4 The proportion among forms of understanding and their objects, then, undergirds Aristotle’s use of the adjective kalos to describe the objects of contemplative, practical, and productive thought. He consistently associates the beauty of these objects, moreover, with their status as ends and hence as goods. The fine work of art is the artisan’s end, embodying the “form in the soul” from which art proceeds.5 Fine actions are chosen by good people just because they are fine. In 2. EN I.10.1100b35–1101a6. The literal translation of polemikōtata highlights a possibly pregnant refusal to say “most beautifully/finely/nobly” in the case of warfare; cf. X.7.1177b10–12. 3. EN II.6.1106a15–24. 4. Met. I.1.981b13–17. 5. Met. VII.7.1032b1, 23.



Being and Goodness

153

living things, the beautiful is “that for the sake of which they have been constituted, or have come to be.” Likewise, it is precisely as beautiful that god moves the first heaven. There is a tight connection, finally, between the good or beautiful and the principles of each thing’s being.6 In grasping the position of the beautiful in Aristotle’s natural science and theology, we have reached the turning point of our study. The aim of good human actions, the kalon, has turned out to be in some way the aim of natural beings as well. This connection is not entirely surprising: as I noted at the outset, it is a matter of general agreement that Aristotle’s account of the human good coheres in its broad outlines with his understanding of natural substances, each of which has its own work as its end. In its simplest outlines, moreover, this idea was not unique to Aristotle. The function argument of Ethics I.7 was, in its original context, a perfectly respectable line of reasoning quite apart from the particular concepts of Aristotle’s metaphysics or psychology. Through the considerations that follow it within the Ethics, however, this argument becomes the overture to a careful and distinctive treatment of what it means for a human being to live, a treatment that shares important themes with Aristotle’s other works. In chapter 5, I shall explore one pair of closely related themes in particular: the good is ordered and determinate. In appendix A, I shall look more briefly at another: the good is complete and self-sufficient. 6. This is as good a place as any to register the common view that according to Aristotle “goals are at work in nature . . . without the support of thought processes of any kind” (Cooper 1982, 222). There is much to support this allegation. However, we can be certain that divine thought is not involved in Aristotle’s natural teleology just in case: (1) we can explain passages such as those quoted earlier (71–72) from EN VII.13 and X.2 and DA II.4, either (a) without any immanent cause “superior to [what animals have] through themselves,” or (b) through a superior cause that does not involve awareness of the good; (2) we can explain away Met. XII.10 and similar passages; (3) we can suppose that despite the general precedence of act over potency, Aristotle considers the thinkability of natural forms to be prior to their actually being thought (that is, thought by human beings); and (4) we can suppose that he never thought to ask why nature consistently aims at ends that we can independently recognize as beautiful. Aristotle no doubt considered the role of divine thought in constituting the world to pose an enormously difficult problem; for an attempt to wrestle with his wrestling see Kosman 1988, with the response in Shields 1988.

154

Being and Goodness

In pursuit of these themes I shall range across the extant corpus, not on a quixotic quest to secure its complete consistency, but in order, rather, to identify and reflect upon some important recurring features in Aristotle’s thought. Each of the works in which these elements occur has its own integrity, and each passage needs to be considered in its own context. Yet we shall see that, again and again, Aristotle relies on certain key ideas. These ideas are not merely metaphysical, as metaphysics now tends to be understood. They are intended rather as elements of wisdom, for they articulate the goodness and beauty of that which is. My task in the present chapter is to review and discuss, as a foundation for further study, Aristotle’s consistent identification of a natural substance’s good as that which constitutes its being in the full sense of the word.7 I shall first look to his works on nature for the good’s connection with being in its primary sense of fulfillment (entelecheia) or inworking (energeia)—that is, with the forms and activities of natural beings. I shall then examine two passages in which he makes explicit the striking premise that being is better than not being.8 Finally, I shall reflect briefly on his concern within the Metaphysics for the status of the good as a cause. Throughout, our primary goal will be to bring into clearer focus certain well-known themes in Aristotle’s thought by gathering and reading together some of the most important passages in which these themes are discussed.

7. This is not an essay on Aristotle’s natural teleology in the usual sense, for I am not primarily concerned to clarify the causal relation between that for the sake of which and that which is for the sake of it. I want rather to clarify the standing of that for the sake of which as good. Witt 1998 helpfully distinguishes between natural and metaphysical teleology, where Aristotle’s metaphysical teleology articulates the unity of composite substances in terms of the distinction between potentiality and actuality, where the former is for the sake of the latter. The present chapter shares important themes with Witt’s discussion, but focuses on Aristotle’s conviction that actuality can serve as that for the sake of which because it is good. 8. Menn 1992 asserts without argument that the Scholastic doctrine of the goodness of being as such “is incorrect as an interpretation of Aristotle” (551n12); cf. however the excellent Preus 1990.



Being and Goodness

155

Th e Good, For m, and Activit y

In one of his best-known chapters, On the Soul II.1, Aristotle explains that the term entelecheia “fulfillment” has two senses.9 Here is the relevant passage: The soul is necessarily, therefore, the substance in the sense of form of a natural body that has life by way of ability [dunamei]. Now the substance is a fulfillment [entelecheia]; it is therefore the fulfillment of such a body. Fulfillment [hautē], though, is spoken of in two ways, one in the manner of understanding and the other in the manner of contemplating. It is apparent, then, that it is fulfillment in the manner of understanding; for when the soul belongs to something, both sleep and waking occur, where waking is proportionate to contemplating, sleep to having understanding without inworking. Now understanding is prior [  protera] in coming-to-be in the case of the same individual; consequently, the soul is the first [  prōtē] fulfillment of a natural body that has life by way of ability.10

Though first in its own way, then, soul is not a fulfillment in the complete sense of the word. This honor goes rather to the inworking or activity that belongs to a living thing through its soul. Yet it is not inworking but soul, and more generally form, that Aristotle calls substance. Unlike inworking, soul belongs to the animal or plant for the duration of its existence, providing continuity and identity. What it is for an animal or plant to be is therefore determined by its inworking not directly, but rather through the ongoing power to be at work that is its form or soul. My first task, then, is to recall just how central to Aristotle’s natural science is his identification of form as the cause for the sake of which, that is, as the good of the natural being. We have already seen this identification at work in his exhortation to the study of biology, but we must now follow it into the heart of his scientific methodology. I shall then turn more briefly to the status of work or inworking as the natural being’s complete fulfillment.

9. For the translation “fulfillment” see the introduction (7). 10. DA II.1.412a19–28.

156

Being and Goodness

The Good and Form

Three texts will help us explore the connection between form and goodness in Aristotle’s natural science: Physics II.9, Generation and Corruption II.6, and Parts of Animals I.1.11 In considering these texts, I want to draw attention to one overarching theme: the connection between Aristotle’s decision to understand natural beings in terms of their respective goods and his attention to the forms of these beings understood as logoi, reasons or rational articulations. This connection implies that his concern with the beauty of natural things in Parts of Animals I.5 is not mere window-dressing. Instead, the openness to rational articulation that renders natural beings beautiful to thought also implies that these beings can be understood only in terms of their respective goods. Aristotle’s clearest statement that the search for logoi uncovers the causal role of the good comes in Parts of Animals I.1, a rigorous methodological counterpart to the poetic I.5. I shall therefore work my way toward this text by way of the more partial articulations found in Physics II.9 and Generation and Corruption II.6. In its overall structure, the second book of the Physics is a gem of philosophical writing. It is framed by the causal role of a single reality, which Aristotle introduces in II.1 as “the shape, the form corresponding to the logos.” He immediately argues that this shape or form has a better claim to be considered the nature of a natural being than does its matter; hence the form is “a certain beginning [or ‘principle,’ archēs] and cause of being moved and being at rest.”12 In II.3, we learn to identify nature in this sense as an instance of a broader type of cause (aitia), namely “that whence the beginning [archē] of the 11. With the prominence of the term logos in these passages, cf. DA II.4.415b14–15, where Aristotle describes soul itself as a logos in the striking remark that “the fulfillment of what exists by way of ability is a logos.” 12. Phys. II.1.193a30–31, b6–7, 192b21–22. For discussion, see for example Broadie 1988 (1–45), Lang 1998 (40–50); for material and formal natures more generally see Cooper 1982 (108–9). Note in II.1 the dialogue between two forms of inquiry, stemming respectively from the concern of the pre-Socratic naturalist with materials and the concern of the Socratic dialectician with definitions. In II.2 Aristotle will rework the notion of natural science to include the articulation of logoi, but in II.1 the two methods are distinct.



Being and Goodness

157

change or rest,” as distinct from with “the end” or “that for the sake of which.” Aristotle’s general account of nature, then, begins with nature as a beginning. In II.7, however, he tells us that three of the types of cause distinguished in II.3 “often come to one.” Not only are “the what-it-is [the form] and that for the sake of which one,” but “that whence first the motion is the same as these in form, for a human begets a human.”13 Around the pivot of this “coming to one,” Aristotle’s discussion swings from nature as a beginning to nature as an end. He first argues that nature as beginning is indeed for the sake of something (II.8), and then displays nature, precisely as form, as that for the sake of which nature as beginning acts (II.9).14 Ending with nature as end, he completes his account of natural substances as self-contained beings aimed at their own fulfillment.15 Despite this elegant structure, the teleology of Physics II presents a number of difficulties, to which we shall return more than once in this and the following chapter. For now, I want to focus on Aristotle’s identification of nature as form with nature as end, an identifica13. Phys. II.3.194b29–30, 31–32, 7.198a24–25, 25–27 (respectively for each quotation). For an introduction to the four causes and their connection with the concept of nature see again Cooper 1982 (108–11). Kelsey 2003 (60–66) denies that nature as defined in Phys. II.1 is an efficient cause, but the question itself is misguided: Aristotle’s concept of a source or principle (archē) of motion is broader than that of an efficient cause, extending for example to internal principles of being moved by another: Broadie 1982 (205–7), Furley 1985, Pavlopoulos 2003 (139). 14. The stated topic of II.9 is the role of necessity in nature’s works; this heading reflects Aristotle’s polemical goal of correcting earlier views regarding necessity in nature (II.8.198b10–16). The constructive goal of II.8–9, however, is first to explain the fact that nature acts for an end, and then—by connecting the necessary in natural beings with their material (9.200a30–32)—to allow nature itself, in the sense of form, to emerge as nature’s end. 15. Phys. II.1.192b8–33; see also Met. V.4, 12. For these two roles of nature see also Henry 2008 (47–48), citing PA I.1.641a22–33. Henry’s claim that Aristotle’s appeal to nature to explain organismic development “gives way to a deeper explanation in terms of the more fundamental theory of causal powers” (51) underestimates the importance of the natural being’s unified self-directedness. It is worth asking which Aristotle would consider more fundamental: the exercise of a causal power in general or the self-constituting activity of a natural being in particular. Henry’s application of this claim is often quite helpful, although his treatment of nature as equivalent to “a unified complex of independently heritable dunameis” (71) undersells—perhaps due to his interest in traits that vary from individual to individual—the unity required for successful reproduction.

158

Being and Goodness

tion that he completes only in II.9. Here are the two most important passages. For example, why is a saw such and such? So that this and for the sake of this. Of course, it’s impossible that this—that for the sake of which—should come to be unless it is made of iron; it is therefore necessarily made of iron, if a saw and its work are to be. The necessary, then, is necessary on a hypothesis, not as an end; for the necessary is in the material, that for the sake of which in the logos. It is apparent, then, that the necessary in natural science is that which is spoken of as material and the motions of this. And the naturalist should speak of both causes [aitiai], but should attend more to the “for the sake of what.” For this is responsible [aition] for the material, not the material for the end. And the end is that for the sake of which, and the principle is the definition and the logos, just as in the products of art: since a house is such and such, these things must necessarily come to be and be present, and since health is this, these necessarily must come to be and be present; so also if a human being is this, these, and if these, these. But perhaps the necessary is also found in the logos. For if one has defined the work of sawing, that it is such and such a dividing, it turns out this will not be unless it has such and such teeth, and these will not be unless they are made of iron. For there are, even in the logos, certain parts as material of the logos.16

In considering these passages, notice the terms in which Aristotle chooses to present the connection between form and end.17 The terms “form” (eidos) and “shape” (morphē)—despite their philosophical importance and their prominence earlier in Physics II—do not appear at all; neither does “substance” (ousia). Instead, Aristotle speaks of “the definition and the logos.” This choice reminds us how central to Aristotelian natural science is the task of formulating an account of what this or that natural being is. This task is central, it appears, largely 16. Phys. II.9.200a10–15, a30–b8. 17. In order to explicate the goodness of forms and ends, we need not decide whether Aristotle’s teleology presupposes the insufficiency of the elements and their causal powers to produce biological phenomena; for the range of positions on this question see Gotthelf 2012.



Being and Goodness

159

because in formulating such an account we articulate that for the sake of which the substance as a whole exists. This end, the form or account, is the beginning of our knowledge and, in an important sense, the beginning or principle of the natural being as a whole. The beginning of natural science is the realization that the principle through which a natural being is subject to rational articulation is in fact the natural being’s own end.18 Though I am interested for the moment primarily in form, another point to file away from these passages is the centrality of work, ergon, to the logos of a natural being. Implicit in the first excerpt is the thought that a natural being, like a saw, is oriented toward and hence to be defined in terms of its work. At the end of the second excerpt, Aristotle suggests that just as the saw’s definition entails certain materials, so the definition of its work entails a certain assembly of these materials. This implies that the saw’s definition will have the general form “such and such an instrument for such and such a work,” where the second part entails the first just as the definition as a whole entails certain materials. Because the definition is itself composite in this way, its centrality to the naturalist’s task implies the more focused centrality of the natural substance’s work. A third and final point concerns the causal role that Aristotle assigns to the material of a natural substance and to the motions that occur within this material—a role well known to readers of Aristotle under the label “hypothetical necessity.”19 Whereas the form of a natural substance is its end, its material exists within it for the sake of this end, being necessary given the hypothesis that the end is to exist. Now if—as we have begun to see in Parts of Animals I.5, and will see more clearly in Parts of Animals I.1—the form of a natural substance coincides with the kalon, the fine or beautiful that the nat18. See Owens 1968 (138): “In each individual natural thing there is an all-pervading intelligible aspect to which everything else in the thing is subordinate.” So also Johnson 2005 (83): “the explanation or cause ‘for the sake of which’ is an end in this specific sense—that of providing a limit which makes things comprehensible and achievable.” 19. See Cooper 1985a, PA I.1.639b21–640a9, a33–b4, 642a1–13, a31–b4.

160

Being and Goodness

uralist contemplates within it, then the distinction between form and matter articulated in Physics II.9 becomes an instance of the contrast between the fine and the necessary that we have already explored in the Nicomachean Ethics, and noted also in Aristotle’s discussion of the sensory powers of animals.20 The connection between end and logos in Physics II.9 is by no means an explicit account of the sense in which Aristotle considers the ends of natural beings good. Although his emphasis on the logos of the natural substance is consistent with the understanding of the kalon that I have offered in chapter 3, its significance will become clear only as we consider related passages, from Generation and Corruption II and above all Parts of Animals I. Before turning to these passages, however, I want to consider a difficulty posed by a remark found in Physics II.7. Earlier in book II, Aristotle has distinguished true ends from mere outcomes or results by reference to the good: “not everything that is last means to be an end, but that which is best.”21 In II.7, however, he adds an important clarification. To act for the sake of an end, he observes, is to do something “because it is better thus, not simply but with respect to [alla to pros] the substance of each thing.” He then immediately applies this type of causality to nature, arguing that nature too does what it does “because it is better.”22 Now the qualification articulated in II.7 poses two difficulties. First, it seems to suggest that the goods for the sake of which nature acts are not good in any absolute sense, but only “good for” the natural being to which they belong. Second, it seems to suggest the absence of any cosmic teleology in Aristotle. Only the first difficulty affects the connection between end and logos, and so I will postpone consideration of the second until later in the present chapter.23 What sort of qualification, then, does Aristotle intend in II.7? The 20. See 46–47, 107. 21. Phys. II.2.194a32–33. 22. Phys. II.7.198b8–9, 8.198b16–17. 23. See 182–83.



Being and Goodness

161

answer emerges from a rather different text, the discussion of prudence and wisdom in Ethics VI.7. In this chapter, remember, Aristotle argues that neither political nor individual prudence (  phronēsis) can constitute the highest form of knowledge “unless a human being is the best thing in the cosmos.” His argument contrasts the unity proper to wisdom (sophia), the highest knowledge, with the diversity found in the goods proper to animals: “there is not one [so-called wisdom] about the good of all the animals, but a different one about each.” True wisdom, he assumes, cannot be relative to this or that particular nature, and it can have this absolute character only if it concerns the most honorable of all beings.24 The highest good, that is, stands apart from all lesser goods just insofar as it is highest, and wisdom is the knowledge of this good. Ethics VI.7 therefore contains an explicit distinction between absolute and relative knowledge of the good, grounded in a distinction between what is best absolutely and what is best for a particular kind of animal. There is no need to look farther for an interpretation of the qualification in Physics II.7. Each natural being, Aristotle argues in Physics II, does what it does by nature “because it is better thus,” and indeed in achieving its ends it achieves “that which is best.” This does not imply, however, that it achieves the highest good simply speaking. Rather, it seeks only the good appropriate to its own nature. The distinction at work is between the highest good and all lower ones, where the highest is assumed to be one and absolute, the lower many and relative to the nature of each thing.25 This multiplicity and relativity of natural goods does not, however, imply that the naturalist cannot recognize as genuine goods, worthy of rational contemplation, the ends of natural beings. The picture is rather that of On the Soul II.4: all natural things strive (oregetai) to 24. EN VI.7.1141a21–22, 31–32, b6. 25. One might object that the phrase “better [beltion] . . . simply,” because it involves a comparative rather than superlative, cannot easily refer to the highest or best. See, however, Aristotle’s use of the comparative in EN I.6, where he describes the Form of the Good as “the universal beltion” (1096a11).

162

Being and Goodness

“participate in the eternal and divine, insofar as they can . . . and for the sake of this they do all that they do by nature.”26 Although inferior to the highest good, the ends of natural beings may yet be beautiful in their own right, in such a way as to fulfill contemplative thought. In Generation and Corruption II.6 we find another suggestive passage connecting form understood as logos with the good that is nature’s end. Here Aristotle is engaged in a spirited, if not ill-tempered, cross-examination of Empedocles, occasioned by the latter’s conviction that the elements are not transformed into one another. He has begun by arguing that if the elements indeed do not change into each other then they will not be commensurable either, contrary to Empedocles’s own claim that the elements are equal.27 Such incommensurability would obviously imply that the elements cannot be mixed in any definite proportion (logos), and for Aristotle this would make all coming-to-be impossible.28 After a brief argument that Empedocles will also have trouble accounting for growth,29 Aristotle continues as follows: It is far more difficult to defend himself when it comes to natural coming-tobe. For the things that come to be by nature all come to be either always or for the most part, whereas those that are neither always nor for the most part come from the spontaneous and from chance (tuchē). What, then, is responsible for the fact that from a human a human comes to be, either always or for the most part, and from wheat wheat, not an olive tree; or even the fact that if things are put together in this way, the result is bone? For nothing comes to be when they come together however it may chance, as he says, but only by a certain logos. What, then, is the cause of these things? For surely it is not mere fire or earth, but neither indeed is it friendship or strife, for the former is responsible for combination, the latter for separation. It is the substance of each thing, not “only a mixing and a dissolution of things mixed,” as he says. 26. DA II.4.415a29–b2. 27. On Generation and Corruption (hereafter GC) II.6.333a16–34. 28. For a general introduction to mixture in Aristotle see Bogaard 1979; note in particular the remarks throughout regarding “balance.” 29. GC II.6.333a35–b3.



Being and Goodness

163

In such cases it is called chance, not proportion, for the mixing is as it may chance. Thus the cause of things that exist by nature is their being in such a condition [to houtōs echein], and this is the nature of each, about which he says nothing. He says nothing, therefore, “About Nature.” But this indeed is also the well and good, whereas he praises only the mixing.30

Although the basic import of this passage is clear, Aristotle’s third example—“if things are put together in this way, the result is bone”— presents some difficulties. Precisely this example, however, pushes Aristotle’s argument to its furthest and most interesting conclusion. The general point of the passage is clearly that natural coming-to-be is due not to chance but to a logos; this logos is the nature of that which has come to be, and is also in some sense “the well and the good.” The difficulty with the third example arises from the ambiguity of the term logos and from Aristotle’s compressed treatment of the example itself. In his first two examples, Aristotle clearly means to set against Empedocles’s theory a full-blown, biological teleology: the nature of a human being or of wheat is the logos present within it; as found in the parent, this logos is the source of coming-to-be; as found in the offspring, it is the end and so also the good. Aristotle might, then, want us to apply a similar analysis to the coming-to-be of bone: through the logos or nature of the animal as a whole, bone comes to be within it as a living, functional part.31 In the very next chapter, however, he extends his theory of the elements to account for the existence of organic stuffs like flesh, marrow, and bone, where these are considered not as functional parts of the living body but simply as mixtures of the elements. So considered, bone comes to be through a blending of the elements in a definite ratio (logos), resulting in a stable mean or intermediate between opposing qualities.32 This suggests that in II.6 30. GC II.6.333b3–20. 31. See also On the Generation of Animals (hereafter GA ) II.1.734b19–735a4. Aristotle’s “homonymy principle” for the parts of living things specifies that the bone of a living animal and that of its corpse are bone in different senses, insofar as the latter cannot exercise the biological function by which the former is defined: Mirus 2001, 2006. 32. GC II.7, esp. 334b11–15; see also Meteorology (hereafter Mete.) IV.12.390b2–14.

164

Being and Goodness

as well, the logos most directly involved in the coming-to-be of bone is the ratio in which the elements must be mixed if bone is to exist. Empedocles’s failure to explain the existence of bone would thus run deeper than his neglect for the nature of the animal as a whole or for the nature of bone as a functional part of the animal. To the extent that he appeals to chance as an efficient cause rather than to the logos, he fails to explain even the material existence of bone as a balanced mixture of the elements.33 It seems reasonably certain, then, that the ratio in which the elements are blended to produce bone is one intended sense of the term logos in Generation and Corruption II.6.34 Moreover, Aristotle clearly identifies the logos that governs natural coming-to-be with the well and the good. As a result, his appeal to logos at least nudges us toward a conception of the well and the good that turns quite generally on the existence of logoi within natural beings. The dependence of bone on its defining logos—its quantitative articulation or account—is already opposed to the claim that it exists merely by chance, quite apart from an appeal to the functional organization of living things. Despite falling short of the robust teleology characteristic of Aristotle’s biology, his appeal to orderly quantitative principles is a way of presenting nature in terms of the good. Only in Parts of Animals I, however, does the role of form as logos in Aristotle’s conception of natural goods become fully explicit. We have already considered the poetic exhortation found in I.5, and if we turn from the end of the book to its beginning—from Aristotle’s final exhortation to biology to his opening discussion of its method—we find the same themes expressed in more rigorous terms. His analysis 33. In PA I.1 Aristotle clarifies that Empedocles, “led by the truth itself, is forced to say that the logos is substance and nature—as when he says what bone is, for he says neither that it is some one of the elements nor two nor three nor all, but a logos of their mixture” (642a18– 22). The problem in GC is that Empedocles nevertheless attributes the existence of bone to chance, drawing attention away from the crucial role of the logos as a principle. 34. Williams 1982 (171) emphasizes the role of proportion in the strict sense for Aristotle’s argument; see also Joachim 1922 (235), which refers to Plato’s Philebus (25d–26d, 64c–65a). See also Lennox 2001 (150–51) on the remark about Empedocles at PA I.1.642a17–24.



Being and Goodness

165

of the correct method in biology, and of the failure of earlier thinkers to discover it, is the lens that brings into focus his appeal to form as logos in Physics II.9 and Generation and Corruption II.6. The analysis opens with the observation that several types of cause are relevant to natural coming-to-be; Aristotle then asks which of these causes is naturally first. I will begin with some crucial lines from the beginning and the end of his discussion, and refer more briefly to other passages as needed. Since we see several causes relevant to natural coming-to-be—such as the cause “for the sake of which” and the cause “whence the principle [or ‘source’] of the motion”—we must determine also, concerning these, which sort is naturally first and second. That cause appears to be first which we call “for the sake of what,” for it is a logos, and the logos is a principle alike in things according to art and in things constituted by nature. For having defined (either by thought or by perception), the doctor health, the house-builder a house, they render the logoi and causes of each thing they make, and why it must be made in this way. Now that for the sake of which and the beautiful35 are found in the works of nature more than in those of art. There are therefore these two causes, that for the sake of which and that from necessity. . . . It is clear, then, that there are two ways of being a cause, and that those who speak about such things should if possible hit upon them both, but if not, at least make an attempt; and that all who do not speak of this say nothing, so to speak, “About Nature”: for the nature is a principle more than the material. . . . The cause of our predecessors’ failing to light upon this way of being a cause was that there was no what-it-is-to-be or defining of the substance. It was Democritus, rather, who first touched upon this, though not as something necessary for the contemplation of nature, but carried along by the reality itself. In the time of Socrates this type of inquiry flourished, but inquiry into nature declined, and those who philosophized turned away toward the useful and the political sort of excellence.36 35. Lennox 2001 (127) rejects the translation “beautiful” in favor of “good,” but observes that the term “carries connotations of a goodness inherent in the nature of the thing valued. Aristotle would not use this expression of something valued instrumentally, nor even of something which, while good in itself, was of trifling value.” 36. PA I.1.639b11–21, 642a1–2, 13–17, 24–31.

166

Being and Goodness

These passages and their context contain Aristotle’s clearest assertion that the discovery of natural teleology arises naturally from a concern for definitions.37 Let us consider them in turn. In the first, Aristotle tells us that the logos of an animal functions as a principle precisely insofar as the coming-to-be of the animal is teleologically ordered to this logos. The role of the logos in explaining the animal’s coming-to-be is comparable to its role in explaining artistic production, except that the works of nature are even more endlike and beautiful than are the works of art. This appeal to beauty should be read alongside the exhortation to biology with which, at least from a rhetorical point of view, Parts of Animals I culminates. Indeed, the rhetorical culmination is possible only because of the careful methodological work carried out in the rest of the book. If Aristotle had not already established the primacy of final causes, then his eloquence concerning the beauties of nature would have been poetically masterful but scientifically empty. Immediately after the exhortation, in fact, he concludes book I with a compendium of the method on which he has settled. If we read Parts of Animals I as a whole, therefore, we find that the appreciation of natural beauty is a constitutive element of the correct method in biology. In recognizing this beauty, we learn to frame the question about coming-to-be in terms of ends rather than merely in terms of efficient causes. 37. Balme 1972 (75, 94, 100) grasps the significance of definition—and hence of apprehending the animal as a whole—in these passages; see also the less emphatic Lennox 2001 (esp. 132–33). According to Gotthelf 1989, however, Aristotle’s concern for definitions and his teleology as a whole are subordinate to his concern for adequate efficient-causal explanations. Specifically, Aristotle’s interest in definitions stems “from a teleological claim which itself is made to rest on the inadequacy of explanation in terms of element-potentials” (64–65). The causal powers of the elements do not adequately explain “certain facts about the living world” (61); hence there must be special, irreducible potencies for these facts; hence these facts qualify as ends; hence in order to understand nature we must define these ends. Gotthelf (65n50) cites PA I.1.640a14–26, b29–641a17, but these passages build on 639b11–21, where Aristotle treats the priority of the end as self-evident precisely because the end is logos (14–16) and kalon (19–21). In describing Aristotle’s reasoning, moreover, Gotthelf has smuggled the animal’s logos in at the beginning: his phrase “certain facts” can only refer to the living thing considered in terms of the “form corresponding to [its] logos,” as Aristotle puts in in Phys. II.1: see, in fact, Gotthelf 1987 (11).



Being and Goodness

167

Our second passage, which begins by repeating the conclusion of the first, is significant mainly for its diagnosis of the methodological failures of earlier naturalists. Aristotle’s assessment is blunt yet dense. As elsewhere, he admires Democritus for his relative clarity and precision38 but deplores his lack of a correct, explicit methodology. Meanwhile, Socrates and his contemporaries were deeply concerned with definitions and, for that matter, with ends, but of another sort: they focused exclusively on “the useful and political sort of excellence.” It remained for Aristotle himself to recognize that an explicit concern for definitions radically transforms the perspective of the natural scientist. In doing so, he implies, it opens the way to another kind of excellence, less practical than the first but by no means inferior. How exactly does he think a concern for definitions, or logoi, transforms biology into a teleological enterprise and a form of contemplative excellence? Here again the exhortation of I.5 can serve as a guide.39 Recall that at the end of the exhortation, Aristotle focuses our capacity to recognize beauty not on the material of the living thing, but on “the whole shape . . . the composition and the substance as a whole.” Here the word “shape” (morphē) is deliberately ambiguous. Poised between the form perceptible to the senses and the deeper form expressed in the logos, in context it draws our attention away from the former and toward the latter. The methodology of I.1, however, carefully distinguishes the two: an animal exists not merely through its “figure and color,” but through the form by which it enters into our understanding as a single, unified whole.40 To understand everything that occurs within the animal in light of its form just is to establish the form as an end.41 To attend to the logos of an animal—to its form, and indeed to its soul42—is to bind one’s reasoning to the animal’s wholeness. From 38. See also GC I.2.315a26–b15. 39. Lennox 2010 (esp. 71, 76) connects this passage with the first part of PA I.5. 40. PA I.1.640b29–641a17. 41. PA I.1.640a33–b4, 641a14–17. 42. PA I.1.641a17–32.

168

Being and Goodness

a purely methodological point of view, this is to make one’s primary mode of reasoning teleological. In I.5, however, Aristotle considers the effects of this same transformation on the life of the naturalist as a human being. Attention to the animal as a whole is precisely attention to the beauty achieved by its nature, and such attention, paid with scientific rigor, is deeply fulfilling. The implicit contrast between practical and contemplative excellence at the end of our second passage anticipates the later exhortation to biology, which is also an exhortation to contemplative excellence as a whole. In the three works that we have just considered—Physics, Generation and Corruption, and Parts of Animals—Aristotle relies on the term logos in order to identify the form of a natural substance with its end or good.43 The good of such a substance is therefore characterized by its articulability: its openness to being understood as just what it is, in and for itself.44 The methodological discussion in Parts of Animals I.1 is particularly helpful, for its connection with Parts of Animals I.5 ties the methodological centrality of form as end within natural science to the broader centrality of the kalon, the fine or beautiful, within a good human life. The Good and Activity

In On the Soul II.1, however, we saw that a natural being’s form is not its second and complete fulfillment (entelecheia), any more than the inactive possession of excellence is human happiness. Instead, to articulate such a form is to articulate the capacity for a characteristic 43. Gotthelf 1989 (48) argues that one can and must establish the end of an organism’s development without reference to its goodness, the goodness of the end then being reducible to its status as an end. Because the actualization of an organism’s potential is structurally similar to intentional action, Gotthelf argues, it is useful to describe it in normative terms even as we recognize the absence of real normative content (61–63; cf. 49). See also Gotthelf 1987 (33–34) and the review of recent work in Scharle 2008a (27–29), which fails to mention the good at all. Beere 2009 (349) is a much better place to start. 44. See Broadie 2010 (200) on Met. IX.8: “Thus knowing what a thing is—grasping its eidos—inextricably depends on accessing the thing in its actual or active mode.”



Being and Goodness

169

inworking or activity (energeia), and this inworking, rather than the form itself, is the substance’s complete fulfillment. This distinction between first and second fulfillment is echoed in Physics II.9, where the logos of a natural being, like that of a saw, must refer essentially to some characteristic work (ergon). I will now turn briefly to the primacy of this ergon, which is an external product but an inworking, a second and complete fulfillment, for the understanding of natural beings. The two passages that I shall consider are from Meteorology IV and On Sleep and Waking. It is worth noting here that in considering the explanatory role of the logos in Aristotle’s natural science, I have focused on the second of the two ways distinguished in the introduction in which Aristotle’s understanding of the good embraces the human good without being exhausted by it: the goods of other natural substances belong to the human good insofar as they constitute fitting objects of human contemplation.45 Our two passages concerning the works of natural substances as ends will provide an opportunity to recall the first way, namely that the human good is proportionate or analogous to the goods of other natural substances. Aristotle begins the last chapter of Meteorology IV by stating what he takes himself to have accomplished and then identifying his next task.46 We have now specified, he explains, the material from which the various “homoiomerous” or homogeneous bodies (such as bone and tin) are composed, and we have assigned these bodies to kinds on the basis of their coming-to-be (dia tēs geneseōs). Building on this foundation, however, we must go on to discern what each of these bodies is in particular, not as composed of certain materials but kat’ ousian, according to its substance. He explains this distinction as follows: All things are from the aforementioned [the elements, via their homogeneous mixtures] as from material, but taken according to their substance, they exist by their logos. 45. See 10–11. 46. Mete. IV.12.389b23–26.

170

Being and Goodness

All things are defined by their work, for those able to do their own work truly are each thing—such as an eye, if it sees. What lacks this ability is the sort of thing in question homonymously—as is the eye that has died, or is made of stone; for neither is a wooden saw a saw, except as an image. Well, then, so also flesh, but its work is less clear than that of the tongue; and likewise also fire, but its work is probably even less clear to the naturalist [  phusikōs47] than that of flesh. Likewise too those found in plants, and the unensouled, such as bronze and silver. For they all exist by some power of acting or of being affected, just as do flesh and sinew, but their logoi are not precise.48

In their details, these are difficult passages to make out, as is the whole chapter from which they are drawn. The basic difficulty is similar to that which we faced in considering Generation and Corruption II.6. If Aristotle means to define the elements and homogeneous bodies in terms of their biological functions in animals and plants, then not only flesh and bone but the elements themselves will sometimes be defined biologically: fire will be something different in the body of a living animal than it is a moment later in the corpse. Copper and silver must then have analogous functions, presumably within artifacts, and the analysis will extend to the whole of nature insofar as each natural being is either a functional whole or a potential constituent thereof.49 If, however, Aristotle means to identify defining natural things by their works with defining them by their powers of acting and being affected, then the work of an element is simply the activity corresponding to one or another of the defining dispositions already assigned to the elements in On the Heavens or Generation and Corruption. Copper and silver can be defined simply as metals, and Aristotle’s analysis becomes universal in a different way. His presentation of inanimate things again stops short of the robust teleology that shapes his biology, but if logos as such is a principle of intelligibility, then the simple 47. This term generally refers to natural science, practiced either as by Aristotle’s predecessors or as he thinks it should be. Here it may be a subtle dig at those who study nature by resolving things into their materials, but can hardly recognize a logos if it hits them in the face. 48. Mete. IV.12.389b28–29, 390a10–20. 49. Gill 1997; see also Kosman 1987 (383–84).



Being and Goodness

171

act of classifying a natural being already renders it an object of contemplative excellence, bringing it within the scope of his philosophical project. I have argued elsewhere that this second reading is correct, and will not repeat the argument here.50 Whichever interpretation of Meteorology IV.12 we adopt, it is clear that the chapter emphasizes the role of logos as opposed to mere material, that logos is closely related to ergon, and that in one way or another, Aristotle means this analysis to be quite general.51 In addition, the project of defining natural beings in terms of their works is clearly reminiscent of the function argument from the Ethics. Our passage from On Sleep and Waking will develop the implied analogy between the human good and the goods of other natural substances. Whereas Meteorology IV.12 echoes Physics II in various respects, even repeating the analogy of the saw,52 our second passage echoes On the Soul II.1. There, we have seen, Aristotle models the distinction between first and second fulfillment on that between sleep and waking. This use of sleep and waking is reminiscent of Ethics I.5 and 8, where he observes that possession of excellence is compatible with inactivity, even with passing one’s life in sleep.53 Fittingly, then, we find in On Sleep and Waking 2 a passage that neatly connects On the Soul II with Ethics I: We must now say by what cause [aitian] sleeping occurs, and what sort of thing this affection is. Now since there are several ways of being a cause [aitias] (for we call causes the “for the sake of what,” and the “whence the principle [or ‘source’] of the motion,” and the material, and the logos: first, then, since we say that nature acts for the sake of something, and that this is some good; and that repose is necessary and beneficial for everything that is naturally moved but cannot always and continuously be moved with pleasure; and that, moved by the truth itself, people apply this metaphor to sleep, as 50. Mirus 2006; see also Cohen 1996 (69, 139, 143), Johnson 2005 (143). 51. Earlier (66) we saw a passage from DC III.8 according to which the elements are defined not by their shapes but by their works, affections, and powers; see also PA I.1.640b29–641a6. 52. See 390a13, b13. 53. EN I.5.1095b31–33, 8.1098a30–1099a7.

172

Being and Goodness

being repose: hence it occurs for the sake of the animal’s preservation. Wakefulness, though, is the end, for perceiving and taking thought for oneself [  phronein] is an end for all those to which either of them belongs; for they are best, and the end is best.54

It follows that despite being an end and a good, a natural substance’s form or logos is not its good simply speaking. Aristotle says in Ethics I.5 that excellence, despite its importance, is “rather incomplete.”55 Like excellence, form implies mere power to act; it is therefore an incomplete good. Hence it is unsurprising that in Physics II.9 and Meteorology IV.12 we find him placing the true identity of natural beings in their respective works. Correspondingly, when he speaks of a natural being’s good he always ultimately means the complete fullness of its being: the work or inworking on which its definition depends, in terms of which it is capable of being thought. The Good, Fulfillment, and Being

As I said at the outset of this chapter, my goal in the preceding discussion was to bring into clearer focus, from the point of view of the good, certain well-known Aristotelian themes. Above all, I have presented the centrality of form and inworking to Aristotle’s natural science, and the status of each as an end and fulfillment, in such a way as to bring into focus the nature of the goodness that Aristotle attributes to these ends. The key to this clearer focus was his persistent description of the natural being’s form as a logos, a description that underwrites the identity that we had already found in Parts of Animals I.5 between the good achieved by a natural being and the beauty contemplated in that being by the natural scientist. I now want to summarize the results of this discussion by drawing more explicitly on three distinctions from Aristotle’s Metaphysics concerning the senses in which something may be said to be. First, as 54. Somn. 2.455b13–25. 55. EN I.5.1095b32.



Being and Goodness

173

we saw in Nicomachean Ethics I.6, being is divided by the categories, among which only substance is said to be in the primary sense.56 Second, a consideration of substance as that which underlies beings in the other categories yields three senses in which something may be called a substance: as matter, as form, or as the composite of matter and form.57 Third, some things are said to be something by way of a mere power or ability, while others are said to be something not merely through their ability but through their inworking, and so to be in fulfillment; this is to be in the primary sense.58 Here the term “inworking” is used in a broad sense, in such a way that it becomes interchangeable with “fulfillment.”59 The priority of being in the sense of inworking or fulfillment implies that the matter of a natural substance reaches fulfillment in its form, and that the substance as a whole reaches fulfillment in its work. In view of these distinctions, we can now formulate a simple, general statement expressing Aristotle’s understanding of the good of a natural substance. The good of each substance is nothing other than its being, in the primary sense of inworking or fulfillment. We can refine this statement by identifying a substance’s form, its first fulfillment, as the proximate end of its coming-to-be. Form is the good directly and immediately achieved through a substance’s becoming, and so it is the first good to which the material and its motions contribute. This implies that we can also identify the substance’s material and the motions of this material as good, insofar as they are necessary for the form, which is good in itself. Form itself, finally, can be understood only in light of the substance’s work. As second fulfillment, this work is the good for the sake of which the substance as a whole exists. Each in its own way, then, work, form, and material are all spoken of as good “in what-something-is,” “the through itself, or substance.”60 56. Met. IV.2.1003a33–b19; VII.1. 57. Met. VII.3.1028b33–1029a7, VIII.1.1042a24–31; see also DA II.1.412a6–9. 58. Met. IX.6.1048a25–b9, IX.8. 59. Met. IX.8.1050a21–23. 60. EN I.6.1096a19–21.

174

Being and Goodness

At the point of articulating this conclusion, however, it will be helpful to address explicitly two possible misconstruals of the conception of the good that we find deployed in Aristotle’s natural science. First, we can now see that in Aristotle’s natural science the word “good” does not signify in the first place the necessary or beneficial. His zoological works do, of course, deploy a nuanced understanding of the ways in which a part, process, or material can be necessary or beneficial for the whole animal. In themselves, moreover, these explanatory strategies are compatible with various deflationary accounts of the good’s role as an end. One might, for example, argue that although Aristotle can and does refer to the mature organism and its activity as good, the explanatory role of form and activity as ends can be secured simply by understanding them as actualities, without reference to their alleged goodness. At first this might seem to leave Aristotle’s account of the good headless—a homonymy pros hen without the hen—for it would entail that what is good as necessary or beneficial is not good by contributing to what is good in itself, understood precisely as such. One might also think, however, that the necessary or beneficial is itself good only by courtesy, its biological significance lying rather in its contribution to a given outcome.61 Now if Aristotle had no way to cash out his claim that nature’s ends are good, such a deflationary account would be worth a closer look. In fact, however, he has carefully tied his understanding of the good to his understanding of being, and his understanding of being to his understanding of thought. Nature’s ends are not merely the factual 61. Gotthelf 1989 seems at first to endorse such a headless understanding explicitly: “the goodness of something, at least in biological contexts, is regularly its capacity to contribute to the continued life (to z­ēn) of the organism which has or performs or undergoes that something, where the notion of what it is to live does not itself rest on a prior notion of the good” (48). Gotthelf eventually recognizes that “apparently, goodness for Aristotle is logically connected with actuality, with being fully in actuality what one is” (59), but this point remains for him a curious afterthought. The result is an interpretation on which nature’s ends and means are indeed good by courtesy only (see 169n43). The question, however, is not whether the notion of living rests on a prior notion of the good, but whether one who apprehends living as a form of being apprehends something beautiful, and if so, how this beauty should shape our philosophical understanding of living things.



Being and Goodness

175

outcomes of natural processes; they are outcomes that thought itself naturally apprehends as beautiful. Their goodness cannot be reduced to their causal or explanatory role; rather, they are well suited for certain explanatory tasks precisely because they can be recognized by thoughtful observers as good in themselves. This response raises the possibility of a second deflationary account: a Kantian reading, on which Aristotle’s natural teleology seeks not so much to discern real causes as to give an account of nature in light of the perceived occurrences that we ourselves find most interesting.62 Because Aristotle so consistently attributes ends to nature itself, however—in fact defining natures in terms of their ends—such a reading would have to end up attributing to him the view that nature itself, understood as he understands it, is a construct of human thought. This in turn would require a serious rethinking of his relation to the view of Protagoras that man is the measure of all things, of his conception of truth, and so forth. Not only would such an interpretation be anachronistic; it would betray Aristotle’s deepest philosophical commitments. The connection that I have traced between the status of nature’s ends as goods and the beauty that these ends present to thought certainly requires further reflection, but it removes the genuine causality of the good only on an understanding of both thought and nature that Aristotle himself does not share. Being Is Better Than Not Being

Aristotle identifies the good in nature first and most often with the natural substance’s form, but ultimately with its work. He thus implicitly identifies the good in general with being in the sense of fulfillment—and consequently, of course, with whatever contributes to this fulfillment.63 Not only, however, does his understanding of 62. See especially Wieland 1975, but also Nussbaum’s early 1978a. For further references and discussion see Johnson 2005 (182–83), Gotthelf 2012 (71–72). 63. On the basis of Met. IX.9—for which see 221–25—Beere 2009 likewise concludes

176

Being and Goodness

form and of inworking as good imply the goodness of being as such; in addition, he twice explicitly states that being (to einai) is better than not being (to mē einai). This statement—extraordinary in itself, though not really surprising for those who have read Plato—occurs in ambitious parallel arguments from Generation and Corruption II.10 and Generation of Animals II.1.64 The passage from Generation and Corruption is shorter, and occurs toward the end of the work. At this point Aristotle takes himself to have shown through a careful consideration of two causes, the material and the source of motion, that coming-to-be and destruction are continuous.65 He then continues: Coming-to-be and destruction will always, as has been said, be continuous; and they will never fail, because of the cause we have stated. Now this happens with good reason. For since nature, we say, strives always in all things for what is better; and being [to einai] is better than not being (that we speak of being in many ways has been said elsewhere); and it is impossible for this to be present in all things, because they are too far removed from the source [archēs]: in the manner that remained possible, then, the god has filled up the whole, making coming-to-be perpetual [endelechē]. For thus most of all might being be strung together, because the nearest thing to substance is that coming-to-be should always be coming to be. What is responsible for this, as we have often said, is circular locomotion, for this alone is continuous.66

The parallel passage from Generation of Animals, which opens book II, announces its own place within Aristotle’s investigation: We said earlier that female and male are principles of coming-to-be, as well as what their power is, and the logos of their substance. As we go on, we must try to point out the reason [logon] why one comes to be as female, another that “Aristotle thinks goodness is (roughly speaking) energeia” (329; see also 348–49). For actuality as the good see also see also Uscatescu Barrón 2002. 64. Kahn 1985 briefly discusses both passages, along with others that present Aristotle’s teleology in terms of “a universal tendency towards positive being, realized form, and unceasing activity” (200). 65. See GC I.3.317b33–318a10, II.10.336a15–18. 66. GC II.10.336b25–337a1. For the notion of continuity here see Joachim 1922 (255–56), Williams 1982 (193–94).



Being and Goodness

177

as male, as from necessity—that is, from the first mover [i.e., the efficient cause] and a certain sort of material. As a matter of what is better and of the cause “for the sake of what,” though, they have their source [archēn] from above [anōthen]. For since some of the things that are are eternal and divine, whereas some admit of both being and not being; and the noble [kalon] and the divine is always responsible by its own nature for what is better in the things that admit of [being and not being or the better]; and what is not eternal admits both of being67 and of partaking in both worse and better; and soul is something better than body, and the ensouled than the unensouled because of its soul, and being than not being, and living than not living: because of these causes there is a coming-to-be of animals. For since the nature of such a kind is unable to be eternal, that which comes to be [to gignomenon] is eternal in the manner in which it does admit of it. It is not able to be eternal in number—for the substance of beings is in the particular, and if it were this sort of thing, it would be eternal—but it admits of it in form [eidos68]. For this reason there is always a kind [  genos] of human beings, of animals, and of plants. Now since female and male are the principle of these, it would be for the sake of coming-to-be that female and male are among the things that are [en tois ousin69]. Now given that the first moving cause, to which the logos and the form belong, is better and more divine in nature than the material, it is better also that the superior be separated from the inferior. Because of this, in as many as admit of it and in so far as they admit of it, male is separated from female, for it is better and more divine. (The principle of motion belongs to things that come to be as the male, the material as the female.)70 67. Platt 1910 (followed by Peck 1942, Drossaart Lulofs 1965, and the revised Platt in Barnes 1984) adds “and not being.” 68. I follow Lennox 2001 in eschewing the terms “genus” and “species,” so as to retain the flexibility and ambiguity of Aristotle’s genos and eidos. 69. I follow the majority of manuscripts, so that the argument of this paragraph is framed neatly by the phrase “the things that are.” Platt 1912 translates the same reading as “in the existing individuals”; Peck 1942 adopts manuscript Z’s en tois ousin hekateron toutōn, “in the individuals which are male and female”; Drossaart Lulofs 1965 suggests en tois echousin, rendered in Barnes 1984 as “in those things that possess them.” 70. GA II.1.731b18–732a9. The difficulty of the last two Bekker lines becomes less pressing if we construe “for it is better and more divine” with the preceding rather than with the

178

Being and Goodness

Aristotle has left us, then, two works about coming-to-be: one on coming-to-be in general, with a focus on the elements, and one on animals. In each he has included a passage specifying the good achieved not in this or that instance of becoming but in the whole eternal cycle. In each passage, his first principle is simply that being is better than not being.71 For all their similarity, the two arguments are not identical. In Generation of Animals, Aristotle sets out to explain why certain animals are female, others male. He proceeds in three steps, explaining first why male and female exist at all, next why these principles ought to be separated when possible, and finally—immediately after the quoted passage—in which cases they are in fact separated. The premise that being is better than not being belongs to the first step, although its corollary, that soul is better than body, contributes implicitly to the later contention that male is better than female. In the first step, Aristotle argues specifically that because being is better than not being, some higher principle (anōthen . . . tēn archēn)—eternal, noble, and divine—ensures the quasi-eternal being of animals; this is why male and female exist. Although the direct effect of the male and female principles is coming-to-be, what approximates eternal being in Generation of Animals is not coming-to-be as such; it is rather the being of living substances, which are eternal in form rather than in number (cf. On the Soul II.4).72 In Generation and Corruption, by following sentence. This requires assuming that the last sentence quoted has either lost its connecting particle or never had one; I have therefore treated it as parenthetical. Aside from dividing the sentences differently, I have followed the text of Drossaart Lulofs 1965. 71. The centrality of this premise is clearer in GC. In GA the general claim is surrounded by more specific variants, but Aristotle clearly needs the general form. 72. Cooper 1988 argues that in GA the forms of animals include heritable characteristics that vary within species, with the result that these forms are neither universal nor particularized by matter and accidents alone. This conclusion directly affects the claim that living things are eternal in form, but it is far from obvious. Balme 1987 defends a similar view; see also the critique in Lloyd 1990 (16–28) and response in Balme 1990. Here I address only Cooper’s version. It is clear enough that the male parent, typically by way of its semen, is the source or efficient cause of its offspring’s form (I.18.724b5–6, 20.729a9–11, 21.729b4–8, 17–21, 730a28–30, 22.730b8–32; II.1.732a3–6, 4.740b24–25; IV.1.765b8–15; though see the



Being and Goodness

179

contrast, what is said to approximate eternal being is not a kind of substance at all, but rather the continuous coming-to-be of comingto-be itself. Despite this striking difference, the two arguments have much in common; our main concern is with their common premise. We need to determine what Aristotle means, within the context of these arguments, when he says that being is better than not being. In each argument, we shall find, the claim that being is better than not being appears as a basic premise, and indeed as the principle that governs the argument as a whole. No argument is given to support it, and Aristotle does not specify the sense in which he is using the term “better.” In this respect, the two passages add little to the conclusions we have already reached. In another respect, however, they add a great deal. Each of the passages in which Aristotle states that being is better than not being is inescapably cosmological, and indeed theological. Whatever exactly the concept of goodness at work in these passages, it at least ranges across a wide variety of beings, and is used to generate conclusions not only concerning individual beings but also concerning the structure of the cosmos. In addition, each passage strongly associates the good with eternity. The argument from Generation of Animals gives us more to work with, for it includes not only the general claim about being but also a cluster of more specific instances of better and worse: soul and body, ensouled and unensouled, living and not living, male and female. The reconsideration of this point in Kosman 2010a). It is also clear that semen is the primary efficient cause of some heritable characteristics that vary within species (IV.1, 3). It does not follow, however, that form includes these variable characteristics: see Sharples 1985 (120–21). The male parent or semen produces the offspring’s form or soul by using heat and cold as instruments, fashioning with them the bodily parts in which soul becomes present (II.1.733b23–735a9, 4.740b12–741a3). It is therefore likely that Aristotle considers variation in the instrumental heat and cold compatible with a generative power identical in logos, and that he considers variation in the resulting physical characteristics compatible with having the same powers of soul. I have not found a case in which Aristotle uses eidos to include any effect other than sex (IV.1.766a19, 24–25) that varies within a species (at IV.1.767b17, 769a35 he uses morphē).

180

Being and Goodness

prejudice expressed in this last contrast provides us with a first clue. On Aristotle’s own account, male and female are equally necessary for coming-to-be. As source of motion rather than of material, however, the male is responsible for the form or soul of the offspring; its contribution is therefore more important without being more necessary. As we might have expected, therefore, the superiority of the male appears to be a matter of dignity, nobility, or beauty. Now this specific contrast between better and worse depends on a biological premise that we now know to be false. Removing this premise neatly and happily detaches male superiority from the more general premises of Aristotle’s argument.73 Among these premises, the contrast between body and soul brings us onto familiar ground. As form rather than material, soul is the primary principle of the living thing’s being and of its being thought; through it the ensouled body stands out as a distinct being with its own identity, an object of natural science and of the delight we take in knowing natural things. Body, for its part, is as mere material ability rather than fulfillment.74 Now although the contrast between form and material is between distinct ways of being the same substance—in mere power or ability and in fulfillment—form can also be contrasted with its own absence or privation. To consider a form against the background of its own privation is to contrast being with not being, and Aristotle claims that in the case of animal generation, being and not being are respectively better and worse.75 To what, though, does the good in question belong? A cautious reading might suggest that being is better for the individual living thing, which from its own perspective at least is better off alive than 73. See the argument in Witt 2003 (106–15) that Aristotle’s metaphysics is not intrinsically gendered. Witt probably goes too far in claiming (101–2, 107) that Aristotle’s gender theory is actually in tension with his metaphysical principles. 74. DA II.1.412a9–10. 75. Aristotle discusses the more general case in Physics I.7, where his analysis of becoming in terms of form, subject, and privation reinterprets the Parmenidean distinction between being and not being in terms of the presence and absence of form.



Being and Goodness

181

dead, and which lives on in its offspring.76 This is certainly the claim of On the Soul II.4: “there remains not itself but one like itself, not one in number but one in form.”77 In our present text, then, the phrase “that which comes to be” (to gignomenon) might likewise refer to the individual, which achieves eternity through its offspring. This construal, however, would lead to the awkward claim that the individual itself is “eternal in form.”78 In Generation of Animals, moreover, unlike On the Soul, the term “kind” (  genos) plays a central role, and the argument turns on a distinction between two basic kinds, the eternal and the destructible. Rather than referring to the individual, therefore, “what comes to be” is probably imprecise, picking out only the coming-to-be sort of thing as opposed to the eternal sort. This vagueness allows Aristotle to distinguish two senses of the statement that what comes to be is eternal: the false claim that individuals of this or that coming-to-be sort are eternal, and the true one that there eternally exist individuals of this or that coming-to-be sort. Such a focus on the structure of the world rather than the fate of individuals suits the cosmological and even theological tenor of the passage, and it is perfectly compatible with On the Soul. At minimum, it seems clear that Aristotle’s strategy for explaining the existence of male and female animals involves offering an ultimate explanation for the existence of animal generation, and that this ultimate explanation involves locating the existence of animals within the larger structure of an eternal cosmos. This suggests that the good achieved through reproductive activity is not simply the good of the individual as such. The intimation of a larger good to which individual substances contribute is clearer in our passage from Generation and Corruption. Before considering this passage, therefore, I want to address the sec76. It seems clear, in fact, that Aristotle takes individual living things to aim in reproducing at their own particular good and that of their offspring; for discussion and references see Johnson 2005 (176–78), Gotthelf 1987 (32–33). 77. DA II.4.415b6–7; for discussion see Lennox 1985 (137). 78. This is the view of Lennox 1985 (134). Lennox makes the important point that Aristotle does not assert the existence of numerically identical eternal forms (131, 135, 141–54).

182

Being and Goodness

ond difficulty arising from the remark of Physics II.7 that to act for the sake of an end is to do something “because it is better thus, not simply but with respect to the substance of each thing.”79 I have suggested that this comment should be understood in light of Ethics VI.7; so read, it states that substances acting for the sake of an end do not in general achieve what is best simply speaking, namely the condition of the divine being or beings with which wisdom is concerned, but only the best that their own natures allow. If this is Aristotle’s intention, then his remark does not obviously exclude the existence of goods within the cosmos that are not merely the goods of individual substances.80 One might object that in practice, Aristotle does not deploy teleological explanations of the cosmic type, restricting himself instead to explanations based on the nature of this or that particular kind of animal.81 Used against passages that imply a cosmic teleology, this argument begs the question. Now it is true that in his biology, Aristotle usually begins with the natures of particular kinds of animals, or with generalizations based on these natures. On the one hand, however, he can hardly be blamed for having failed to invent the science of ecology; and on the other, his cosmology is directly and continually concerned with the structure of the cosmos as a whole. In Generation of Animals II.1, we have seen, it is possible to construe the good at issue as the good achieved by individual living things through their offspring. Yet regardless of how one settles this issue, it is at least clear that the good in question is achieved through the coordinated action of distinct natures. The male and female “have their source from above,” from some eternal being that is kalon and divine by comparison with themselves. By this Aristotle certainly means the 79. See 161. 80. Balme 1972, Johnson 2005 (92–93) claim that all Aristotelian teleology is relative to the individual substance; Ferguson 1985 (272), Furley 1985 (181–82) resist this reading of the remark from Phys. II.7, Ferguson noting that a purely individual teleology is incompatible with Aristotle’s political thought (272–73). For cosmic teleology in Aristotle see especially Sedley 1991, 2000, 2010 (18–29); contrast Wardy 1993. 81. Johnson 2005 (92–93).



Being and Goodness

183

heavens, and in particular the sun.82 In Generation and Corruption II.10, to which I shall turn shortly, he describes the sun as the “generator” (to gennētikon) of destructible beings, arguing that its annual motion around the ecliptic is teleologically required for the continual existence of terrestrial coming-to-be and destruction.83 Moreover, the sun plays its role as generator only within the context of the heavens as a whole, and the motions of the heavens, being many, must for this reason be subordinate to a single principle (hupo mian archēn).84 This requirement of a single principle for the cosmos as a whole is, of course, just the claim with which Aristotle concludes the betterknown theology of Metaphysics XII. One might certainly say, not altogether unfairly, that Aristotle’s metaphysical focus on the individual substance makes it more difficult for him to articulate a teleology that involves the coordination of several substances. Our present passage, however, shows that he does not altogether lack the resources to do so. He tells us explicitly that it belongs to the eternal, noble, and divine to be “responsible by its own nature” for the good of lesser things. This premise echoes his discussions of generosity and of friendship in the Ethics. In discussing generosity, he notes that it belongs to virtue more to do good than to receive it, “to effect [  poiein] well than to be affected [  paschein] well.”85 In considering friendship, he explains that benefactors produce in their beneficiaries an echo and extension of their own being (IX.7). I do not mean to imply, of course, that Aristotle thinks of the heavens as deliberating about the goods of lesser beings. We should not ignore, however, his repeated use of a rather general, abstract principle concerning the relation between higher and lower.86 82. Balme 1972 (155) implausibly suggests that anōthen refers not to a higher cause but to one prior in the sense of being more general, namely the aim to share in the divine common to all natural beings. For the correct interpretation see Falcon 2005 (8–13), Peck 1942 (129). 83. GC II.10.336a17, a34–b2. 84. GC II.10.337a20–22. 85. EN IV.1.1120a11–12. 86. This principle bears on the question of whether the heavenly motions have the

184

Being and Goodness

Although it is possible, then, to identify the good at issue in Generation of Animals II.1 with the goods achieved by individual male and female animals through their offspring, it is not possible to understand this good except as resulting from the coordinated activity of the sun and of the male and female animals themselves. In Generation and Corruption II.10, it is harder to avoid the implication of a good that transcends the goods of individual substances as such.87 As its title indicates, the focal topic of Generation and Corruption is not any particular substance or kind of substance, but genesis and phthora, coming-to-be and destruction. In II.9–11 Aristotle brings the work to a close by asking, “concerning all coming-to-be alike, how many and what are its principles.”88 In II.10, he states that the continuity of coming-to-be among destructible things is caused by the analogous continuity of circular heavenly motion already established in Physics VIII.7–9. “It is much more reasonable,” he observes, “for what is [to on] to be the cause of coming-to-be for what is not, than for what is not to be [the cause] of being for what is. Now what is moved with respect to place is, whereas what is coming to be is not.”89 His direct explanandum in II.10 is not, therefore, the existence of any substance or kind of substance, but the continuous and eternal occurrence of coming-to-be as such.90 This choice of explanandum shapes in detail the argument with which we are now concerned. In this argument, Aristotle specifies the end for the sake of which continuous coming-to-be occurs. In fact, existence of inferior beings as an end proper or merely as a byproduct: Falcon 2005 (13), Leunissen 2010 (160–64, on DC II.3); see also 204n29 later. While it is no doubt awkward to suggest that the superior is for the sake of the inferior, it is hardly less awkward to conclude that it is purely accidental to the superior to confer goodness on the inferior. Perhaps the question is not as difficult as it seems, as according to EN IX.7 the good of a beneficiary in some sense belongs to the benefactor. 87. Pace Balme 1972 (97). 88. GC II.9.335a25–26. 89. GC II.10.336a20–23. 90. Joachim 1922 (264) reads the passage in terms of the eternity of particular species, but this reading does not fit the text. A later passage (II.11.338b6–19) does focus on eternity in form or species.



Being and Goodness

185

the whole argument is framed in terms of the Platonic distinction between being (here einai, ousia), which is never destroyed, and mere becoming (  genesis). Things that are “too far removed from the source” do not admit of being or substance, except in the extended sense in which a sort of being, the “nearest thing to substance,” can be strung together from innumerable instances of becoming itself. The Platonic notes sounded in the argument offer an important perspective on Aristotle’s decision to devote a distinct treatise to coming-to-be. Within the context of its focus on coming-to-be, the argument draws on several premises that I have already discussed. First, nature “strives always in all things for what is better.” Second, “being is better than not being.” Third, although destructible things cannot possess the good of being, they can approximate this good within the limits of their own natures. Here we can and should paraphrase Physics II.7: destructible things aim at what is better, but not at what is better simply, for what is better simply is to be indestructible. Fourth, the qualified good achieved by destructible things is due to the action of a divine being. Although Aristotle does not explain his poetic reference to “god” or “the god,” he must mean either the sun, which is the proximate eternal generator of coming-to-be, or “the source.” This source (archē) is unlikely to be the sun, for the Platonic context requires that destructible things be measured by their distance from a source or principle that is genuinely first. Given the clear reference to Physics VIII earlier in the chapter, the source is surely the first mover of Physics VIII.10. Two aspects of the good secured for destructible things by the influence of the sun require emphasis. First, Aristotle describes the god—whether we understand this to be the sun or the first mover of Physics VIII—as having “filled up the whole.” That is, the good achieved in the coming-to-be of destructible things brings the cosmos as a whole to completion. It is hard to avoid reading the word “filled up” (suneplērōse) both metaphorically and literally: the influence of the heavens and of their mover brings completes the structure

186

Being and Goodness

of the cosmos by filling the turbulent spherical hollow enclosed by the heavens with the greatest good it can hold. Second, the specific good produced by the divine cause consists in the stringing together of many instances of coming-to-be.91 Precisely this succession of occurrences—“that coming-to-be should always be coming-to-be”— constitutes the good in question.92 This presentation of coming-to-be as a good depends directly on the comparison between continuous coming-to-be and the continuous locomotion of the heavens, a comparison that we shall understand better when we have seen, in chapter 5, how the Physics presents motion itself as a good.93 For now, note that in Physics III.1–2 Aristotle describes motion as a sort of inworking or fulfillment (entelecheia),94 and that in Physics VIII.1 he describes eternal motion as “a sort of life for everything constituted by nature.”95 Indeed, I suspect that our present passage itself subtly invokes the concept of fulfillment. Recall that the term entelecheia, coined by Aristotle, is probably a pun on endelecheia, “continuity.” If so, then the phrase “making coming to be perpetual [endelechē]” contains the same pun in reverse. Given that the original pun was his own, and given the close connection in his thought between entelecheia and the concepts of being and substance, at work in this passage, the reverse pun is unlikely to have escaped his notice. In the two passages that we have just considered, then, Aristotle focuses on two aspects of the good of destructible things. First, this 91. See also GC I.3.318a13–27. 92. Johnson 2005 (149) seems not to have noticed that locating the good of the sublunary elements in their cycle of transformation makes it difficult to interpret this good as that of some specific type of natural substance, for example earth or fire. Balme 1972 (97) too attempts to understand this passage reductively in terms of the good of individuals: Aristotle’s “statements therefore reduce to this: reproduction is part of self-preservation, and its continuance is part of the continuance of the universe.” 93. See 225–32 below. For the claim of Met. IX.8.1050b28–30 that the elements imitate the heavens see Lang 1994, Johnson 2005 (149). 94. This statement includes coming-to-be, for it occurs before Aristotle has distinguished coming-to-be from motion in the strict sense, at V.1.224b35–2.225b11. 95. Phys. VIII.1.250b14–15.



Being and Goodness

187

good is possible only through the influence of the eternal on the destructible, through which the goodness characteristic of the natural order extends itself to the lowest depths of this order. Second, this good involves a qualified eternity on the part of destructible things. Both aspects require further reflection. Both passages, we have seen, are cosmological. They take up the perspective of being as a whole, aiming to explain not the existence of this or that substance or process within a larger structure, but rather the structure itself: biological coming-to-be and its destructible principles in one case, coming-to-be in general in the other. Hence Aristotle appeals to causes that are not themselves circumscribed by the cycle of coming-to-be, but belong to a higher order. Just as male is superior to female and body to soul, these higher causes are superior to everything that comes to be. Nor is their superior beauty or nobility accidental to their status as causes; rather, it belongs to the kalon and divine precisely as such, “by its own nature,” to bring about what is better in things inferior to itself. Aristotle’s interest in the structure of the cosmos as a whole suggests that his conception of the good is not merely a conception of the good of this or that particular substance, at least insofar as certain goods involve a hierarchical coordination of natures. Second, both passages are concerned with eternity. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that eternity is the only good at stake, as if anything at all could count as good provided it kept on keeping on.96 Instead, the goodness that Aristotle consistently associates with eternity should be understood in light of the goodness or beauty discussed in passages that do not focus on eternity. Given that something is good, in other words, it will be better if it keeps on being good than if its goodness comes to an end. We have begun to explore the good96. Thus Gotthelf 1989 (58–59) contends that the goodness of the divine in Aristotle can be reduced to necessary and eternal actuality, as if anything at all could serve as god provided it kept on keeping on. Aristotle does treat the first mover as good qua necessary (Met. XII.7.1072b10–16), but he goes on—even within the passage quoted by Gotthelf—to observe that god continues eternally in not just any condition but the best.

188

Being and Goodness

ness that makes eternity itself good in this and the previous chapter.97 We shall continue to do so in chapter 5, when we turn to Aristotle’s concepts of order and of the determinate. T h e G o o d i n t h e M e ta p h y s i c s

It would be a mistake to undertake here any more than a cursory look at the exegetical everglade that is Aristotle’s Metaphysics. There are, however, two points that require emphasis, and that I can bring out without disappearing altogether into the text. First, Aristotle makes his general case for the centrality of energeia—its centrality, that is, both for knowledge and for being itself— in Metaphysics IX.8.98 He first argues that energeia is first in logos, as one cannot articulate a power or ability without first articulating the corresponding inworking or activity.99 Τhe inworking is therefore central for knowledge; it is the principle of the thinkability of things. He later argues that inworking is first “in substance” as well, and this in two ways. First, the inworking within any dunamis-energeia pair is, by comparison with the power, a genuine, stable reality, whereas the power exists only as tending toward the inworking.100 Here he explicitly describes inworking as the end for the sake of which things exist by way of ability. Second, no eternal and indestructible being exists as eternal by mere power, but only by inworking. Because power or ability does not always come to fruition, it is incompatible with eternity.101 Eternal beings are first in substance in that their being is absolute, whereas the being of destructible things depends on that of the 97. See 134–51, 156–75. 98. Charles 2010 argues that in IX.6–8 Aristotle conceptualizes matter and form in terms of actuality and potentiality precisely in order to secure a teleological understanding of substance. This assessment weaves Aristotle’s concern for the good into Met. VII–IX as a whole. 99. Met. IX.8.1049b12–17. 100. Met. IX.8.1050a4–b6. 101. The standard interpretation of this claim is that the eternal as such has no dunamis at all: Makin 2006 (209–14), Beere 2009 (316–18). Frey 2015 objects on the ground that nature essentially involves dunamis.



Being and Goodness

189

eternal.102 In the following chapter, finally, Aristotle draws the important corollary that unlike the good, the bad arises only where something exists merely by way of ability, and then only when the ability falls short of its proper inworking.103 In short, Metaphysics IX summarizes the basic assumptions about good and bad, being and not being, that structure Aristotle’s natural science as a whole.104 The second point regards Aristotle’s insistence elsewhere in the Metaphysics on properly understanding the good as a cause. In reviewing the history of causal thinking in book I, in posing problems regarding the nature and unity of wisdom in book III, and in the cryptic assessment of his predecessors that ends book XII, Aristotle insists that in pursuing wisdom we must find a way for the good to serve as a cause precisely insofar as it is good.105 Consider the following passages: That for the sake of which the actions, changes, and motions are, they say to be a cause in a certain manner, but they do not speak of it in these terms, nor in the precise manner natural to it [honper pephuken]. For those who speak of mind or friendship as a good posit them as causes, not indeed as if any of the things that are either were or came to be for the sake of them; rather, they speak of the motions as being from them. Similarly, those who hold that the one or being is this sort of nature hold that it is responsible for substance, not however that being or coming-to-be is for the sake of it.106 In a way, then, it turns out that they both say and do not say that the good is a cause, for they 102. Met. IX.8.1050b6–28. 103. Met. IX.9.1051a17–21. For the argument of IX.9 and its continuity with IX.8 see Katz and Polansky 2007; see also 221–25. 104. It is not easy, however, to articulate just what Aristotle means by “prior in substance”; one question is whether he applies the same notion of priority to energeiai in relation to their corresponding dunameis as to eternal beings in relation to destructible ones. Witt 2003, Beere 2009 offer balanced, sensitive discussions; Witt is particularly sensitive to normative issues. See also Cleary 1988, Panayides 1999, Makin 2003, 2006, Broadie 2010, Peramatzis 2011, Malink 2013, Menn unpublished, §IIIα3 (11–20). 105. In addition to the passages that follow see I.2.982b4–10, 3.984b8–4.985a10. For Aristotle’s concern for the good see also Beere 2009 (324–25, 349–51). Menn unpublished, §IIIγ1 (4–9) rightly connects this concern with similar ideas in Anaxagoras and Plato. Wilson 2000 (204), in contrast, sees little concern for the good in Met. as a whole. 106. Italics represent the emphatic particle ge.

190

Being and Goodness

speak of it not straightforwardly [haplōs], but by way of something accidental to it. There are many beings to which not all [the principles] belong. For how could a principle of motion, or the nature of the good, belong to something unmoved? For everything that is good through itself and by its own nature is an end, and serves as a cause insofar as other things both come to be and are for the sake of it; and the end and that for the sake of which is an end of some action; and all actions involve motion. Hence this principle is not to be found among the unmoved, nor can there by any “Good-itself.” Now the others do not even make the good and the bad principles [archas]; yet in all things the good above all is a principle. Now they do rightly say it is a principle, but how the good is a principle they do not say: whether as end, or as mover [kinēsan], or as form. . . . Anaxagoras [makes] the good a principle as mover [kinoun], for mind causes motion [kinei]. But it causes motion for the sake of something; hence [the good is] distinct [from mind], except in the manner in which we speak of it: for the medical art is in a way health.107

This repeated insistence on properly articulating the causality of the good cuts in two directions. Applied to Aristotle’s predecessors, it implies that although some previous thinkers have tried to present either the good or something they consider good as a cause, their attempts have fallen short. The criterion that Aristotle applies to his 107. Met. I.7.988b6–16; III.2.996a21–29; XII.10.1075a36–b1, 8–10. Gotthelf 1989 (46–47) recognizes that the first of these passages (along with Phys. II.2.194a28–33, Somn. 2.455b22–25) poses particular difficulties for a naturalistic interpretation of Aristotle’s natural teleology; Gotthelf allows that “the very same states (or activities) which are ends will also be goods,” but insists that “they will not be ends in virtue of being goods” (47), but rather in virtue of being actualities. It is far from clear that this solution meets Aristotle’s requirement—which Gotthelf has just quoted—that the good be presented as “a cause qua good” (46; translation of Met. I.7.988b15 by Ross in Barnes 1984). Aristotle is not stretching his own view to meet someone else’s requirement, but proposing a requirement of his own; we should expect him to meet it straightforwardly. It seems evident to me (see also Henry 2013) that Aristotle’s natural science deliberately takes up the gauntlet thrown down by Plato at Phaedo 99c1–8: “As for [the heavens’] capacity of being in the best place they could possibly be put, this they do not look for, nor do they believe it to have any divine force . . . and they do not believe that the truly good and ‘binding’ binds and holds them together. I would gladly become the disciple of any man who taught the workings of that kind of cause” (trans. G. M. A. Grube in Cooper 1997).



Being and Goodness

191

predecessors can also, however, be applied to our understanding of Aristotle himself. Then it implies that when Aristotle treats the good as a cause—in particular, as that for the sake of which—he means it to be a cause precisely as good. Here again, the possibility of a deflationary reading looms. Perhaps Aristotle means simply to define the good as that for the sake of which. Perhaps, that is, he calls certain outcomes goods simply because they are ends, rather than making the stronger claim that these outcomes occur as ends because they are intrinsically good. His natural teleology would then be based on the conviction that nature acts not at random but for the sake of something—namely, that for the sake of which it acts. In the Metaphysics, to treat the good as a cause just insofar as it is good would simply be to use the term “good” for the outcomes that in fact serve as ends. The language of goodness would furnish teleological explanations with a convenient sense of familiarity, but it would ultimately be inessential to a causal understanding of the world. As we have seen, Aristotle’s own deep delight in the ends of natural beings—a delight that he endorses philosophically and that he recommends to others—suggests that he considers these ends to be good in themselves, and does not merely consent to call them good insofar as they happen to be ends. Ends are ends because they are good, not merely called “good” because they are ends. His remark in Physics II.2 that “not everything that is last means to be an end, but that which is best” cuts in the same direction. Nevertheless, it will be helpful to consider this deflationary account in light of Aristotle’s ambition in the Metaphysics to present the good as a cause. Consider again the aporia posed in III.2. According to the argument that creates the aporia, the good is not to be found as a principle among unmoved things, for it is a principle as that for the sake of which, and this sort of principle implies motion. This argument does make it difficult to treat the good as a universal principle, but why should this be a problem for wisdom? Why should it be an obstacle to

192

Being and Goodness

understanding the causes and principles of all things? What exactly, in other words, is the force of the aporia? The argument creates a clear difficulty for the pursuit of wisdom only if we, the inquirers, already expect an adequate account of first principles to give a prominent place to the good, and perhaps even to make the highest good something unmoved. Yet why should we make this assumption? Why does Aristotle expect the aporia to carry force with his students and readers? He certainly does not expect us to bring to the Metaphysics a settled conviction that the good is a universal cause in the sense of being an end. At least in the context of a search for first principles, he claims the connection between goods and ends as his own.108 The situation is even worse if we assume that nothing is intrinsically good, even though we call certain things good insofar as they happen to be ends. This assumption empties the aporia of its force by emptying the good of its intuitive explanatory promise, for this explanatory promise depends on the conviction that some things are genuinely better than others. The good becomes an attractive first principle only if we believe that the things around us are straightforwardly better and worse, and if we expect an adequate account of first principles to explain this fact. This is just the situation, by the way, that Aristotle describes in Metaphysics I.3–4.109 Throughout the Metaphysics, Aristotle holds himself responsible to the expectation that wisdom will have at its heart an account of the good. This expectation can be satisfied only by discovering an adequate foundation for the sense—which, he thinks, a good person inclined to contemplation is likely to share—that some goods are relative neither to our own arbitrary interests nor to the brute fact that nature aims at certain outcomes. In his natural science, I have now argued, he attempts to lay this foundation by grounding his account of 108. He does not claim to have originated the practical view that “the good is that at which all things aim” (EN I.1.1094a3), but only to bring a correct understanding of the good to the philosophical discussion of first principles. 109. Met. I.3.984b8–4.985a10.



Being and Goodness

193

the good in an encounter with beauty, and his encounter with beauty in an analysis of being itself and of being’s openness to thought. The resulting metaphysics—when we manage to see it as a whole— emerges as a powerful argument for a life of contemplation rooted in love for the beautiful, a love that is also the wellspring of practical reason.

194

Being and Goodness

Order and the Determinate

5

ORDER AND THE DETERMINATE

Being is better than not being; being in the full sense is fulfillment; hence this above all is good. If we ask how exactly being in the full sense marks itself out as good, we can begin by saying that the good is an end, and that being in the full sense typically functions as an end. Yet we must then add that fulfillment is in some way suited for this role, for “not everything that is last means to be an end.”1 Aristotle’s insistence on form as logos—as that through which natural beings are knowable, and hence as the source of our pleasure in knowing them—provides a first clue. In this chapter, I shall explore two further key terms in which he presents the goodness of being: being as good is ordered and determinate.2 1. Phys. II.2.194a32. 2. In appendix A we shall find that two crucial marks of the good in EN,

195

Our first theme comes from a phrase that occurs twice in Aristotle’s works on nature: in both Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals, he describes natural beings as ordered (tetagmena) and determinate (hōrismena). The two concepts are closely related, for order (taxis) involves a determinate arrangement of parts. This implies that the determinate is broader and more abstract than the ordered, requiring a longer and more careful approach. I shall therefore proceed as follows. First, I shall reconsider Aristotle’s natural teleology in light of his assertion that what is natural is ordered and determinate, giving particular attention to his claim that nature is a source of order. I shall then turn to the determinate, which he often approaches through the notion of a limit. I shall consider, for example, his claim that any limited number of movers will give rise to some sort of order, his description of form as a sort of limit, and his presentation of the heavens as limiting the cosmos as a whole. Finally, we shall explore how his concepts of the determinate and indeterminate, limited and unlimited, interact with his distinction between potency and act, and hence also with his understanding and assessment of motion as a sort of inworking. Order

In Parts of Animals I, then, and again in Generation of Animals V, Aristotle uses the phrase “ordered and determinate” to secure the goodness of nature’s works, and hence the place of teleology in natural science. To appreciate the work done by this phrase, and more generally by his presentation of nature as a source of order, let us begin again with the good as an end.

finality or completeness and self-sufficiency, further characterize the goodness of being in general. Completeness and sufficiency or self-sufficiency are marks of the good in Plato’s Philebus (20c–d, 67a); if we connect the determinate with the limited, then determinacy is also thematized in this dialogue (see 215n59, 220n76).

196

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

Nature’s Ends as Goods

“Every art and every inquiry, and likewise action and choice, seems to aim at some good; hence people well [kalôs] declare the good to be that at which all things aim.” In so beginning the Ethics, Aristotle refers human activity to the good as to an end, and hence as to a certain sort of cause. The good is responsible for our striving; it confers intelligibility on our lives. The same is true in nature: wherever it occurs, the good is an end. In Physics II.3, we have seen, Aristotle introduces the last of the four causes as “the end; and this is that for the sake of which.” This end is “the good of the others,” as “that for the sake of which means what is best, the end of the others.”3 Despite their context, moreover, his examples in this chapter are again of human actions;4 only later will he argue that nature too is for the sake of something. The discussion of causes in Physics II.3–7 is therefore quite general, and Aristotle is sufficiently concerned for its generality to append a note reminiscent of the Ethics: “let it make no difference whether one says a good itself or an apparent good.”5 In virtue of their goodness or apparent goodness, then, causes of this sort mark themselves out as points of reference for all that leads up to them. The description of that for the sake of which as good plays an important if tacit role in the argument of Physics II.8 explaining why “nature is among the causes for the sake of something.”6 This argument 3. Phys. II.3.194b32–33, 195a24–25. 4. Phys. II.3.194b33–195a3. 5. Phys. II.3.195a25–26. 6. Phys. II.8.198b10–11. My reading of this argument is similar to that of Cooper 1982 (116–18); I depart from Cooper on three connected points. First, II.8 purports to show not that but why nature is for the sake of something (198b10), drawing on earlier explications of nature and of that for the sake of which, so as to reveal how the two are connected. Already in II.1, in fact, Aristotle has stated that the existence of natural wholes is obvious (193a3–9), and argued in essentially teleological terms that nature is form more than material (193b6–18). Second, because the argument proceeds directly from the understanding of nature presented in II.1, it does not depend on the additional premise, unstated and here unsupported, that species are eternal. For earlier criticism of this reading see Judson 1991a (87–88), Charles 1991 (113n17), Code 1997 (131–32). Third, therefore, the argument of II.8 is not weakened by reliance on such a premise, and II.9 is not primarily a new and improved argument for the thesis of II.8.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

197

presupposes that we can identify certain outcomes in nature—in the changing world, that is, but outside human intention—as good. To recognize this presupposition, we must see how Aristotle uses the analysis of fortune (tuchē) and the spontaneous (to automaton) in II.4–6 to set up an alternative that forms a key premise in the first argument of II.8: “it seems to be either by accident [apo sumptōmatos] or for the sake of something.”7 Fortune and the spontaneous are causes of the same basic sort; specifically, fortune is the spontaneous affecting the lives of human beings.8 We call an outcome spontaneous when we have no better explanation for it, and Aristotle sets out to identify the case in which no better explanation is in fact to be had.9 This occurs when the salient outcome—the one that has caught our attention, and that seems to demand an explanation—has no cause at all in its own right, but only accidentally.10 For example, a man who has gone to the theater to see the Oresteia comes across someone who owes him money and happily collects the debt. As his intention was not to meet his debtor but to see Sophocles, we attribute the meeting to good fortune. Likewise, we say that a horse escapes death spontaneously if it returns to the barn to eat shortly before the lion comes to the pasture.11 Not just any case of accidental causation, however, qualifies as spontaneous. Rather, we attribute something to fortune or the spontaneous only when it is the sort of thing that might have been for the sake of something—when, in other words, it is either an end or a means thereto.12 Aristotle’s pur7. Phys. II.8.199a3–4. 8. Phys. II.5.197a32–35, 6.197a36–b22. 9. Phys. II.4.195b36–196a17. 10. Phys. II.5.196b23–31, 197a8–25. 11. Phys. II.5.196b33–197a5, 25–26, 6.197b15–16. 12. Phys. II.5.196b17–22, 29–31, 197a35, 6.197b18–20. Lennox 1984, Judson 1991a (77–78) conclude that spontaneous events are in a sense for the sake of something. The text is difficult, but it is hard to see why Aristotle would say this, and the relevant passages admit of alternative readings: 5.196b22 might refer not to the class of actual events that might be (but are not always) done by thought or nature, but instead to the class of possible events that are in fact done by thought or nature (not “whatever might have been done” but simply “whatever might be done”); 196b29–30 might refer to things that generally (but not necessarily) take place

198

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

pose, then, is not to provide a general analysis of random events but to distinguish genuine from spurious cases of goal-directed change. This presupposes that we can identify certain outcomes in nature and human affairs as outcomes that might have been for the sake of something—as outcomes qualified in principle to serve as ends.13 Aristotle has already told us, moreover, what sort of occurrence is qualified to serve as an end: “not everything that is last means to be an end, but that which is best.”14 When an outcome of this sort—one that strikes us as good by comparison with other possibilities—has only an accidental cause, we attribute it to the spontaneous.15 This analysis neatly sets up the argument of II.8. We observe in nature certain outcomes that strike us as good from some point of view, and that are therefore qualified in principle to serve as ends. Because we are concerned only with real or apparent goods as such, the alternative “either by accident or for the sake of something” holds. A real or apparent good, that is, either does or does not have a cause just insofar as it is good. If it does, it occurs for the sake of something; if not, spontaneously. Now Aristotle and his opponents agree that for the sake of something; 196b34–36 (unamended) might affirm not that the man’s coming (which Aristotle explicitly characterizes as accidental) was for the sake of something, but that once he happened to come, he proceeded to get the money for the sake of recovering the debt (or providing the banquet); 197a1–2 might then mean that although the end for which he acted in taking the money was not among his reasons for coming (the causes present in himself ), it was nevertheless (as we can see from the outcome) something choiceworthy, and therefore the sort of thing for which thought might have led him to come; in 6.197b18–21 the qualification haplōs might indicate a class of events that in the absence of further information we would classify as for the sake of something (as in the phrase “good simply,” for which see 53–55). The ethical passages cited by Lennox (257) for corroboration (EN III.1.1111a2–5, 18–19; V.8.1135b12–16; EE II.9.1225b1–5) do not state directly and explicitly that one can be ignorant of one’s end in the strong sense that one’s action is somehow for the sake of an outcome one did not have in mind. It is more charitable to read them as treating briefly, under the convenient heading of ignorance, cases in which an action leads to an outcome other than the one intended. 13. Furley 1985 refers to “end-like outcomes” (179), explaining that Aristotle’s question arises “only if we recognize some structure, some pattern or organization, some good in a very general sense” (180). In the case of bad fortune, the outcome is presumably endlike in that it might have been inflicted by one for whom it was really or apparently good. 14. Phys. II.2.194a32–33. 15. Meyer 1992 (101–2).



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

199

certain outcomes—apparently good and therefore qualified to serve as ends—have nature as their cause.16 They disagree about whether these outcomes should be attributed to nature insofar as they are good or only in some other respect.17 Because Aristotle holds that nature achieves its good works not just occasionally but “always or for the most part,” and because he holds that what occurs always or for the most part cannot be spontaneous, he can rule out the spontaneous and conclude that nature is “for the sake of something.”18 If it is typical of nature to produce good works, that is, then nature just does aim at the good. It is important to recognize the limits of this argument. Aristotle cannot mean that the generative power of a plant, for instance, aims at what the plant understands to be good: it is the naturalist, rather than the plant itself, who achieves this understanding. It is therefore quite possible to describe the plant’s work simply as the production of an individual the same in form as itself. If, however, we compare the various natures at work in the changing world, we find that they invariably aim at something that we can recognize as good, though something different in each case. There is no general connection, in other words, between nature and the generation of geraniums or of zebras—or, for that matter, between nature and motion toward the limit or center of the sublunary sphere. There is, however, a general connection between nature and the good. This means that if we wish to understand nature in general, we must understand it in terms of the good—or at least in terms of certain good-making attributes common to all nature’s works.19 That natures are consistently oriented toward the good does, of course, raises further questions about the ultimate principles and causes of natural beings. 16. Phys. II.8.199a5–7. 17. Meyer 1992 (92–94); for the agreement on nature as cause see also Code 1997 (129). 18. Phys. II.8.198b34–36, 199a4–5. 19. Aristotelian principles such as “nature is a cause for the sake of something” and “nature does nothing in vain” are therefore “generalization[s] over the goal-directed actions of the formal natures of particular natural substances” (Henry 2013: 231).

200

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

Physics II.8 presupposes, then, the presence in nature of endlike results—of outcomes at least apparently good.20 Its question is not why this or that outcome strikes us as good, nor in what its goodness consists, but rather how—given its endlike appearance—we ought to explain its occurrence. For his argument to be plausible, therefore, Aristotle must have something to say about the endlike appearance of nature’s works: he must be able to say, when pressed, in what the goodness of these works in fact consists. Considering his examples in this chapter, moreover, one might well conclude that goodness in nature is purely instrumental: that it lies in a living thing’s useful parts, such as teeth, leaves, and roots, or in its useful activities and products, such as webs, nests, and the activity of building them.21 Yet this would be to mistake the structure of his claim. Nature is a “cause for the sake of something” not because it produces tooth or nest, but because it produces them for the sake of an end, where this end is itself “nature . . . as shape [morphē].”22 Nor—as we have seen—does he think that living things behave merely as if their forms were good; rather, he affirms in his own voice the beauty of nature’s works. We have returned to form as good, and by extension to inworking. On what grounds, though, does Aristotle take being in the sense of inworking or fulfillment to be good? How does he describe nature’s works—not merely in their subordinate parts or activities, but as complete substances—so as to manifest their goodness and beauty? The phrase that will guide this study, “ordered and determinate,” can be found in the methodological reflections that frame his biology.

20. This is as true of the later arguments as of the first. The second argument (199a8–20), for instance, involves recognizing in nature the means-to-end structure also characteristic of art. 21. Phys. II.8.198b23–27, 9a20–29. This is certainly the most obvious way to approach the argument and to conceive of certain natural outcomes as good; see for example Charles 1988 (38). The example of rainfall and crop growth has received considerable attention; see for example the wide-ranging discussion in Scharle 2008, with the references there. 22. Phys. II.8.199a30–32.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

201

Nature’s Ends as Ordered and Determinate

The phrase “ordered and determinate” occurs twice in Aristotle’s surviving treatises, at the beginning and at the end of his biology.23 It first appears in Parts of Animals I, his preface to the study of living things, and more specifically in I.1’s defense of teleological explanation. It reappears in his last set of programmatic remarks, at the beginning of Generation of Animals V. Here he summarizes the method defended in Parts of Animals in order to signal his departure from it in the following discussion, much of which is devoted to traits that serve no purpose.24 His succinct restatement of this method will make a good point of departure: For just as we said at the beginning, in our first discussion, it is not because each thing comes to be of a certain sort that, because of this, it is of a certain sort—speaking, that is, of those that are ordered and determinate works of nature—but rather, because they are such and such, they become such; for coming-to-be follows upon substance and is for the sake of substance, not substance upon coming-to-be.25

In the central phrase of this sentence, Aristotle specifies the scope of teleological explanation in natural science: explanation in terms of that for the sake of which finds a place wherever one is dealing with “ordered and determinate works of nature.” Now the term “work,” ergon, has as its most general meaning simply “effect.”26 Nature, then, as in Physics II.1 and 8, is the principle of certain works or effects, and these are ordered and determinate. By contrast with his examples in Physics II.8, however, Aristotle here focuses not so much on what nature brings about for the sake of an end as on the end itself: the primary work of living nature is the fully formed substance. To describe 23. It occurs twice also in the Protrepticus: Düring 1961 (fragment 33.2, 4). 24. For a nuanced account of the purpose and methods of GA V and of its relation to the previous four books see Leunissen and Gotthelf 2012. 25. GA V.1.778b1–6. 26. So throughout Mete. I–III; for discussion see appendix B. The first instance in IV (1.378b29) already carries more weight, as the erga in question are now those of fundamental natural principles rather than of particular geological and meteorological formations.

202

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

this work as ordered and determinate is to exhibit its goodness, and so to display it as a suitable explanans in teleological explanations. In Parts of Animals, the phrase “ordered and determinate” plays a different role. Instead of distinguishing traits that call for teleological explanation from those that do not, Aristotle uses it to argue a fortiori that if the parts and generations of animals ought to be explained by reference to their form, then so too must heaven itself: Further, the contemplation of nature [tēn phusikēn theōretikēn] cannot deal with anything that depends on abstraction, since nature does everything for the sake of something. For it appears that just as in artifacts there is art, so in the things themselves [autois tois pragmasin] there is some other principle and cause of this sort, which we have, like the hot and the cold, from the whole [ek tou pantos].27 Therefore the heaven is more likely to have come to be through a cause of this sort—if it has come to be—and to be due to such a cause, than are mortal animals. The ordered and the determinate, at any rate, are much more apparent in the heavenly regions than in ours: in the mortal sphere, “now one thing, now another” and “as chance had it” are more the order of the day.28

In this highly allusive passage, Aristotle first observes that natural science—unlike mathematics, that is—cannot approach its objects by way of abstraction. This observation echoes the aporia from Metaphysics III.2 that we have already considered: the good is an end, and as such it belongs not to abstract objects but to movable things. Yet just as artifacts embody the thoughtfulness that produced them, so 27. Balme 1972 (9) translates differently: “For as in artefacts there is the art, so in things themselves there is evident another such origin and cause, which we grasp from the universe just as we grasp the hot and the cold.” Balme suggests that “just as we have generalized a concept of the hot and the cold from our experience of the perceptible universe, so we have gained a concept of the achievement of ends—especially from observing the stars” (99). This interpretation is idiosyncratic, and it garbles the passage. To put Aristotle’s point briefly, natural science deals not with abstractions but with beings that seek ends and are therefore subject to change. There are principles of intelligibility within these beings themselves, and because the orderly whole to which these beings belong provides a natural setting for the principles they bear within them, there is no need to blunder about in natural science with the sorts of explanation proposed by Platonists. 28. PA I.1.641b10–20.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

203

too within natural things themselves—in contrast, presumably, to separate or abstracted forms—there is a similar principle. Just as art comes to artifacts from without, moreover, so the thinkable principle that we find in animals comes to them in some way from “the whole.” This obscure reference to the whole, finally, sparks the observation that what we see in animals is present even more clearly in the heavens. The significance of the ordered and the determinate in this context is clear: to the extent that a natural being is ordered and determinate, it is good and hence open to teleological inquiry. The heavens, for example, are superior to mortal animals just because they are more orderly and more determinate. Nor is natural order limited to animals, plants, and the heavens. At the beginning of Meteorology, Aristotle proposes for discussion an array of phenomena that “happen [sumbainei] according to a nature, yet one less orderly than that of the first element of bodies.”29 Here as in Parts of Animals the heavens—formed of the “first element of bodies”—put lesser beings in their place; yet wherever there is nature, there is at least some order. Order seems, in fact, to be nature’s proper work. Thus in Physics VIII.1, Aristotle takes Empedocles and Anaxagoras to task for proposing arbitrary accounts of motion, then papering over their proposals with appeals to nature: “Nothing disorderly is among those that occur by nature or according to nature, for nature is for all things a cause of order . . . to have no order is no longer a work of nature.”30 Nature can even be defined as a kind of order, as we find in On the Heavens III.2. Considering the proposal that motion is at bottom disorderly, Aristotle writes that “the disorderly is nothing other than the unnatural [  para phusin], for the order proper to perceptible things is nature. . . . On their view, then, we end up with the opposite: disorder is natural, but order and arrangement [kos29. Mete. I.1.338b20–21; for natural order in Mete. I–III see Wilson 2013. Wilson argues that meteorological phenomena, though good insofar as they are orderly, are accidental effects of the heavens rather than ends. Yet the heavenly motions also support the lives of animals and plants, and if the former effects are accidental then so are the latter. See also 184n86. 30. Phys. VIII.1.252a11–12, 16.

204

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

mon] unnatural—yet no natural thing comes to be ‘as it happened.’ ”31 Notice that in Parts of Animals I.1 and On the Heavens III.2, Aristotle echoes Physics II by contrasting natural order with what comes to be merely “as it happened.”32 What is or comes to be “as it happened” is the kata sumbebēkos, the accidental; it occurs through a conjunction of causes or attributes that are not essentially connected. Now in Metaphysics VI.2 and the parallel XI.8, Aristotle argues that the accidental—precisely as disorderly and indeterminate—falls outside the realm of knowledge: it is “not necessary but indeterminate . . . and the causes of what is such are disordered and limitless.”33 This suggests that natural science in particular is possible just because nature is a source of order. Note also that by describing the accidental as indeterminate and its causes as limitless, Aristotle suggests a connection between the determinate and the limited. Metaphysics VI.2 and XI.8 provide us, moreover, with a third way in which Aristotle’s understanding of the good tracks his understanding of being. In both chapters, he refers to Plato’s suggestion that the sophist is a dealer in to mē on—in “what is not.”34 In a way, Aristotle remarks, this was not a bad suggestion, for sophistry turns on the accidental—on whether, for example, the musical is or is not the same as the literate. The accidental, however, is a mere name, next-door to nonbeing.35 Nor is this merely a passing remark; rather, Aristotle is discussing the accidental just because he considers it, if only barely, a way of being: “Being, spoken of simply, is spoken of in many ways, of which one was the accidental, another the true (where nonbeing is the false), and apart from these are the figures of predication (such as the what, quantity, quality, place, time, and anything else that signifies things in this way); further, beyond all these, there is being by way of 31. DC III.2.301a4–5, 9–11; for nature as a source of order see also Lang 1998 (3). 32. See also DC II.5.287b24–25: “nothing ‘as it happened’ or spontaneous [hōs etuche mēd’ apo tautomatou] is possible among eternal things.” 33. Met. XI.8.1065a24–26; cf. VI.2.1026b4–10, 1027a5–7. 34. Met. VI.2.1026b13–21; XI.8.1064b23–30; Sophist 236c–237b, 258b. 35. Met. VI.2.1026b13, 21.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

205

ability and being by way of inworking.”36 The accidental falls short of genuine being, moreover—of what is kath’ hauto, through itself—for the same reason it falls short of determinacy and order. It falls short in being, that is, for the same reason it falls short in goodness. It begins where thinkability and its attendant beauty end. Nature, then, aims at the good, and this good is at least in part a matter of order. In a sense, nature just is the order present in perceptible things. Order thus serves as a middle term linking nature with the good. This link plays a crucial role not only in Aristotle’s treatises on nature, but also in his search for a higher form of wisdom. In Metaphysics I.3, for instance, surveying the types of cause explored by his predecessors, he proposes for explanation the fact “that some beings are [echein], while others come to be, well and beautifully.” To elucidate the goodness and beauty in question, he relies on the notion of order. Anaxagoras, for example, proposed that thought is responsible “for the cosmos and for all order,” whereas Empedocles posited love and strife as causes because he recognized in nature “not only order and the beautiful, but also disorder and the ugly.”37 At the other end of his inquiry, in Metaphysics XII.10, Aristotle asks “in which way the nature of the whole has the good and the best: whether as something separated, itself by itself, or as its own order [tēn taxin].” “The good [eu],” he then suggests, is first and foremost separate, but is also “in the order,” for “all things are in some way coordinated [suntetaktai],” and “coordinated with a view to one thing [  pros . . . hen].”38 The noun “order” and the verbs “to order” and “to coordinate” appear six times in the course of fifteen lines.39

36. Met. VI.2.1026a33–b2; see also XI.8.1064b15–16. 37. Met. I.3.984b11–12, 16–17, 4.984b33–985a1. 38. Met. XII.10.1075a11–14, 16, 18–19. 39. Menn unpublished, §IIIγ3 (5) notes that taxis (“order”) and related terms are military in origin, and therefore support the military analogy at work in this passage.

206

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

T h e D e t e r m i n at e a n d t h e L i m i t e d

Aristotle says not simply that the works of nature are ordered, but that they are ordered and determinate. This is not mere pleonasm: the participle hōrismenos, which I have rendered “determinate,” carries a force of its own. Taken literally, horizein means to mark off by means of a boundary, to bound or delimit. From Plato onward, it is used metaphorically to signify demarcating something in speech, that is, defining it. Determinate works, then, have clear and stable identities. Marked off from each other and from the indeterminate, they are open to thought and speech. If a work of nature is ordered, moreover, it is clearly determinate as well, for to recognize and describe order in nature is to attribute to natural things certain determinate ways of being and acting. If nature just is “the order proper to perceptible things,” finally, then nature itself is something determinate. To exist by nature is to have a fixed identity, open to thought and speech. What is or comes to be accidentally, however, is “not necessary but indeterminate”; its causes are “disordered and limitless.” “Disordered and limitless” is not quite the opposite of “ordered and determinate,” but it is not far off, and in Metaphysics XI.8 “indeterminate” hovers nearby. It seems reasonable to suppose, in fact, that one way of being determinate is to have a limited and hence specifiable number of causes. To begin exploring the connection between the ordered and the determinate, then, let us consider Aristotle’s suggestion in On the Heavens III.2 that any limited number of causes will give rise to some sort of order. Order and the Limited

In On the Heavens III.2, Aristotle argues that “necessarily, some motion belongs by nature to all the simple bodies”; his description of nature as “the order proper to perceptible things” belongs to this discussion.40 A few lines before this description, he suggests that any 40. DC III.2.300a20–21, 301a4–5.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

207

limited number of movers, regardless of their exact characteristics, will necessarily produce some sort of order. If each cause gives rise to a particular sort of motion, that is, then a limited number of causes will produce a limited array of motions. At least to this extent, motion as a whole will be orderly.41 Now the key terms in this passage, “limited” (  peperasmenos) and “unlimited” (apeiros), are closely related to “determinate” (hōrismenos) and “indeterminate” (aoristos). The first pair comes from peras, limit, the second from horos, boundary. In quantitative contexts, at least, they are not interchangeable, as “limited” means “finite” whereas “determinate” means “of a specified amount.”42 In itself, however, every real quantity is both limited and determinate, for quantities are generated by addition and division, and any completable series of real divisions or additions will yield a specific, finite quantity.43 For a quantity, then, to have a determinate identity at all is to be so much and no more; hence the observation in Physics III.5 that “if the account of a body is ‘that which is bounded/determined by a surface,’ a body would not be unlimited [apeiron].”44 In hypothesizing a limited number of causes, we might say, Aristotle assumes for motion as a whole a kind of metaphorical shape: a set of formal features that can, at least in principle, be specified—in a word, an order. In Aristotle’s natural science, therefore, the hypothesis that motion has a finite number of distinct types of cause is not merely a matter of passing interest. On at least four occasions, in fact, he asks directly whether one ought to posit a limited or an unlimited number of principles. Let us begin with Physics I.4, where he addresses the claim of Anaxagoras that the material principles of nature are unlimited: 41. DC III.2.300b31–301a12; see also Johnson 2005 (142). 42. I nevertheless avoid “finite” and “infinite,” so as to emphasize the conceptual context within which Aristotle’s discussions of the infinite unfold. 43. Two examples: first, one can exhaust any limited magnitude by repeatedly taking any determinate amount (Phys. III.6.206b11–12); second, one who keeps adding never reaches a sum exceeding every magnitude, just as one who keeps dividing “surpasses every determinate [  part],” yet there is always a smaller one (16–20; quotation at 19–20). 44. Phys. III.5.204b5–6.

208

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

If, then, the unlimited as unlimited is unknowable, the unlimited in multitude or in magnitude is a certain unknowable quantity, while the unlimited in form is a certain unknowable quality. Should the principles be unlimited both in multitude and in form, it will be impossible to know the things that arise from them. For we suppose that we know a composite in this way: when we know from what and from how many things it is. . . . It is better to assume principles that are fewer and limited [elattō kai peperasmena], as Empedocles in fact does.45

Now from the naturalist’s perspective, the prospect of an unknowable nature might well seem an unhappy one, and for Aristotle it is probably decisive. Shortly afterward, however, in I.6, he adds two further considerations: Next we should say whether [the principles] are two or three or more. For they can be neither one, because contraries are not one, nor unlimited, because (i) being will not be understandable; (ii) there is one contrariety for every one kind, and substance is a sort of one kind [hen ti genos46]; and (iii) it is possible to account for things on the basis of limited principles—and better to do so from limited principles, as in Empedocles, than from unlimited ones—for he takes himself to account for everything that Anaxagoras does with his unlimited ones.47

Now the second of these arguments need not concern us here, and the first looks to be just a summary of the earlier argument from knowledge. The third argument in I.6, however, poses a problem: in what sense is it better to hypothesize a limited number of principles? Perhaps, for example, this argument is simply a more modest version of the first. Even were it possible, that is, to employ an infinite number of principles, a finite number would secure a more knowable nature, 45. Phys. I.4.187b7–13, 188a17–18. 46. The translation is awkward, but the particle ti may be suspended between functioning as an indefinite article (“substance is a single kind”) and introducing a subtle doubt regarding the unity of the genos (“substance is, in a way, a single kind”). Met. XII.4–5 suggests that material, form, and privation are common to natural substances by proportion only, so that form and privation are not truly a single pair of opposites. These principles belong properly, moreover, to natural substances only. 47. Phys. I.6.189a11–17.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

209

and hence a better situation for the naturalist. Yet Aristotle does not indicate any particular connection between the two arguments; on the contrary, they are separated in the text by an argument unrelated to either. But let us step back for a moment. What exactly is Aristotle’s objection to an unknowable nature? On the basis of I.4 alone, one might think his concern pragmatic: if one in fact seeks knowledge of nature, one should not hypothesize principles that would render such knowledge unattainable. Consider, however, a similar passage from On the Heavens III.4. Again comparing Anaxagoras and Empedocles, Aristotle connects the requirements of natural science with those of mathematics, where the quality of a finished proof depends in part on its economy: The next thing to look at is whether [the elements] are limited or unlimited, and if limited, how many in number. First, then, we should consider that they are not unlimited, as some think—and first, those who make everything homogeneous an element, as Anaxagoras does. . . . Nor is it necessary for those who posit this sort of element to make them unlimited. For one can account for all the same things even if one takes them to be limited; indeed, one can produce the same results even if there are only two or three such elements, as Empedocles attempts to do. . . . It is obviously much better to make the principles limited, and indeed as few as possible, so long as one shows the same results, just as the mathematicians demand; for they always assume limited principles, either in form or in quantity.48

What mathematicians require is not the easiest or most useful demonstration but the simplest; nor is Aristotle likely to find their economy attractive on merely pragmatic grounds. According to Metaphysics XIII.3, at least, mathematical demonstrations concern not the useful but the beautiful, for they display order and the determinate in the highest degree. Consider again, moreover, his compact summary of the argument from knowledge in Physics I.6: if the principles 48. DC III.4.302b10–14, 20–24, 26–30. For the methodological razor here articulated see also Drozdek 1997.

210

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

are unlimited, “being will not be understandable [ouk epistēton to on estai].”49 The terms of this statement suggest a deep, principled objection. Read thus, the argument might indeed function pragmatically when necessary, but it would ultimately rely on the conviction that being is thinkable. This reading of the argument from knowledge suggests another way to interpret the third argument of Physics I.6. We have seen Aristotle repeatedly connect the goodness of natural substances with the presence within them of a logos—of a form that, in principle, the naturalist can think and articulate. If the unlimited as such is unknowable, therefore, then Aristotle has at his disposal not only an argument from knowledge but also a parallel argument from the good: precisely as unknowable, an unlimited number of principles would undermine nature’s goodness. This line of reasoning becomes explicit, in fact, in Physics VIII.6: Since, then, the motion is eternal, the first mover will also be eternal, if it is one; but if several, the eternal things will be several. But one should suppose them one rather than many, and limited than unlimited; for when the same things follow, one should always assume rather the limited, for in natural things the limited and the better must rather, whenever possible, be present. Yet even one is sufficient; and it, the first of things unmoved, being eternal, will be the principle of motion for the others.50

Aristotle prefers a more elegant set of principles, then—and in the first place, a limited set, which precisely as limited is a source of order—on the grounds of nature’s goodness.51 Order and Form

Physics I, Aristotle’s preface to the study of nature, provides us with another opportunity as well to explore the connection between order and determinacy. Consider first the beginning of On the Soul II.1, 49. Phys. I.6.189a13. 50. Phys. VIII.6.259a6–13. 51. Graham 1999 (108).



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

211

where Aristotle tells us that substance in the sense of material “in itself is not a this,” whereas substance in the sense of shape or form is that “through which something is now called a this.”52 It seems fair to say that according to this passage, material in itself is unbounded or indeterminate—it lacks “shape and form”—whereas form shapes and hence determines material. In Metaphysics V.17, we shall see, Aristotle explicitly describes form as a sort of limit. Now in Physics I.5–7, he frequently employs order as a precursor to the more general notion of form, while also signaling the inadequacy of order as a model for form in general. In so doing, he implicitly presents determinacy as broader and more difficult to grasp than order itself. Throughout these chapters, and particularly in I.7, Aristotle uses two primary examples of change: the arrangement of material parts into a house or statue and the musical education of a human being. The notion of order appears consistently in connection with the former example, as in the following three passages: A house, a statue, or any other such thing comes to be in the same way: for the house comes to be from things that are not composed but separated in a certain way, the statue and anything figured from figurelessness; and each of these is in some respects a certain order, in others a composition. I call . . . figurelessness, shapelessness, and disorder the opposite, but the bronze, stone, or gold the underlier. The form is one thing—such as the order.53

Order thus serves as an important model for the broader concept of form. It is an instance and an image of the ways in which indeterminate material can receive a determinate fulfillment, thereby acquiring being in the full sense. Awkward terms such as “figurelessness” and “shapelessness,” meanwhile, convey the indeterminacy of the underlying material in its own right. Aristotle’s second recurring example, in contrast, reveals the limits 52. DA II.1.412a6–9. 53. Phys. I.5.188b17–21, 7.190b13–17, 190b28.

212

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

of order as a model for form. In purely qualitative changes, such as the change from unmusical to musical, we see an indeterminate subject or underlier being determined by something that Aristotle wants to call a form, but without any obvious reordering of parts.54 Changes of this sort involve “simple beings,” he writes, whereas those that depend on order and composition involve “composite” ones.55 The determinacy that he elsewhere associates with form clearly applies to both cases, but when the form in question is simple, its determinacy does not involve order in any obvious sense. By juxtaposing the arrangement of material parts with musical training, Aristotle frees up the notion of form to include any mode of being that determines and orients a unified concrete thing. Aristotle does not use the terms “determinate” and “indeterminate” in Physics I.5–7, and he uses “limited” and “unlimited” only of the number of principles. Rather, I have used “determinate” and “indeterminate” so as to get at the work he needs the concept of form to do, work for which the more obvious but narrower concept of order is both helpful and inadequate. It may be helpful to emphasize, therefore, that the philosophical use of horos, “boundary,” and of its derivatives horizein and horismos, “demarcate/define” and “demarcation/definition,” depends on a metaphor similar to that underlying the philosophical use of morphē and eidos, “shape” and “form.” The use of peras, “limit,” often involves a similar conceptual strategy. In this case, however, Aristotle makes the connection with form explicit. In his treatise on the many ways of using philosophical terms, Metaphysics V—alongside more obvious entries such as principle, cause, element, and nature—he discusses the various ways in which something can be called a limit. The entry is brief, and worth quoting nearly in full: We call a limit (i) what is last in each thing, the first outside which there is nothing to be found and the first inside which everything is; and (ii) that 54. See for example Phys. I.5.188a35–b8, 7.189b34–190a3, b13–14. 55. Phys. I.5.188b9–10.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

213

which serves as the form of a magnitude or of something that has magnitude; and (iii) the end of each (and this is that to which the motion and the action proceeds, not that from which—though sometimes it is both: both that from which, and that to which and for the sake of which); and (iv) the substance of each and the what-it-is-to-be for each—for this is the limit of knowledge [or “of the process of getting to know something,” tēs gnōseōs], and if of knowledge, also of the reality [  pragmatos].56

It is instructive to juxtapose these remarks with the reference to “ordered and determinate works of nature” in Generation of Animals V.1. There Aristotle describes the end of natural generation both as a substance and as determinate—more literally, as bounded or demarcated. Here in Metaphysics V.17, he describes the end of each motion or action—that to which and for the sake of which—as a limit, immediately adding that “the substance . . . and the what-it-is-to-be” is also a limit. In the case of natural generation these two are one and the same, and the form or limit renders the work determinate.57 According to Physics II.8, in contrast, Empedocles’s hypothetical man-faced ox-progeny “were unable to come to any boundary [horon] or end.”58 The explanation of form’s role as a limit, moreover—“for this is the limit of knowledge, and if of knowledge, also of the reality”—illuminates Aristotle’s persistent use of the term logos for the substance or form in which natural coming-to-be terminates. We encounter substance in the sense of what-it-is-for-something-to-be as that which delimits and shapes our knowledge, and more specifically as the object of a certain kind of logos—a horismos, demarcation or definition. In proposing definitions, however, we seek not merely the meanings of words but knowledge of things (  pragmata). The form that delimits 56. Met. V.17.1022a4–9. According to Kirwan 1993 (168), Aristotle himself uses only the first and third senses. With the second, however, cf. Aristotle’s definition of place at Phys. IV.4.212a6, 20. I will argue that the fourth, which Kirwan connects with the Philebus, sits happily within Aristotle’s conceptual world as well. 57. Lennox 2001 (146): “ ‘limit’ (  peras), a noun Aristotle often uses as a near synonym for ‘end’ or ‘goal.’ ” 58. Phys. II.8.199b11–12, 15–16.

214

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

our knowledge delimits in the first place the thing itself, making it what it is.59 It is unsurprising, finally, that this implicit connection of logos or horismos with limit extends to the internal structure of definitions as well. If the substance we aim to define is indeed to define or delimit that whose substance it is, it must first be determinate or limited within itself. According to Metaphysics II.2, therefore, there can be no infinite regress in defining a substance: Nor does the what-it-is-to-be admit of being reduced to another determination [or “definition”] exceeding it in speech [horismon pleonazonta tōi logōi 60], for the prior is always more of a definition, not the posterior, and where there is no first, neither can anything follow. Further, those who speak thus destroy understanding [to epistasthai], for one cannot know until one comes to the indivisibles. For them one cannot get to know anything, for how is it possible to think things that are unlimited in this way?61

In short, an infinite number of principles in nature as a whole is hardly worse than a single substance about which one can never finally say, even in principle, what it is. Form and the Determinate

We have now seen more than once that as an attribute of nature’s works, the determinate is closely associated with form. We have also seen, however, that determinacy is broader in scope than form: 59. An antecedent to this use of limit may be found in Plato’s Philebus (23c–27c), where Socrates develops an ontology consisting of four classes, the first two being the unlimited and limit. Of the third class he states: “I treat all the joint offspring of the other two kinds [that is, the first two] as a unity, a coming-into-being [  genesis eis ousian] through the measures imposed by the limit” (26d7–9); trans. Dorothea Frede in Cooper 1997 (414). Earlier in the dialogue (16c–18d), limit is associated with the “one form” (mian idean, 16d1) present in many things. 60. The verb pleonazō typically connotes excess, in this case the unnecessary prolongation of an already adequate account. 61. Met. II.2.994b16–23; see also GC II.5.332a30–333a13. Williams 1982 suggests without explanation that GC II.5 involves “some equivocation with the notions of definition, limit, and boundary” (168). Used philosophically, of course, these terms are all metaphors.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

215

principles limited in number, for instance, are collectively determinate in a way that an unlimited number would not be. It turns out, moreover, that natural beings can be determined or limited not only by their own forms but also by beings distinct from and superior to themselves. Consider the relation between the heavens and the sublunary realm sketched in On the Heavens II.13. Aristotle here wishes to show that earth, despite being less honorable than fire, can fittingly occupy the geometrical center of the cosmos; he does so by distinguishing a thing’s geometrical center from the metaphorical center occupied by its most important part. Regarding these two centers or middles he then argues as follows: For that middle [meson] is a principle [archē] and is honorable, whereas the middle of the place seems rather a dead-end [teleutē] than a principle. For the middle is bounded [or “determined,” horizomenon], whereas that which bounds [to d’ horizon] is the limit; and what surrounds, the limit, is more honorable than what is limited [  perainomenon], for the latter is material, the former the substance of the structure [sustaseōs].62

With this passage we may compare two others from the same work: Therefore it is well to be persuaded that the ancient accounts which form our particular inheritance are true: that there is something immortal and divine among the things that have motion, yet whose motion is such as to have no limit but is instead the limit of the others. For a limit is something that surrounds; and this [motion], being complete, surrounds those that are incomplete and that have a limit and cessation, itself having neither beginning [archēn] nor ending, unceasing for unlimited time, cause of the others’ beginning, receiving their cessation. Now we say that what surrounds is formal [tou eidous], what is surrounded material [tēs hulēs]. This distinction is found in all the kinds, for both in quality and in quantity there is something more like form, something like material. So also, among things distinguished by place [en tois kata topon], 62. DC II.13.293b11–15.

216

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

the upper corresponds to the determinate [to men anō tou hōrismenou], the lower to the material [tēs hulēs].63

Read in context, the latter passage extends the dignity of “what surrounds” to the lighter elements, which, when occupying their natural places, surround the heavier.64 So also, late in Generation and Corruption we have the following: “Fire alone and especially is formal [tou eidous], because its nature is to be moved toward the boundary [ton horon]. Each one is naturally moved to its own region, and the shape and form of all things is in their boundaries.”65 These passages reveal just how seriously Aristotle takes the distinction between boundary and what needs to be bounded, limit and what needs to be limited. At first sight, they might seem to rely on a metaphorical stretching of the notions of form and material, which would then be the fundamental concepts. In some ways, no doubt, this is correct: the form of a natural substance is often the paradigmatic case of a superior, determining principle.66 At the same time, the notions of boundary or determination and of limit help reveal just why form is so central. Form is substance, that is—and simultaneously, it is honorable, good, and beautiful—precisely as limit or determination: as providing a composite substance with its definite, thinkable content. What makes form itself “formal” (tou eidous), we might say, is its status as determinate and determining.67 63. DC II.1.284a2–11; IV.4.312a12–16. 64. Lang 1998: “Place, as we shall see, is not itself form, but strongly resembles form: both are limits. . . . As I shall argue, place, as a first limit, serves as a cause of order: it renders the cosmos determinate in respect to ‘where things are and are moved’ ” (66). Yet Lang’s account of place and its role in Aristotle’s cosmology (esp. 86–87, 91–113) is a strange one. 65. GC II.8.335a18–21. See also DC IV.3.310b8–15, discussed in Algra 1995 (216–17) within an excellent account of place and elemental motion (195–221); see also Hussey 1983 (xxvii–xxviii). 66. For form as superior to material see Phys. I.9.192a16–19; GA II.1.731b28–31. 67. For form and material as determinate and indeterminate see also Met. I.8.989b18–19, GA IV.10.778a6, as well as Aristotle’s causal analysis of homogeneous bodies (esp. Mete. IV.1.378b15, 379a10, 2.379b34, 380a3, 3.380a19, 4.381b14, 381a14, b31) and his discussion of determinate extension as the foundation of bodily reality (Phys. IV.2.209b1–11).



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

217

Precisely because they are not about material and form in the strict sense, these passages illustrate all the more clearly the importance of the determinate in Aristotle’s thought. Nor do they merely deploy an ad hoc move to bolster the superiority of the heavens. In Physics III.6, for instance, Aristotle uses similar ideas to secure a different, conceptually prior conclusion.68 Addressing the view that the universe is spatially infinite, he argues that only what has a limit can be considered complete and whole: “Nothing that does not have an end [telos] is complete [teleion], and the end is a limit.”69 Every bodily whole, that is, exists through its actual determination to a particular size and shape;70 and what is true of particular wholes is true also of the cosmos itself, which is whole in the principal sense that there is nothing at all outside it. Indeterminate or unlimited spatial extension, for its part, is no more than the “material” for a determinate size and shape.71 It is absurd, therefore, to suppose that the world is surrounded by unlimited or infinite space. The conclusion to this argument, which involves a brief dialogue with Plato’s Timaeus and Philebus, is striking in its scope and confidence: The unlimited is . . . whole and limited not through itself but through another; and it does not surround but is surrounded, qua unlimited. Therefore too it is unknowable, qua unlimited: for material does not have form. Hence it is apparent that the unlimited fits the description of a part [en moriou logōi72] rather than that of a whole, for the material is part of the whole just as bronze is part of a bronze statue—since if it surrounds among sensible 68. Phys. III.6.207a7–32; for further discussion see Hussey 1983 (85–88). Hussey suggests that in identifying the unlimited or infinite as a kind of matter, Aristotle has in mind the infinite divisibility of physical bodies. In fact, he means primarily that what is infinite in size would lack definite boundaries, so that any attempt to grasp it as something determinate would leave some part of it outside. 69. Phys. III.6.207a14–15. 70. Cf. Aristotle’s observation that every species of living thing has a determinate maximum natural size, specified by its form: DA II.4.416a15–18, GA II.6.745a5–9. 71. In Aristotle’s words, indeterminate spatial extension is “the material of the completeness of magnitude, a whole in ability but not in fulfillment” (207a21–22). 72. Cf. the equivalent en moriou eidei in DC I.1.268b5, for which see appendix B.

218

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

things, among thinkable things too the great and the small would have to surround the thinkables. But it is absurd and impossible for the unknowable and indeterminate to surround and determine.73

We do not need the details of Aristotle’s engagement with Plato: the great and the small, the unlimited as principle in the Philebus, its possible connection with the “receptacle” of the Timaeus. Even without these details, his subtle invocation of Plato’s concept of form—the unlimited “is unknowable, as unlimited: for material does not have form”—is as powerful as it is sudden. Form just is that which can be thought and known, where openness to thought and knowledge is the measure of reality and of the respect due to it. Aristotle could, by the way, have limited himself in this passage to addressing the atomists, who were all too happy to surround the world we experience with an unlimited void. Instead he has chosen to engage the Platonic texts as well, and to engage them on their own ground. By invoking form as a principle of knowledge, he signals not only the primacy but the superiority of that which, determinate in itself, determines and fulfills another.74 T h e D e t e r m i n at e , P ow e r , a n d M o t i o n

In the texts considered so far, Aristotle treats determinacy as a mark of being in the full sense. Not only this; he also treats that which is determinate in itself and determinative of others as superior to what is indeterminate or determined by another. Most striking about this last 73. Phys. III.6.207a21, 23–32. Lang 2009 discusses the relation between two descriptions of natural science: in terms of matter and form (Phys. II.1) and in terms of body and what has body (DC III.1). Lang argues that the naturalist’s interest in matter as a sort of substance is an interest in capacity for change, and that this change must take place within limits—that is, within the length, breadth, and depth that make matter into body. These dimensions are analogous to substance; they “do the job for matter as substance that is potential and capable of change that form as substance and an unchanging limit does for the individual” (215). In becoming body through the formality of such limits, matter becomes subject to the category of quantity, to which body as magnitude belongs. 74. Hussey 1983 (xxiv) points to this passage as revealing Aristotle’s “fundamental reason”—a teleological one—for rejecting infinite numbers and quantities.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

219

claim is not any argument in its favor, or even any strenuous instance on its truth, but rather the sheer assumption that it is both true and plausible. The conceptuality that shapes Aristotle’s cosmos is one in which the nexus being-determinate-good is almost beyond question. We have seen the determinate play a similar role in his ethics, briefly appearing at two high points—II.6 and IX.9—as an unquestioned feature of the human good. In II.6, remember, he presents practical reason as “determining” the mean in which excellence of character lies.75 Shortly before this formulation, moreover, he has permitted himself a brief metaphysical aside: There are many ways to go wrong—for the bad belongs to the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans guessed, the good to the limited—but only one way to go right. It follows that the one is easy, the other difficult: it is easy to miss one’s target, hard to hit it. For these reasons as well, then, excess and deficiency belong to vice, the mean to excellence: for people are “noble simply, but bad in every which way.”76

The good as determinate reappears in IX.9 as part of a long, deliberately metaphysical argument: “Now living is something good and pleasant in itself (for it is determinate, and the determinate is of the nature of the good; and what is good by nature is also such for the 75. EN refers to a horos of the mean and of right reason (VI.1.1138b18–34), EE to a horos of the soul (VII.15.1249b17–26; see also II.5.1222a17, b7–8). In an extended sense horos can mean a standard and hence an end or aim; it is hard to avoid taking it thus in EE. In EN, the word skopos at 1138b22 probably serves the same role (see note 00 above). Peterson 1988 argues that horos here (b23, 34) bears its primary sense of boundary marker, boundary, or limit, referring to the boundary between the mean and excess or defect. She relates this use of the term to Aristotle’s hōrismenē, horiseien, in defining moral virtue (II.6.1106b3). The phrase horos tōn mesotētōn (1138b23) does seem to suggest a boundary rather than a goal. 76. EN II.6.1106b28–35; see § 2.1.2 for discussion. The structure excess-mean-deficiency reflects the metaphysical speculations of certain Platonic dialogues. At Statesman 284b–e, for example, the Stranger suggests that “the more and less” must “become measurable not only in relation to each other but also in relation to the coming into being of what is in due measure” (b9–c1, trans. Christopher J. Rowe in Cooper 1997: 327). Sayre 2006 works out the connections between this discussion and that in the Philebus of limit and the unlimited—the unlimited being “whatever seems to us to become ‘more and less’ ” (24e7, trans. D. Frede in Cooper 1997: 412; see also note 00 above). Sayre also considers the reappearance of “the Great and the Small,” as excess and deficiency in Aristotle and his commentators; for summary and critical discussion see M. Miller 2007.

220

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

decent); that is why it seems to be pleasant to all. One ought not consider a wretched, ruined life, nor one beset by pain, for this sort of life is indeterminate, just like its attributes.”77 Although one might easily wish he had been willing to elaborate, it is already revealing that Aristotle chooses to establish the goodness of life by adducing the goodness of the determinate. He has, moreover, given us at least something to go on: in the Ethics, living means inworking, and the notion of inworking is one of his most prized innovations. The Determinate and Power

If Aristotle associates the determinate with form in general, and with the complete inworking of living things in particular, it should not be surprising to find him identifying being in the sense of dunamis— power or ability—as the source of indeterminacy within being as a whole. This is in fact what we find. He associates the heavens, for instance, both with “the ordered and the determinate” (Parts of Animals I.1) and with an almost complete lack of ability.78 Consider also the following argument, from Metaphysics IV.4, against the conclusion that “all contradictions are true at once of the same thing.” Having observed that in this case “all things will be one,” Aristotle elaborates as follows: “It comes, then, to the position of Anaxagoras: that all things are in the same place, so that nothing truly obtains [huparchein]. They seem, then, to be speaking of the indeterminate; and thinking they are speaking of being, they are speaking about nonbeing; for what is by way of ability rather than fulfillment is the indeterminate.”79 Although this argument connects dunamis with both indeterminacy and deficiency in being, it says nothing about the good. In a much more important text, however—Metaphysics IX.9—Aristotle 77. EN IX.9.1170a19–24. Note also the observation at Rhet. I.8.1366a1–2 that kingship is “according to a certain order,” whereas tyranny is indeterminate; note the connection between order and determinacy. 78. Met. IX.8.1050b13–28. 79. Met. IV.4.1007b18–20, 25–29.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

221

contrasts the determinacy of a good actuality with the indeterminacy and consequent inferiority of the corresponding potency. The discussion is brief but fundamental: That the excellent inworking is better and more honorable than the ability is clear from the following. Everything spoken of as being able [dunasthai] is, the same thing, able to be contraries—as the very thing that we call able to be healthy is also able to be sick, even at the same time. For the ability to be healthy and to be ill is the same, to be at rest and to be moved, to build and to tear down, to be built and to fall down. The ability for contraries, then, is present at once, but there is no ability for the contraries to be present at once, and for the inworkings to be present at once—such as being healthy and being ill. Hence necessarily one of these is the good, but the being able is both alike or neither; the inworking, therefore, is better. In the case of the bad [tōn kakōn], the end and the inworking is necessarily worse than the ability, for the same merely able thing is both contraries. It is clear, therefore, that there is nothing bad apart from the things themselves [ta pragmata], for the bad is subsequent in nature to ability. And therefore in those that are from the beginning, the eternal ones, there is nothing bad at all: no failure, nor anything corrupted; for corruption too is something bad.80

Taken in context, this argument presents an essential corollary to the conclusions of the previous chapter, which established that inworking is prior to ability in articulation, in time, and in substance.81 In IX.8, however, the distinction between good and bad inworkings was nowhere to be found, and when it does emerge in IX.9, it has significant implications for what has already been said. Consider the first sentence of the second paragraph just quoted: “there is nothing bad apart from the things themselves, for the bad is subsequent in nature to ability.” Every actual case of the bad, that is, is “subsequent in nature [tēi phusei]” to some ability, which is a source of both bad and good. Yet Aristotle has just argued without qualification 80. Met. IX.9.1051a4–21. 81. See Menn unpublished, §IIIα3 (22–23).

222

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

that inworking is prior to ability, in logos and in ousia. Although it is possible that he does not mean priority in logos or in ousia to include priority in phusis, this seems unlikely. If the two chapters are consistent, therefore, then the earlier conclusion must not have been meant to include bad inworkings.82 This should not be entirely unexpected. Although technical translations such as “actuality” tend to obscure the presumption of goodness inherent in Aristotle’s language, he has already told us that “the work is an end, the inworking the work; hence even the name ‘inworking’ is spoken by reference to work and stretches out toward fulfillment.”83 Still, IX.8’s implicit restriction of inworking to good inworking is striking. The bad is so much an afterthought, it appears, so dependent on the good for its very possibility, that in many important contexts it can simply be ignored. Inworking just is good inworking, and the distinction at issue throughout book IX is between something assumed to be good and the power or ability for that good. This ability is also, however—due to the very nature of ability as opposed to inworking—a source of the bad. One might think that such an ambitious understanding of inworking—as good not just in this or that case, but quite generally— both exceeds the text and saddles Aristotle with an absurd position. Surely the superiority of inworking to ability that breathes through the last paragraphs of IX.8 is not meant to apply universally, but only to a range of important cases: to living things, for instance, but not to the elements and their powers. In an important way, this objection is of course correct. Animals and plants seek their own goods—and in so doing they succeed or fail—in ways that fire and earth do not. We cannot speak of good and bad in the case of nonliving things in 82. Makin 2006 (222–25). Beere 2009 (337–44) makes IX.9 more difficult than it needs to be by insisting that in the sentence beginning “In the case of the bad” the word “end” must be taken literally, so that the ability in question is precisely an ability for something bad. I would prefer to think that “end” is here used in an extended sense, and that—as the second part of the sentence indicates—the capacity is simply the capacity for good and evil that Aristotle has already discussed. In other respects my reading is similar to Beere’s (see esp. 345). 83. Met. IX.8.1050a21–23, but see the alternative punctuation of these lines in Broadie 2010 (203–4).



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

223

the same sense as in that of the living; nor does Aristotle ever do so. Yet in another way the objection misses the point. We are now working with a conception of the good, grounded in Aristotle’s extensive though scattered remarks concerning order, the determinate, and the limited, that is capable of identifying the good straightforwardly as a universal cause. An element’s motion to and rest in its natural place is an ordered and determinate work of nature. Similarly, although fire may well destroy a living thing, this is accidental to its own orderly behavior, which is simply to communicate the heat that defines it to all that it touches. Fire thus contributes to an orderly system of acting and being affected in which causes and effects are, in principle, specifiable. It is not enough, then, to observe that elements are not living things; no one ever said they were. A thing’s inworking is always proportionate to its nature, but what occurs by nature is always ordered and determinate. To articulate the connection between the unqualified inworking of IX.8 and the bad inworking of IX.9, then, it may be helpful to consider an excerpt from Metaphysics V.16. Addressing the ways in which something may be called complete, Aristotle writes as follows: Those to which an excellent end belongs are called complete, for they are complete [teleia] in having their end [telos]. Hence, since the end is among the things that are last, even in the case of bad things [ta phaula] we say by transfer [metapherontes] that they have perished completely and been completely destroyed, when there is nothing left of destruction and the bad, but they are at the last stage. Therefore also the end of life [hē teleutē] is called by transfer an end, because both are last.84

Similarly, the treatment of energeia in IX.8—its identification as end in the case of changing things and as exclusive mode of being for the eternal—suggests that the bad inworking of IX.9 is simply whatever a failed substance has ended up with in place of its true inworking. Inworking in this sense lacks not only the primacy of true inworking, presumably, but its determinate identity as well. What defines 84. Met. V.16.1021b23–29.

224

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

the bad, that is, is not its specific content but the mere failure of a power or ability to give rise to the genuine inworking to which it was ordered—a failure rooted in the indeterminacy of the dunaton as an inferior type of being.85 In some cases, of course, the result falls short of goodness only in the rather tenuous sense that a natural being has failed to exhibit fully the order by which it is defined. That this is often of no great concern or consequence does not detract from the goodness of the order itself. The Determinate and Motion

This identification of dunamis as the source of the indeterminate and bad might seem to leave Aristotle with a decidedly negative view of ta dunata—the things whose being is marked by dunamis rather than pure energeia. Yet this impression would be easy to exaggerate. In the first place, the determinate forms and inworkings characteristic of changing substances can only exist at all as ends. However, Aristotle’s appreciation for the dunaton becomes fully apparent only in his account of kinesis, motion. So, to conclude our exploration of determinacy as a conceptual link between being and goodness, I will turn briefly to the account of motion found in the Physics. I shall first consider his description of motion as a sort of fulfillment or inworking, turn next to his insistence that motion is determined by limits, and finally see how these conclusions enable him to exhibit motion as a good.86 In Physics III.2, then, Aristotle surveys his predecessors’ attempts to articulate the perplexing reality of motion. Motion is—they conjectured—difference, or inequality, or nonbeing; for it seems to be something indeterminate, and therefore to be some sort of 85. Makin 2006 (224, 229–30). 86. The Physics sets out to show that motion is not impossible (book I), to define it (III.1–3), to elucidate its structure (V–VI), and to account for its occurrence (VII—if it belongs to the finished work—and VIII). The remainder of the work presents nature as a principle of motion (II) and considers several further topics that at III.1.200b12–25 are explicitly subordinated to motion (III.4–IV).



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

225

privation.87 Nor is he unsympathetic, for he too distinguishes motion from the condition of the things that most truly are. In Metaphysics VI.1, for instance, where he finally identifies first philosophy as theology, he does so by distinguishing mere natural science from the study of things unmoved.88 Likewise, he begins the theological portion of Metaphysics XII with the reminder that “there are three substances: two natural and one unmoved.”89 Conversely, in Physics III.1 he begins his account of motion by observing that “there is something [that exists] in fulfillment only, and something [that exists] in ability and fulfillment.”90 Motion belongs to those beings whose status as merely able brings with it some degree of indeterminacy. Yet in Physics III.1–2 as a whole, he identifies motion not as a mere privation, nor even as an ability, but as a fulfillment and an inworking. It is “the fulfillment of what is by way of ability, as such”; or “the [fulfillment] of what is by way of ability, when, being in fulfillment, it is at work not as itself but as movable”; or—most simply—“the fulfillment of the dunaton, as dunaton.”91 He concludes by observing that “motion seems to be a sort of inworking, but incomplete; responsible for this is that the dunaton, whose inworking it is, is incomplete.”92 The task of his various formulations is therefore to position motion within the larger class of inworkings.93 They do so in two steps: motion is the inworking of something that he calls, most simply, the dunaton; and it is the inworking of the dunaton not just in any respect but precisely as dunaton.94 87. Phys. III.2.201b20, 24–26. 88. Met. VI.1.1026a10–16. 89. Met. XII.6.1071b3–4. 90. Phys. III.1.200b26–27. 91. Phys. III.1.201a10–11, 27–29, b4–5. 92. Phys. III.2.201b31–33; see also 176–89. 93. Hussey 1983 (xiii). 94. For the literature on this definition see A. Anagnostopoulos 2010 (34–35). My reading coincides in important respects with those of Broadie 1982 (108–19), Loux 1995, Anagnostopoulos. Anagnostopoulos (35–45, 59–61, 72–78) creates an unnecessary difficulty by suggesting that it is problematic to understand motion as an entelecheia (actuality), as opposed to an energeia (activity). I take it that energeia—in the original and proper sense, for which

226

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

We can illuminate the first step by placing the inworking that is motion alongside two contrasting cases. First, Aristotle holds that although divine thinking is indeed an inworking, it is not the fulfillment of an ability. Second, unlike divine thought, the activity of seeing is indeed the fulfillment of an ability, but it is not most aptly described as the fulfillment of what is by way of ability: to dunamei on (“what is by way of ability”), or to dunaton (“what is able”). Seeing is, rather, the inworking of what is already in fulfillment a certain kind of animal—of what is in an important sense already a seer. True, the animal is not always exercising its sight, and in this way it has sight as a power and not only as an inworking. At the same time, there is no distance left to be traversed between the animal and its seeing: when it is awake and its eyes are open, it sees. The dunaton properly speaking, by contrast, is able to become something other than it already is, by acquiring or losing what Physics I.7 calls a form.95 Unshaped bronze is in no way a statue in fulfillment; what is actually cold is in no way hot in fulfillment. Each of them is not just able, but merely and hence simply able.96 Understanding the definition’s second step requires assessing three possible interpretations of the phrase “the fulfillment of the dunaton.” First, observe that the dunaton cannot, by definition, be fulfilled or at work as that which it is merely able to be—as a statue or as hot, for instance. When it is fulfilled or at work in this way, it is no longer merely able. Second, the dunaton can certainly be at work as whatever it may already be in fulfillment—as bronze or as cold, for instance. In this case, however, it is not at work precisely as dunaton; in articulating see Anagnostopoulos (60, 76), relying on Menn 1994—just is a sort of entelecheia (cf. DA II.1.412a10–11, 21–27), and that Aristotle chose to begin his discussion by insisting provocatively that motion is a sort of fulfillment (entelecheia). The teleological overtones of “fulfillment” are deliberate on my part; if I can make good on them, we can avoid also the difficulties faced by Loux (291–97) in determining the sense of “actuality” in Aristotle’s definition. 95. Cf. the discussion of sensation and one form of motion, alteration, in DA II.5. 96. I do not think this interpretation requires a dunamis that ceases to exist once actualized: see A. Anagnostopoulos 2010 (38–39) for references and discussion. Instead, we may simply take to dunamei on and to dunaton to signify that which is merely able: see Broadie 1982 (115).



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

227

its inworking I have not even mentioned its ability to be other than it already is. Third, however, the dunaton can be at work as something that stands between what it already is and what it is not yet—between, so to speak, two fixed and determinate places within the world. It can be at work neither as what it merely can be but is not (which is incoherent), nor as what it already is (which is not to be in motion), but precisely as that which can be what it is not.97 To be at work in this way is to have, within the order of being, a place that is not a place. It is to exhibit a mode of being that Aristotle considers so strange and difficult that in III.2 he devotes twenty-three Bekker lines to its difficulty, and to the aptness of his own elusive solution. Motion is indeed an inworking, therefore, but of an odd sort. It is the inworking of something incomplete—to dunaton—just insofar as it is incomplete. Now given the connection between motion and mere ability, and the consequent strangeness of motion as a sort of inworking, it is not surprising that on at least one occasion Aristotle explicitly attributes to motion just the sort of indeterminacy we have seen him attribute to ability. In Meteorology II.5, he comments on the difficulty of predicting weather by means of the constellation Orion: “Orion seems to be uncertain and difficult [akritos de kai chalepos], both rising and setting, because its rising and setting happen at a change of season, 97. A. Anagnostopoulos 2010 (66). I therefore accept the view that the dunamis in question is for being rather than being moved, so that the definition is not circular. Note that Cohen 1994, 1996 (41–45), Matthen 2009, and others attribute the elements’ natural motions to dunameis for being in their natural places rather than for being moved there; Gill 2009 disagrees. The heavens, moreover, may not have abilities to be moved at all—this would make their motion contingent—but only to be elsewhere: Met. IX.8.1050b15, 17–18. The main difficulty with taking the dunamis to be a dunamis for being rather than being moved lies in Aristotle’s use of words like alloiotos, auxētos (III.1.201a12–18, 2.202a7–8), which are usually translated “alterable,” “increasable,” and so forth: Broadie 1982 (114–16), Heinaman 1994, Anagnostopoulos (63). But verbal adjectives in -tos originally functioned more or less as perfect participles; they came to signify possibility only by extension. Of the instances in Phys. III.1–3, Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon documents earlier occurrences such as phthitoi, “the dead,” phorētos, “borne, carried.” In Aristotle these terms are not precise; in the present context “the sort of thing that can have been altered” is just as likely as “the sort of thing that can be in process of being altered.” Note that the perfect tense is important to his account of motion: see the discussion of Phys. VI.10.241a26–b20 that follows (229–32, including 230n102).

228

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

of summer or winter (and because of the size of the constellation, they last many days); and the changes of all things [  pantōn] are unsettled because of their indeterminacy.”98 If the fulfillment of a mere ability is typically uncertain, it seems, then the inworking of the merely able as such will also be unstable. Motion takes time; it can be sidetracked; it can meander. In the case here at issue, the sublunary realm is capable of being moved by the sun from summer to winter and back. The exact outcome of this change varies from one year to the next, and Aristotle here observes that the transitional weather is even more unstable. Like dunamis itself, though, motion is not purely indeterminate; it is shaped by its connection with more determinate modes of being. Specifically, it is typical of motion to be defined by end-points or limits that are not themselves motions. Thus in Physics V.1—which resumes his account of motion after a lengthy discussion of subsidiary topics—Aristotle begins by observing that every change is “from something, to something.”99 Two books later, he deploys the notion of a limit to give this initial statement its final form. The passage from VI.10 is worth quoting in full; in reading, note that change “defined by a contradiction” is change from not being to being or from being to not being—that is, coming-to-be or destruction—whereas change “defined by contraries” is the motion of a continuously existing substance between contrary qualities, quantities, or places.100 No change is unlimited, for each is from something, to something. This holds both of change defined by [literally “within”] a contradiction and of change defined by [literally “within”] contraries. In changes that involve a 98. Mete. II.5.361b30–35. If my parenthesis is indeed parenthetical (as its otherwise awkward syntax suggests), then pantōn might be read as referring to the seasons (hai hōrai) rather than as indicating a general feature of change. Yet toutōn or tōn hōrōn might have been more natural for this purpose, especially because the seasons appear to include summer and winter only, with transitional periods between them. There is no good reason to take chalepos as “stormy” (E. W. Webster in Barnes 1984, Lee 1952), and even less to take akritos as “treacherous” (Webster; Lee has “uncertain”). Neither rendering can be found in Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon, nor is there any precedent within Mete. 99. Phys. V.1.225a1; see also 5.235b6–7. 100. See V.1.224b35–225b9.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

229

contradiction, the affirmation and the denial are each a limit, as being is of coming-to-be, nonbeing of destruction. In those that involve contraries, the contraries are limits, for these are the extremities of the change. It holds also, therefore, of every alteration, for alteration involves one sort of contraries. It holds of growth and withering as well, for the limit of growth is that of the complete magnitude corresponding to a thing’s own nature, that of withering the departure from this. Now locomotion is not limited in this way, for not every locomotion is defined by contraries. But since what is unable to have been cut, in the sense that it does not admit of having been cut (for the unable is spoken of in several senses), does not admit—that which is thus unable—of being [in the process of being] cut, neither in general would what is unable to have come to be admit of being coming to be, nor what is unable to have changed of being changing to that to which it is unable to have changed. If, then, what is moved locally is changing to something, it will also be possible for it to have changed. Hence the motion is not unlimited, nor will it be moved through an unlimited motion; for it is unable to have traversed it. It is apparent, then, that a change is not unlimited in such a way as not to be determined by limits. But we must see whether it admits of it in the following way: that it is unlimited in time, being the same and one. Presumably nothing prevents this when the motion that occurs is not one. For example, after locomotion there might be alteration, after alteration growth, and then coming-to-be. In this case there will be motion for all time, but not one motion, because no one motion is composed of them all. But if the motion that occurs is one, then it does not admit of being unlimited in time, except in one instance; and this is locomotion in a circle.101

Note that Aristotle has already explored what it means for a change to be one, and that the present discussion concerns changes taken individually. Now there is obviously much to discuss in this passage,102 but 101. Phys. VI.10.241a26–b20. 102. Circular locomotion is possible because it is possible to traverse a finite circumference, or perhaps to reach the most distant point thereon. The first alternative better expresses the completeness of circular motion; the second the moved body’s ability to occupy a distinct place. The argument against locomotion through an infinite distance appears to beg the question by assuming that every motion must be understood in terms of progress toward a determinate, achievable endpoint. Aristotle probably understands himself to be drawing out the implications of his earlier definition of motion: locomotion is the inworking of what is actually here but able to be there, as such, where “there” signifies a determinate place.

230

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

what concerns us at present is simply the assertion that every change is “determined by limits.” In most cases, these limits can be represented as end-points of a rectilinear trajectory. In the case of circular locomotion, however, the motion follows a continuous but self-limiting path; it is determinate without requiring an end. This is the motion that according to On the Heavens II.1 “is such as to have no limit but is instead the limit of the others.” Although Physics VI.10 considers only individual changes, moreover, Aristotle elsewhere extends its conclusion to natural sequences of distinct changes. For example, in Generation of Animals III.10 he suggests that “king bees” generate both other kings and ordinary bees, that ordinary bees in turn generate drones, and that drones generate nothing: “Because that which is according to nature always involves order, the drones are necessarily deprived of generating even some other kind, just as appears to be the case. For they come to be yet generate nothing else; rather, in the third term [arithmōi] the coming-to-be has its limit.”103 Likewise, he affirms the occurrence of spontaneous generation—see especially Generation of Animals III.11—but observes that the offspring of spontaneously generated animals differ in kind from their parents and are themselves incapable of generation. This is, he argues, just what we should expect; for if the offspring were of the same kind as their parents, then they should have been generated in the same way, whereas if they were different but still capable of generating, then the same should be true of their own offspring—and “this would go on without limit [eis apeiron]. But nature flees the unlimited, for the unlimited is incomplete [ateles], but nature always seeks an end [telos].”104 103. GA III.10.760a31–35. Aristotle appears to attribute a particular significance to the number three; see also GA II.1.733b15–16: “from this [the chrysalis] comes to be an animal, receiving in the third change the end of its coming-to-be”; Mete. III.4.374b33: “in the number three, as in most other things, these [the transformations of color in the rainbow] have their end”; and especially DC I.1.268a9–15: “the three [dimensions] are all, and what is divisible in three ways is divisible in all. As the Pythagoreans also say, the All and all things are bounded [hōristai] by the Three. For end and middle and beginning contain the number of the All, and they contain that of the triad. Therefore, taking these from nature as laws thereof, we use this number also in the rituals of the gods.” 104. GA I.1.715b4–16; quotation at 14–16.



O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

231

Let us return, though, to Physics VI.10. Despite the importance of limits in the sense of endpoints, Aristotle does not end Physics VI with limits of this sort. Instead, he calls our attention to the one motion that can do without them, being at once determinate and inexhaustible. Recall as well that Physics VI.10 is concerned with individual changes, not sequences of change. It therefore seeks a single motion, circular locomotion, that returns on itself in such a way as to remain one. As in the case of linear change, however, we have seen him elsewhere identify natural sequences of change whose structure is circular: in Generation and Corruption II.10, for instance, where he explains how coming-to-be itself can become eternal. In nature’s power to return on itself—in the revolution of the heavens, the cyclical transformation of the elements, and the generation of living things—we find the end of Aristotle’s analysis of change and of its place within being as a whole. Each part of a heavenly body’s motion occurs only in continuity with the rest. Each element’s coming-to-be comes to an end; the generation of an animal culminates in maturity; yet each occurs only as part of a larger cycle. In each case, change itself becomes whole and complete. Its status as the inworking of the able gains new significance, for mere ability—the power to be other than one was—has itself become a way to immortality. Nature’s continual renewal is its own eternal inworking, for motion itself—to quote the opening of Physics VIII.1—“has neither come to be, nor is it destroyed; but it always was and always will be, and this belongs, undying and unceasing, to the things that are, being as it were a sort of life for everything constituted by nature.”105 Motion is “a sort of life.” In this metaphor, which presents as an end in itself the incomplete inworking of incomplete beings, Aristotle raises motion from the corruptible realm to the eternal. This is the aim of his struggle to render determinate this strange reality that “seems to be something indeterminate,” yet forms the permanent condition of natural beings. 105. Phys. VIII.1.250b12–15.

232

O r d e r a n d t h e D e t e r m i n at e

Conclusion

CONCLUSION

Our goal has been to understand the vision of the goodness of being that animates Aristotle’s works. This vision, which enters into the details of so many difficult texts, has turned out in its barest outline to be as follows. The human good is inworking of soul according to excellence. Because this inworking is inseparable from the substance whose inworking it is, Aristotle’s search for the good that a human being can achieve turns into a portrait of the good that a human being can be. Good actions are beautiful, moreover, and those who can pursue this beauty in action can also consider it with pleasure. All the more, then, should they choose to consider the eternal beauties of nature and of god. The natural and divine beauties that Aristotle proposes for contemplation are themselves in the first place inworkings (energeiai), then also the forms by which natural substances are what they are and are capable of their respective works (erga). Being, then, is better than not being, and a substance is good and beautiful to the extent that it is

233

in a state of fulfillment (entelecheia). What is in this way is determinate, and whenever it is complex, it is ordered. As ordered and determinate, being is thinkable; it is therefore beautiful to consider. This vision of the goodness of being has shed light on a number of disputed questions in the interpretation of Aristotle. The analytic devices of homonymy pros hen and analogy, which he develops explicitly in the Metaphysics, have helped us understand the argument by which he arrives at the human good, and the centrality of this good to human life as a whole. The beautiful rationality of excellent actions has pointed us toward the proportion between fine actions and fine objects of contemplation that unifies a good human life. His rejection of the infinite or unlimited in nature has turned out to be inseparable from his conviction that being is good. This same conviction has provided us with the essential context for his metaphysical rehabilitation of motion in the Physics and elsewhere. It has now been two decades since I decided to spend the first part of my philosophical career apprenticed to Aristotle. As this apprenticeship draws to a close, and by way of concluding the present study, I would like to connect Aristotle’s vision of the goodness of being with the feature of his philosophy that, it now seems to me, constitutes his distinctive contribution to the history of human thought. Aristotle’s distinctive contribution to the history of human thought is this: he takes things seriously. After two and a half millennia of Western philosophy, Aristotle remains our premier theorist of the thingliness, or substantiality, of particular sensible realities—above all, of particular natural realities. He refuses to allow the manifest, concrete integrity of particular animals and plants, or of the objects that move across our skies, or of human beings themselves in their intelligent bodiliness, to be dissolved. Not by conceptual analysis, not by material dissection, not by phenomenological reduction. I do not mean that these turns of thought are unnecessary or unhelpful in themselves. Each is crucial to philosophy, and each has deep roots in Aristotle. I do want to suggest that a great deal of Aristotle’s vir-

234 C o n c l u s i o n

tue lies, paradoxically, in his willingness to take things for granted. To take things for granted, in the sense I intend, is the natural condition of a healthy human being. It is the condition of those who are fascinated and delighted with the things that compose the world. Such persons have not conceived, or have firmly rejected, the attempt to explain away the things that stand before them. Analysis, dissection, and reduction remain for them secondary to the main purpose of the intellectual life, which is to exhibit in things themselves—and perhaps also in the ultimate causes of these things—the source of their ability to fascinate and delight. For such persons the goal of inquiry is not to bring our pleasure in things to an end by submitting these things to some sort of intellectual control. It is rather to intensify our delight in things by bringing the sources of this delight into clearer focus. The end of the mind’s life is not the cramped self-satisfaction of a tyrant, but a kind of apotheosis of childlike wonder. Many reasons can be alleged for denying ourselves the spiritual nourishment offered by the things that make up our world. These reasons always amount to the same sin: the sin of saying that X, whatever it may be, is merely Y, when any free and thoughtful person can see that they are different. It is astonishing how often this sin has been repackaged in new forms, and how we still fail to see that behind its arguments lies nothing more interesting than the desire to make oneself the measure of reality—a desire driven by fear of the plain truth that things and their sources, whatever these may be, are often quite independent of our wishes. No legitimate method of inquiry is essentially tied to this fear, although all are subject to its distortion. Things themselves, at any rate, have nothing to fear from accurate analysis, or from their own materiality, or—least of all—from their marvelous presence to human beings. Aristotle took things seriously, then, for the simple reason that they are fascinating and delightful. He was fascinated and delighted with things not only when they suited his particular tastes, but quite generally. He thought, moreover, that his delight in things

Conclus ion

235

revealed something both about things and about himself. He declared the things good, and declared himself—and his students and readers—capable of appreciating the goodness of things. In encouraging us to take things seriously, in other words, he also encourages us to take ourselves seriously. He shows us that our standing as natural beings within a changing world is subordinate to our ability to converse about that world, and to converse about ourselves insofar as we are capable of conversing about the world: “for in this sense, it would seem, we speak of living together in the case of human beings.” He shows us this truth not merely theoretically, but by enacting it. In sharing with us his delight in the things that are, finally, he offers us a motive for contemplating the world, and for contemplating ourselves, that can free us from the egotistical and self-defeating ambition to be the one who is right. He was no doubt subject to this ambition, as are we all. Sometimes he bent what he saw to the demands of his own theories. Driven to prove that things are worth seeing, he sometimes pressed the issue in unhelpful ways. His delight in beings was tinged with pride in his own understanding, and in the exalted place among mortals that his theories gave him. His fundamental motive, however, shines clearly through these weaknesses. He aspired to become himself by going out of himself: to enrich himself and others with the fascinating, unsettling beauty of that which is. He held himself responsible to this beauty, and to his own ability to understand it more deeply and to exhibit it more fully to others. Such a motive does not, of course, entitle its bearer to get everything right. In certain respects, Aristotle’s vision of the good is deeply flawed. Above all, the world is not the rigidly hierarchical, walled-in museum exhibit he so often took it to be. It is more dangerous and more exciting than that. Yet can we deny the fascination it holds for us? Can we say we are better off explaining this fascination away, as a mere byproduct of our blind struggle for survival, a mere epiphenomenon of neural activity, or a mere artifact of our cultural condi-

236 C o n c l u s i o n

tioning? Are we better off absolving ourselves of the responsibility to the things that are—and to our own capacity for understanding them—that Aristotle wants to share with us? It is easy enough to do so. Aristotle himself worshipped at the altar of necessity, and nowhere in his writings does he give any hint of personal doubt concerning his own deepest convictions. Things are different now, and those who wish to look can see that the possibility of doubting the existence of the good is built into the structure of every responsible intellectual commitment. To be truly human is to be capable of doubting oneself; there is a particular ugliness in unruffled self-assurance. Yet despite his naivety—perhaps even because of it— there is something infectious about Aristotle’s joy in the world. He observed the behavior of birds, worried about how to classify sponges, cut up animals to see what was inside, collected and analyzed constitutions, divided the forms of rhetoric, invented formal logic, and pondered the emotional effects of tragedy. He never learned, as most of us do, to define himself by his dislike of certain subjects or methods. What is to be said for us, I wonder, if we do not cultivate in our students and children a similar delight? They are born wide-eyed; how deeply do we respect their openness? Do we take them seriously? Do we teach them to take themselves seriously? They must learn to doubt themselves, of course—they must learn many things that Aristotle cannot teach them. But they must also learn to live, and there are worse ways to live than to be filled with delight in the things that are—with the sort of delight that Aristotle managed to combine with all the faults we may wish to find in him. There are worse ways to live than to believe that being, for all its trouble, is better than not being.

Conclus ion

237

Completeness and Self-Sufficiency

Appendix A Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

If one surveys the texts in which Aristotle makes claims concerning the good in general, it quickly appears that two well-known criteria of the human good, finality and self-sufficiency, have a more general significance as well. In Nicomachean Ethics I.7, he concludes that the good is happiness by assuming that the good is not just an end (telos), but the most endlike (teleion) of ends—that is, the most final or complete. He goes on to suggest that the final or complete good is also self-sufficient (autarkes). He returns to these two criteria at the close of his argument, in X.7.1 Yet he also appeals to these criteria in assessing nonhuman goods; I now offer a brief survey of texts in which he does so. I hope to show that these criteria fit naturally into the metaphysics of goodness and beauty that I have already discussed, and to provide others with resources for further study. I shall begin with Politics I.2, in which Aristotle argues that the city (  polis) exists by nature, and that the human being is naturally a civic or political animal. Through its emphasis on nature, this chapter reveals the broader significance of finality and self-sufficiency even as applied to the human good.2 I shall then turn briefly to Aristotle’s theological 1. EN I.7.1097a25–b21; X.7.1177a27–b26. Finality and self-sufficiency are less prominent in EE, which assumes that happiness is the human good (I.1), and does not conclude by ranking different types of happiness. The concept of complete excellence does play an important role: II.1.1219a35–39, VII.15. 2. Pol. I.2.1253a1–3. The concept of a political or social animal appears in Aristotle’s

239

invocations of self-sufficiency. Although I have chosen not to make a direct study of his theology in this book, a brief consideration of passages in which he describes the divine as self-sufficient will be helpful. Most of this appendix will be concerned with finality and self-sufficiency in his biology, and with related themes in his treatment of the sublunary elements. T h e M e ta p h y s i c s o f S e l f - S u f f i c i e n c y : Evidence from Politics and Theology

I will not assess the argument of Politics I.2 as a whole, but will rather restrict myself to the concepts of finality and self-sufficiency at work in the chapter. I will suggest that despite the importance of finality as a diagnostic criterion, self-sufficiency turns out to be a more substantive criterion of goodness. Even self-sufficiency, however, gets its status as a general criterion of goodness from the prior concept of an ergon or work. Finality and Self-Sufficiency in Politics I.2

The passages from Politics I.2 in which Aristotle invokes finality and self-sufficiency are as follows: The community [koinōnia] formed from several villages is the final one [teleios], the city, which has more or less reached the limit of all self-sufficiency, and which comes to be for the sake of living, but exists for living well. Therefore every city exists by nature, since the prior communities do so as well. For it is their end [telos], and nature is an end: for of whatever sort each thing is when its coming-to-be is completed [telestheisēs], this we say is the nature of each—of a human, for example, a horse, or a household [oikia]. Further, that for the sake of which and the end is the best; and self-sufficiency is both end and best.3 From these arguments, then, it is apparent that the city is something natural, and that the human being is naturally a civic animal. biology as well: see HA I.1.487b33–488a14, VIII.1.589a1–2. The contention of Halper 1995 that Aristotle uses metaphysical conclusions (not just dialectical principles congenial to his metaphysics) as ethical and political premises is more plausible for Pol. I.2 (Halper: 14) than for EN I.7, perhaps because EN has already established the importance of the theoretical. 3. For civic life as complete and self-sufficient, see also III.9.1280b34–1281a2; for selfsufficiency see further I.8.1256b32, 9.1257a30; III.1.1275b21; VII.5.1326b27–31; EN V.6.1134a27. For an overview of self-sufficiency in Pol. see Mayhew 1995.

240

Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

A city is prior in nature to a household and to each one of us. For whole is necessarily prior to part; for if the whole is done away with, there will be no foot or hand except in name [homōnumōs]—just as if one should speak of a stone hand—for such a one will have been destroyed. Now all things are defined [hōristai] by their work and by their power [tēi dunamei], so that when they are no longer of this sort, one should not say they are the same, but same-named [or “homonymous”]. That, then, the city is both natural and prior to each one is clear, for if each is not self-sufficient when separated, he will stand in relation to the whole [  pros to holon] as does any other part. But one who is unable to associate with others [koinōnein], or who has no need to because of his selfsufficiency, is no part of a city, and is hence either a beast or a god.4

Because he is so intent on demonstrating that the city exists by nature, these passages provide important resources for understanding not just his politics but his conception of the good in general. Begin with the teleion. In the first paragraph above, as in Ethics I.7, Aristotle associates the teleion directly and explicitly with ends, telē. We should therefore begin by treating the teleion as the endlike, or final.5 As in Ethics I.7, however, the final so considered is a rather formal criterion of goodness: by itself it does little to reveal in what the superiority of the city consists. It implies that any community short of the city is rudimentary, whereas anything beyond it is no longer natural. It does not tell us what qualifies the city to be nature’s end—what, in other words, is good about the city. Now in Aristotle the final or endlike is also typically the complete, and so rendered, the term teleios is a bit more informative. It presents the city as a kind of whole, whereas the previous communities naturally serve as parts.6 Even this does little to advance the argument, for it fails to tell us why the natural whole is the city, and not, say, the village or the empire. The primary task of the term teleios, then, is to indicate that the city is amenable to analysis as an end or good in an Aristotelian causal schema. It also identifies the city as the natural whole in the sphere of human association, without providing a basis for this identification. The appeal to self-sufficiency is more informative, for it tells us that in 4. Pol. I.2.1252b27–1253a3, 18–29. 5. For teleios as “final” in EN I.7 see Cooper 2003 (279–80). 6. See Met. V.16, EE II.1.1219a35–39.



Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

241

the city we complete our power to live and to live well.7 In the city, that is, our ability to live acquires an independence that is both necessary and attractive. Consider the motives of a group of human beings working to establish or preserve a city. (Because life in a city is natural not just to any animals but to human beings, the natural development of the city must be mediated by human motivations and actions.) One cannot motivate a typical group of human beings to build a city simply by telling them that the city is naturally final, or even naturally complete. One can, though, tell them that as a civic community they will satisfy needs and desires that would otherwise go unmet. Just as importantly, one can tell them that as a city they will be capable of looking after themselves, of directing and living their lives without needing to call on others. One can tell them that they will have the good things of life by their own power.8 Yet this way of putting things also reveals the insufficiency of the autarkes as an independent criterion of goodness. Τo call something selfsufficient is to comment on the way in which it is, does, has, or achieves whatever its nature orients it toward being, doing, having, or achieving. It is to comment, that is, on the manner in which a thing achieves and possesses its end. It seems to follow that self-sufficiency can serve as a criterion of goodness only given a prior commitment to the goodness of some end. This conclusion is confirmed by the appeal to homonymy in the second passage quoted above. Each thing, Aristotle reminds us, is defined or demarcated by its work—and so, in the case of changing things, by its power to accomplish that work. If a hand, for instance, is completely insufficient for the work by which we demarcate hands, it is not really a hand at all. Now we humans are not completely insufficient for the human work when separated from our communities, but neither are we self-sufficient. This leads to a nuanced invocation of homonymy: one who merely happens to be cityless is still human, though handicapped, 7. Thus Ferguson 1985 (264) makes self-sufficiency the test of completeness or perfection. 8. Of EN I.7, Cooper 2003 writes: “it is important to see that Aristotle explicitly subordinates self-sufficiency to finality, in making it a sign of the latter. For Aristotle, the criteria, though distinct, are explicitly not made parallel to each other” (283). It is also important to understand the way in which self-sufficiency, rather than finality, is the substantive criterion.

242

Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

but one who is cityless by nature no longer qualifies.9 Thus self-sufficiency is not so much about the end one achieves—this is found in the work itself—as about one’s manner of achieving it. This conclusion anchors self-sufficiency firmly within the fundamental perspective according to which being itself is good. Being in the full sense is inworking, and inworking implies a substance whose inworking it is. The more self-sufficient something is, the more its inworking, and hence also its good, is truly its own. In the limiting case, that of god, the substance just is its own inworking—and so it just is, without any qualification whatsoever, its own good.10 Self-Sufficiency in Aristotle’s Theology

Self-sufficiency therefore plays an important role in Aristotle’s theology as well.11 Most specifically, portraying divine thought as its own, purely actual object enables Aristotle to present the divine inworking as fully self-contained, and so, by implication, as self-sufficient. Yet there are also a number of texts in which the assumption of divine self-sufficiency precedes any particular understanding of what it is to be god. In these passages, self-sufficiency as a criterion of goodness guides theological inquiry much as its guides Aristotle’s ethics and politics. In On the Heavens I.9, for instance, he argues that because there can be no body outside the heaven, whatever does exist there must be nonbodily, unchanging, and eternal. This implies, he seems to think, that such substances must lead “the best [aristēn] and most self-sufficient life.”12 Here the theoretical immunity to change of certain purely hypothetical substances grounds the assumption that whatever exactly these substances might be, they must be self-sufficient.13 A similar passage occurs in Metaphysics XIV, where Aristotle is 9. For this argument and its implications see Keyt 1991 (135–40), F. Miller 1995 (45–56), Saunders 1995 (70–71), Kraut 2002 (253–76). 10. Met. IX.8.1050b6–28; XII.7.1072b22–30. 11. Because god, as unchanging, need not achieve any end, we should not expect a corresponding theological role for the final or complete. 12. DC I.9.279a11–22, quotation at 21–22; for discussion, see Leggatt 1995 (204–6). 13. DC may, however, presuppose the argument for a nonbodily first mover in Physics VIII.



Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

243

exploring what an eternal first principle or principles would have to be like. In XIV.4 he turns to “the good and the beautiful,” asking whether “any of [the elements and principles of being] is the sort of thing we want to call the good itself and the best.”14 As in On the Heavens I.9, his invocation of self-sufficiency is abrupt: “But it is a matter for wonder if to that which is first, eternal, and most self-sufficient, this very primacy— its self-sufficiency and preservation—belongs in some other way than as a good. But indeed it is not indestructible, nor self-sufficient, due to anything other than that its condition is good [eu echei]. Hence it is reasonable to affirm as true that the principle [archēn] is of this sort.”15 He takes it to be obvious that if something is eternal and primary, it is also self-sufficient; and if it is indestructible and self-sufficient, it is good. He does not identify the principle’s goodness with its indestructibility or self-sufficiency; rather, he infers goodness from self-sufficiency by assuming that the former is a necessary and sufficient condition of the latter. A final text, from Motion of Animals 6, infers an important aspect of self-sufficiency from goodness. Using highly Platonic language, Aristotle describes the role of the prime mover by suggesting that “what is eternally beautiful, what is truly and firstly good—not sometimes, but sometimes not—is too divine and honorable to be relative to another [  pros heteron].”16 Whereas desire and the faculty of desire cause motion by being for the sake of something else, and are hence pros heteron, the first mover is an absolute starting point. Although the context does not invite an explicit appeal to self-sufficiency, notice how the crucial concluding phrase—pros heteron—creates a contrast with Politics I.2. Whereas the first mover is not pros heteron, the individual human is pros to holon.17 In 14. Met. XIV.4.1091a29–33. 15. Met. XIV.4.1091b16–20. 16. MA 6.700b32–35. The reading pros heteron occurs in one manuscript (P) and in William of Moerbeke’s translation; according to Nussbaum 1978 (338–39) these two had access to a common, independent source. Nussbaum prefers pros heteron to the more common proteron on the grounds that the former fits the context slightly better and does not require emendation: for proteron Jaeger prints proteron ti, relying on the commentary of Michael of Ephesus and the translation of Leonicus. 17. Pol. I.2.1253a27. I do not mean that pros bears exactly the same meaning in these two texts, only that in each case the goodness of what is pros something else is insufficient, occurring only in the context of some further, more sufficient good.

244

Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

contrast with the inworking of the first mover, our inworking as individuals is dependent on and conditioned by an encompassing whole. Alongside the phrases pros heteron and pros to holon, we can place another such locution from Politics I. Discussing the management of households in I.12, Aristotle writes that “the male is by nature better suited for leadership than the female (except when one arises contrary to nature), the elder and mature [or ‘complete,’ teleion] than the younger and immature [atelous].” In the following chapter, he explores some of the consequences: “The slave wholly lacks the deliberative part; the female has it, but lacking authority; the child has it, but incomplete. . . . Since the child is incomplete, it is clear that its excellence too is not of itself in relation to itself [autou pros hauton], but in relation to its end [  pros to telos] and its leader; likewise too, that of a slave is relative to a master.”18 Again acknowledging the undesirable elements in Aristotle’s social theory, we can also register his use of teleios and atelēs, here “mature” and “immature.” The human being who has attained his end, he supposes, is the one who can direct human affairs; the immature human has not yet developed this ability. Granted, then, that no human is self-sufficient as an individual, it remains the case that some are more capable than others of performing their work by and for themselves. Once again, Aristotle seems to present finality or completeness in terms of self-sufficiency. N at u r a l S c i e n c e

Like Politics I.2, Aristotle’s natural science presents living things as developing naturally toward self-sufficiency—toward independence in the performance of their works. He attributes a proportionate independence, though much reduced, to the four sublunary elements. In one important passage regarding the elements, he situates this independence within his account of being as a whole by presenting it in terms of the element’s “nearness to substance.”

18. Pol. I.12.1259b1–4, 13.1260a12–14, 31–33. For discussion, see for example Saunders 1995 (100–101).



Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

245

Self-Sufficiency in Nutrition and Generation

Let us first consider the self-sufficiency of animals in nutrition and generation, beginning with a passage from Generation of Animals II.4 that echoes Politics I.12. Aristotle wishes to explain why the first organ to exist distinctly within an embryo is the heart, the seat of the nutritive power. To do so, he relies on a domestic metaphor: “The first thing actually differentiated is the heart, and this is clear not only to sensation—for so it happens—but also to reason. For when it has been differentiated from both [parents], what has come to be must itself manage its own household [auto hauto dioikein], just like a child who has left his father’s house.”19 Although the form of expression is metaphorical, the emphasis on nutritive independence is serious. Compare this later remark concerning the stomach and related organs: “What is above the diaphragm [i.e., the heart] governs life, while what is below is for nourishment and residue, so that all animals that move about, having within themselves self-sufficiency of nourishment, may change places.”20 The ability to store food, that is, confers an independence in nourishing oneself that would otherwise be lacking. As a result, the animal can move about. The exercise of the nutritive power typically culminates in generation, and Aristotle attributes greater self-sufficiency in generating to some kinds of animal than to others. Unsurprisingly, generation tends to be more self-sufficient in those animals that he also wishes to classify as “more complete,” and even “more honorable.”21 In Generation of Animals II.1, for instance, just after explaining the distinction between the sexes, he briefly distinguishes two ways in which male animals contribute to generation. 19. GA II.4.740a3–7. 20. GA IV.8.776b5–8. 21. Preus 1983 (351–52) discusses normative aspects of the species concept in Aristotle’s biology, concluding thus: “Aristotle’s concept of species is normative in three ways: (1) features are selected as definitive of kinds on the ground of their conditional necessity, utility, or value for the life of the kind. . . . (2) Once a genos, of whatever degree of universality or ‘generality’ has been discerned on the basis of a communality of function, the possession of properly functioning organs typical of the genos is a kind of standard for all species in the class. . . . This generic normality leads easily to the idea of the scale of nature. (3) In the scale of nature, species and whole genera are compared to each other in terms of their relative value.” Without attempting to be systematic, I shall touch on several aspects of Preus’s third point.

246

Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

Whereas some emit seed into the female, thus acting on the material through an intermediary, others, he thinks, can act on the material only so long as they remain in direct contact with the female. By sharing in the female and the male, then, a thing lives—hence plants too share in life—but the race [  genos] of animals exists through sensation. Now in nearly all those that move about, the female and the male are separated due to the causes mentioned; and of these some, as has been said, emit seed in copulation, some do not emit it. The cause of this is that the more honorable are also more self-sufficient in their nature, so that they have received magnitude; and this is not without soul-heat [thermotētos psuchikēs]. For what is larger is necessarily moved by a greater power, and the hot is a mover [kinētikon]. Therefore, generally speaking, the blooded animals are larger than the bloodless, and those that move about are larger than the stationary.22

In Aristotle’s natural science, the term “honorable” is used advisedly. It shows up in comparisons between eternal and destructible beings, among types or parts of soul, and—less perspicuously—between sides or regions of an animal’s body. Whether we find such distinctions helpful or ludicrous, we shall find in appendix C that they do not allow us to gloss “honor” in terms of anything less emphatic. According to the present passage, the more honorable animals are also more self-sufficient. Their selfsufficiency depends on superiority in size and “soul-heat,” the bodily motive power employed by the soul. This self-sufficiency typically involves not only greater generative power—here the central explanandum—but also the presence of blood and the ability to move about. Later in the same chapter we find another kind of generative prowess: the ability to bring one’s offspring to completion internally, through a single continuous process. We should apprehend how well, in continuous succession, nature brings forth coming-to-be. For the more complete and hotter animals bring forth an offspring complete with regard to quality—though with regard to quantity, no animal at all does so, for everything that has come to be admits of growth—and these generate animals within themselves straightaway. The next do not generate complete [offspring] within themselves straightaway, for they bear animals 22. GA II.1.732a11–22.



Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

247

after first bearing eggs; but externally, they bear animals. Some do not generate a complete animal, but generate an egg, and this egg is complete.23

Aristotle goes on to distinguish two further classes of animal. In this passage, he refers to those animals whose generative power is greatest as complete rather than as honorable or self-sufficient. Yet because he is again considering the ease or difficulty with which the generative power achieves its end, he could easily have appealed to self-sufficiency as well. Once again, we need the concept of self-sufficiency to interpret the claim that one thing is more complete than another. Self-Sufficiency and Locomotion

Because of our focus up to this point on nutritive soul, two elements in the preceding passages have not received the attention they deserve. The first belongs to Generation of Animals IV.8: “so that all animals that move about, having within themselves self-sufficiency of nourishment, may change places.” The second is from II.1: “more complete and hotter animals bring forth an offspring complete with regard to quality—though with regard to quantity, no animal at all does so.” These passages reflect the importance of locomotion for the completeness and self-sufficiency of natural beings. To see this, we must situate them within the cosmological framework to which they ultimately belong, stepping back from the world of living things to consider Aristotle’s theory of the sublunary elements.24 Indeed, a number of passages will be required to grasp the general connection between locomotion and self-sufficiency. Unlike their Empedoclean predecessors, Aristotle’s sublunary elements come to be and are destroyed.25 Their coming-to-be involves several distinct stages, of which the first and most decisive is qualitative.26 23. GA II.1.733a32–b7; note also the distinction between complete and incomplete live young at IV.6.774b5–775a4. It is widely agreed that Aristotle aims not to provide a single, unique classification of animals, but to recognize similarities and differences as a preliminary to offering causal explanations that are as general as possible in each case: Pellegrin 1986. 24. His account of these elements spans four works: Phys., DC, GC, Mete. (esp. Mete. IV). 25. DC III.6; GC I.3, II.4. 26. GC I.7–9; II.4–5. With the following discussion, see also Cohen 1996 on Aristotle’s “dispositional essentialism,” which allows him to countenance the existence of “incomplete substances.”

248

Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

Air, for example, is hot and wet, whereas water is cold and wet; if the cold that defines water is overcome by heat, then air comes to be from water. The last stage in an element’s coming-to-be is motion to its natural place, as described for instance in On the Heavens IV.3: “Whenever, then, air comes to be from water, light from heavy, it comes to the upper region. At once it is light,27 and it no longer comes to be, but—there—it is. It is thus apparent that, existing through its ability and on its way to fulfillment, it comes to the place where—and to the quantity and quality in which—its fulfillment is found.”28 Thus an element has three types of fulfillment in all; and if quality comes first, place last, then quantity must come in the middle. Other passages—especially Physics IV.9—confirm that an element’s defining qualities bring about motion to its natural place by way of a natural quantity: The material of a large and of a small body is also the same. This is clear, for whenever air comes to be from water, the same material comes to be something else without taking anything in, but what it is through ability, it comes to be through inworking, and so again water from air: sometimes to largeness from smallness, sometimes to smallness from largeness. . . . Hence also the largeness and smallness of the perceptible bulk are extended, not because the material takes in anything, but because it is, in ability, material for both, so that the same thing is dense and rare, and there is one material for them. Now the dense is heavy, the rare light.29

In short, an element is first demarcated by two characteristic qualities; it consequently acquires a characteristic quantity or volume; finally, and again consequently, it moves to its natural place.30 27. It is light in the sense of occupying the place proper to the light, not in the sense of being disposed to go there: Phys. VIII.4.255b8–21. 28. DC IV.3.311a1–6. 29. Phys. IV.9.217a26–31, b8–12. 30. See also the brief earlier remark at IV.5.212b2–3. The argument at VIII.7.260b7–13, which suggests a different order, must be purely dialectical: Aristotle’s understanding of the elements is flatly incompatible with the view that dense and rare are causally prior to hot and cold. At VIII.7.260b29–261a12 we have locomotion, coming-to-be, increase, alteration, decrease, perishing, where alteration is a departure from nature initiating a period of decline (cf. DA II.5, Phys. VII.3). Thus the locomotion of potential generators leads to generation and growth; an alteration undermining the nutritive power leads to withering and death. Aristotle may envision a similar sequence for the elements, based on the premise that only change into



Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

249

To this sequence of changes, then, compare Aristotle’s statement in Generation of Animals II.1 regarding the order of coming-to-be in the more complete animals. Qualitatively complete at birth but still needing to grow, such animals seem to develop according to the same rough pattern as the sublunary elements. Compare also the connection between self-sufficiency and locomotion in Generation of Animals IV.8. The motion that renders mature animals self-sufficient also characterizes the sublunary elements in the final stage of their coming-to-be. In both cases, locomotion belongs to a natural being at or near its completion. Now Aristotle’s cosmos as a whole contains just the three types of motion we have seen him attribute to animals and to the elements: “that of the qualified, that of the quantified, and that according to place.”31 His final task in the Physics, moreover, is to identify the first cause not just of this or that motion, but rather of motion as a whole. As part of this project, finally, he sets out in VIII.7 to identify the primary type of motion. This, he argues, is locomotion: And in general, what is coming to be appears incomplete, and on its way to a principle, so that what is later in coming-to-be is prior in nature. Now locomotion comes to belong last to all that are coming to be; because of this, some living things are completely immobile by deficiency [of organ32]—such as plants and many kinds of animal—while to the rest it comes to belong as they are being completed. Hence, if locomotion tends to belong to those whose nature is more fully developed, this motion would also be prior to the others according to substance—because of the foregoing, and also because, among motions, the thing moved departs from its substance least in being moved locally. For through it alone nothing of the thing’s being changes—as the subject of quality does when it is altered, the subject of quantity when it grows or withers. Above all, it’s clear that what moves itself in the principal sense moves itself with this motion above all, motion according to place; and we say that of movers and things moved, the principle and the first is that which itself moves itself.33 a superior element—which, being rarer and lighter, has a greater natural volume—is unqualified coming-to-be (GC I.3.318a25–319a3). 31. Phys. V.1.225b8–9. 32. Some manuscripts omit this phrase. It is perfectly intelligible, but the stronger claim that results from omitting it—namely, that immobile living things are simply deficient by comparison with the mobile—also fits the context. 33. Phys. VIII.7.261a13–26.

250

Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

This passage—as rich within its own perspective as it may be perplexing to us—contains three arguments. The first, which Aristotle summarizes in the third sentence and rounds off with the phrase “because of the foregoing,” grows directly out of the observation that locomotion appears last in natural coming-to-be. This finality creates a presumption that what is moved locally will turn out to be complete or endlike by comparison with the subjects of other motions. This presumption in turn gives rise to two comparisons: between distinct stages in the generation of a single substance, and between distinct kinds of substance. According to the second, bolder ranking, beings that never acquire a natural locomotion are like the earlier and more primitive stages of those that do.34 This first argument, however, is insufficient. It again identifies something as occupying the position of an end—or at least a position not far removed from the end—without telling us what qualifies it to do so. The second and third arguments fill the gap. According to the second, there is an important sense in which what merely changes its place does not really change at all. According to Physics IV, after all, a thing’s place is not an attribute present within it, but simply “the limit of the surrounding body.”35 This suggests that what is moved locally “departs from its substance least [hēkista tēs ousias existatai],” or even that “nothing of the thing’s being changes [ouden metaballei tou einai].”36 In this case, therefore, what is moved remains in an important sense unmoved, approximating the divine changelessness that Aristotle elsewhere takes to imply self-sufficiency.37 According to the third argument, moreover, locomotion is the only form of motion characteristic of genuine self-movers 34. Aristotle cannot have thought that animals typically finish growing before beginning to move about. He might nevertheless have held that self-motion (more or less) presupposes qualitative completeness, and perhaps that its perfection presupposes quantitative com­ pleteness. 35. Phys. IV.4.212a6. 36. This is an exaggeration; Algra 1995 (212–13) rightly observes that the goal of an element’s motion is not strictly speaking its natural place but its being in that place, which belongs to the category “somewhere” and depends on the substance to which it belongs. Algra also identifies natural locomotion as part of a larger process in which the element’s form is fully actualized (213, 218). Matthen 2009 focuses on the element’s ontological stability in its natural place. 37. Graham 1999 (128).



Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

251

as such—and self-movers, we have seen, do not merely resemble a selfsufficient being; rather, the ability to move about renders animals themselves self-sufficient.38 In assessing the significance of these arguments, it is important to keep their context firmly in mind. The ultimate goal of Physics VIII is to establish the existence of a single first mover for nature as a whole, and the present passage is correspondingly universal in scope. In fact, the conclusion that locomotion is prior in substance to motion in quality or quantity has at least three distinct applications. First, locomotion is the only form of motion characteristic of any eternal being—namely, the heavens.39 Second, locomotion is also characteristic of the most endlike or complete destructible living things—those that genuinely move themselves, namely animals. Third, locomotion is characteristic of the sublunary elements only insofar as they are already complete in quality and quantity. As is typical of Physics VIII, however, Aristotle aims to establish his conclusion in its most universal form. Whereas Physics VIII.7 is concerned with universals, On the Heavens IV.3 applies similar reasoning directly and explicitly to the elements. Taken as a whole, however, this passage parallels not Physics VIII.7 but the earlier VIII.4, in which Aristotle denies that the elements are true self-movers. In the Physics version, he concludes that no element “itself moves itself,” although he allows that each element does have “a principle of motion.”40 On the Heavens goes further, asking why the heavy and light might have seemed to be true self-movers in the first place: To ask why fire is carried [  pheretai] upward and earth downward is the same as to ask why the healable, when moved and changed as healable, arrives at health rather than whiteness; and so too everything else that is altered. And what is capable of growth is no different: when it changes, as capable of growth, it arrives not at health but at a superior size. The process of change, too, is similar in each case—one thing changes in quality, another in quantity; and in place, the light goes upward, the heavy downward. The difference is that some seem 38. For self-motion in Aristotle see Broadie 1982 (204–61), and the essays in part I of Gill and Lennox 1994. 39. Phys. VIII.7.260b29–30; see also Met. IX.8.1050b6–28. 40. Phys. VIII.4.255b29–30.

252

Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

to have a principle of the change in themselves—I mean the heavy and the light—whereas some do not, but seem to be changed from without, such as the subjects of healing and of growth. Even these, however, sometimes change of themselves: given just a small external motion, the former arrives at health, the latter at growth; and since the subject of health and of sickness is the same, if it is moved as healable, it is carried to health, but if as liable to sickness, it is carried to sickness.41 Now the heavy and the light appear, more than these do, to have the principle of motion in themselves, because their material is nearest to substance. A sign of this is that locomotion [  phora] belongs to things that have been fully separated [tōn apolelumenōn], and in coming-to-be it is last of motions; hence this motion would be first according to substance.42

The motion proper to the heavy and the light as such thus has as its subject or “material” something “nearer to substance” than are the subjects of other motions. In order to be moved locally at all, that is, a body must already be distinct from its surroundings, with an identity of its own that it retains despite being moved. Aristotle’s use of the term “substance” in this passage is particularly helpful: whether the body moved locally is a heavenly sphere, a self-moving animal, or an element, its motion presupposes that in other respects, it is already fully itself. In this way, the importance of locomotion in Aristotle’s cosmology—we might even say its dignity—depends on the concepts of completeness and self-sufficiency. All in all, the texts that I have just presented suggest that in ranking beings as better and worse, Aristotle tends to cash out the language of finality or completeness in terms of self-sufficiency, and that he understands self-sufficiency as independence in accomplishing one’s work. 41. Aristotle throughout uses the language of locomotion (“arrives at,” “is carried”) to describe qualitative change. His mention of alteration in the direction of sickness further assimilates the twofold motion of the single subject of health to the twofold motion of the heavy and the light respectively. 42. DC IV.3.310b16–311a1.



Completeness and S elf-Sufficiency

253

Teleology, the Elements, and the Cosmos

Appendix B T e l e o l o g y, t h e E l e m e n t s , and the Cosmos

It should be clear at this point that I attribute to Aristotle both a cosmic teleology and a teleology of the sublunary elements. I have considered passages from Generation of Animals II.1 and Generation and Corruption II.10 that support cosmic teleology (176–89), and connected these passages with Aristotle’s account of motion in general (§ 5.3.2232). I have considered two passages that suggest a teleology of the sublunary elements, Generation and Corruption II.6 (163–65) and Meteorology IV.12 (170–72); the elements also appear briefly in my discussion of Metaphysics IX.8–9 (223–24). These discussions do not amount to a thorough or systematic account of Aristotle’s teleology; indeed, such an account has been precluded by my focus on the nature of the good as such. Yet any weakness in my presentation of Aristotle’s teleology is a weakness in my argument as a whole, and I have a bit more to say both about the sublunary elements and about the cosmos than the structure and focus of chapters 4 and 5 have allowed. In discussing Aristotle’s account of the elements, it is usually if not always possible to avoid the terms most strongly associated with his teleology: “for the sake of ” (heneka/heneken), “work” (ergon), and “end” (telos). This is not the case, of course, in discussing his biology. One reason is clear enough: unlike the bodies of animals and plants, the elements neither are nor contain instruments (organa). A second, closely related reason stems from the simplicity of the elements by comparison with animals and plants. In On the Heavens II.12, Aristotle suggests that whereas the highest beings require little or no motion to possess the highest 255

goods, the lowest, such as earth, require little motion because the goods they can attain are so slight. In contrast, intermediate beings manage to achieve higher goods, but only at the cost of more complex activity. 1 Such activity, with its labyrinthine subordination of means to ends, invites teleological analysis in ways that the activities of higher and lower beings do not. Neither of these reasons implies that the elements achieve no goods of their own. On the contrary, nonfunctional order is still order, and even the lowest good is still good. Aristotle does, in fact, use all three teleological terms of the elements, or at least in general statements from which it would require special pleading to exclude them. Yet there are also contexts in which the terms “end” and “work,” at least, are not teleological at all. In the Physics, for example, he sometimes uses “end” in the sense of a simple endpoint of motion, without any further implication.2 Such cases make it difficult to assess those in which the same term might instead be weakly teleological. Does “end” mean something stronger, for instance, when a motion ends naturally rather than being arbitrarily cut short? Given the importance of limits to Aristotle’s conception of the good, it does seem significant that the rectilinear motion of a destructible element has “some end, and it is not moved to infinity [eis apeiron].” When he writes this, after all, he has already gone out of his way to explain that “what is moved in a circle is not unfinished nor unlimited, but has an end.”3 Similarly, he affirms quite generally that whatever comes to be “necessarily attains an end.” Here too, “end” seems significant, for in the same breath he attributes to the opposite process, destruction, not an end but a mere ending (teleutē).4 1. DC II.12.292a14–293a11. The concerns expressed by Leggatt 1995 (248) regarding this argument can be addressed at least in part through Lear’s concept of teleological approximation (Lear 2004). Regarding the placement of the argument Leggatt observes that “the moment at which cosmology verges on theology coincides with the completion of Aristotle’s discussion of the heavens. The remainder of the treatise . . . deals with the sublunar realm, almost as though, having reached the summit of his cosmological system, Aristotle must return to earth” (250). See also the discussion of this chapter in Leunissen 2010 (165–68). 2. Phys. VI.5.236a10, 12, 9.239b13; VIII.8.262b30. 3. DC I.8.277a26–27, 5.273a5–6. Note that the sublunary elements also gather speed as they approach the endpoint (telos) of their motions: Phys. VIII.9.265b13; DC I.8.277b5. 4. Phys. III.4.203b8–10. For death as a teleutē, as opposed to a genuine end, see Phys. II.2.194a30–33.

256 Teleology, th e Elements, and th e Co smo s

The same sort of ambiguity besets the term ergon, which in Meteorology I–III means simply “effect.”5 It would be hard to argue, for instance, that Aristotle takes rivers to be for the sake of lakes,6 or subterranean water to be for the sake of the particular observable effects from which he conjectures its behavior. Yet what about the effects that are proper to water rather than merely accidental? In On the Heavens II.3, Aristotle claims that “among things that have a work, each is for the sake of its work.” Later, he specifies that the elements not only have works, but ought to be defined in terms of them: “the decisive differences among bodies are found in their affections, works, and powers.”7 Now in II.3 he is concerned not with the sublunary elements but with the heavens, which he explicitly takes to be for the sake of their eternal motions. It would weaken his argument considerably, however, were it to turn out that certain tremendously important natural bodies were not after all for the sake of the works by which, he claims, we ought to define them.8 Indeed, not only does Aristotle hold that the heavens are for the sake of their eternal circular motions; he also suggests that they are spherical at least in part so as to fit the requirements of such motion.9 Moreover, he assigns the destructible elements their attributes precisely so as to fit the requirements of rectilinear motion (beginning in On the Heavens I.2–3 and continuing in III.1). It would be surprising if he did not mean to imply that these elements too are for their sake of their proper motions. This point bears on the structure of On the Heavens as a whole, and I shall return to it shortly. Although On the Heavens II.3 is concerned with natural locomotion, such motion is by no means an element’s only work. In III.1, Aristotle explains that the “works and affections” of natural substances, including the 5. See Wilson 2013 on teleology in Mete. I–III. 6. Mete. I.14.353a6. 7. DC II.3.286a8–9; III.8.307b19–21. For further discussion of II.3, see Leunissen 2010 (160–64). 8. Johnson 2005 (140) observes that disagreement over the teleological status of elemental motion is puzzling given Aristotle’s clarity regarding the heavens, and connects the dots between DC II.3 and III.8 (142–43). 9. For the first point, see also DC II.12.292a14–293a11; for the second, see II.3.286a7–12, II.4.



Teleology, th e Elements, and th e Co smo s 257

elements, are “the motions both of each of these and of as many others as these are responsible for by their own power, and further their alterations and transitions into each other.”10 According to this account, the effect of an element on other bodies is among its works. When he takes up this sort of work in Generation and Corruption I.7, he explains that “fire heats and the cold cools, and in general the effective [  poiētikon] makes the affected [  paschon] like itself.” This formulation distinctly echoes the account of nutrition and reproduction found in On the Soul II.4, where we read that the crowning work of a natural being is “to effect [  poiēsai] another like itself.”11 Toward the end of Generation and Corruption I.7, moreover, Aristotle adds the following note regarding the poiētikon: The effective [  poiētikon] is a cause as that whence the source [or “principle”] of the motion, whereas that for the sake of which is not effective—therefore health is not effective, except by a metaphor. For indeed, when it is presently effecting [tou men poiountos hotan huparchēi], the thing affected is becoming something, whereas when the conditions are present [tōn d’ hexeōn parousōn] it is no longer becoming but already is. Now the forms and the ends are certain conditions, the material as material what is affected.12

This argument belongs to a longer discussion of moved and unmoved movers, in which Aristotle’s example of something effective is fire. Throughout Generation and Corruption, moreover, he is concerned not only with effecting and being affected in general, but also with the elements in particular. Unless he has suddenly changed the scope of his discussion, therefore, he is apparently willing to say quite generally that the effective is for the sake of its effect. Given that the immediate effect of fire is to pass on its own determinate way of being, this need not be 10. DC III.1.298a32–b1. 11. GC I.7.324a9–11; DA II.4.415a28–29. 12. GC I.7.324b13–19; cf. II.9.335a24–26, b4–7 (emphasis added): “Since some things are such as to come to be and be destroyed, and coming-to-be in fact occurs in the place around the middle, we should say, concerning all coming-to-be alike, how many and what are its principles. . . . Hence it’s necessary that coming-to-be and destruction have to do with what is able to be and not be. Therefore also this too is responsible, as material, for the things that come to be, but the shape and the form as that for the sake of which; now this is the logos of the substance of each.”

258 Teleology, th e Elements, and th e Co smo s

surprising.13 Yet the passage is hardly crystalline; one might argue that it casts as much shadow as it transmits light. The foregoing paragraphs present, albeit with minimal discussion, most of the evidence that bears directly on Aristotle’s willingness to use the terms heneka/-en, ergon, and telos concerning the sublunary elements.14 The evidence is limited in both quality and quantity, and with a bit of ingenuity it can probably be explained away. None of it comes close to suggesting that the destructible elements have ends in the same sense as animals and plants do. In a sense, however, this is precisely the point. Understanding Aristotle’s account of the elements requires us to free his understanding of the good from the specific requirements and opportunities of biology, and to ground it in his account of being itself. Whether we call them ends or not, in other words, the works and inworkings of the elements are clearly ordered and determinate works of nature; they are therefore both good and natural. In view of this basic commitment, Aristotle has no obvious need for sharp distinctions between ergon as effect and ergon as work, between telos as defining limit and telos as end, or, for that matter, between having a work and being for the sake of it. If we ask simply whether fire has works or ends, but tacitly understand works and ends in the strong sense derived from his biology, then the question itself is misleading. It is misleading in another way as well. To ask whether fire has ends, or whether it is or acts for the sake of its works, is to suggest that we ought to be considering fire in its own right, as distinct from the other elements and the things they compose. In a way, such questions have already assigned to the elements a self-sufficiency akin to that of animals and plants. Yet Aristotle is most often interested in the elements not individually but as parts of some larger whole. In Meteorology IV.12 and Parts of Animals II.2, for instance, he points us from the elements themselves toward the animals and plants composed of them. Yet the elements are not essentially the basic materials from which animals and plants are composed; they do not depend for what they are on the particular uses 13. For more on effecting and being affected in GC, see for example Mourelatos 1984. 14. I here omit Mete. IV.12, but have argued in Mirus 2006 that this important chapter should not be forced into a biological box.



Teleology, th e Elements, and th e Co smo s 259

made of them by living things. They do, however, belong essentially to the cosmos itself. If we insist on taking them separately, we cannot understand the good to which they contribute.15 To see this anew, consider the beginning of his cosmology in On the Heavens. On the Heavens begins, strikingly, with the extension of perceptible things in three dimensions. Aristotle refers to the completeness of the number three, elaborating its significance in almost mystical terms. 16 Having shown that only magnitude in three dimensions is complete, he continues as follows: The bodies that have the form of a part [en moriou eidei] are each of this sort, in accordance with the [preceding] account, for they have all the [three] dimensions [diastaseis]; but they are demarcated [or “determined/defined,” hôristai] relative to what is next to them, by contact. (Therefore each of them is in a way many.) But the All, of which these are parts, is necessarily complete in all ways, as its name signifies, and not in one way only.17 Concerning, then, the nature of the All, whether it is unlimited in size or is limited in its entire bulk, we must inquire later; but now let us speak of the parts [of it] according to [its] form [tōn kat’ eidos autou moriōn], making the following our principle. All natural bodies and magnitudes are, we say, essentially movable in place.18

He goes on to distinguish simple motions from composite ones, and to identify as simple two distinct forms of locomotion: circular motion around a center, and rectilinear motion toward or away from the center. Only once this abstract framework is in place can he return to the bodies 15. Matthen and Hankinson 1993 concludes that the elements are defined in terms of and so ontologically posterior to the whole (221). Note that Aristotle does not try to derive the existence of the elements or of other natural beings simply from a prior, substantive conception of the good. As Cooper 1982 (114–15) observes, his conception of how we know the good almost certainly precludes such a derivation. Nor, however, does he simply derive the natures of the elements from experience. Instead, he tries to derive them from the postulate that bodily reality as a whole is maximally ordered and complete. For global teleology see also Sedley 1991, 2000, 2010 (18–29); in opposition see for example Wardy 1993. 16. DC I.1.268a1–b5. 17. With Guthrie 1939, I take the preceding sentences to mean that parts of the cosmos are complete as three-dimensional but incomplete as parts, determined from without by the other parts and by the whole. For another reading see Leggatt 1995 and J. L. Stocks in Barnes 1984. 18. DC I.1.268b5–2.268b14.

260 Teleology, th e Elements, and th e Co smo s

of which the All is composed, constructing simple bodies to execute the simple motions. From this beginning we may take two crucial points.19 First, Aristotle’s explicit starting point is the simple fact that bodies are subject to locomotion. Locomotion is the paradigmatic inworking of bodily reality as such, and he develops his entire cosmology in view of this inworking. Given that the simple motions are to be, he argues, the world must contain the following natures. There is therefore quite a literal sense in which Aristotle’s elements, celestial or sublunary, are for the sake of their motions. In the world he has sketched for us, they exist so that simple, orderly motion might exist. Second, Aristotle introduces both the eternal and the destructible elements not as independent principles from which some larger whole happens to be produced, but rather as incomplete parts of an All, a complete whole. The passage I have quoted begins by treating everything less than the All as like, or having the appearance or form of, a part [en moriou eidei].20 It later refers to these parts as tōn kat’ eidos autou moriōn; the phrase is ambiguous, but may mean that the parts are to be distinguished in terms of the form or shape of the whole.21 A third point comes later in I.2. Among the simple motions, circular motion “is necessarily first. For the complete is prior in nature to the incomplete, and the circle—but not any straight line—is something 19. For the following see also Falcon 2005 (31–35) and esp. Matthen and Hankinson 1993 (212–13). 20. With this phrase cf. Timaeus 30c4 (tōn men oun merous eidei pephukotōn), although Plato’s phrase refers to intelligible models rather than directly to parts of the cosmos. I owe this reference to Leggatt 1995 (175), who attributes it to Longo and observes that according to Cornford meros and morion are the standard words for “species” in the Timaeus. 21. Leggatt 1995 has “specific parts,” suggesting with Simplicius that it “must designate physical body in its various (elemental) forms—earth, water, air, fire, and aithêr” (176). The parts are certainly the elements, but everything else is obscure. On Leggatt’s reading, kat’ eidos implies that the parts (moriōn) are species of a genus, but Aristotle seems to be concerned with geometrical parts. Stocks (in Barnes 1984) has “parts of the whole which are specifically distinct,” taking eidos as species but leaving the parts geometrical. Aristotle, however, goes on to distinguish the parts geometrically rather than qualitatively, and this opens up the possibility that the eidos is that of the cosmos and that autou modifies eidos rather than moriōn. Guthrie 1939 has “formally distinct parts,” which is helpfully noncommittal by comparison with both Leggatt and Stocks. Matthen and Hankinson 1993 commits in the other and I think preferable direction: “the parts that [the totality] has in virtue of its form” (219).



Teleology, th e Elements, and th e Co smo s 261

complete.” Because the circle is prior, circular motion must be primitive, and there must be a simple body—a particularly “honorable” one, in fact—to engage in it.22 This body will serve as the basic natural limit of rectilinear motion. From the beginning of Aristotle’s discussion, then, there is never any question of treating the destructible elements as determinate, thinkable realities—and hence as having ends of their own—apart from their places within the cosmos as a whole. Quite the contrary: he expressly designs these elements with a view to their rectilinear motions; he bounds and defines these motions by placing them within the heavens; and he designs the heavens to execute unceasingly the one motion that admits of being eternal. His goal, therefore, is never merely to consider the lowly end of earth, or even that of fire. The important thing, rather, is that the heavens should communicate to their wayward, destructible contents a share in their own unceasing activity. The perishable elements themselves need only enough grace to follow their heavenly leaders.23 22. DC I.2.269a18–21, b16. 23. Sedley 2012 highlights another aspect of Aristotle’s holism by showing that Aristotle’s account of place was developed with a view to the natural places of the elements: “It is no accident . . . but the natural order of things, that water should occupy the place immediately below and contiguous with air, because that is where it can best fulfil its function of being available to become actual air and thus keep the eternal cycle of the elements going. As he also puts it in this paragraph [DC IV.5.212b29–213a11], calling upon an alternative model, the way that water fits into its natural place, the inner boundary of the air, is somehow analogous to the way a part of some larger whole—an arm, say, as part of a human body—has to be in contact with the whole in order to fulfil its natural function and to maintain its proper location” (198).

262 Teleology, th e Elements, and th e Co smo s

The Honorable

Appendix C The Honorable

The discussion of the goodness and beauty of being found in the main text of this book had to be supplemented, in appendix A, by a survey of the theoretical contexts in which Aristotle uses finality and selfsufficiency as criteria of goodness. In the course of this survey, we encountered three passages in which he also describes one being as more honorable than another: the highest good is “too divine and honorable [timiōteron] to be relative to another”; the body that moves in a circle has a “more honorable nature”; and the more honorable animals are more self-sufficient in nature. As a further supplement, therefore, we need at least a rough sense of what Aristotle means by “honorable.”1 In this final appendix, I will quickly survey the use of timios in Aristotle’s natural science and metaphysics. To include the practical works would be a much larger project, and I hope that the smaller task will prove both manageable and helpful. Although no precise definition of to timion will emerge, I hope to show that Aristotle consistently uses the term timios to distinguish archai: originating or governing principles. In doing so, I hope to show that timios ought in fact to be translated as “honorable,” rather than as “higher,” “more valuable,” or “more precious.”2 1. MA 6.700b34–35; DC I.2.269b16; GA II.1.732a17. Schmitz 1984 offers an informal but perceptive sketch of “natural value” (timē) in Aristotle. Cooper 1982 (127–28) concludes that teleological explanations via the noble or honorable form a detached class, not susceptible to the more typical analysis that appeals only to the eternal existence of certain natures. This seems inevitable if, as Cooper seems to think, the goodness of the forms by which living things exist is basically opaque. 2. Contrast the briefer discussion in Gotthelf 1989 (56–57).

263

Within Aristotle’s contemplative or theoretical works, the words timios, timiotēs, atimos, and atimia appear in thirty-one distinct passages.3 It will be convenient to divide these into three occasionally overlapping groups, insofar as they concern (1) the heavens and the sublunary elements, (2) animals and plants, or (3) knowledge, being, and god. The second of these groups is by far the largest, and shares important themes with both the first and the third. T h e H e av e n s a n d t h e S u b l u n a r y E l e m e n t s

Passages: [1] PA I.5.644b22–645a26; [2] DC I.2.269a2–b17 (esp. b13–17); [3] DC II.13.293a27–b1; [4] DC II.5.288a2–12; [5] Mete. II.1.353a34–b5; [6] Iuv. 19 = Resp. 13.477a13–25. Unsurprisingly, Aristotle considers the heavens more honorable than the rest of nature. Of the passages [1–5] that express this theme, two simply identify the heavens as more honorable than sublunary beings, either [1] because the heavens are eternal, or specifically [2] because circular motion is complete and primary. Two others suggest that [3] the most honorable thing in the cosmos should occupy the most honorable place, and that [4] more honorable substances should move in the more honorable of two contrary directions. These passages express the contention that some locations within a bodily whole are more honorable than others, a contention that reappears in Aristotle’s biology and to which I shall return below. Passages [3] and [5] report the view of certain earlier thinkers that the most honorable position in the cosmos is its center. Two passages suggest that some sublunary elements are more honorable than others. They contend that [4] it is fitting for the more honorable elements to move naturally in the more honorable direction, 3. I searched for the root tim- in the works on nature from Phys. to GA by Bekker page, excluding pseudepigrapha, and in Met. I, then discarded one use of entimos to designate the superior of two cities (Mete. I.14.352a12), one of timē by Empedocles (Met. III.4.1000b14), and one discussion of mythology (Met. I.3.983a33). The remaining instances are mostly forms of timios and atimos, with one instance of timiotēs and atimia together (GA II.3.736b31–32) and one of timiotēs alone (PA I.5.644b32). It seems more helpful, however, to distinguish the passages in which these words appear rather than individual instances of the words themselves.

264

The Honorable

and that [6] the more honorable elements should occur in higher proportions in the bodies of those living things whose souls are also more honorable. The central claim of these six passages is that the heavens—the natural beings whose location and activity render them eternal and primary—are more honorable than the beings contained by them. In addition, sublunary elements whose natural place is higher—or closer to the heavens—are more honorable. The claim that the natural motion of such elements befits their nature suggests that there is something honorable about them apart from their natural motions and places. Finally, the distinction between more and less honorable sublunary elements provides the material conditions for a further distinction between more and less honorable living things. Animals and Plants

Many more passages—from the biological works and On the Soul— focus on plants and animals. It will be useful to divide these also into three groups, insofar as they concern (A) whole animals and their souls, (B) particular parts of animals and plants, and (C) cognition. Whole Animals and Their Souls

Passages: [1] PA I.5.644b22–645a26; [6] Iuv. 19 = Resp. 13.477a13–25; [7] DA I.2.404b1–7; [8] GA II.1.732a11–23; [9] GA III.11.762a18–27; [10] DA I.1.402a1–7; [11] GA II.3.736b29–33. Four passages [1, 7–9] refer with little explanation to kinds of animal that are more or less honorable. Three others attach honor either to soul in general or to certain types of soul in particular. One [10] attributes honor not to soul directly but to knowledge of soul, which is more honorable than knowledge of many other things insofar as its object is better and more wondrous. One [11] refers without explanation to more and less honorable souls, and one [6] identifies the more honorable animals as having more honorable souls. Of the seven passages just mentioned, four associate—but by no means identify—being more honorable or having a more honorable soul

The Honorable

265

with particular material characteristics, namely: [6,4 9] being composed in larger proportion of a more honorable element; [6, 8] having more heat; and [9, 11] having higher-quality pneuma.5 It is reasonable to suppose that composition from superior materials makes it possible or appropriate for a living thing to have a more honorable soul, but that one animal is more honorable than another primarily in virtue of its soul. Parts of Animals and Plants

Passages: [12] PA II.14.658a18–24; [13] PA III.3.665a6–26; [14] PA III.4.665b15–24; [15] PA III.5.667b29–668a1; [16] PA III.10.672b8–24; [17] IA [On the Progression of Animals] 5.706b3–15; [18] GA II.6.744b11–27. Like the cosmos as a whole, the bodies of animals and plants include more and less honorable parts and locations. There are seven passages [12–18] in which Aristotle refers either to honorable locations within an animal or plant or to honorable bodily organs. The more honorable location is usually above as opposed to below, but in animals it may also be front as opposed back or right as opposed to left. He theorizes that whenever no greater good would be compromised, nature favors the more honorable locations by [12] providing them with greater protection, [13–17] placing more honorable or important organs within them, or [18] producing them from the best-digested nourishment. In one passage, he states explicitly that [16] the less honorable organs are for the sake of the more honorable; this passage also posits an internal physical barrier between more and less honorable organs, lest the former be disturbed by the latter. His arguments [13–17] concerning the placement of honorable organs in honorable locations presuppose mutually independent grounds for assigning honor to the organs and to their locations. I shall first 4. Being “more honorable of nature” is there distinguished from having a more honorable soul, and so cannot refer to formal nature (On Youth and Old Age [hereafter Iuv.] 19 = On Respiration [hereafter Resp.] 13.477a17–18). That Aristotle has in mind the proportion of elements present in the living body is apparent from the remarks at 477a25–31. 5. Preus 1990 (475–77) documents the connection between the upright posture of human beings—which reflects our status as the most honorable mortal animal—and our natural heat.

266

The Honorable

consider the organs and the powers of soul that inform them, only then taking up the claim that some locations within a bodily whole are more honorable than others. Aristotle assigns greater honor, then, to the organs in which the powers of soul primarily inhere. In doing so, he consistently refers to both organs and powers as archai. Of the passages already cited, one concerns [13] “the archē inhering in the heart”—in this context, nutritive soul.6 Another concerns [18] the organs of sensation, which “participate in the most authoritative archē.” A third, worth considering a bit more carefully, concerns [16] the heart as the central organ of sensitive soul.7 Its topic is the physical separation of gut from chest by the diaphragm. [The diaphragm] is for the sake of marking off the place around the gut from that around the heart, so that the archē of sensitive soul might be unaffected, and not quickly overwhelmed, by the fumes arising from the nourishment and the quantity of heat introduced. Against this, nature set them apart, making the midriffs like a partition or fence, and it divided the more honorable from the less in as many animals as admit of a division between upper and lower. For the upper is that for the sake of which, and is better, while the lower is that which is for the sake of this, and is necessary—that which is receptive of nourishment.8

Although the function of the diaphragm or midriffs is to protect the central organ of sensation, we have just seen that the heart is also the central organ of nutritive soul. The upper part of an animal’s trunk, therefore, is better and more honorable insofar as it controls the animal as a whole, whereas the lower part is merely necessary for the sake of the upper. This distinction between the good or honorable and the merely necessary echoes that between the fine and the necessary in the Ethics. Aristotle therefore uses the term timios to describe bodily organs and powers of soul insofar as these function as archai, governing principles, 6. The heart is also the central location of sensitive soul, but here the principle inhering in the heart is the beneficiary of respiration. Respiration is a form of refrigeration, required to regulate the vital heat by which nutritive soul operates (Iuv. 14–19 = Resp. 8–13). 7. For the heart as central organ of sensation see MA 9, Somn. 2.455b34–456a11. 8. PA III.10.672b15–24. The context excludes using “diaphragm” in place of “midriffs,” as Aristotle has just observed that “this diaphragm [diazōma] some call midriffs [  phrenas]” (672b11).



The Honorable

267

within an animal. He gives particular consideration to the heart, which he takes to be the central organ of both nutrition and sensation. He further contends, however, that nature assigns to these principles the most honorable locations within the body. This requires independent grounds for considering certain locations to be honorable. His reasons for considering some locations within a bodily whole more honorable than others appear in two extended passages, On the Heavens II.2 and Progression of Animals 4–5. The word timios, however, occurs only in the conclusion of the second passage. Instead, both texts distinguish locations functionally, associating particular locations with particular principles of motion. This strongly suggests that honorable locations are such only because they contain archai. This circularity threatens to vitiate the claim that nature assigns honorable locations to honorable parts; it therefore suggests a theory that is in fact more complex. At the beginning of Progression of Animals 4, Aristotle argues that animals are naturally determined by six directions: upper and lower, front and back, right and left. These directions, he adds, “are distinguished by a work, not just by position with respect to earth and heaven.” The upper part, for example, is that from which the flow of nourishment begins: “the upper is the archē.” In animals only, the front is the part “toward which and from which sensation naturally is.” The animal’s naturally stronger right side, finally, is the efficient cause of its progression, “that whence is naturally the archē [here beginning] of change in place,” whereas the left is “that which naturally follows this.”9 In each case, the location that Aristotle will eventually identify as honorable is defined by an archē. There is, however, a difficulty: plants too nourish themselves, but they seem to get their nourishment from below.10 Aristotle responds that if above and below are defined in terms of the whole of nature, plants receive their nourishment from below. If above and below are defined functionally, however, then by definition plants receive their nourishment from above. Plants, in other words, are cosmically upside down. 9. On the Progression of Animals (hereafter IA) 4.705a31–32, b2, 12, 18–21. Growth, sensation, and progression correspond roughly to the three basic forms of motion recognized in the Physics: quantitative, qualitative, and local. 10. IA 4.705b2–8.

268

The Honorable

This is because [6] they are composed predominantly of earth, and so [17] must derive their nourishment from the ground. The distinction by which Aristotle’s theory accommodates plants has a broader significance. It enables him to end Progression of Animals 5 with [17] an apparently circular reflection on the functional account of location that he has just elaborated: “Now it’s reasonable too that the archai are from these parts, for the archē is something honorable, and upper is more honorable than lower, front than back, right than left. But it is well also to say the reverse concerning them—that because the archai are in these, these are more honorable than the opposite parts.”11 How might this circle avoid vice? It seems that the causal structure of the cosmos as whole— specifically, the existence of archai within the cosmos—confers honor on certain locations.12 This makes it appropriate for nature to locate the more honorable organs of animals in the locations within their own bodies that correspond to the honorable locations in the cosmos.13 The presence of the animal’s own archai in these locations then confers further honor upon them, and this new honor provides a further explanatory resource.14 We have already seen that [2] the heavens are honorable insofar as their motion is complete and primary. In On the Heavens IV.1, Aristotle uses this primacy to distinguish above from below within the cosmos as a whole: “We call ‘above’ the extremity [eschaton] of the whole, which is above in position and primary in nature.”15 It goes without saying, moreover, that the circular motion of the heavens is the highest governing principle, the archē, of the natural world as a whole. Eternal, cyclical 11. IA 5.706b11–16. 12. DC II.2 uses the functional distinctions of IA 4 to argue that similar distinctions should be discerned in the first heaven, itself a living substance. The heaven’s upper part is around the South Pole, and so the stars move from the heaven’s right to its left. From an explanatory point of view, however, the heavenly distinctions are surely primary. DC II.2 also offers a second explanation of the primary locations, probably compatible with the first and relying on locomotion alone: “above is that whence the motion, right that from which, and front that to which” (285a23–24). 13. Sedley 2010 (10). As Preus 1990 (475) observes, the cosmic distinction between above and below has nothing to do with nutrition; the type of archē therefore seems to be quite different in the two cases. Preus proposes a tighter but somewhat speculative connection. 14. Exceptions provide no difficulty, as nature’s deference to the more honorable is subject to any number of more prosaic, functional concerns. 15. DC IV.1.308a21–22.



The Honorable

269

change begins in the heavens and ends in the world of destructible things below them. It seems safe to conclude that Aristotle’s doctrine of honorable locations is entirely a doctrine of the honor due to originating and governing principles, archai. If honor in the strict sense is due to intelligent beings alone, then the honor due to natural principles is often metaphorical. Yet Aristotle cannot have missed the connection between honor and archai in the sense of authorities or rulers, and this suggests that the best translation of timios is indeed “honorable.” Cognition

Passages: [19] PA IV.10.687a8–23; [20] DA II.3.414b16–19; [21] GA I.23.731a30–b4. Unsurprisingly, Aristotle assigns particular honor to intelligence and thought. One passage argues that [19] nature has given human beings hands because we are the most intelligent (  phronimos) of animals, not intelligence because we have hands. The argument presumes that intelligence is “greater,” “more authoritative,” and “more honorable” than hands, which are mere instruments. Another passage suggests that [20] thought belongs only to substances at least as honorable as human beings. A third [21] compares self-nourishing, sentient, and thoughtful substances with each other and with those that lack soul altogether. This passage too is worth a brief pause: The animal’s work is not only to generate (for this is common to all living things); rather, they all share in some sort of awareness [  gnōseōs]—some more, some less, some hardly at all. For they have sensation, and sensation is a sort of awareness. But whether this counts as honorable or unworthy of honor depends greatly on whether one is looking at intelligence [  pros phronēsin] or at the class [  genos] of the unensouled. For just as by comparison with [  pros] exercising intelligence it seems to be nothing to share only in touch and taste, by comparison with a plant or a stone it is wondrous. For it would seem preferable to attain even this much awareness than to lie dead and unbeing.16

16. GA I.23.731a30–b4.

270

The Honorable

One might, of course, read the term “unbeing” (mē on) as no more than a manner of speaking, but this would be a mistake. Just a couple of pages later, remember, Aristotle will write that “soul is something better than body, and the ensouled than the unensouled because of its soul, and being than not being, and living than not living.”17 In II.1, that is, he treats ensoulment as a kind of threshold for being. Here in I.23 he treats awareness as another such threshold. K n ow l e d g e , B e i n g , a n d G o d

Passages: [10] DA I.1.402a1–7; [22] PA I.1.639a1–3; [23] Met. I.1.981a24– b6; [24] Met. XII.10.1075b20–21; [25] Met. I.2.983a4–7; [26] Met. VI.1.1026a18–23; [27] Met. XI.7.1064b1–6; [28] Met. XII.9.1074b15–35; [29] Met. IX.9.1051a4–17; [30] MA 6.700b32–35; [31] DA III.5. Other passages treat knowledge itself, or certain forms of knowledge, as honorable. One speaks [22] of “every contemplation and inquiry [theōrian te kai methodon], humbler and more honorable alike.” Another proclaims that [10] knowledge (eidēsin) in general is fine and honorable, but that knowledge of the soul—“the archē of animals”—is finer and more honorable than knowledge of many other things “both in accuracy and by being about better and more wondrous things.” Five passages [23–27] from the Metaphysics, meanwhile, help to specify the most honorable form of understanding. In the arts, for example, [23] those who understand the reason (logon echein) for their actions and direct the work of others (tous architektonas) are more honorable. The most honorable form of understanding is [24] wisdom, which Aristotle has defined as understanding of “first things and causes,” “the most governing [archikotatē] form of understanding.”18 Wisdom is [25] most divine and most honorable both because it would be the most fitting understanding for god to have and because it concerns divine things. That is, the most honorable understanding [26–27] concerns the most honorable kind, so that that contemplative understanding is more honorable than practical, theology than other forms of contemplation. A fine object of thought is [28] more honorable than the ability to think. 17. GA II.1.731b28–30. 18. Met. I.2.982b2, 4.



The Honorable

271

With one possible exception, the remaining passages concern the objects of wisdom. An excellent inworking—the sort of thing that Aristotle has identified as “an archē and an end”19—is [29] better and more honorable than the corresponding ability. The first mover is [30] divine and honorable insofar as it is “first,” “eternally beautiful,” “truly and firstly good.” God [28] is honorable precisely as thinking, and as thinking what is most divine and most honorable. Finally, On the Soul III.5 describes [31] a thought or type of thought whose substance just is its inworking. This thought is in some sense poiētikon, productive or effective, and it is therefore more honorable than the thought that can be affected and that becomes all things. This may well be a description of divine thought. Aristotle’s assignment of honor to substances and archai, then, reflects his vision of a cosmic hierarchy culminating in an eternal, selfcontained thought. Even in his natural science, the honorable is much more than window dressing: it orients his vision of nature, and it does real explanatory work. His first philosophy, meanwhile, begins by identifying the most honorable form of knowledge and ends by identifying the being whose knowledge is most honorable. This being—this eternal thought, the standard by which all goodness and honor are reckoned—is the archē, the one governing principle or leader, of being as a whole.20 19. Met. IX.8.1050a7–8. 20. Met. XII.10.1076a3–4.

272

The Honorable

Works Cited

Wor ks C ited

Please note that all works are cited by original date of publication alone. In cases of subsequent revision or expansion, the dates are those of the revised versions. For anthologized essays, bibliographical information is provided both for the original publication and for one or more reprints. Page numbers cited in the notes are always those of the first edition listed within each entry below. For Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, the colloquium year, which is distinct from the publication year, is given parenthetically after the volume number. Editions, Translations, and Commentaries Apostle, Hippocrates G., trans. 1975. Aristotle, “The Nicomachean Ethics.” Dordrecht: Reidel. Balme, David M. 1972. Aristotle’s “De partibus animalium” I and “De generatione animalium” I (with passages from II.1–3). Oxford: Clarendon. Barnes, Jonathan, ed. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Broadie, Sarah, and Christopher Rowe. 2002. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics”: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnet, John, ed. 1902. Platonis opera. Vol. 4, Clitopho, Res Publica, Timaeus, Critias. Oxford: Clarendon. Bywater, Ingram, ed. 1963. Aristotelis: Ethica Nicomachea. Oxford: Clarendon. Charlton, William. 1970. Aristotle, “Physics” Books I and II. Oxford: Clarendon. Cooper, John M., ed. 1997. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett. Crisp, Roger, trans. 2014a. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics.” Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drossaart Lulofs, Hendrik Joan, ed. 1965. Aristotelis: De generatione animalium. Oxford: Clarendon.

273

Düring, Ingemar, ed. 1961. Aristotle’s “Protrepticus.” Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Fobes, F. H., ed. 1919. Aristotelis Meteorologicorum libri quattuor. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Reprinted in Hildesheim: Olms, 1967. Graham, Daniel. 1999. Aristotle, “Physics” Book VIII. Oxford: Clarendon. Guthrie, W. K. C., trans. 1939. Aristotle, “On the Heavens.” Loeb Classical Library 338. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hussey, Edward. 1983. Aristotle, “Physics” Books III and IV. Oxford: Clarendon. Irwin, Terence H., trans. 1999. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics.” Second edition. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett. Jaeger, W., ed. 1913. Aristotelis De animalium motione et de animalium incessu. Ps.-Aristotelis de spiritu libellus. Leipzig: Teubner. (For the text of IA only.) Joachim, Harold H. 1922. Aristotle, “On Coming-to-Be and Passing-Away (De generatione et corruptione)”: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon. (For the commentary only.) Kassel, Rudolph, ed. 1964. Aristotelis De arte poetica liber. Oxford: Clarendon. Kirwan, Christopher. 1993. Aristotle, “Metaphysics” Books Γ, Δ, and Ε. Second edition. Oxford: Clarendon. Lee, H. D. P., trans. 1952. Aristotle, “Meteorologica.” Loeb Classical Library 397. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lennox, James G. 2001. Aristotle, “On the Parts of Animals” I–IV. Oxford: Clarendon. Louis, P., ed. and trans. 1956. Aristote, “Les parties des animaux.” Paris: Les Belles Lettres. ———, ed. and trans. 1964. Aristote, “Histoire des animaux.” 3 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Lucas, D. W. 1972. Aristotle, “Poetics.” Reprinted with corrections. Oxford: Clarendon. Madigan, Arthur, SJ. 1999. Aristotle, “Metaphysics” Books Β and Κ 1–2. Oxford: Clarendon. Makin, Stephen. 2006. Aristotle, “Metaphysics” Theta. Oxford: Clarendon. Minio-Paluello, L., ed. 1949 (1963). Aristotelis Categoriae et Liber de interpretatione. Oxford: Clarendon. Moraux, P., ed and trans. 1965. Aristote, “Du ciel.” Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Nussbaum, Martha Craven. 1978. Aristotle’s “De Motu Animalium”: Text with Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays. Paperback printing with corrections, 1985. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Pakaluk, Michael. 1998. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics” Books VIII and IX. Oxford: Clarendon.

274

Wor ks C ited

Peck, A. L., trans. 1942. Aristotle, “Generation of Animals.” Loeb Classical Library 366. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Platt, Arthur, trans. 1910. Aristotle, “De generatione animalium.” Oxford: Clarendon. Rackham, H., trans. 1926. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics.” Loeb Classical Library 73. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Ross, W. D. 1924. Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. ———, ed. 1950. Aristotelis Physica. Oxford: Clarendon. Reprinted with corrections 1966. ———. 1955. Aristotle, “Parva naturalia”: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon. ———, ed. 1959. Aristotelis Ars rhetorica. Oxford: Clarendon. ———, ed. 1961. Aristotelis De anima. Oxford: Clarendon. Reprinted 1967. ———, ed. 1963. Aristotelis Politica. Oxford: Clarendon. ———, ed. 1963a. Aristotelis Topica et Sophistici elenchi. Oxford: Clarendon. Reprinted with corrections 1970. Sachs, Joe, trans. 2002. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics.” Newburyport, Mass.: Focus. Reprinted in Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2014. Saunders, Trevor J. 1995. Aristotle, “Politics” Books I and II. Oxford: Clarendon. Taylor, C. C. W. 2006. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics” Books II–IV. Oxford: Clarendon. Walzer, R. R., and J. M. Mingay, eds. 1991. Aristotelis Ethica Eudemia. Oxford: Clarendon. Whalley, George. 1997. Aristotle’s “Poetics.” Edited by John Baxter and Patrick Atherton. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Williams, C. J. F. 1982. Aristotle’s “De Generatione et Corruptione.” Oxford: Clarendon.

Other Works Abizadeh, Arash. 2002. “The Passions of the Wise: Phronêsis, Rhetoric, and Aristotle’s Passionate Practical Deliberation.” The Review of Metaphysics 56 (2): 267–96. Achtenberg, Deborah. 1989. “The Role of the Ergon Argument in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.” Ancient Philosophy 9 (1): 37–47. Also in Anton and Preus 1991, 59–72. ———. 1995. “Human Being, Beast and God: The Place of Human Happiness According to Aristotle and Some Twentieth-Century Philosophers.” In Sim 1995, 29–50.



Wor ks C ited

275

Ackrill, John L. 1965. “Aristotle’s Distinction between Energeia and Kinesis.” In Bambrough 1965, 121–42. ———. 1974. “Aristotle on eudaimonia.” In Rorty 1980, 15–33. From Proceedings of the British Academy 60:339–59. Algra, Keimpe. 1995. Concepts of Space in Greek Thought. Leiden: Brill. Allan, Donald J. 1971. “The Fine and the Good in the Eudemian Ethics.” In Moraux and Harlfinger 1971, 63–71. Anagnostopoulos, Andreas. 2010. “Change in Aristotle’s Physics 3.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 39:33–79. Anagnostopoulos, Georgios. 1994. Aristotle on the Goals and Exactness of Ethics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Annas, Julia. 1977. “Plato and Aristotle on Friendship and Altruism.” Mind 86 (4): 532–54. ———. 1980. “Aristotle on Pleasure and Goodness.” In Rorty 1980, 285–99. ———. 1989. “Aristotle on Virtue and Happiness.” In Sherman 1999, 35–55. From The University of Dayton Review 19 (3): 7–22. ———. 1989a. “Self-love in Aristotle.” In Roche 1989a, 1–18. ———. 1993. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1993a. “Virtue as the Use of Other Goods.” In Virtue, Love and Form: Essays in Memory of Gregory Vlastos, 53–66. Special issue, Apeiron 26 (3–4). Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing. ———. 1996. “Aristotle on Human Nature and Political Virtue.” The Review of Metaphysics 49 (4): 731–53. Anton, John P., and Anthony Preus, eds. 1991. Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Vol. 4, Aristotle’s Ethics. Albany: State University of New York Press. Asmis, Elizabeth, ed. 2010. “Beauty, Harmony, and the Good.” Special issue, Classical Philology 105 (4). Balme, David M. 1987. “Aristotle’s Biology Was Not Essentialist.” In Gotthelf and Lennox 1987, 291–312. ———. 1990. “Matter in Definition: A Reply to G. E. R. Lloyd.” In Devereux and Pellegrin 1990, 49–54. Bambrough, Renford, ed. 1965. New Essays on Plato and Aristotle. London / New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul / Humanities. Baracchi, Claudia, ed. 2014. The Bloomsbury Companion to Aristotle. London: Bloomsbury. Barnes, Jonathan, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji, eds. 1975, 1978. Articles on Aristotle. Vol. 1, Science (1975), and vol. 4, Psychology and Aesthetics (1978). London / New York: Duckworth / St. Martin’s.

276

Wor ks C ited

Barney, Rachel. 2008. “Aristotle’s Argument for a Human Function.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34:293–322. ———. 2010. “Platonic Ring-Composition and Republic 10.” In Plato’s “Republic”: A Critical Guide, edited by Mark L. McPherran, 32–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beere, Jonathan. 2009. Doing and Being: An Interpretation of Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” Theta. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berti, Enrico. 1971. “Multiplicité et unité du bien selon EE I 8.” In Moraux and Harlfinger 1971, 157–84. Bobzien, Susanne. 2014. “Choice and Moral Responsibility.” In Polansky 2014, 81–109. Bodnár, István M. 1997. “Movers and Elemental Motions in Aristotle.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 15:81–117. Bogaard, Paul A. 1979. “Heaps or Wholes: Aristotle’s Explanation of Compound Bodies.” Isis 70 (1): 11–29. Bolton, Robert. 1991. “Aristotle on the Objectivity of Ethics.” In Anton and Preus 1991, 7–28. Bostock, David. 1988. “Pleasure and Activity in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Phronesis 33 (3): 251–72. Bowen, Alan C., and Christian Wildberg, eds. 2009. New Perspectives on Aristotle’s “De Caelo.” Leiden: Brill. [Broadie], Sarah Waterlow. 1982. Nature, Change and Agency in Aristotle’s “Physics.” Oxford: Clarendon. Broadie, Sarah Waterlow. 1988. “The Problem of Practical Intellect in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1987), edited by John J. Cleary, 229–52. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. ———. 1990. “Nature and Craft in Aristotelian Teleology.” In Devereux and Pellegrin 1990, 389–403. ———. 1991. Ethics with Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. “Where Is the Activity?” In Lennox and Bolton 2010, 198–211. Brown, Eric. 2007. “Wishing for Fortune, Choosing Activity: Aristotle on External Goods and Happiness.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 22 (2006): 221–56. Leiden: Brill. Brunschwig, Jacques. 2000. “Lambda 9: A Short-Lived Thought Experiment.” In Frede and Charles 2000, 275–306. Burnyeat, Myles F. 1980. “Aristotle on Learning to Be Good.” In Rorty 1980, 69–92. ———. 2008. “Kinēsis vs. Energeia: A Much-Read Passage in (but Not of )



Wor ks C ited

277

Aristotle’s “Metaphysics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34:219–92. Carreras, Anthony. 2012. “Aristotle on Other-Selfhood and Reciprocal Shaping.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (4): 319–36. Cashen, Matthew. 2012. “The Ugly, the Lonely, and the Lowly: Aristotle on Happiness and the External Goods.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (1): 1–19. Charles, David. 1988. “Aristotle on Hypothetical Necessity and Irreducibility.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 69 (1): 1–53. ———. 1991. “Teleological Causation in the Physics.” In Judson 1991, 101–28. ———. 2006. “Aristotle’s Desire.” In Mind and Modality: Studies in the History of Philosophy in Honor of Simo Knuuttila, edited by Vesa Hirvonen, Toivo J. Holopainen, and Miira Tuominen, 19–40. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2010. “Metaphysics Θ.7 and 8: Some Issues Concerning Actuality and Potentiality.” In Lennox and Bolton 2010, 168–97. Cleary, John J. 1988. Aristotle on the Many Senses of Priority. Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ———. 1994. “Emending Aristotle’s Division of Theoretical Sciences.” The Review of Metaphysics 48 (1): 33–70. ———. 1995. Aristotle and Mathematics: Aporetic Method in Cosmology and Metaphysics. Leiden: Brill. Code, Alan. 1997. “The Priority of Final Causes over Efficient Causes in Aristotle’s PA.” In Kullmann and Föllinger 1997, 127–43. Cohen, Sheldon M. 1994. “Aristotle on Elemental Motion.” Phronesis 39 (2): 150–59. ———. 1996. Aristotle on Nature and Incomplete Substance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coope, Ursula. 2012. “Why Does Aristotle Think That Ethical Virtue Is Required for Practical Wisdom?” Phronesis 57 (2): 142–63. Cooper, John M. 1975. Reason and Human Good in Aristotle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. ———. 1977. “Friendship and the Good in Aristotle.” In Cooper 1999, 336–55. ———. 1982. “Aristotle on Natural Teleology.” In Cooper 2004, 107–29. From Language and Logos: Studies in Ancient Philosophy Presented to G. E. L. Owen, edited by Malcolm Schofield and Martha Craven Nussbaum, 197–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1985. “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune.” In Cooper 1999, 292–311. From Philosophical Review 94 (2): 173–96.

278

Wor ks C ited

———. 1985a. “Hypothetical Necessity.” In Cooper 2004, 130–47. From Gotthelf 1985, 151–67. ———. 1987. “Contemplation and Happiness: A Reconsideration.” Synthese 72 (2): 187–216. Reprinted in Cooper 1999, 212–36. ———. 1988. “Metaphysics in Aristotle’s Embryology.” In Cooper 2004, 174–203. From Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 214:14–41; also in Devereux and Pellegrin 1990, 55–84. ———. 1989. “Some Remarks on Aristotle’s Moral Psychology.” In Cooper 1999, 237–52. From Roche 1989a, 25–42. ———. 1996. “Reason, Moral Virtue, and Moral Value.” In Rationality in Greek Thought, edited by Michael Frede and Gisela Striker, 81–114. Oxford: Clarendon. Reprinted in Cooper 1999, 253–80. ———. 1996a. “An Aristotelian Theory of the Emotions.” In Essays on Aristotle’s “Rhetoric,” edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, 238–57. Berkeley: University of California Press. Reprinted in Cooper 1999, 406–23. ———. 1999. Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ———. 2003. “Plato and Aristotle on ‘Finality’ and ‘(Self-)Sufficiency.’ ” In Cooper 2004, 270–308. From Plato and Aristotle’s Ethics, edited by Robert Heinaman, 117–47. London: Ashgate, 2003. ———. 2004. Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ———. 2010. “Political Community and the Highest Good.” In Lennox and Bolton 2010, 212–64. ———. 2013. “Aristotelian Responsibility.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 45:265–312. Crisp, Roger. 1994. “Aristotle’s Inclusivism.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12:111–36. ———. 2014. “Nobility in the Nicomachean Ethics.” Phronesis 59 (3): 231–45. Crubellier, Michel. 2009. “Aporiai 1–2.” In Aristotle, “Metaphysics” Beta, edited by Michel Crubellier and André Laks. Symposium Aristotelicum 16. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curzer, Howard. 1991. “The Supremely Happy Life in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.” Apeiron 24 (1): 47–69. ———. 1996. “A Defense of Aristotle’s Doctrine that Virtue Is a Mean.” Ancient Philosophy 16 (1): 129–38. ———. 2012. Aristotle and the Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davis, Michael. 1992. Aristotle’s “Poetics”: The Poetry of Philosophy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.



Wor ks C ited

279

———. 1996. The Politics of Philosophy: A Commentary on Aristotle’s “Politics.” Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. De Koninck, Thomas. 1994. “Aristotle on God as Thought Thinking Itself.” The Review of Metaphysics 47 (3): 471–515. Deslauriers, Marguerite. 2002. “How to Distinguish Aristotle’s Virtues.” Phronesis 47 (2): 101–26. Devereux, Daniel. 1981. “Aristotle on the Essence of Happiness.” In O’Meara 1981, 247–60. Devereux, Daniel, and Pierre Pellegrin, eds. 1990. Biologie, logique, et métaphysique chez Aristote. Actes du Séminaire C.N.R.S.-N.S.F. Oléron 28 juin– 3 juillet 1987. Paris: C.N.R.S. Éditions. Douglas, Mary. 2007. Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Dover, Kenneth James. 1974. Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett. Dow, Jamie. 2009. “Feeling Fantastic? Emotions and Appearances in Aristotle.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 37:143–75. ———. 2011. “Aristotle’s Theory of the Emotions: Emotions as Pleasures and Pains. In Pakaluk and Pearson 2011, 47–74. ———. 2014. “Feeling Fantastic Again: Passions, Appearances, and Beliefs in Aristotle.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 46:213–51. Drozdek, Adam. 1997. “Aristotle’s Razor.” Diálogos 70:181–98. Dustin, Christopher A. 1995. “Commentary on Sherman.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 9 (1993), edited by John J. Cleary and William Wians, 34–53. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. 1983. Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Insight. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Falcon, Andrea. 2005. Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferguson, John. 1985. “Teleology in Aristotle’s Politics.” In Gotthelf 1985, 259–73. Flakne, April. 2005. “Embodied and Embedded: Friendship and the Sunaisthetic Self.” Epoché 10 (1): 37–63. Ford, Anton. 2010. “Response to Irwin.” In Asmis 2010, 396–402. Fortenbaugh, William W. 1978. “Aristotle’s Rhetoric on Emotions.” In Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji 1978, 133–53. ———. 1991. “Aristotle’s Distinction between Moral Virtue and Practical Wisdom.” In Anton and Preus 1991, 97–106.

280

Wor ks C ited

Frede, Dorothea. 2006. “Pleasure and Pain in Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Kraut 2006, 255–75. Frede, Michael, and David Charles, eds. 2000. Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” Book Lambda. Symposium Aristotelicum 13. Oxford: Clarendon. Frey, Christopher. 2015. “Capacities and the Eternal in Metaphysics Θ.8 and De Caelo.” Phronesis 60 (1): 88–126. Furley, David. 1985. “The Rainfall Example in Physics ii 8.” In Gotthelf 1985, 177–82. Gallop, David. 1990. “Animals in the Poetics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 8:145–71. Garver, Eugene. 1989. “The Moral Virtues and the Two Sides of Energeia.” Ancient Philosophy 9 (2): 293–312. ———. 2006. Confronting Aristotle’s Ethics: Ancient and Modern Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gentzler, Jyl, ed. 1998. Method in Ancient Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon. Gerson, Lloyd P., ed. 1999. Aristotle: Critical Assessments. Vol. 2, Physics, Cosmology, and Biology, and vol. 3, Psychology and Ethics. London / New York: Routledge / Garland. Gill, Mary Louise. 1997. “Material Necessity and Meteorology IV 12.” In Kullmann and Föllinger 1997, 145–61. ———. 2009. “The Theory of the Elements in De caelo 3 and 4.” In Bowen and Wildberg 2009, 139–61. Gill, Mary Louise, and James G. Lennox, eds. 1994. Self-Motion: From Aristotle to Newton. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Glassen, Peter. 1957. “A Fallacy in Aristotle’s Argument about the Good.” Philosophical Quarterly 7 (29): 319–22. Gómez-Lobo, Alfonso. 1991. “The Ergon Inference.” In Anton and Preus 1991, 43–57. Gotthelf, Allan, ed. 1985. Aristotle on Nature and Living Things: Philosophical and Historical Studies Presented to David M. Balme on his Seventieth Birthday. Pittsburgh / Bristol: Mathesis / Bristol Classical Press. ———. 1987. “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality,” with additional notes and “Postscript 1986.” In Gotthelf 2012a, 3–44. From Gotthelf and Lennox 1987, 204–42. ———. 1989. “The Place of the Good in Aristotle’s Natural Teleology.” In Gotthelf 2012a, 45–66. From Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 4 (1988), edited by John J. Cleary and Daniel C. Shartin, 113–35. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. ———. 2012. “Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology.” In Gotthelf 2012a, 67–89.



Wor ks C ited

281

———. 2012a. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2012b. See Leunissen and Gotthelf 2012. Gotthelf, Allan, and James G. Lennox, eds. 1987. Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gottlieb, Paula. 2009. The Virtue of Aristotle’s Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gould, Carol S. 1994. “A Puzzle about the Possibility of Aristotelian enkrateia.” Phronesis 39 (2): 174–86. Gregoric, Pavel. 2001. “The Heraclitus Anecdote: De Partibus Animalium i 5.645a17–23. Ancient Philosophy 21 (1): 73–85. Grönroos, Gösta. 2007. “Listening to Reason in Aristotle’s Moral Psychology.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 32:251–71. ———. 2015. “Wish, Motivation and the Human Good in Aristotle.” Phronesis 60 (1): 60–87. Gurtler, Gary M., SJ. 2003. “The Activity of Happiness in Aristotle’s Ethics.” The Review of Metaphysics 56 (4): 801–34. Halliwell, Stephen. 1992. “Pleasure, Understanding, and Emotion in Aristotle’s Poetics.” In Essays on Aristotle’s “Poetics,” edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ———. 1998. Aristotle’s “Poetics.” Reprinted with a new introduction. London: Duckworth. Halper, Ed. 1995. “The Substance of Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Sim 1995, 3–28. Hankinson, R. J. 1993. See Matthen and Hankinson 1993. Heidegger, Martin. 2002. Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann. Translated by Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer as Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Heinaman, Robert. 1994. “Is Aristotle’s Definition of Change Circular?” Apeiron 27 (1): 25–37. ———. 2002. “The Improvability of Eudaimonia in the Nicomachean Ethics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 23:99–145. ———. 2007. “Eudaimonia as an Activity in Nicomachean Ethics I.8–12.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 33:221–54. ———. 2011. “Pleasure as an Activity in the Nicomachean Ethics.” In Pakaluk and Pearson 2011, 7–45. Henry, Devin. 2008. “Organismal Natures.” In Mouracade 2008, 47–64. ———. 2013. “Optimality Reasoning in Aristotle’s Natural Teleology.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 45:225–63.

282

Wor ks C ited

Hill, Susanne. 1995. “Two Perspectives on the Ultimate End.” In Sim 1995, 99–114. Homiak, Marcia. 1981. “Virtue and Self-Love in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (4): 633–51. Hursthouse, Rosalind. 1999. “A False Doctrine of the Mean.” In Sherman 1999, 105–19. From Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 81 (1980–81): 57–72. Hutchinson, Douglas S. 1986. The Virtues of Aristotle. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Irwin, Terence H. 1978. “First Principles in Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 3, Studies in Ethical Theory, edited by Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, 252–72. Morris: University of Minnesota, Morris. ———. 1980. “The Metaphysical and Psychological Basis of Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Rorty 1980, 35–53. ———. 1980a. “Reason and Responsibility in Aristotle.” In Rorty 1980, 117–55. ———. 1981. “Aristotle’s Methods of Ethics.” In O’Meara 1981, 193–223. ———. 1985. “Permanent Happiness: Aristotle and Solon.” In Sherman 1999, 1–33. From Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3:89–124. ———. 1986. “Aristotle’s Conception of Morality.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1985), edited by John J. Cleary, 115–43. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. ———. 1991. “The Structure of Aristotelian Happiness.” Ethics 101 (2): 382–91. ———. 2010. “The Sense and Reference of Kalon in Aristotle.” In Asmis 2010, 381–96. ———. 2011. “Beauty and Morality in Aristotle.” In Miller 2011, 239–53. Johansen, Thomas Kjeller. 2006. “In Defense of Inner Sense: Aristotle on Perceiving that One Sees.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 21 (2005), edited by John J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 235–76. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2012. The Powers of Aristotle’s Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, Monte Ransome. 2005. Aristotle on Teleology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Judson, Lindsay, ed. 1991. Aristotle’s “Physics”: A Collection of Essays. Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 1991a. “Chance and ‘Always or For the Most Part’ in Aristotle.” In Judson 1991, 73–99. Kahn, Charles H. 1981. “Aristotle on Altruism.” Mind n.s. 90 (357): 20–40. ———. 1985. “The Place of the Prime Mover in Aristotle’s Natural Teleology.” In Gotthelf 1985, 183–205.



Wor ks C ited

283

Katayama, Errol. 2011. “Soul and Elemental Motion in Aristotle’s Physics VIII 4.” Apeiron 44 (2): 163–90. Katz, Emily Catherine, and Ronald Polansky. 2006. “The Bad Is Last but Does Not Last: Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ 9.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 31:233–42. Kelsey, Sean. 2003. “Aristotle’s Definition of Nature.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 25:59–87. Kenny, Anthony. 1978. The Aristotelian Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon. Keyt, David. 1991. “Three Basic Theorems in Aristotle’s Politics.” In A Companion to Aristotle’s “Politics,” edited by David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, 118–41. Oxford: Blackwell. Kontos, Pavlos. 2014. “The Visibility of Goodness.” In Baracchi 2014, 227–40. Korsgaard, Christine M. 1986. “Aristotle on Function and Virtue.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 2 (3): 259–79. Kosman, L. Aryeh. 1980. “Being Properly Affected: Virtues and Feelings in Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Rorty 1980, 103–16. ———. 1987. “Animals and Other Beings in Aristotle.” In Gotthelf and Lennox 1987, 360–91. ———. 1988. “Divine Being and Divine Thinking in Metaphysics Lambda.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1987), edited by John J. Cleary, 165–88. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. ———. 2000. “Metaphysics XII 9: Divine Thought.” In Frede and Charles 2000, 307–26. ———. 2004. “Aristotle on the Desirability of Friends.” Ancient Philosophy 24 (1): 135–54. ———. 2006. “Commentary on Johansen.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 21 (2005), edited by John J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 277–83. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2010. “Beauty and the Good: Situating the καλόν.” In Asmis 2010, 341–57. ———. 2010a. “Male and Female in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals.” In Lennox and Bolton 2010, 147–67. Kraut, Richard. 1989. Aristotle on the Human Good. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ———. 1995. “Reply to Professor Roche.” In Sim 1995, 139–48. ———. 2002. Aristotle: Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———, ed. 2006. The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Ethics. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. ———. 2006a. “Doing without Morality: Reflections on the Meaning of Dein

284

Wor ks C ited

in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 30:159–200. ———. 2013. “An Aesthetic Reading of Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy, edited by Verity Harte and Melissa Lane, 231–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kullmann, Wolfgang, and Sabine Föllinger, eds. 1997. Aristotelische Biologie: Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Laks, André. 2000. “Metaphysics XII 7.” In Frede and Charles 2000, 207–43. Lang, Helen. 1994. “Why the Elements Imitate the Heavens.” In Sim 1995, 305–24. From Ancient Philosophy 14 (2): 335–54. ———. 1998. The Order of Nature in Aristotle’s Physics: Place and the Elements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009. “Body, Natural Things, and the Science of Nature.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 24 (2008), edited by John J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 197–217. Leiden: Brill. Lawrence, Gavin. 1993. “Aristotle and the Ideal Life.” In Gerson 1999, 3:184– 210. From Philosophical Review 102 (1): 1–34. ———. 1997. “Nonaggregatability, Inclusiveness, and the Theory of Focal Value: Nicomachean Ethics I.7.1097b16–20.” Phronesis 42 (1): 33–76. ———. 2001. “The Function of the Function Argument.” Ancient Philosophy 21 (2): 445–75. ———. 2006. “Human Good and Human Function.” In Kraut 2006, 37–75. Lear, Gabriel Richardson. 2004. Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ———. 2006. “Aristotle on Moral Virtue and the Fine.” In Kraut 2006, 116–36. ———. 2010. “Response to Kosman.” In Asmis 2010, 357–62. Leggatt, Stuart. 1995. Aristotle, On the Heavens I and II. Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Leighton, Stephen R. 1982. “Aristotle and the Emotions.” Phronesis 27 (2): 144–74. Lennox, James G. 1984. “Aristotle on Change.” In Lennox 2001a, 250–58. From Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 66 (1): 52–60. ———. 1985. “Are Aristotelian Species Eternal?” In Lennox 2001a, 131–59. From Gotthelf 1985, 67–94. ———. 2001a. Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2010. “The Unity and Purpose of On the Parts of Animals I.” In Lennox and Bolton 2010, 56–77.



Wor ks C ited

285

Lennox, James G., and Robert Bolton, eds. 2010. Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leunissen, Mariska. 2010. Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leunissen, Mariska, and Allan Gotthelf. 2012. “ ‘ What’s Teleology Got to Do with It?’: A Reinterpretation of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals Book V.” In Gotthelf 2012a, 117–41. Lloyd, G. E. R. 1966. Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reprinted in Bristol / Indianapolis, Ind.: Bristol Classical Press / Hackett, 1987 and 1992. ———. 1990. “Aristotle’s Zoology and His Metaphysics. The Status Quaestionis. A Critical Review of Some Recent Theories.” In Devereux and Pellegrin 1990, 7–35. ———. 1996. Aristotelian Explorations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lockwood, Thornton. 2014. “Competing Ways of Life and Ring Composition (NE x 6–8).” In Polansky 2014, 350–69. Long, A. A. 2011. “Aristotle on Eudaimonia, Nous, and Divinity.” In Miller 2011, 92–113. Lorenz, Hendrik. 2009. “Virtue of Character in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 37:177–212. ———. 2009a. “Nicomachean Ethics VII. 4: Plain and Qualified akrasia.” In Natali 2009, 72–101. Losin, Peter. 1987. “Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 4 (3): 329–41. Louden, Robert B. 1991. “Aristotle’s Practical Particularism.” In Anton and Preus 1991, 159–78. Loux, Michael J. 1995. “Understanding Process: Reflections on Physics III.1.” In Sim 1995, 281–303. Madigan, Arthur, SJ. 1985. “EN IX.8: Beyond Egoism and Altruism?” Modern Schoolman 63 (1): 1–20. Also in Anton and Preus 1991, 73–94. Maher, Daniel P. 2012. “Contemplative Friendship in Nicomachean Ethics.” The Review of Metaphysics 65 (4): 765–94. Makin, Stephen. 2003. “What Does Aristotle Mean by Priority in Substance?” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 23:209–38. Malink, Marko. 2013. “Essence and Being: A Discussion of Michail Peramatzis, Priority in Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics.’ ” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 45:341–62.

286

Wor ks C ited

Matthen, Mohan. 2001. “The Holistic Presuppositions of Aristotle’s Cosmol­ ogy.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20:171–99. ———. 2009. “Why Does Earth Move to the Center? An Examination of Some Explanatory Strategies in Aristotle’s Cosmology.” In Bowen and Wildberg 2009, 119–38. Matthen, Mohan, and R. J. Hankinson. 1993. “Aristotle’s Universe: Its Form and Matter.” In Gerson 1999, 2:209–26. From Synthese 96 (3): 417–35. Mayhew, Robert. 1995. “Aristotle on the Self-Sufficiency of the City.” History of Political Thought 16 (4): 488–502. McDowell, John. 1980. “The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Rorty 1980, 359–76. Mendell, Henry. 1989. Review of O’Meara 1981. Ancient Philosophy 9 (2): 340–50. Menn, Stephen. 1992. “Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good.” The Review of Metaphysics 45 (3): 543–73. ———. 1994. “The Origins of Aristotle’s Concept of Ἐνέργεια: Ἐνέργεια and Δύναμις.” Ancient Philosophy 14 (1): 73–114. ———. Unpublished. “The Aim and the Argument of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.” Available at https://www.philosophie.hu-berlin.de/de/lehrbereiche/ antike/mitarbeiter/menn/contents. Meyer, Susan Sauvé. 1992. “Aristotle, Teleology, and Reduction.” In Gerson 1999, 2:90–117. ———. 2011. Aristotle on Moral Responsibility: Character and Cause. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted with a new introduction. ———. 2011a. “Living for the Sake of an Ultimate End.” In Miller 2011, 47–65. Miller, Fred D., Jr. 1995. Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s “Politics.” Oxford: Clarendon. Miller, Jon. 2011. Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller, Mitchell. 2007. Review of Sayre 2006. Journal of the International Plato Society 7. Available at http://nd.edu/~plato/plato7issue/ Millerfinal07.pdf. Mirus, Christopher V. 2001. “Homonymy and the Matter of a Living Body.” Ancient Philosophy 21 (2): 357–73. ———. 2004. “Aristotle’s Agathon.” The Review of Metaphysics 57 (3): 515–36. ———. 2004a. “The Metaphysical Roots of Aristotle’s Teleology.” The Review of Metaphysics 57 (4): 699–724. ———. 2006. “The Homogeneous Bodies in Meteorology iv 12.” Ancient Philosophy 26 (1): 45–64.



Wor ks C ited

287

———. 2012. “Order and the Determinate: The Good as a Metaphysical Concept in Aristotle.” The Review of Metaphysics 65 (3): 499–523. ———. 2013. “Excellence as Completion in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics.” The Review of Metaphysics 66 (4): 663–90. Moran, Richard. 1996. “Artifice and Persuasion: The Work of Metaphor in the Rhetoric.” In Essays on Aristotle’s “Rhetoric,” edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, 385–98. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moraux, Paul, and Dieter Harlfinger, eds. Untersuchungen zur Eudemischen Ethik. Symposium Aristotelicum 5. Berlin: De Gruyter. Moss, Jessica. 2012. Aristotle on the Apparent Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mouracade, John, ed. 2008. Aristotle on Life. Special issue, Apeiron 41 (3). Kelowna: Academic Printing and Publishing. Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 1984. “Aristotle’s Rationalist Account of Qualitative Interaction.” Phronesis 29 (1): 1–16. Müller, Anselm W. 2004. “Aristotle’s Conception of Ethical and Natural Virtue: How the Unity Thesis Sheds Light on the Doctrine of the Mean.” In Was ist das für den Menschen Gute / What Is Good for a Human Being?, edited by Jan Szaif and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, 18–53. Berlin: De Gruyter. Nagel, Thomas. 1972. “Aristotle on Eudaimonia.” In Rorty 1980, 7–14. From Phronesis 17 (3): 252–59. Natali, Carlo. 2001. The Wisdom of Aristotle. Translated by Gerald Parks. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2007. “Rhetorical and Scientific Aspects of the Nicomachean Ethics.” Phronesis 52 (4): 364–81. ———, ed. 2009. Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” Book VII. Symposium Aristotelicum 17. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. “Posterior Analytics and the Definition of Happiness in NE I.” Phronesis 55 (4): 304–24. ———. 2014. “The Book on Wisdom.” In Polansky 2014, 180–202. Nielsen, Karen. 2007. “Dirtying Aristotle’s Hands? Aristotle’s Analysis of ‘Mixed Acts’ in Nicomachean Ethics III, 1.” Phronesis 52 (3): 270–300. Nightingale, Andrea Wilson. 1998. “Aristotle on the ‘Liberal’ and ‘Illiberal’ Arts.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 12 (1996), edited by John J. Cleary and William Wians, 29–58. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. Norman, Richard. 1978. “Aristotle’s Philosopher-God.” In Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji 1978, 93–102.

288

Wor ks C ited

Nussbaum, Martha Craven. 1978a. “Aristotle on Teleological Explanation.” In Nussbaum 1978, 59–106. ———. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. “The Discernment of Perception: An Aristotelian Conception of Private and Public Rationality.” In Sherman 1999, 145–81. Abridged from Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, chapter 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. ———. 2014. “Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundations of Ethics, with an Addendum.” In Baracchi 2014, 191–226. O’Connor, David K. 1990. “Two Ideals of Friendship.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 7 (2): 109–22. Oele, Marjolein. 2012. “Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle’s Concept of Pathos.” Epoché 16 (2): 389–406. Olfert, Christiana M. M. 2014. “Aristotle’s Conception of Practical Truth.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (2): 205–31. O’Meara, Dominic J., ed. 1981. Studies in Aristotle. Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 9. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. O’Rourke, Fran. 2006. “Aristotle and the Metaphysics of Metaphor.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 21 (2005), edited by John J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 155–77. Leiden: Brill. Osborne, Catherine. 2009. “Selves and Other Selves in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics.” Ancient Philosophy 29 (2): 349–71. Owen, G. E. L. 1957. “A Proof in the Peri Ideôn.” In Owen 1986, 165–79. From Journal of Hellenic Studies 77 (1): 103–11. ———. 1960. “Logic and Metaphysics in some Earlier Works of Aristotle.” In Owen 1986, 180–99. From Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century, edited by Ingemar Düring and G. E. L. Owen, 163–90. Symposium Aristotelicum 1. Göteborg: Elanders. ———. 1965. “Aristotle on the Snares of Ontology.” In Owen 1986, 259–78. From Bambrough 1965, 69–95. ———. 1986. Logic, Science and Dialectic: Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy. Edited by Martha Nussbaum. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Owens, Joseph. 1968. “Teleology of Nature in Aristotle.” In Aristotle: The Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, edited by John R. Catan, 136–47. Albany: State University of New York Press. From Monist 52 (2): 159–73. ———. 1981. “The ΚΑΛΟΝ in the Aristotelian Ethics.” In O’Meara 1981, 261–77.



Wor ks C ited

289

———. 1991. “Value and Practical Knowledge in Aristotle.” In Anton and Preus 1991, 143–57. Pakaluk, Michael. 1992. “Friendship and the Comparison of Goods.” Phronesis 37 (1): 111–30. ———. 2005. Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2011. “Mixed Actions and Double Effect.” In Pakaluk and Pearson 2011, 211–31. Pakaluk, Michael, and Giles Pearson, eds. 2011. Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Panayides, Christos Y. 1999. “Aristotle on the Priority of Actuality in Substance.” Ancient Philosophy 19 (2): 327–44. Pangle, Lorraine Smith. 2002. Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Patsioti-Tsacpounidi, Ioanna. 2006. “Commentary on O’Rourke.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 21 (2005), edited by John J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 178–85. Leiden: Brill. Pavlopoulos, Marc. 2003. “Aristotle’s Natural Teleology and Metaphysics of Life.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24:133–81. Payne, Andrew. 2000. “Character and the Forms of Friendship in Aristotle.” Apeiron 33 (1): 53–74. Pears, David. 1980. “Courage as a Mean.” In Rorty 1980, 171–87. Pearson, Giles. 2011. “Non-Rational Desire and Aristotle’s Moral Psychology.” In Miller 2011, 144–69. Pellegrin, Pierre. 1986. Aristotle’s Classification of Animals. Translated by Anthony Preus. Berkeley: University of California Press. Peramatzis, Michail M. 2008. “Aristotle’s Notion of Priority in Nature and Substance.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 35:187–247. ———. 2011. Priority in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peterson, Sandra. 1988. “Horos (Limit) in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.” Phronesis 33 (3): 233–50. Polansky, Ronald. 1983. “Energeia in Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX.” Ancient Philosophy 3 (2): 160–70. Also in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. 5, Aristotle’s Ontology, edited by Anthony Preus and John P. Anton, 211–25. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. ———. 2006. See Katz and Polansky 2006. ———. 2010. Aristotle’s “De anima”: A Critical Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

290

Wor ks C ited

———, ed. 2014. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2014a. “Introduction: Ethics as Practical Science.” In Polansky 2014, 1–13. Politis, Vasily. 1993. “The Primacy of Self-Love in the Nicomachean Ethics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 11:153–74. Preus, Anthony. 1983. “Eidos as Norm in Aristotle’s Biology.” In Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. 2, edited by John P. Anton and Anthony Preus, 340–63. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1990. “Man and Cosmos in Aristotle: Metaphysics XII and the Biological Works.” In Devereux and Pellegrin 1990, 471–90. Price, A. W. 1989. Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 2001. Review of Pakaluk 1998. Ancient Philosophy 21 (1): 215–23. ———. 2011. Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Rapp, Christof. 2009. “Nicomachean Ethics 13–14 (1154a21): Pleasure and eudaimonia.” In Natali 2009, 209–35. Reeve, C. D. C. 1992. Practices of Reason: Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics.” Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 1998. “Dialectic and Philosophy in Aristotle.” In Gentzler 1998, 226–52. ———. 2000. Substantial Knowledge: Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett. ———. 2012. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness: An Essay on Aristotle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 2013. Aristotle on Practical Wisdom: “Nicomachean Ethics” VI. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 2014. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics.” Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett. ———. 2014a. “Beginning and Ending with Eudaimonia.” In Polansky 2014, 14–33. Richardson, Henry S. 1988. “Commentary on Broadie.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1987), edited by John J. Cleary, 253–61. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. ———. 1992. “Desire and the Good in De Anima.” In Essays on Aristotle’s “De anima,” edited by Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. Oxford: Clarendon. Roche, Timothy D. 1988. “On the Alleged Metaphysical Foundation of Aristotle’s Ethics.” Ancient Philosophy 8 (1): 49–62. ———. 1989. “The Perfect Happiness.” In Roche 1989a, 103–25.



Wor ks C ited

291

———, ed. 1989a. Spindel Conference 1988: Aristotle’s Ethics. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 27 (supplement). Memphis, Tenn.: Memphis State University Press. ———. 1992. “In Defense of an Alternative View of the Foundation of Aristotle’s Moral Theory.” Phronesis 37 (1): 46–84. ———. 1995. “The Ultimate End of Action: A Critique of Richard Kraut’s Aristotle on the Human Good.” In Sim 1995, 115–38. ———. 2014. “Happiness and the External Goods.” In Polansky 2014, 34–63. Rogers, Kelly. 1993. “Aristotle’s Concept of Τὸ Καλόν.” Ancient Philosophy 13 (2): 355–71. ———. 1994. “Aristotle on Loving Another for His Own Sake.” Phronesis 39 (3): 291–302. Roochnik, David. 2008. “Aristotle’s Defense of the Theoretical Life in Politics 7.” The Review of Metaphysics 61 (4): 711–35. Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg, ed. 1980. Essays on Aristotle’s “Ethics.” Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1980a. “The Place of Contemplation in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.” In Rorty 1980, 377–94. ———. 1994. “The Psychology of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 8 (1992), edited by John J. Cleary and William Wians, 39–79. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. Rowe, Christopher. See Broadie and Rowe 2002. Russell, Daniel C. 2014. “Phronesis and the Virtues (NE vi 12–13).” In Polansky 2014, 203–20. Salmieri, Gregory. 2014. “Aristotle on Selfishness? Understanding the Iconoclasm of Nicomachean Ethics ix 8.” Ancient Philosophy 34 (1): 101–20. Santas, Gerasimos. 1989. “Desire and Perfection in Aristotle’s Theory of the Good.” Apeiron 22 (2): 75–99. Sayre, Kenneth M. 2006. Metaphysics and Method in Plato’s “Statesman.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scharle, Margaret. 2008. “Elemental Teleology in Aristotle’s Physics 2.8.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34. ———. 2008a. “The Role of Material and Efficient Causes in Aristotle’s Natural Teleology.” In Mouracade 2008, 27–45. Schmitz, Kenneth. 1984. “Natural Value.” The Review of Metaphysics 38 (1): 3–15. Sedley, David. 1991. “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?” Phronesis 36 (2): 179–97. ———. 2000. “Metaphysics XII 10.” In Frede and Charles 2000, 327–50.

292

Wor ks C ited

———. 2010. “Teleology, Aristotelian and Platonic.” In Lennox and Bolton 2010, 5–29. ———. 2012. “Aristotle on Place.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 27 (2011), edited by Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, and William Wians, 183–201. Leiden: Brill. Segvic, Heda. 2004. “Aristotle on the Varieties of Goodness.” Apeiron 37 (2): 151–76. Reprinted in Segvic, From Protagoras to Aristotle: Essays in Ancient Moral Philosophy, edited by Myles Burnyeat, 89–110. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009. Sharples, Robert W. 1985. “Species, Form, and Inheritance: Aristotle and After.” In Gotthelf 1985, 117–28. Sherman, Nancy. 1989. The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue. Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 1995. “The Role of Emotions in Aristotelian Virtue.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 9 (1993), edited by John J. Cleary and William Wians, 1–33. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. ———, ed. 1999. Aristotle’s Ethics: Critical Essays. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. Shields, Christopher. 1988. “Commentary on Kosman.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1987), edited by John J. Cleary, 189–201. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. ———. 1999. Order in Multiplicity: Homonyms in the Philosophy of Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2011. “Perfecting Pleasures: The Metaphysics of Pleasure in Nicomachean Ethics x.” In Miller 2011, 191–210. Shiffman, Mark. 2005. “Shaping the Language of Inquiry: Aristotle’s Transformation of the Meanings of Thaumaston.” Epoché 10 (1): 21–36. Sihvola, Juha. 1996. “Emotional Animals: Do Aristotelian Emotions Require Beliefs?” Apeiron 29 (2): 105–44. Sim, May, ed. 1995. The Crossroads of Norm and Nature: Essays on Aristotle’s “Ethics” and “Metaphysics.” Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. ———. 1995a. “Senses of Being in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.” In Sim 1995, 51–77. Smith, A. D. 1996. “Character and Intellect in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Phronesis 41 (1): 56–74. Sorabji, Richard. 1980. “Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue.” In Rorty 1980, 201–19. From Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 74 (1973–74): 29–51.



Wor ks C ited

293

Sparshott, Francis. 1994. Taking Life Seriously: A Study of the Argument of the “Nicomachean Ethics.” Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Stern-Gillet, Suzanne. 1995. Aristotle’s Philosophy of Friendship. Albany: State University of New York Press. Strohl, Matthew S. 2011. “Pleasure as Perfection: Nicomachean Ethics 10.4–5.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 41:257–87. Tuozzo, Thomas M. 1994. “Conceptualized and Unconceptualized Desire in Aristotle.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (4): 525–49. ———. 1995. “Aristotle’s Theory of the Good and Its Causal Basis.” Phronesis 40 (3): 293–314. ———. 1995a. “Contemplation, the Noble, and the Mean: The Standard of Moral Virtue in Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Aristotle, Virtue and the Mean, edited by Richard Bosley, Roger A. Shiner, and Janet D. Sisson, 129–55. Special issue, Apeiron 28 (4). Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing. Tutuska, John. 2013. “Aristotle on the Noble and the Good: Philosophic Imprecision in the Nicomachean Ethics.” Ancient Philosophy 33 (1): 159–79. Urmson, J. O. 1973. “Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean.” In Rorty 1980, 157–70. From American Philosophical Quarterly 10 (3): 223–30. Uscatescu Barrón, Jorge. 2002. “Das Gute im Horizont der Seinsfrage: Zur Bedeutungsmannigfaltigkeit des Guten bei Aristoteles.” Perspektiven der Philosophie 28:47–83. Vranas, Peter B. M. 2005. “Aristotle on the Best Good: Is Nicomachean Ethics 1094a18–22 Fallacious?” Phronesis 50 (2): 116–28. Walker, Matthew. 2011. “Aristotle on Activity ‘According to the Best and Most Final’ Virtue.” Apeiron 44 (1): 91–110. Ward, Julie K. 2008. Aristotle on Homonymy: Dialectic and Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wardy, Robert. 1993. “Aristotelian Rainfall or the Lore of Averages.” Phronesis 38 (1): 18–30. Weller, Cass. 2001. “Intrinsic Ends and Practical Reason in Aristotle.” Ancient Philosophy 21 (1): 87–112. White, Stephen A. 1989. “Reasons for Choosing a Final End.” In Roche 1989a, 209–32. ———. 1992. Sovereign Virtue: Aristotle on the Relation between Happiness and Prosperity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Whiting, Jennifer. 1986. “Human Nature and Intellectualism in Aristotle.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 68 (1): 70–95. ———. 1988. “Aristotle’s Function Argument: A Defense.” Ancient Philosophy 8 (1): 33–48.

294

Wor ks C ited

———. 2002. “Strong Dialectic, Neurathian Reflection and the Ascent of Desire: Irwin and McDowell on Aristotle’s Methods of Ethics.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 17 (2001), edited by John J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 61–116. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2002a. “Locomotive Soul: The Parts of the Soul in Aristotle’s Scientific Works.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 22:141–200. ———. 2006. “The Nicomachean Account of Philia.” In Kraut 2006, 276–304. ———. 2012. “The Pleasure of Thinking Together: Prolegomenon to a Complete Reading of EE VII.12.” In The “Eudemian Ethics” on the Voluntary, Friendship, and Luck, edited by Fiona Leigh, 77–154. The Sixth S. V. Keeling Colloquium on Ancient Philosophy. Leiden: Brill. Wieland, Wolfgang. 1975. “The Problem of Teleology.” In Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji 1975, 141–60. Translated from Die aristotelische Physik: Untersuchungen über die Grundlegung der Naturwissenschaft und die sprachlichen Bedingungen der Prinzipienforschung bei Aristoteles, §16 “Zum Teleologieproblem.” Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1962. Wielenberg, Erik. 2004. “Egoism and Eudaimonia-Maximization in the Nicomachean Ethics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 26:277–95. Wiggins, David. 1980. “Deliberation and Practical Reason.” In Rorty 1980, 221–40. Wilkes, Kathleen. 1978. “The Good Man and the Good for Man in Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Rorty 1980, 341–57. From Mind 87 (4): 553–71. Wilson, Malcolm. 2000. Aristotle’s Theory of the Unity of Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ———. 2013. Structure and Method in Aristotle’s “Meteorologica”: A More Disorderly Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winter, Michael. 1997. “Aristotle, hôs epi to polu Relations, and a Demonstrative Science of Ethics.” Phronesis 42 (2): 163–89. Witt, Charlotte, 1998. “Teleology in Aristotelian Metaphysics.” In Gentzler 1998, 253–69. ———. 2003. Ways of Being: Potentiality and Actuality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Wolfsdorf, David. 2013. Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wood, James L. 2011. “Contemplating the Beautiful: The Practical Importance of Theoretical Excellence in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (4): 391–412.



Wor ks C ited

295

Index locorum

Index locorum

Aristotle Categories 1 5 7 8 12

VII.15 239n1 1248b34–1249a16 47n72 1249a4–5 47n72 1249b17–26 220n75 VIII.3 74n43

1a1–6 113 4a34–b10 113 7b24–25 113

On the Generation of Animals I.1

715b4–16 131 715b14–16 131 I.18 724b5–6 179n72 I.20 729a9–11 179n72 I.21 729b4–8 179n72 729b17–21 179n72 730a28–30 179n72 I.22 730b8–32 179n72 I.23 731a30–b4 270 II.1 731b18–732a9 178; see also 255 731b28–30 271 731b28–31 217 732a3–6 179n72 732a11–22 247 732a11–23 265 732a17 263 733a32–b7 248 733b15–16 231n103 733b23–735a9 180n72 734b19–735a4 164n31

10b7 130 14b18–22 113

Eudemian Ethics I.1 239n1 I.8 1218b4–7 146n155 II.1 1219a35–39 239n1, 241 II.5 1222a17 220n75 1222b7–8 220n75 II.8 1224a26–30 65n13 II.9 1225b1–5 199n12 VII.12 1244b25 142n140 1244b26 142n140 1245a1–10 100n122 1245b4–5 142n140, 143n144

297

On the Generation of Animals (cont.) II.3 736b29–33 265 736b31–32 264n3 II.4 740a3–7 246 740b12–741a3 180n72 740b24–25 179n72 744b11–27 266 745a5–9 218n70 III.10 760a31–35 131 III.11 231 762a18–27 265 IV.1 180n72 765b8–15 179n72 766a19 180n72 766a24–25 180n72 IV.3 180n72 767b17 180n72 769a35 180n72 IV.6 774b5–775a4 248n23 IV.8 776b5–8 246; see also 248, 250 IV.10 778a6 217n67 V.1 778b1–6 202; see also 214

On Generation and Corruption I.2

315a26–b15 168 I.3 248 317b33–318a10 177 318a13–27 187n91 318a25–319a3 250n30 I.7 324a9–11 258 324b13–19 258 I.7–9 248 II.4 248 II.4–5 248 II.5 332a30–333a13 215n61

298

II.6 333a16–34 163 333a35–b3 163 333b3–20 164; see also 171, 255 II.7 334b11–15 164 II.8 335a18–21 217 II.9 335a24–26 258n12 335a25–26 185 335b4–7 258n12 II.9–11 185 II.10 1, 15, 232 336a15–18 177 336a17 184 336a20–23 185 336a34–b2 184 336b25–337a1 177 337a20–22 184 II.11 338b6–19 185n90

On the Heavens I.1

268a1–b5 260 268a9–15 231n103 268b5 218n72 I.1–2 268b5–14 260 I.2 269a2–b17 264 269a18–21 262 269b13–17 264 262, 263 269b16 I.2–3 257 I.5 273a5–6 256 I.8 277a26–27 256 277b5 256n3 I.9 279a11–22 243 279a21–22 243

Index locorum

II.1 284a2–11 217; see also 231 II.2 268 285a23–24 269n12 II.3 185n86 286a7–12 257 286a8–9 257 II.4 257n9 II.5 287b24–25 205n32 288a2–12 264 II.12 292a14–293a11 256, 257 II.13 293a27–b1 264 293b11–15 216 III.1 219n73, 257 298a32–b1 258 III.2 300a20–21 207 300b31–301a12 208 301a4–5 205, 207 301a9–11 205 III.4 302b10–14 210 302b20–24 210 302b26–30 210 III.6 248n25 III.8 307b19–21 257 307b19–22 66; see also 172n51 IV.1 308a21–22 269 IV.3 310b8–15 217n65 310b16–311a1 253 311a1–6 249 IV.4 312a12–16 217

History of Animals I.1



487a17–19 28 487b33–488a14 240n2 488b15 91

VIII.1 589a1–2 240n2 589a5–9 67 IX.1 608a15 91 608b2 91 IX.5 611a16 91 IX.6 612a3 91 612b1 91 IX.10 614b18 91 IX.29 618a25 91

Magna Moralia II.15 1213a20–24 97n111

Metaphysics I.1

I.2

I.3

981a19–20 146n153 981a24–b6 271 981b13–17 153 982b2 271 982b4 271 982b4–10 190n105 983a4–7 271

983a33 264n3 984b11–12 206 984b16–17 206 I.3–4 190n105, 193 984b8–985a10 I.4 984b33–985a1 206 I.5 986a22–26 149 I.7 988b6–16 191 988b15 191n107 I.8 989b18–19 217n67

Index locorum

299

Metaphysics (cont.) II.2 994b16–23 215 III.1 995b4–25 144 III.2 996a18–997a34 144 996a21–29 191; see also 203 996a21–b1 144; see also 203 996a29–30 147 997b5–12 148n161 III.3 144n146 III.4 1000b14 264n3 IV.2 22, 174 1003a33–b19 1003a35–36 34 1003b17 34 1004b15–26 151n174 1004b27 149 1004b28 149 IV.4 1007b18–20 221 1007b25–29 221 V.4 158n15 V.12 158n15 V.16 241 1021b23–29 224 V.17 212 1022a4–9 214 18, 136, 150 VI.1 1026a10–16 226 1026a18–23 271 VI.2 1026a33–b2 206 1026b4–10 205 1026b13 205 1026b13–21 205 1026b21 205 1027a5–7 205 22, 174 VII.1 1028a23 30 VII.3 1028b33–1029a7 174

300

VII.7 1032b1 153 1032b23 153 VII.16 1040b27–1041a3 148 VII.17 148 VIII.1 1042a24–31 174 1042a29 150 VIII.2 23 IX.6 22, 174 1048a25–b9 IX.6–8 189n98 IX.8 169n44, 222–24 1049b12–17 189 1050a4–b6 189 1050a7–8 272 174, 223 1050a21–23 1050b6–28 190, 243, 252n39 1050b13–28 221 1050b15 228n97 1050b17–18 228n97 1050b28–30 187n93 16, 255 IX.8–9 IX.9 1051a4–17 271 1051a4–21 222 1051a17–21 190 XI.1 1059a34–b1 145 1059a38–b21 147 1059b14–21 147 1059b15–16 147 XI.1–2 144 XI.7 1064b1–6 271 XI.8 1064b15–16 206 1064b23–30 205 1065a24–26 205; see also 207 1066a15 149 22–23, 209n46 XII.4–5

Index locorum

XII.6 1071b3–4 226 1072a8 148 XII.6–7 145 XII.7 150 1072a25–b1 149 1072b2–3 87 1072b10–16 188n96 1072b22–30 243 XII.9 1074b15–35 271 1074b23–24 150 1074b33–36 150 1075a1–3 150 XII.10 15, 154n6 1075a11–14 206 1075a11–25 150 1075a12 151 1075a16 206 1075a18–19 206 1075a19–23 71 1075a36–b1 191 1075b8–10 191 1075b20–21 271 1076a3–4 272 XIII.3 1078a31–b5 145; see also 210 1078a34 147 1078a36 147 1078b1–2 147 XIV.4 1091a29–33 244 1091b16–20 244

Meteorology I.1

338b20–21 204 I.14 352a12 264n3 II.1 353a34–b5 264 II.5 361b30–35 229 III.4 374b33 231n103



IV.1 378b15 217n67 378b29 202n26 379a10 217n67 IV.2 379b34 217n67 380a3 217n67 IV.3 380a19 217n67 380b14 217n67 381a14 217n67 IV.4 381b31 217n67 IV.12 255, 259n14 389b23–26 170 389b28–29 171 390a10–20 171 390b2–14 164n32

On the Motion of Animals 6

700a22 81n63 700b25 146n155 700b32–35 244, 271 700b34–35 263 9 267n7

Nicomachean Ethics I.1 7, 38 1094a1–2 25 1094a3 193n108 1094a3–6 25 1094a6–16 25 I.1–3 26 37, 39n51, 120 I.2 1094a18–22 26; see also 28 1094a24–b11 31 1094b7 24 1094b7–10 117 1094b8–10 111 I.2–4 123 I.3 1094b14–15 110 1094b14–16 109 133, 140 1095a5–6

Index locorum

301

Nicomachean Ethics (cont.) I.4

1095a16–17 29 1095a17–23 29 1095a19–20 62n4 1095a23–26 29 27n15, 30 1095a26–28 1095a29–30 30 1095b4–6 110 140n134 I.5 1095b14–16 30 1095b16–22 30 1095b22–29 141 1095b22–31 141 1095b22–1096a2 30 1095b26–30 86 1095b31–33 172 1095b32 173 1096a4–5 30 1096a7 47 11, 41 I.6 30, 162n25 1096a11 1096a17–29 32; see also 174 1096a17–b26 27 1096a19–21 174 1096a21–22 37 1096a29–34 30 1096b8–26 34 1096b24–25 56 1096b26–31 28 1096b28–29 129n95 1096b30–31 98n115 1096b31 24 1096b31–1097a13 27 1096b33–34 27 1096b34 61 1097a9 30 9n11, 31n28 I.6–7 I.7 2, 7, 28, 44, 49n76,52, 73–74, 82, 90, 123–24, 154, 240n2, 241, 242n8 1097a18–22 87 1097a25–b21 239 1097a26–27 47

302

I.8

1097a30–34 26 1097b22–1098a17 25; see also 34–43 1097b26 37 1098a3 1098a3–4 39 1098a7–8 39 1098a11 41 1098a16 24 1098a16–18 48

1098a30–1099a7 172 1098b12–20 44 1098b20–22 62n4 1099a16 132 1099a17–18 108 1099a18–22 115 1099a24–29 111 1099a29–32 48 1099a29–b6 50 1099a32 115 I.8–11 49 I.8–12 48n76 I.9 1099b11–13 140n134 1099b11–23 135 1099b15–16 92 1099b24 111 1099b26–28 50 1099b29–32 119 1099b32 115 I.10 123 1100a24–25 52 1100b2–3 61 1100b8–10 50 83, 97 1100b19–20 1100b20–21 124 1100b25–29 50 1100b30–31 124 1100b35–1101a6 153 1101a2 115 1101a4–5 134 1101a7–8 124 1101a13 111 1101a14–16 48 I.12 1101b31–32 115

Index locorum

I.13 1102a15 24 II.2 1103b26–31 133, 140 1103b31–34 73 1103b32 40 1103b34–1104a10 84 1104a11–27 68 II.3 67n22 1104b3–28 66 1104b9–11 108 1104b11 115 1104b30–31 55 1104b30–32 45, 106; see also 83 1104b30–34 55 1104b35–1105a1 45 1105a1 108 II.4 1105a23–28 63 1105a28–33 64, 84; see also 73 1105a32 40 II.5 1105b19–25 65 1105b21–23 66 1105b26–27 66 1106a3 65 II.6 1106a15–24 153 1106a26–b7 110 1106a26–b35 68 1106b3 220n75 1106b5–6 126 1106b5–9 126n82 1106b13–15 126n82 1106b14–28 56 1106b24–25 65 1106b28–35 69, 220 1106b36 65 1106b36–1107a2 69; see also 220 1107a1–2 73 II.7 1108a14–16 68 1108b3–4 52 II.8 1108b11–26 68



II.9 1109a20–30 67 1109a24–29 110 1109a28 110 1109b7–12 67 III.1 1109b30 65 1110a1 115 1110a4–b1 106 1110a21–22 117 1110a21–23 115 1110a29–30 117 1110b12–13 108 1110b14–15 108 1110b33–1111a1 110 1111a2–5 199n12 1111a3–6 110 1111a18–19 199n12 1111a28 115 III.2 1111b19–30 81 III.2–3 68 III.2–5 74, 81 III.3 73 1112a18–b11 68 1121a21–26 133n108 1112b11–12 75 1112b33–34 75 1113a2–4 67 III.4 1113a15–24 87 1113a15–b2 83 1113a22–b1 55 1113a31 109 1113a32 109 1113a32–33 132 1113a33–b2 108 1113a34–b1 109 III.5 106 1113b3 81 1113b3–4 75 1113b9–12 115 1113b11–14 81 1113b17–19 64 1113b25 115 1114b9 112

Index locorum

303

Nicomachean Ethics (cont.) III.6 1115a8–9 118 1115a12 110 1115a29–b6 119 1115a30–31 112 68, 82, 120 III.6–9 III.6–10 117 III.7 1115b10–13 118 1115b12 115 1115b12–13 110 1115b20–22 127 1115b20–24 118 1115b21 109 1115b23 115 1116a11 115 1116a15 115 III.8 1116a28 118 1116a29–30 106 1116b2–3 107 1116b3 115 1116b31 115 1117a4–9 130 1117a8 115 82, 115 1117a8–9 1117a17 115 III.9 1117b7–9 118 1117b9 115 III.10 46 III.10–12 68 III.11 1119a16–20 108 1119a17–18 110 45n66, 115 1119a18 III.12 1119b16 115 1119b16–17 110 1119b17 110 IV.1 120 1119b34–1120a3 125 1120a4–8 52n84 1120a11–12 184 1120a12–14 115

304

1120a15–23 111n34 1120a23–30 115 1120a27–28 110 1120a28 110 1120a34 110 1120b1 107 1120b1–4 115 1120b4 110 1120b17–18 52n83 1121a1 110 1121a4–5 110 1121b1–4 115 108, 115 1121b9–10 1121b10 115 IV.1–2 68 38, 124 IV.2 1122a34–b18 125 1122b1–2 127 1122b6 115n53 112, 127n85 1122b16 1123a4–5 120 1123a25 115n53 IV.2–3 112 IV.3 1123b7–8 112 1123b20–21 86 107, 127 1125a11–12 1125a25–27 52n83 1125a26 115 IV.3–5 68 IV.4 1125b9 110 IV.6 1126b28–29 110 1126b28–33 108 1126b28–1127a6 45n66 1126b29–32 115 1127a2–5 108 1127a5 115 IV.6–8 68 IV.9 106 V.1 1129b1–6 54 1129b25–1130a1 111; see also 120

Index locorum

V.6 1134a27 240n3 1134a34 54 1134b4 54 V.8 1135b12–16 199n12 1135b25 111n36 V.9 1136b20–22 111 1137a26–30 54 VI.1 1138b18–25 74 1138b18–34 73, 220n75 1138b22 220n75 1138b23 220n75 1138b34 220n75 1139a6–8 68, 132 1139a11–12 132 1139a12–14 133 VI.2 73 1139a19–20 65n13 1139a24–25 80 VI.4 1140a1–2 133 VI.5 9n11 1140a30–b4 68 1140b1–4 45 1140b4–6 80n62 1140b6–7 45 1140b25–28 132n107 VI.7 78 1141a20–22 135 1141a21–22 162; see also 183 1141a31–32 162; see also 183 1141a33–b3 135 1141a34–b2 135 1141b6 162; see also 183 1141b8–14 68 1141b8–23 68 1141b14–23 84, 99n119 VI.8 1142a11–30 68 1141b23–30 84 VI.11 1143a32–b5 84 1143a35–b5 101n128 1143b4–5 101n128



VI.12 1143b21–23 110 1144a6–9 75 1144a12 110 1144a23–b1 75 1144a26 115 VI.12–13 19 VI.13 9n11 1144b1–17 71 1144b21–28 73 1144b32–1145a2 59 1145a4–6 75 1145a6–11 59 VII.3 1147a24–25 94n106 VII.4 107, 116 1147b23–1148a22 46n68 1147b24–25 47 1148a22–b14 46n68 1148a23–24 47 1148a29–30 47 VII.5 1148b15–31 71 VII.7 1150a26–27 46n68 VII.9 1151b23–28 82 VII.11 1152b2–3 57 VII.11–14 55n96 VII.12 1153a12–15 134 1153a20–23 134 VII.13 1153b25–32 25, 67 1153b29–32 72; see also 154n6 VII.14 1154b21–22 42 VIII.1 8, 84 1155a4–31 92 1155a15 115 1155a28–29 107 1155b1–2 92 1155b8–9 92, 98n115

Index locorum

305

Nicomachean Ethics (cont.) VIII.2 1155b18–19 45; see also 83 1155b19–21 46 1155b21–27 83 1155b28 84 1155b31 87 1155b32–34 84 VIII.3 1156a11–12 87 1156a16–18 33 1156b9–10 87 1156b25–32 84 VIII.7 85n76, 121n75 1159a11–12 VIII.8 1159a22–24 86 1159a25–27 86 1159b16 106 1159b19–24 94n106 VIII.12 1161b18 64 1161b22–23 64 VIII.13 108, 111n34 1162b35–36 IX.2 1165a21–24 110 IX.3 1165b19–20 119 IX.4 85 1166a1–2 85 1166a13–23 89; see also 95n109, 98, 120n69 87 1166a14–16 1166a23–27 96n110, 97 1166a30–31 88 1166b11–18 98 184, 185n86 IX.7 1168a5–9 96n110 1168a9–11 108 1168a9–19 97 1168a10 109 1168a10–12 108 1168a15–18 108 1168a17 108

306

IX.7–9 85, 90, 92, 95n109 IX.8 1168a33–34 115 1168b5–6 85n76 1168b9–10 121n75 1168b27 120 1168b27–29 115 1168b27–34 108 1168b29–30 120 81n64, 141 1168b30 1169a5–6 108 1169a6–11 120 1169a6–12 115 1169a8–10 99 1169a16–18 90 119, 121 1169a18–19 1169a21–23 108 1169a22–35 115 1169a24 112 1169a26 112 99, 121 1169a32–34 1169a34–b1 121n75 IX.8–9 90n95 IX.9 8, 60n109, 92, 114, 132–33, 150n169 1169b9–10 86 1169b22–1170b19 108 1169b28–1170a4 96; see also 102, 128 1169b30–1170a1 139 1169b32–1170b15 108 1169b33 97n111 1169b33–34 86 1169b35 97n111 1170a3 97n111 1170a8–11 124n78, 128, 134 1170a13–14 93 1170a14–b12 94; see also 128 1170a19–24 221 1170a29–33 142 1170b4 142n140 1170b4–5 142 1170b10 142n140 1170b12–13 90

Index locorum

IX.9–11 8, 92 IX.10 1170b33–1171a2 114n51 IX.11 1171a24–26 107 1171b15–16 110 IX.12 60, 92 1172a10–14 85 X.1–5 55n96 X.2 1173a2–5 154n6 X.4 81n64, 101–2 1174b14–23 129; see also 149, 151 1174b15 130 1174b19 130 1174b19–20 130 1174b22–23 130 1174b26–29 129; see also 149, 151 1174b29 130 1174b33–1175a1 129; see also 149, 151 1175a10–21 96n110 X.4–5 30n25, 60, 95n109, 96, 101 X.4–6 55n96 X.5 1175a21–28 129 1176a3–5 67 1176a3–29 55 1176a8–12 67 X.6 1176b8 115n53 X.6–8 140n134 X.7 1177a12–21 102; see also 128–29, 130, 135 1177a14–15 71, 102n133 1177a27–b26 239 1177b4–15 75 1177b10–12 153 1177b11 141 1177b12–15 141 1177b13 141 1177b16–17 141 1177b17 112, 115



X.7–8 25n7, 49, 78, 88n86, 90, 95n109, 96, 102 X.8 43–44, 91 1178a13 110n32, 126 1178b2–3 112 1178b3 115 1178b3–5 54 1178b13 115 1179a4–5 141 1179a5 115 1179a11 115 1179a29 115 X.9 1179b7–11 71 1179b13–15 115 1179b15 108 1180a4–5 107 1180a5–10 115

On the Parts of Animals I.1 157, 169 639a1–3 271 639b11–21 166, 167n37 639b14–16 167n37 639b19–21 167n37 639b21–640a9 160n19 640a14–26 167n37 640a33–b4 50n78, 160n19, 168 640b29–641a6 172n51 167n37, 168 640b29–641a17 641a14–17 168 641a17 167 641a17–32 168 641a22–33 158n15 641a32–b10 95 641b10–20 203; see also 221 642a1–2 166 642a1–13 160n19 642a13–17 166 642a17–24 165n34 642a18–22 165n33 642a24–31 166 642a31–b4 160n19

Index locorum

307

On the Parts of Animals (cont.) I.5

644b22–645a26 264, 265 644b22–645a36 138; see also 14, 113, 148, 151, 153, 157, 160, 168–69, 173 644b27 138n128 644b29 139 644b32 264n3 644b37–38 139 645a8–10 142 645a12–13 142 645a13–15 142 645a25–26 146 645a30–35 143 645b14–20 39n50 II.2 259 II.14 658a18–24 266 III.3 665a6–26 266 III.4 665b15–24 266 III.5 667b29–668a1 266 III.10 672b8–24 266 672b11 267n8 672b15–24 267 IV.10 687a8–23 270

Physics I.4 I.5

187b7–13 209 188a17–18 209

188a35–b8 213 188b9–10 213 188b17–21 212 I.5–7 212–13 I.6 189a11–17 209 189a13 211 I.7 181, 227 189b13–14 213

308

I.9

189b34–190a3 213 190b13–17 212 190b28 212

192a16–19 217 II.1 23, 71, 202, 219n73 192b8–33 158 192b21–22 157 193a3–9 197 193a30–31 157; see also 167n37 193b6–7 157 193b6–18 197 II.2 194a28–33 191n107 194a30–33 256n4 194a32 195 194a32–33 161, 199; see also 192 II.3 194b29–30 158 194b31–32 158 194b32–33 197 194b33–195a3 197 195a24–25 197 195a25–26 197 II.3–7 197 II.4 195b36–196a17 198 II.4–6 71, 198 II.5 196b17–22 198 196b22 198 196b23–31 198 196b29–30 198 196b29–31 198 196b33–197a5 198 196b34–36 199n12 197a1–2 199n12 197a8–25 198 197a25–26 198 197a32–35 198 197a35 198 II.6 197a36–b22 198 197b15–16 198

Index locorum

197b18–20 198 197b18–21 199n12 II.7 198a24–25 158 198a25–27 158 198b8–9 161; see also 186 II.8 71, 158, 202 198b10 197 198b10–11 197 198b10–16 158n14 198b16–17 161 198b23–27 201 198b34–36 200 199a3–4 198 199a4–5 200 199a5–7 200 199a8–20 201n20 199a20–29 201 199a30–32 201 199b11–12 214 199b15–16 214 II.9 157, 158, 197n6; see also 161, 166, 170, 173 200a10–15 159 200a20–32 158n14 200a30–b8 159 III.1 200b12–25 225 200b26–27 226 201a10–11 226 201a12–18 228n97 201a27–29 226 201b4–5 226 III.1–2 7, 187, 226 III.1–3 228n97 III.2 225, 228 201b20 226 201b24–26 226 201b25 149 201b31–33 226 202a7–8 228n97 III.4 203b8–10 256 III.5 204b5–6 208



III.6 206b11–12 208 206b16–20 208 206b19–20 208 207a7–32 218 207a14–15 218 207a21 219 207a21–22 218 207a23–32 219 IV.2 209b1–11 217 IV.4 212a6 214n56, 251 212a20 214n56 IV.5 212b2–3 249n30 212b29–213a11 262n23 IV.9 217a26–31 248 217b8–12 249 V.1 224b35–225b9 229 225a1 229 225b8–9 230 V.1–2 224b35–225b11 229n94 V.5 235b6–7 229n99 236a10 256 236a12 256 VI.9 239b13 256 VI.10 241a26–b20 228n97, 230 VII.3 9n9, 249n30 VIII.1 250b12–15 232 250b14–15 187 252a11–12 204 252a16 204 VIII.4 255b8–21 249n27 255b29–30 252 VIII.6 259a6–13 211

Index locorum

309

Physics (cont.) VIII.7 260b7–13 249n30 260b29–30 252 260b29–261a12 249n30 261a13–26 250 VIII.7–9 185 VIII.8 262b30 256 VIII.9 265b13 256n3 15, 186 VIII.10

Poetics 6 7 21 22

1450a4–5 113 1450a15 113 1450b34–1451a6 113 1451a9–11 113

Posterior Analytics I.4

1457b6–9 35

73a37–43 133n112 I.6–7 8

1459a5–8 36

Prior Analytics

Politics I.2 245 1252b27–1253a3 241 1253a1–3 239 1253a7–18 67 1253a9–18 89 1253a18–29 241 1253a27 244 I.8 1256b32 240n3 I.9 1257a30 240n3 I.12 1259b1–4 245; see also 246 I.13 1260a12–14 245 1260a31–33 245 III.1 1275b21 III.9 1280b34–1281a2 240n3

310

III.12 1282b31–1283a3 52 IV.11 1296a31 137n125 VII.2 141n138 VII.3 1325b16–21 79n58 VII.4 1326a29–b2 114 1326b23–24 114 VII.5 1326b27–31 240n3 1327a1–3 114 VII.12 1332a7–27 53n86 VIII.3 1338a30–37 43 1338a31–32 43 VIII.5–6 124n78

II.21 67a37 143n144

On the Progression of Animals 4

705a31–32 268 705b2 268 705b2–8 268 705b12 268 705b18–21 268 4–5 268 5 706b3–15 266 706b11–16 269

On Respiration 13

477a13–25 264, 265 477a17–18 266n4 477a25–31 266n4

Index locorum

Protrepticus fr. 33 2 4

202n23 202n23

Rhetoric I.6–7 2 I.8 1366a1–2 221n77 I.9 120n69 1366a33–34 105, 128n90 1366a34 132 II.9 1387a26–b2 52n84 III.2 1405a8–9 36n42 1405b3–4 36 III.4 1406b20 36n42 III.10 1410b10–13 36n42 1410b15–21 36n42 1410b36–1411a1 35

On Sleep and Waking 2

455b13–25 91, 173 455b22–25 191n107 455b34–456a11 267n7

On the Soul I.1 I.2

402a1–7

265, 271

404b1–7 265 II.1 412a6–9 174n57, 212 412a9–10 181 412a10–11 227n94 412a19–28 41, 156; see also 169, 172 412a21–27 227n94 II.2 413a2–5 95 II.2–3 40



II.4 415a26–b2 72; see also 154, 179 415a28–29 258 415a29–b2 163 415b6–7 182 415b14–15 157n11 415b20–21 87 416a15–18 218n70 II.5 9n9, 227, 249n30 II.6 152 II.12 424a18 129 III.2 93 425b12–17 90 425b13 100 425b26–27 100 III.4 429a28–29 129 429b6–9 90 429b26–430a3 90 430a2–3 100 430a3–4 100 III.4–5 82n67 III.5 271–72 III.7 431a1–2 82n67, 100 431a8–14 102n133 431a10–11 129 431a10–14 101 431a16–17 82n67 431b2 82n67, 129 431b17 82n67 III.7–8 82n67 III.8 432a2 129 432a5 129 432a13–14 82n66 431b28 129 III.9 432b4–7 81n63 III.10 433b10–13 81n63 III.12 434b22–25 107n13

Index locorum

311

On the Soul III.13 435b19–21 107n13

VI.2 139b34–35 36n42

On Youth and Old Age 19. See On Respiration

Topics I.2

101a36–b4 151n174

Cicero Academica II

119 138n128

Plato Euthydemus 76n49

Republic I

Phaedo 99c1–8 191n107

Phaedrus 264c 113n47

Philebus 69, 214n56, 218–19 16c–18d 215n59 16d1 215n59 20c–d 196n2 23c–27c 215n59 24e7 220n76 25d–26d 165n34 26d7–9 215n59 64c–65a 165n34 67a 196n2

333e3–334a9 36 352d8–354a5 42 352e2–354a9 35n38 IV 81 VI 504d2–3 2 506b8–e1 1

Sophist 236c–237b 205 258b 205

Statesman 69 284b–e 220n76 284b9–c1 220n76

Timaeus 218–19 30c4 261n20

312

Index locorum

Index personarum

I ndex per sonarum

Abizadeh, A., 82 Achtenberg, D., 19, 34, 115 Ackrill, J., 27 Algra, K., 217, 251 Allan, D., 146 Anagnostopoulos, A., 226–27, 228 Anagnostopoulos, G., 99 Anaxagoras, 190n105, 191, 204, 206, 208–10, 221 Annas, J., 46, 48, 71, 72, 76, 85, 89, 119, 121 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas Aristippus, 144, 146 Balme, D., 137, 138, 167, 179, 183, 184, 185, 187 Barnes, J., 178, 191, 229, 260, 261 Barney, R., 8, 35, 37 Beere, J., 23, 169, 176, 189, 190, 223 Berti, E., 29, 48 Bobzien, S., 65 Bogaard, P., 163 Bolton, R., 42, 94 Broadie, S., 19, 25, 28, 30, 32, 39, 47, 55, 58, 65, 68, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 97, 102, 118, 128, 129, 130, 136, 140, 141, 142, 157, 158, 169, 190, 223, 226, 227, 228, 252 Brown, E., 51 Brunschwig, J., 150 Burnyeat, M., 65, 128 Carreras, A., 122 Cashen, M., 51 Charles, D., 81, 101, 136, 189, 197, 201 Cleary, J., 136, 146, 190 Code, A., 197, 200 Cohen, S., 172, 228, 248

Coope, U., 81 Cooper, J., 44, 45, 49, 51, 53, 55, 59, 60, 65, 74, 76, 79, 81, 82, 96, 97, 109, 111, 119, 130, 133, 140, 145, 154, 157, 158, 160, 179, 191, 197, 215, 220, 241, 242, 260, 263 Crisp, R., 45, 56, 62, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 116, 118, 121, 126 Davis, M., 113 De Koninck, T., 150 Democritus, 166, 168 Deslauriers, M., 81 Devereux, D., 48 Douglas, M., 8 Dover, K., 109 Dow, J., 65, 82, 130 Drossaart Lulofs, H., 178, 179 Drozdek, A., 210 Düring, I., 202 Empedocles, 94, 163, 165, 204, 206, 209–10, 264n3 Engberg-Pedersen, T., 122, 280 Falcon, A., 184, 185, 261 Ferguson, J., 183, 242 Flakne, A., 142 Ford, A., 109 Fortenbaugh, W., 65, 76 Frede, D., 46, 215, 220 Frey, C., 189 Furley, D., 158, 183, 199 Gallop, D., 113 Garver, E., 61–62, 64, 65, 78, 97, 119 Gill, M., 171, 228, 252

313

Glassen, P., 62 Gómez-Lobo, A., 42 Gotthelf, A., 146, 159, 167, 169, 175, 176, 182, 188, 191, 202, 263 Gottlieb, P., 68, 117 Gould, C., 82 Graham, D., 211, 251 Gregoric, P., 138 Grönroos, G., 76, 81 Gurtler, G., 140 Guthrie, W., 260, 261 Halliwell, S., 36, 131, 143 Hankinson, R., 260, 261 Heidegger, M., 4–5, 66n19 Heinaman, R., 48, 50, 128, 228 Henry, D., 143, 158, 191, 200 Heraclitus, 94, 138 Hill, S., 42, 97 Hursthouse, R., 68 Hussey, E., 217, 218, 219, 226 Hutchinson, D., 3, 39, 62, 76, 81 Irwin, T., 2, 19, 42, 43, 50, 54, 55, 62, 65, 76, 104, 107, 109–10, 112, 118, 120, 123, 124, 129, 130, 138–39, 140 Isocrates, 42n58 Jaeger, W., 244 Joachim, H., 165, 177, 185 Johansen, T., 81, 93, 102 Johnson, M., 7, 160, 172, 176, 182, 183, 187, 208, 257 Judson, L., 197, 198 Kahn, C., 36, 85, 90, 177 Katz, E., 190 Kelsey, S., 158 Kenny, A., 54 Keyt, D., 243 Kirwan, C., 214 Kontos, P., 127 Korsgaard, C., 81, 82 Kosman, L., 66, 89, 93, 97, 100, 104, 131, 142, 150, 154, 171, 180 Kraut, R., 27, 34, 50, 51, 57, 70, 78, 85, 110, 114, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 131, 243

314

Laks, A., 149 Lang, H., 157, 187, 205, 217, 219 Lawrence, G., 25, 34, 48, 72, 91, 136 Lear, G., 25, 27, 31, 57, 78, 88, 91, 101, 102, 104, 107, 114, 123, 126, 128, 129, 130, 133–34, 143, 145, 150, 256 Lee, H., 229 Leggatt, S., 23, 243, 256, 260, 261 Leighton, S., 65 Lennox, J., 138, 150, 165, 166, 167, 168, 178, 182, 198–99, 214, 252 Leunissen, M., 185, 202, 256, 257 Lloyd, G., 23, 36, 150, 179 Lockwood, T., 8 Long, A., 32, 140 Lorenz, H., 46, 47, 65, 75, 81 Losin, P., 68 Louden, R., 76, 77 Loux, M., 226–27 Lucas, D., 113, 114 Madigan, A., 121, 144 Maher, D., 94, 97, 142 Makin, S., 189, 190, 223, 225 Malink, M., 190 Matthen, M., 228, 251, 260, 261 Mayhew, R., 240 McDowell, J., 76 Mendell, H., 105 Menn, S., 29, 32, 145, 149, 150, 155, 190, 206, 222, 227 Meyer, S., 64, 65, 78, 140, 199, 200 Miller, F., 243 Miller, M., 220 Mirus, C., 164, 172, 259 Moran, R., 36 Moss, J., 75, 81 Mourelatos, A., 259 Müller, A., 268 Nagel, T., 10 Natali, C., 24, 25, 26, 27, 36, 42, 73, 75, 76, 77, 95 Nielsen, K., 117 Nightingale, A., 43, 107 Norman, R., 150 Nussbaum, M., 19, 76, 77, 244

I ndex per sonarum

O’Connor, D., 33 Oele, M., 66 Olfert, C., 62, 80 O’Rourke, F., 28, 36 Osborne, C., 97, 142 Owen, G., 23 Owens, J., 105–6, 134, 160 Pakaluk, M., vii, 25, 31, 33, 37, 74, 85, 89, 97, 106, 117, 121, 122, 130, 142 Panayides, C., 190 Parmenides, 181 Patsioti-Tsacpounidi, I., 36 Pavlopoulos, M., 158 Pears, D., 119 Pearson, G., 82 Peck, A., 178, 184 Pellegrin, P., 248 Peramatzis, M., 190 Peterson, S., 220 Plato, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8n8, 10, 11, 22, 27–28, 30–34, 35–36, 69, 76n49, 89, 106n4, 113n47, 144, 148, 165n34, 177, 186, 190n105, 191n107, 196n2, 203n27, 205, 207, 215n59, 218–19, 220n76, 244, 261n20 Platt, A., 178 Polansky, R., vii, 18, 53, 128, 190 Politis, V., 121 Preus, A., 155, 246, 266, 269 Price, A., 59–60, 76–77, 89, 97, 102, 121 Pythagoreans, 69, 74, 149, 220, 231 Rapp, C., 72 Reeve, C., 25, 27, 29, 32, 37, 39, 47, 51, 57, 66, 68, 69, 74, 75, 76, 79, 81, 86, 88, 89, 91, 97, 99, 100, 102, 120, 136, 139, 142, 149, 150, 151 Richardson, H., 77, 80 Roche, T., 27, 28, 34, 42, 50, 51, 53, 56, 98 Rogers, K., 70, 87, 105, 107, 109, 110 Roochnik, D., 79, 141 Rorty, A., 66, 83, 97 Ross, W., 146, 149, 191 Rowe, C., 47, 55, 97, 102, 118, 130, 142, 220 Russell, D., 76 Sachs, J., 6, 7, 86, 111 Salmieri, G., 89, 111



Santas, G., 27, 35 Saunders, T., 243, 245 Sayre, K., 220 Scharle, M., 169, 201 Schmitz, K., 263 Sedley, D., 151, 183, 260, 262, 269 Segvic, H., 22, 40, 55 Sharples, R., 180 Sherman, N., 66, 77, 82, 91, 96 Shields, C., 23–24, 32, 35, 40, 57, 128, 154 Shiffman, M., 6, 138 Sihvola, J., 82 Sim, M., 42 Smith, A., 77 Sorabji, R., 77 Stern-Gillet, S., 83 Strauss, L., 4–5, 149 Strohl, M., 128 Taylor, C., 119 Thomas Aquinas, 1–2, 5 Tuozzo, T., 48, 78, 81 Tutuska, J., 45, 104, 105, 108, 120, 128 Urmson, J., 68 Uscatescu Barrón, J., 177 Vranas, P., 27 Walker, M., 140 Ward, J., 23, 57 Wardy, R., 183, 260 Weller, C., 25, 31 Whalley, G., 113 White, S., 81 Whiting, J., 37, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 102, 142 Wieland, W., 176 Wiggins, D., 76 Wilkes, K., 62 Williams, C., 165, 177, 215 Wilson, M., 23–24, 28, 29, 32, 34, 38, 40, 48, 55, 190, 204, 257 Winter, M., 99 Witt, C., 3, 155, 181, 190 Wolfsdorf, D., 128, 129, 131 Wood, J., 81, 102, 133

I ndex per sonarum

315

Index rerum

Index rerum

ability (possibility; potency; power): dist.* actuality in general, 14, 57, 154n6, 155n7, 169n43, 174, 189–90, 206; divine, 114n50; for form, 156, 157n11, 181, 218n71, 219n43; as indeterminate, 221–23; for inworking or work, 65–66, 72, 93, 96, 100, 128–33, 153, 158n15, 159n17, 167n37, 171–73, 177–78, 241, 257–58, 267, 271–72; and motion, 225–29, 230n102, 232, 249; and self-sufficiency, 17, 240–43, 246–48, 252; translation of, 6–7. See also fulfillment; inworking; politics; work abstraction, 203–4 accidental (what “happens”), 17, 191, 205–7, 261, 262n23; category, 31–33, 37, 179n72; cause, 17, 184n86, 188, 191, 198–200, 204n29, 224, 257; good/beautiful not, 136, 143, 147, 192–93, 199–200; sensibles, 152; translation of, 32n32 act, actuality. See fulfillment; inworking action (doing; the practical), 25–26, 37, 72, 83–85, 113, 140, 144–47, 163, 169n43, 190–91, 197, 198n11, 214, 271; and affection, 12, 63–66; dist. contemplation, 14, 58–59, 78–80, 102–3, 133; contemplation of, 20, 82–83, 84, 93, 95–101, 103, 108, 132–34, 142, 221; excellence in (practical excellence), 14, 97n114, 140–41, 146, 166, 168–69; fine, 45, 73–77, 82, 104n1, 106–28, 129n95, 132–36, 143n145, 151–53; good and bad, 43, 69–70, 73–80, 100, 102–3, 130; goods achievable in, 9n11, 11, 19, 26, 29, 61; life of, 39–40, 85–86, 88, 133; and other goods, 48–57; philosophy

concerning (practical philosophy), 12, 18–20, 22, 27–29, 42n57, 92, 95–96, 105, 136, 153, 263, 271; dist. production, 74–75; responsibility for, 65n13; truth in (practical truth), 80n62, 99n119, 140; voluntary, 65n13, 117; dist. work, 38. See also fine activity. See inworking adornment: architectural, 51–52, 126; bodily and external goods as, 50–53, 60, 124; pleasure as, 55, 131–32 advantageous: dist. fine, pleasant, 45, 77, 83, 107–8, 120; dist. useful, 45. See also beneficial affection (being-affected): and character, 12, 62–63, 65–73, 77n50, 78, 92, 110, 115–16, 134; and desire for the good, 80–82, 130n97; of natural substances, 62, 65–66, 171–72, 224; and the unaffected, 267, 272. See also effecting; work alteration. See quality always or for the most part, 83, 97, 99n119, 140, 163, 200 analogy (proportion), 22–24, 35–36, 40, 51, 172, 234; in biology, 23n3; of cognition, 77n53, 101, 128–34; in EN I, 28–29, 56, 60; in the function argument, 34–43; of the good, fine, 10–15, 22, 27–29, 127, 128–34, 139n129, 147, 170, 172; in nature, 35n39, 39–41, 95n108, 171, 185, 219n73, 223–24, 262n23; of nature and art, 113, 135–37, 142, 159, 166–67, 203–4, 206n39. See also homonymy; metaphor; music

* dist. = distinct from

317

animals, 50n78, 98, 113, 156, 161, 162, 227, 234, 237; beauty of, 136–43, 145n150, 146–47; complete, 72, 246–48, 250, 252; good of, 71–72, 136–43, 154n6, 164–69, 171, 172–73, 175, 177–85, 202–204, 223–24, 255, 259; honorable, 263–71; political/social, 84, 239–42; reproduction of, 72, 177–88, 200, 231–32, 247–48, 249n30, 270; self-sufficiency and completeness in, 246–53; size of, 114n50. See also growth; human being; motion; part and whole; quantity appetite, 46n68, 81, 130n97, 133n11, 148 art, 23, 25, 30, 144, 152–53, 191, 197, 271; and excellence, 36, 51–53, 63–64, 73–78, 123–28, 134–36; fine, 42–43, 51–53, 73–74, 113, 123–28, 139, 142–43, 153; in function argument, 37–39, 42–43, 90; as useful, 32–33, 37–38, 63–64. See also analogy; prudence; work beautiful. See fine being. See ability; accident; categories; form; fulfillment; inworking; material; substance beneficial, 64, 74; dist. fine, 107–8, 123n77, 127; dist. necessary, 49–51, 172, 175, 246n21. See also advantageous biology: analogy in, 23n3; beauty in, 136–43; honorable in, 265–70; political animals in, 239n2; self-sufficiency in, 246–48, 250–53; species in, 246n21; teleology in, 159n17, 164–69, 171, 175, 177–85, 188, 202–4, 259 blessedness, 49–50, 93, 96, 135 body, 129n95, 230n102, 243, 251, 253; as such, 208, 217n67, 218–19, 249, 260–62; as image for soul, 28; living, incl. human, 23, 28, 98, 113, 129, 156, 178–81, 188, 234, 247, 253, 255, 262n23, 265–66, 271; natural, 66, 257, 260. See also elements; goods; homogenous bodies; part and whole bravery, 52n84, 68, 73, 90n92, 107, 117–19, 127

318

categories (figures of predication), 24n3, 31–33, 41, 64, 150n167, 174, 205, 209, 216, 219n73, 251n36 cause (the responsible), 66n17, 135, 249n30, 250; determinate as, 216–17; good or fine as, 1, 15–17, 30–31, 33, 136, 137, 143–47, 148–51, 154, 156, 159–69, 171, 176–93, 197–201, 206, 211, 216–17, 224, 241, 244, 247, 250, 269; of happiness, 53n86; human being as, 65n13, 84, 121–22; intelligibility through, 17, 155n7, 224, 235, 248n23, 271; kinds of, 157–58, 172–73, 177–78, 244, 258, 268; nature as, 137, 142–43, 157–69, 197–201, 203–5; in pros hen homonymy, 57n103. See also accidental; god; principle chance (“as it happened”; fortune), 17, 28, 150, 198–99; and happiness, 49–50, 52, 54, 57n102, 92, 107, 111, 124, 135, 153; in nature, 138, 163–65, 203, 205; dist. spontaneity, 163, 198. See also spontaneity change, 139, 157, 163, 190, 199, 203n27, 212–13, 219n73, 228–32; and excellence, 61, 64, 66n17 choice, 25–26, 71, 88–90, 197; character formed by, 66–67, 89n91; essential characteristics of, 60n109, 64–65, 74, 77, 80, 81n63, 84–85, 90; excellence of character as condition for, 64–66, 69, 75; excellent, 40, 43n62, 59, 70, 73–74, 79, 80, 82, 87n83, 97n114, 99n121, 102–3, 116, 120n69, 121n75, 126, 134, 153; objects of, 45–46, 54, 68, 76, 93, 96, 103, 104, 106–8, 112, 117, 149, 199n12, 233; prudence in, 74–75, 77 city, 111, 114, 117, 119–20, 122, 141n138, 145n150, 240–43; cf. fatherland, 112, 119–20. See also part and whole; politics coming-to-be (becoming; generation as genesis), 46, 94, 96, 114n50, 128, 190, 207, 215n59, 220n76, 240; by art, 63, 159, 212; someone else, 88–89, 91; of the elements, 179, 248–53; eternity through, 72, 177–88, 232; of living things and natural substances in general, 39n50, 72, 137–38, 154, 159, 163–67, 170, 174, 177–88, 202–3, 205, 206, 214, 231–32, 246–48, 250–53,

Index rerum

256, 258n12; dist. motion, 229–30; spontaneous, 72, 231. See also priority community: complete 111, 117, 240–43; human, 17, 99, 111–12, 119n68, 120–23, 240–42 complete (final; endlike), 17, 120, 173, 195n2, 224, 239–53, 260–61, 264, 269; animals, 72, 246–48, 250, 252; communities, 111, 117, 240–43; friendship, 12, 84; happiness, 101, 136; inworking or work, 55, 75, 128–29, 132, 134, 221; magnitude or motion, 216, 218, 230–32. See also inworking condition (state; habit), 71, 135, 244; of artifact, 63–64; of body, 55; of cognitive power, 128, 131–32; end of action correlative with, 109, 118, 125, 127; form as, 164, 258; human excellence and vice as, 55, 63–69, 74, 84, 119n67 contemplation (consideration; theory), 10–16, 19–20, 36, 156; human good as, 48n75, 49, 59n109, 74, 78–79, 96, 101–2, 111n37; life of, 19–20, 30, 54, 58–60, 62, 91n99, 95, 97–98, 105, 133, 135, 139–140, 170, 172, 173, 193–94, 203, 233–236, 271; sciences of (theoretical sciences), 13, 18–19, 27, 36n42, 41–42, 100n24, 134–51, 166, 203, 240n2, 264; translation of, 6, 30n25. See also action; excellence; fine; god; happiness; thought; wisdom continence (self-control), 46, 82 continuity: endelecheia as, 7, 177; sunechēs as, 172, 177–78, 184–87, 231–232 corruption. See destruction definition (boundary; demarcation), 192, 225; general notion of, 35, 157n12, 207; and homonymy, 129, 164n31, 241–42; as horos (defining limit), 74, 114n50, 213–14, 215n61, 216–17, 220n75; and limit, 213–15; as logos, 159–60, 165–68, 170–72; by power, work, and affection, 12, 14, 63–66, 90, 159–60, 164n31, 170–72, 176, 224, 241–42, 249, 257. See also determinate deliberation, 53, 59–60, 73, 105, 245; and choice, 64–65, 74, 76nn49–50, 102; and the fine, 80, 82–83



demonstration: and dialectic, 8, 18–19, 24n6; mathematical, 144–45, 147, 210 desire (striving), 26, 27n14, 29, 35n40, 43, 47n73, 65n13, 93, 244; dist. avoidance, 46n68, 101; and excellence, 68, 70, 79, 89n91, 91n99; for the fine, 80–82, 85, 88, 101, 102n133, 108, 115–23, 130n97, 133n111, 136n24, 145n151, 148–51, 194; as natural tendency, 72, 162–63, 177, 186; and practical knowledge, 81n63, 101; proportionate to end, 43–44, 49, 55–56, 107. See also appetite; spirit; wish destruction (corruption; perishing), 241, 249n30; as bad, 137, 139, 222, 224, 256; eternal as not subject to, 232, 244, 247; of livelihood, through prodigality, 124– 25; sublunary substances characterized by, 2, 137, 139, 148, 182, 184–88, 189–90, 248, 252, 256–58, 259, 261–62, 270. See also coming-to-be; eternity determinate, 16–17, 69, 156, 234; form as, 16–17, 211–13, 215–19; in human life, 62–63, 66–71, 73–74, 93, 95–96, 100, 103, 110, 114n51, 118–19, 125, 127, 129; and limit, 208, 213–15, 231n103; and motion, 225–32; order and, 145, 196, 202–6, 211–13; and power, 219–32 dialectic, 2, 24n6, 151n174, 157n12; Aristotle’s use of, 8–9, 19–20, 25n7, 27n14, 28n18, 29–30, 41–42, 46n68, 62, 86, 90, 92, 98n115, 105, 239n2, 249n30 difference, 66, 67, 225, 231, 248n23, 252, 257 divinity. See god effecting (making; production), 34n36, 46, 158n13; by art, 23, 37–38, 43, 63, 75–77, 112, 125–27, 152–53, 155, 159, 166–67, 203; and being-affected, 66, 171–72, 184, 257–59, 272; intellect as (DA III.5), 272; reproduction as, 72, 180n72, 200, 258 egoism, ethical, 116–23 element (simple body): defined, 171–72, 224, 249, 257, 260; good of, 17, 187nn92–93, 223–24, 232, 244, 245, 248–53, 255–62; heaven as, 204; more honorable, 217, 264–66; in living body, 159n17, 167n37;

Index rerum

319

element (simple body) (cont.) mixture of, 163–65, 170–71; motion of, 207, 217n65, 228n97, 248–53; number of, 210; as part of the universe, 216, 260–62. See also coming-to-be end (that for the sake of which; final cause), 7, 27n14, 97n114, 107, 114n52; activity of reason as, 43, 49, 57n103, 74–82, 122, 134n113; bad as metaphorical, 223n82, 224; benefit and beneficiary as, 87–89, 122; and chance, spontaneity, 198–99, 201; explanation in terms of, 158, 167, 170, 175–76, 182–83, 185, 192–93, 198, 202–3; form or nature as, 2, 8, 138, 143, 157–61, 163–69, 174, 201–3, 225, 240, 258; god as, 145, 148–51; good or fine as, 25–26, 32n33, 35n39, 40n54, 44–46, 73, 78n55, 87–88, 97n114, 107–23, 127, 138, 143–47, 153–54, 155n7, 157, 159, 161–69, 172–76, 190–93, 195–204, 206, 239, 266–67; inworking as, 7, 25–26, 39n50, 169–74, 189, 222–25, 232, 272; limit, boundary as, 214, 218, 220n75; nature as acting for the sake of, 72, 155n7, 178, 183, 185–86, 231, 255–62; of particular actions, 28–29, 34, 35n39, 43, 64, 74–78; ultimate human, 20, 26–27, 29, 40, 43, 55n95, 57, 59–60, 76, 78n56, 92, 102n133, 135; and work, 7, 25–26, 34–35, 39n50, 40–43, 154, 159, 170–73, 223, 255–59. See also means eternal (always): activity of humans and beasts not, 92, 172; coming-to-be as, 72, 177–88, 232; divine as, 2, 15, 72, 148, 163, 243–44, 272; heavens as, 137, 139–41, 205n32, 252, 257, 261–62, 264; living species as, 178–79, 182, 197n6, 263; motion as, 211, 252, 257, 262; priority of, 189–90, 222, 224, 269 excellence (virtue), 49, 55, 62, 78, 119–20, 239n1, 245; in character: action and affection perfected by, 12, 45, 62–72, 132–33, 140–41; in character: defined, 63, 68–69, 80, 220; in character: and friendship, 83–99, 120–23; in character: and prudence, 73–78; in character: right desire in, 80–83; in character: as useful and political, 166, 168–69; contem-

320

plative, 101–2, 166, 168–69, 172; and external goods, 44–56; as good of soul, 44, 55; and happiness, 30, 41–56, 92, 101, 135, 140n134, 169, 172–73, 233; natural, 55; of person, act, or object, signified by spoudaios, 46–47, 88, 91–93, 96, 98, 101, 116, 128, 130–32, 139, 222, 224, 272; as quality, 32–33; in work or function, 2, 41–43, 153. See also action; art; fine; and particular excellences excess and deficiency. See mean, excess, and deficiency experience, 19, 67–68, 71, 77, 260 fine (beautiful; noble), 11, 13–15, 17–18, 45, 89n89, 135–36, 152–55, 169, 193–94, 233–37; body, 45, 49, 55; dist. good, 45–47, 56, 145–47, 150–51; linguistic nexus of, 109–14; in mathematics, 13, 136, 144–47, 151, 210; as motive for action, 13–14, 44, 50, 70n35, 73–78, 80–83, 87, 99, 101, 103, 105, 115–23, 141, 152–54; in natural science, 13–15, 136–43, 151, 154, 157, 163, 166–69, 175–76, 178–79, 181, 183–84, 188, 200–201, 206; as object of contemplation, 43, 82–83, 101–3, 112–14, 123–34, 136–53, 162–63, 217; dist. necessary, 46–47, 68, 107–8, 160–61, 242, 246n21, 267; and pleasure, 45–47, 56, 108–9, 128–34; reason, thought as correlative with, 10–17, 40, 44, 62, 70–71, 73–76, 80–82, 99n121, 103, 112–15, 122–23, 128–34, 142–43, 146, 148–54, 157–69, 175–76, 181, 192, 207–11, 213–15, 219, 235–37; rhetorical definition of, 104–5; in theology, 148–51, 214, 272; use of external goods, 49–53, 55–56; translation of, 104n1; dist. ugly, shameful, 106; universality of, 99, 123; dist. useful, 45–47, 56, 107–8, 256n21; wealth as, 47–48. See also action; end first philosophy. See metaphysics form, 14–17, 23, 157–82, 189n98, 191, 209, 227, 233, 260–61, 263n1; in art, 23, 114n52, 153; as cause, in pros hen homonymy, 40n54, 57n103; as determinate, 16–17, 211–13, 215–19; elemental, 251n36;

Index rerum

as fulfillment, 14, 23, 41, 156, 157n11, 158, 169, 173, 174, 181, 212; as limit, 213–15; and order, 211–12; Platonic, 1, 11, 22, 27, 30–31, 34, 144, 148, 162, 204; sensible and intelligible, 82, 129; as species, 23, 37, 40, 67, 77n53, 129, 178–80, 182, 185n90, 197n6, 200, 209–10, 218n70, 246n21, 261; translation of, 178n68. See also end; logos; material; nature; shape; substance fortune. See chance friendship, 12, 19–20, 45, 62, 68, 89n91, 107, 111–12, 114n51, 127n86, 140, 141; complete, 12, 84; and concern for others, 119–22, 184; contemplative dimension of, 93–100, 142; in Empedocles, 163, 190, 206; and friend as external good, 8, 49–50, 92–99; and the human good, 83–88, 92–99, 120–23; and living together, 90, 92, 94, 100, 142; types of, 33, 45 fulfillment (act; actuality), 2, 14, 16, 18, 57n103, 221, 229; of the elements, 249, 251n36; first and second, 23, 41, 156, 169–70, 172–73, 174; in general, as good, 169n43, 173–74, 176, 188n96, 191n107, 195, 201, 218, 234; and inworking, 155, 187, 223; human, 65, 78n55; translation of, 6–7, 187. See also ability; form; inworking; motion function. See work generation. See coming-to-be; reproduction generosity, 52n84, 68, 73, 107–8, 111, 120, 124–25, 184 genus. See kind god (the divine), 2, 148–51, 183, 216, 227, 231n103, 243–44, 263, 272; as cause or principle, 11, 15, 33, 36n42, 40n54, 135, 148, 154, 177–79, 183–86, 191n107, 203–4, 206, 216, 222, 244; contemplation of, 59, 91, 101–2, 133–35, 139, 233, 271; heavens as, 137–39, 216; and human beings, 19n14, 54, 59, 89–92, 98, 135, 139, 241; participation in, 15, 72, 92, 111, 117, 135, 139, 140n134, 141, 154n6, 163, 177–79, 183–88, 251; and thought, 11, 15, 32–33, 101, 140n132, 145, 148–51, 154n6, 227, 243, 271–72



goods: absolute and relative, 69, 110, 135, 150n167, 161–62, 183, 189, 206, 241, 244–45, 260, 263; apparent, 72, 83, 149, 197–201; bodily, 43–44, 48–56, 77, 149n167; external, 43–44, 48–56, 61, 77, 85–86, 112, 127; simply, 53–57. See also advantageous; beneficial; end; fine; friendship; nature; necessary; pleasure; substance; usefulness greatness (largeness; magnitude; size): in human goods and evils, 50, 51n81, 86, 108, 111–14, 117, 119–20, 122–23, 124, 125–27, 137, 270; in generative power of animals, 247; as magnitude in sense of size or body, 112–13, 152n1, 208n43, 209, 214, 218, 219n73, 230, 247, 250n30, 252, 260 growth: of living things, 39, 95, 201n21, 247, 249–51, 268n9. See also quantity happiness, 27n14, 29, 35n40, 61–62, 66, 76, 88, 89n91, 95n108, 99n121, 105, 111, 135–36, 140n134, 169, 239; as cause, 31n30, 59n109; complete, 101, 136; contemplative, 20, 79, 98n116, 101–2, 140n134; and friendship, 83–88, 92–99, 120–23; opinions concerning, 29–30; and other goods, 43, 48–57, 92, 96; translation of, 29n21 heavens, 94, 191n107, 243, 269; as causes, 183–88, 216, 262, 269-70; as desiring the first mover, 145, 149n167, 154; as divine, 135, 137, 256n1; motion of, 228n97, 232, 252–53, 256–57, 262, 269–70; superiority of, 203–4, 221, 264–65, 269–70 homogeneous bodies, 170–72, 210, 217n67 homonymy, 22–24; of the good, 1, 11–12, 22, 27–35, 40n54, 48n75, 55–57, 60, 95n108, 133n114, 175, 234; through lack of defining work, 164n31, 171, 241–43; of life, 40n54, 89n91, 93–94, 95n108, 113. See also analogy honor: and beings in general, 14, 18, 137, 162, 216–17, 222, 244, 246–48, 262, 263–72; as due to principles, 263–72; as a human good, 30, 34, 47, 56, 68, 86, 106, 109n25, 116, 117, 118–19, 120, 127, 137–38, 141; dist. love, 56, 86, 109n25

Index rerum

321

human being: among other living things, incl. god, 19n14, 25, 35n39, 38–41, 55, 57n101, 65n13, 67–68, 70–72, 84, 88–94, 98, 134–35, 162, 178, 233–37, 266n5, 270; as political animal, 239–45; self-understanding of, 11–12, 20, 21–22, 62, 88–96, 120n69; as substance, 12, 16, 18, 21–22, 32–34, 37–41, 61, 63–66, 73, 84–88, 93–95, 100, 102–3 images, Aristotle’s use of. See metaphor imagination, 6n5, 82n66, 91, 102n133 imitation, 67, 112–14, 153, 187n93 inclusio, 8, 43, 92–94, 157–58, 178n69 infinite. See limit instrument (tool): of art 35n38, 42–43, 114n50, 160; living body or part as, 38–39, 90, 180n72, 246, 255, 266–68, 270; musical, 42–43; external good as, 49–51, 60 inworking (activity): and ability, 187, 225–29, 230n10, 272; divine, 148–51, 243, 245, 272; expressing condition of character, 118, 125, 127; as fulfillment, 16, 23, 155–56, 174–75, 233, 249; happiness as, 39–44, 63–66, 92, 93–96, 103, 121n75, 123, 206, 233, 245; happiness as involving ethical, 48–57, 65–72; happiness as involving both practical and contemplative, 78–80, 97–102, 140–143; motion as incomplete, 187, 225–29, 230n10, 232; pleasure in, 55, 67, 128–34; translation of, 6–7, 38; as work, 2, 14–15, 39–41, 65–66, 67, 158n15, 243, 256, 261–62, 265. See also ability; end justice, 36, 54, 57n102, 68, 109–11, 120; as model for goodness of external goods, 52–53 kind (genus), 144n146; as category, 209, 216; of element or mixture, 170, 261n21; of living thing, 39, 137, 178, 183, 231, 246–48, 250–51, 246n21, 265, 271; of natural substance, 178, 182, 185; sameness and difference in, 23, 35n39, 37, 40, 75, 129; translation of, 178n68

322

life (living): divine, 243; of ensouled bodies, 156, 164–65, 171–72, 175n61, 178–81, 201, 218n70, 223–24, 232, 259–260, 263n1; of human beings as animals, 68, 89n91; human ways of (bioi), 19–20, 30, 56, 62, 68, 72n39, 141, 146; inworking of human being as, 12, 38–42, 56, 62, 85, 93–96, 103, 220–21; inworking of living thing as, 2, 7, 38–42; dist. living well, 47; means of, 125; motion as metaphorical, 187, 232; with others, 68, 90, 142n140, 236, 240–43; perceiving and thinking as, 20, 93–96, 142; sacrifice of, 120–21; self-sufficiency of, 245–48, 250, 252. See also analogy; animals; biology; plants limit (finite), 196, 224, 234; of change, 216, 219n73, 229–32, 256, 259, 262; of desire, 26; and determinacy, 95–96, 195n2, 205; and excellence in character, 68–70, 95–96, 100, 220–21; and form, 213–15, 217; in number of principles, 207–11; and order, 17, 205, 207–11; place as, 251, 256; as principle, 17, 213–19; in quantity, 207–11, 213, 218–19, 260; surrounding body as, 216–217; of wealth, power, and population, 57n101, 114, 141n138. See also definition locomotion (being carried), 229–30, 269n12; animal, 248, 250–53; circular, 177, 187, 228, 230–32, 260–62, 269; natural elemental, 228n97, 249–53, 260–62; as primary motion, 250, 252–53; and self-sufficiency, 248–53, 257 logos (account; articulation; reason for): form as, 14–15, 150, 157–73, 178, 180n72, 195, 211, 214, 258n12; and homonymy, 1, 22–23, 56–57, 103; as ratio, 163–65; as rational articulation or account, 144–45, 147, 157, 166, 168, 171, 177, 189, 208, 211, 214–15, 222–23; as reason for, 29, 177, 271. See also priority; nature; reason love, 109n25, 116, 137; dist. honor, 56, 86, 109n25; objects of, 45, 62, 83; of self, 62, 85–88, 108, 120–22. See also desire; friendship

Index rerum

magnanimity, 68, 86, 107, 112, 127 magnificence, 68, 73, 110n32, 112, 120, 127, 133; works of, as images of excellent action, 26, 38, 124–27 magnitude. See greatness material (matter), 9n10, 23, 172, 234–35; of alteration and coming-to-be, 258; analogy of, 209n46; of animal generation, 178, 181, 247; of animals, elements as, 259, 265–66; external goods as, 53, 56–58, 67–70, 77n53, 78–80; as indeterminate, 212–13, 216–19; as individuating, 179n72; of locomotion, 253; of mathematical objects, 147n159; of mixed bodies, 165–65, 170–72; separation from, 150; of size, in elements, 249; subordinate to form as end, 138, 143, 157–61, 164–65, 166, 168, 170–72, 174–75, 189n98, 197n6, 212–13, 216–19 mathematics, 203, 210; beauty in, 13, 136, 144–47, 151, 210; as theoretical science, 13, 105, 136, 145–47 matter. See material mean, excess, and deficiency (great and small): in art, 126; in excellence of character, 68–69, 73–74, 110, 220; of the fine, 108n18; of the good simply, 54, 56, 67; of magnitude in a functional whole, 114n50; in mixture, 164; in Plato, 219; in sensory power, 101, 129 means, 29n19, 32, 34n36, 96n111, 175n61, 198, 201, 256; instrumental, 34, 49, 57n103, 106n35, 107; noninstrumental, 55n95, 57n103; practical reason as both end and, 40, 44, 47, 70–71, 74–76, 82, 133n113 metaphor: in Aristotle’s philosophical vocabulary, 6; Aristotle’s understanding of, 35–36; particular instances of, 26, 28, 38, 42–43, 52–53, 64, 73–74, 84, 124–28, 137, 142n143, 150, 186–87, 207, 212, 213, 215n61, 216–17, 232, 246, 258, 270; philosophical worries about, 35n42, 40n54, 94–95, 142n143. See also body; music metaphysics (first philosophy), 1–3, 14, 16–17, 184, 189–94, 206; analogy and homonymy in, 22–24; in EN and Pol.,



18–20, 21–22, 27–29, 42, 72n39, 98n115, 154, 220–21, 240n2; gender in, 181n73; as theology, 136, 148–51, 184, 206; as wisdom, 155, 271–72. See also theology methods, Aristotle’s, 36n42, 136n124, 165–69, 201–4, 210; in ethics, 18–19, 22, 24, 27–29, 41–42, 72n39, 92, 94, 97–98. See also dialectic mind. See thought mixture. See homogeneous bodies; mean, excess, and deficiency motion, 128, 140, 190, 222, 234, 255–56, 258; of animals, 80n61, 81n63, 95, 244, 246–48; complete, 216; defined, 7, 187, 225–28, 230n102, 232; desire as cause of, 148–49, 244; as fulfillment, 7, 187, 225– 28, 232; good as presupposing, 144–46, 192–93; as indeterminate, 228–29; kinds of, 249–50, 252; limited, 214, 216–17, 229–32; male animal as source of, 178, 181; materially necessary, 159–60, 174; orderly, 204–5, 207–11, 224; principle of, as type of cause, 157, 166, 172, 177, 178, 190–91, 258; in self-movers, 251–53; as sensible, 152n1; and unmoved mover, 15, 36n42, 148–49, 151n73, 154, 178, 186, 188n96, 193, 211, 244–45, 251–52, 272, 258. See also locomotion; nature; part and whole; quality; quantity music, 205, 212–13; analogies involving, 37–38, 42–43, 52, 53n86, 73–74, 76, 123–25, 128, 129n95, 134n118; as liberal pursuit, 43, 153 natural science, 2, 13–18; beauty in, 13–15, 136–43, 151, 154, 157, 163, 166–69, 175–76, 178–79, 181, 183–84, 188, 200–201, 206; completeness and self-sufficiency in, 245–53; dist. dialectic, 9n10; and ethics, 62n4, 72n39, 92–95, 146; and finitude of nature, 208–211; dist. first philosophy, 16, 136, 144, 190, 226; form as principle in, 156–71; honorable in, 263–71, 272; dist. mathematics, 203; mean (intermediate) in, 69n32; object of, 157–58, 202–5, 219n73, 225n86, 226; in Phaedo, 191n107; as theoretical science, 13, 105, 136

Index rerum

323

nature, 114n50, 249n30, 260; animal, 178; defined, 157–58, 189n101, 204, 225n6; divine in, 135, 178, 184, 187; as end, 158–60, 164–69; and excellence, 67, 71–72, 135–36; existing by, 66, 137–39, 187, 232, 239–42; finite in number, 207–211; as form or logos, 23, 143, 154, 157–61, 164–69, 171–72, 197n6, 200n19, 214, 266n4; generalizations over, 143n143, 177, 183, 186, 200, 231, 247, 266–69; good, pleasant by, 47, 71–72, 93, 96, 101, 108–9, 139, 220, 245, 247, 263, 266; honorable in, 247, 263, 266n4, 270; human, 42, 67, 95, 137–38; as principle of motion and rest, 135, 137, 142–43, 157–58, 197–201, 207, 217, 225n6, 230, 232, 250; as source of order, 196, 202–6; works, ends of, 66, 138, 142–43, 145n150, 146n156, 154n6, 158n14, 169–73, 175–76, 192–94, 196–207, 214, 224, 231, 259. See also art; chance; natural science; principle; priority; reason; work necessary, 237; dist. accidental, 205, 207; dist. beneficial, 49–51, 172, 175, 246n21; eternal as, 92, 188n96; human goods, 50; on a hypothesis (hypothetical necessity), 159–60, 174; in nature, 158–60, 166, 174, 178, 181. See also beneficial; fine nutrition (nourishment): as food, 23, 47, 95, 246, 248, 266–69; power or activity of, 39–41, 95, 249n30, 258, 268, 270 opinions, plausible: methodological reliance on, 2, 8, 19, 24n6, 98n115, 240n2; particular instances of, 25, 29–31, 42, 47, 62n4, 71, 86, 111n36. See also dialectic order: dist. accidental, 205; in art, 112–13; in the city, 78n56, 114; and determinacy, 16–17, 196, 202–3, 214, 217n64, 224–25; and form, 211–13; and limit, 207–11; in mathematics, 145, 147; nature as, 204–7, 224–25, 231, 256, 260–62; in the universe, 151, 206, 260–62 pain, 45–46, 52, 93, 98, 117, 128, 221. See also pleasure part and whole, 112–13, 159, 196, 212–13;

324

in city, 145n150, 241; in living body, 38– 41, 50n78, 138, 141, 143, 145n150, 164–65, 171, 180n72, 175, 201, 203, 241, 246, 250, 255, 259, 262n23, 266–69; in motion or change, 232, 251n36; in quantity, 208n43, 218; in universe, 216, 260–62, 268–70. See also soul particularity, 218; ethical, 68, 77n53, 80n62, 84, 89n91, 97n114, 99n119, 101n128, 108n18, 110, 117, 123, 140; and the good of natural beings, 182n76, 188, 200n19; metaphysical, 9n10, 148, 178, 179n72, 234 perception. See sensation place, 32, 95, 191n107, 205, 229, 230n102; definition of, 214n56, 251; honorable, 264–70; and limit, 216–17; natural, 217, 224, 228n97, 249, 262. See also locomotion plants, 114n50, 137, 156, 204, 234, 268–69; dist. animals, 39–41, 94, 247, 250, 270; reproduction or coming-to-be of, 72, 178, 200; teleology in, 35n39, 223, 255, 259. See also part and whole pleasure, 30, 55–57, 105, 108, 172; in affection, 65n14, 66, 68–69; animals as guided by, 67, 71–72; cognitive, 11, 16, 20, 49–50, 81n63, 93–99, 101–3, 128–33, 136–37, 139, 149, 151, 195, 220–21, 234–35; and the fine, 45–46, 103, 108–9, 111, 115–16, 123, 141; fine vs. necessary sources of, 46–47, 107; friendship of, 33, 83–84, 87; as good in itself, 34, 55; life of, 30; and temperance, 68; dist. useful, 45–46, 103, 146. See also inworking; pain politics, 2, 105, 183n80; and contemplation, 140–41; excellence in, 112, 120, 166, 168; fine and just as objects of, 110–11, 134; and power, 47n72, 49, 114, 141, 270; as prudence, 162; as science of human good, 27n14, 29n19, 39, 57, 116–17, 120. See also animals potency; power. See ability pragma, 112–13, 150, 203, 214, 222 principle (beginning; source): changeable and unchangeable, 99n119, 132–33; of coming-to-be, 177–79, 185, 188, 258n12; dialectical search for, 8, 151n174; divine,

Index rerum

15, 151, 179, 184, 200; efficient cause as, 258; of EN, Pol., 8, 18–19, 28n18, 30n25, 42, 92, 98n115, 240n2; heavens as, 216; as honorable, 263–72; limit as, 17, 213–19; limited in number, 207–11; male and female as, 177–79; motion as, 260–61; nature as, 8, 143, 157–61, 164–169, 181, 196, 200n19, 202, 205, 197–202, 203–4, 225n86, 252, 266n4; reason as, 65n13, 71, 78; theoretical, 36n42; translation of, 6. See also cause; god priority, 57n103, 149, 154n6, 174; in comingto-be, 156, 240, 246, 248–50; in logos, 146n156, 150n68, 175n61, 184n82, 189, 215, 222–23, 240; in nature, 31-­33, 166–67, 222–23, 241, 250, 261–62; in substance, 189–90, 222–23, 250, 252–53; in time, 222 privation, 149, 181, 209n46, 226 product. See effecting (for poiēton); work (for ergon) proportion. See analogy prudence (forethought), 69, 74–80, 97n114, 110–11; dist. art, 75, 126n82; dist. cleverness, 55, 75, 77; defined, 80n62; as differentiating animals, 72, 173; excellence in character determined by, 69, 129; as good in itself, 34, 88, 91, 173; and wisdom, 57–60, 76–80, 88n86, 133n110, 134, 140, 151, 153, 162 quality: as category, 23, 31–33, 205; completeness in, 247–48, 250–52; elemental, 164, 261n21; limit and, 209, 216; motion in (alteration), 213, 228n97, 229–230, 248–53, 268n9; motion in, and sensation, 9n9, 227n95, 268n9; and substance, 33, 89n91, 150n167, 248; translation of, 6 quantity: as category, 32–33, 205; completeness in, 247–49, 251–52; and good as measure or logos, 32–33, 165; limit, determinacy in, 208–210, 215–19; motion in, 163, 229–30, 247, 249–53, 268n9; translation of, 6. See also greatness; growth; part and whole reason (rationality): as calculation, 65n13, 132, 133n111; life of, 10n12, 22, 29n19, 39–



40, 58, 90; and nature, 71–72, 142n143; part of the soul that has, 39, 65n13, 81, 132–33; practical, 40n55, 53, 56–59, 62–63, 68–74, 76–78, 84, 92, 99n119, 102n133, 114, 122, 220, 234; productive, 37; right, 40, 73–74, 81–82, 106–7, 110, 115–18, 220n75, 246; unity of contemplative and practical, 13–14, 92–102, 105, 112–14, 128–34, 194. See also action; contemplation; desire: for the fine; fine; logos; means; prudence; thought relation (with respect to; pros): as category, 31–33; as circumstance of action, 56; to cognitive objects, 101, 128–29; of honor or love, 56, 87–88; of position (spatial), 268; usefulness as, 32–33, 37–38, 64. See also goods; homonymy reproduction (generation as gennēsis): of bees, 231; self-sufficiency in, 247–48. See also animals; plants rhetoric, 2, 28, 35–36, 104–5, 167, 237 science. See understanding self-sufficiency, 17, 195n2, 259; in city, 114, 240–43; and excellence, 107, 127, 245; of god, 243–45; and happiness, 34n37, 49n76, 98, 239; and locomotion, 248–53; in nutrition and generation, 246–48 sensation (perception), 113, 151, 227; action not due to, 65n13; and alteration, 9n9, 227n95; as co-perception, 93–94, 100, 142, 150n169; ethical, aesthetic, and productive, 68, 77n53, 84, 101, 106, 109, 113–14, 150n167, 166, 168; fine as object of, 128–31, 137, 150n167, 168; as good in itself, 93, 101, 173; human being as living by thought and, 12, 20–21, 62, 88n86, 93–97, 99–103, 131–32; natural substances as objects of, 137, 148, 203n27, 204, 206–7, 218, 234, 246, 249; organs of, 267–68; pleasure in, 55, 57n101, 128–31; power or part of soul responsible for, 102n133, 161; dist. thought, 129–30, 150, 152, 168; as work of animals, 39–41, 65n13, 247, 270. See also analogy; form shameful (ugly), 45, 106, 117

Index rerum

325

shape (morphē), 157, 159, 201, 212–13, 217, 258n12; beauty of, 138, 143, 168. See also form size. See greatness sleep, 156, 172–73 soul, 220n75; bodies that lack, 171, 178, 180, 270, 271; and body, 53, 178–81, 188, 267, 271; excellence as condition of, 66–67; as fulfillment, 41, 156, 157n11; goods of, 28, 44, 48, 55–56, 129n95; harmony of, 88; heat as instrument of, 247; as honorable, 265–67; inworking or work of, 38, 42, 43, 50, 66, 69; kinds of, 40, 247, 265; knowledge of, 72n39, 168, 271; parts of, 81–82, 102n133, 132–33, 245, 247–48, 267 spirit (thumos), 46n68, 81–82, 115 spontaneity, 72, 163, 198–200, 205n32, 231. See also chance substance (what-it-is): as category, 23, 150n167, 209; dist. coming-to-be, 186, 190, 202; coming-to-be as approximating, 177, 186; composite, 155n7, 181, 217; departure from, 224, 250–51; destructible, 225; eternal, 148–50, 226, 243, 272; form as, 9n10, 41, 150, 156, 163, 165n33, 166, 177, 181, 212, 214–15, 258n12; fulfillment and, 187, 245, 251, 253; good as good of, 2, 10, 12, 14, 16–18, 21–22, 24, 31–34, 41, 62, 73, 86, 89n91, 103, 149–50, 154–55, 158–74, 181–85, 188, 211, 233, 243; good as relative to, 161–63, 182–83; honorable, 264, 270, 272; incomplete, 248n26; limit as, 214, 216, 219n73; living, 179, 269n12; material as, 181, 212, 219n73; motion of, 229; natural, 23, 137, 143, 152, 158–74, 200n19, 201–2, 211, 214, 217, 226; particularity of, 178, 181–85, 188; perceptible, 148; primary, 9n10; and self-sufficiency, 243; wealth as, 55, 124–25; See also definition; human being; priority

theory. See contemplation thought (mind), 166, 176; awareness of, 100, 128n90, 142; as contemplative or practical, 13, 15, 18–20, 78, 91n98, 102n133; and desire, 81nn63–64, 101; and fortune, 198n12; as honorable, 270–72; human being as, 88–96, 101–2; identical to its object, 82–83, 100–101; objects of, 100, 128–34, 215, 219; and perception, 101, 129–30; pleasure in, 128–34. See also fine; god

temperance, 46, 57n103, 68, 90n92 theology, 2, 15–16, 145, 184, 271; beauty in, 148–51, 214, 272; heavens in, 135, 180, 182, 184; self-sufficiency in, 243–45, 256n1; as theoretical science, 13, 17, 105, 136, 148–51, 226

wealth, 47–49, 52n84, 68, 124–27 wisdom, 151, 155, 183; defined, 271; difficulties concerning, 144–47, 190; good as object of, 134–35, 155, 162, 183, 190–94, 271; as highest excellence, 72n39; dist. natural science, 206; practical excellence

326

understanding (science), 100, 125–26, 136–37, 139, 150, 151n74, 156, 215; of being, 144, 209, 211; of the good, 30–31; as honorable, 271; mathematical, 145; part of the soul responsible for, 132; theoretical, 18–19, 136, 146–48 universal (common), 33, 140; by analogy, 77n53, 129, 171, 223–24; definition, absence of in homonymy, 22–24, 28, 31–32, 40, 57, 103, 270; fine as, 98–99, 112, 121–23; form as, 30–32, 179n72; genus as, 246n21; principle or premise, 77n53, 101n128, 125, 144, 146, 192–93, 223–24, 252, 270 usefulness (utility): of artisan, 32–33, 37, 64, 153; of external goods, 49–50, 53, 56; dist. fine, pleasure, 44–48, 74, 83–84, 103, 107–8, 146; friendship of, 33, 84, 87; music not studied for, 43; in nature, 201, 246n21; of practical excellence, 166, 168; as relation, 32–33; theoretical science as lacking, 146, 210 vice (badness), 66, 124, 127; ability as prior to, 222–23; of children or friends, 50; the simply good rendered harmful by, 54; as unlimited, 69–70, 220 virtue. See excellence

Index rerum

as ordered to, 59–60, 75–80, 88n86; dist. prudence or politics, 134–35, 141, 162. See also contemplation; prudence wish, 26, 46n68, 64, 74, 81, 83 work (function; product): of animals, 39– 41, 57n101, 67, 246, 270; of art, 7, 37–38, 43, 63–64, 90, 113n47, 124–27, 142–43, 153, 166–67; of the beautiful, 145, 147; of divine power, 114n50; as effect rather than end, 202, 257; of elements, 66, 171, 257–59, 262n23; as fulfillment or end, 154, 159, 174, 176, 233, 257, 259; in function argument, 2, 25–26, 27n14, 34–43, 60, 62, 70n35, 72n39, 73, 90, 96, 135,



146n156, 154, 172; of homogeneous bodies, 171–72; human, 53, 56, 58, 60, 63–65, 73, 75, 78–79, 82, 108, 112, 124–27, 136; and inworking, 25–26, 38, 43, 223; of nature, 17, 136, 138, 142–43, 166–67, 196, 200–204, 207, 214, 224, 259; of parts of animals, 38, 164–65, 171, 241–42, 246n21, 267; of place, 268; reproduction as, 72, 200, 258, 270; self-sufficiency in, 17, 240–44, 253; substance defined by, 14–15, 66, 159–60, 170–73, 233, 241–42, 257; of thought, 102n133; translation of, 7, 38. See also end; inworking

Index rerum

327

Being Is Better Than Not Being: The Metaphysics of Goodness and Beauty in Aristotle was designed in Garamond and composed by Kachergis Book Design of Pittsboro, North Carolina. It was printed on 55-pound Natural Offset and bound by Maple Press of York, Pennsylvania.