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Aristotle

(forthcoming, Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy, edited by Jens Timmermann and Sacha Golub.

Aristotle’s moral philosophy may usefully be viewed as the development and combination of two

strands of thought and of ethical idealism, one drawn from Socrates and the other from Plato. The

Socratic strand may be called the “protreptic,” since it addresses the question, “How then shall I live?”,

and therefore is hortatory, and indeed it is found in its fullest form in a lost and then rediscovered

dialogue of Aristotle, entitled Protrepticus. The strand drawn from Plato may be called the

“republican,” because it looks at questions of individual well-being and flourishing mainly from the point

of view of a lawmaker or citizen in a city-state, and its starting points are taken from Plato’s dialogue,

Republic. The protreptic strand disposes us to look at questions in moral philosophy from a first-person

point of view, and the republican strand from a third-person point of view.

1. The protreptic strand

The protreptic strand starts from an argument that we should direct ourselves to improving the soul, not

the body: the task (ergon) of human life is to achieve something worthy of praise (epaineton); good and

beautiful things (“noble,” “honorable,” “fine” – kala) are what are truly praiseworthy, and it is not the

body but the soul which a human being truly is; but virtue (aretē) makes the soul good and beautiful, the

way that health and fitness do for the body; therefore, the task of a human life is to make one’s soul

good and beautiful, by acquiring virtue (see Protr. 1.1-2.11).

Note the presuppositions of even this simple argument: that human beings as a natural kind have some

kind of role or place to play in nature; that considerations of how we should live depend upon

considerations of what we are and how we are constituted; that considerations about the body can be

used to draw conclusions by analogy about the soul; that beauty (involving form) and goodness

(involving fruitfulness, benefit, and good functioning) are closely related; that the goodness of the soul,

achieved through the virtues, is in various ways prior to the goodness of external things and the body;

and that human life is reasonably understood as directed toward the achieving of something admirable

and indeed even great.

In Aristotle’s protreptic strand, this initial argument then gets developed mainly in two ways, first, to

yield the conclusion that what one really needs to devote one’s life to is the actualization and not the

mere possession of virtue, and, second, to infer that a certain part or power of the soul deserves the

same kind of prior attention, relative to the rest of the soul, that, it was originally claimed, the soul as a

whole deserved over the body.

Consider first how the actualization of virtue naturally comes to be seen as most important. A certain

incongruity results if a person attends to his body, its fitness and beauty, but fails to build up his soul: it

is as if, Aristotle says, a master were to have rendered himself inferior to his slaves (Protr. 3.4). The

disgracefulness of the disparity seems additional to the disgracefulness of simply the uncultivated soul

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itself. But this then suggests that the soul needs somehow to be at work, through the application of its

virtue, in directing to its benefit those other things that have been identified as by nature ordered to it.

Aristotle calls this application the “use” (chrēsis) and not mere “possession” (ktēsis) of virtue (using

language that throughout his works he uses for the distinction between so-called first and second

actuality)(see for example NE VII.3.1147a10-14) .

It seems reasonable to pick out and give a name to the virtue of the soul insofar as someone makes

good use of other goods by nature ordered to the soul. In the protreptic strand this is the first way in

which Aristotle understands phronēsis (“practical wisdom”), which he will also refer to, at least initially,

as “philosophy” (philosophia) (Protr. 9.1). With the identification of phronēsis, an ordering and

hierarchy of goods appears within the soul also: phronēsis looks to be “better” than other virtues; other

virtues are somehow “for” or “for the sake of” it. Aristotle supports this conclusion with various

arguments which rely on a teleology supposed to be present in nature: for example, what comes later in

a natural process of development may be presumed to be better, and phronēsis develops later than

other virtues (Protr. 17.1-12).

Once an ordering among virtues is accepted at all, then the question can be raised of whether phronēsis

really stands at the apex. To argue that it does not, first the possibility of some other, contender virtue

needs to be established—which Aristotle does by holding that the part of the soul which phronēsis

adorns and renders good, “the part which has or contains reason” (to logon echōn), has another

operation besides the use and ordering of goods, and that a different virtue adorns and renders this part

in that operation good. This other operation is “speculative” (theōretikē), that is, it involves doing

nothing besides simply “seeing” and admiring the way the world is (theōria), and the virtue which

adorns this activity as directed at the entirety of existence, and renders it good, is “wisdom” (sophia).

But by various considerations one can establish that this virtue is at the apex and its activity is the best

achievement of a human life, to wit: the activity of simply seeing is in general more valuable than useful

goods, as shown by the fact that we happily pay money, giving up useful goods, to attend the theater

and other spectacles, and, if so, then surely simply seeing the entirety of reality, which sophia enables us

to do, is more valuable than all useful goods put together (Protr. 44.8); the activity of simply seeing is

better than the activity of ordering and using, because its objects are better –they are even divine --

while our ordering and use of goods pertains, of course, to things good for us, and thus the activity of

phronēsis is restricted to the realm of the merely human (to anthrōpinon); we are busy in order to enjoy

leisure, and so activities of leisure have the character of a goal (telos) and best good, but the activity of

simply seeing is suited to leisure whereas the activity of phronēsis is not; and that activity which is most

closely related to the gods would presumably be best, but the gods could hardly engage in any activity

except simply seeing, and therefore human beings, to the extent that they engage in this activity as well,

become like the gods and therefore would be beloved by the gods. Besides, the activity of simply seeing

of itself leads to nothing else and is enjoyed just for its own sake, which is what one expects in a good at

the top of a hierarchy of goods; and, in any case, sophia is in an important sense the only virtue of “the

part of the soul which has reason” because it is the only virtue which is a virtue of just that part (oikia)—

as the virtue of phronēsis can be seen to be bound up with other virtues of the soul.

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The protreptic strand, in sum, aims to improve upon the Socratic exhortation to attend to virtue rather

than corporeal goods by specifying one virtue in particular which deserves preeminent attention and by

emphasizing that the ultimate good of a human life consists in the achievement of putting that virtue

somehow into practice. This strand finds its fullest statement in the reconstructed Protrepticus, but

Aristotle also brings it forward and gives it center stage at the conclusion of the Nicomachean Ethics

(10.7-8), where nearly all the arguments of the Protrepticus are repeated in compressed form. This

strand is addressed to the listener of the dialogue or of the lectures as if to an interlocutor. It makes no

pretense of being a general claim about how human beings should live or even how society should be

organized. It does not need to give an account of the virtues generally but simply to say enough to

make it plausible that sophia would be the best among them. Its connection with any lines of thought in

Aristotle that pertain to how we should act towards other in society takes place through the term that

Aristotle typically uses to characterize that aspect of the world which makes it suitable simply to see,

namely, kalon, which means literally “beautiful” or “admirable,” but also by extension “honorable,”

“noble,” “appropriate,” or even “ingenious” and “excellent.” The unifying idea is that what makes simply

seeing worthy of choice is that its object is kalon, and what makes virtuous action worthy of choice in its

own right is that such action is kalon, and the suggestion is either that thinking and doing are two

different ways of possessing the kalon, or that action is inherently valuable on account of its somehow

containing thinking which is inherently valuable.

2. The republican strand

The rather different republican strand of thought takes its start from a main argument of Plato’s

Republic I, which is that authority in human affairs is based upon some kind of knowledge or expert skill

(technē); expert skill of its nature aims at the good of the persons or things it acts upon, and certainly at

some good other than the good of the person who practices that skill (except incidentally), or of the skill

itself (which as a skill is perfect and needs nothing); political authority, too, is based upon expert skill;

and therefore political authority, and the expert skill of which it should be an expression, of their very

nature aim at the good of the ruled, not of the ruler. But now add some basic considerations which

Aristotle presents in Politics I.1 and in Nic Eth I.1: political society (the polis, or politikē koinōnia) is the

form of human association to which all others are adapted and which marks the completion of other

forms of sociability; the more complete the form of association, the more complete and ultimate the

good at which it aims; and, thus, the good at which authority over the polis aims, strictly, is to make the

citizens good human beings, by leading them through sound laws and customs to acquire the virtues

(and to provide the conditions under which those virtues can find suitable realization).

But what makes a human being good? Aristotle attempts to be systematic, in cataloguing with precision

what kinds of virtues there are, how they are to be defined, and exactly how many there are, and by

explaining how they come into existence and can go out of existence. Of the four ethical works

traditionally attributed to Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), the Eudemian Ethics (EE), the Magna

Moralia (MM), and On Virtues and Vices (VV), the last is solely such a systematic catalogue of the virtues

(and vices too), and the others are predominantly that. Aristotle regards this systematic cataloguing as

the complete carrying-through of what his predecessors attempted. Socrates, he says, mistakenly

regarded all the virtues as pertaining to “the part of the soul which has logos;” Plato improved upon

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Socrates through identifying additionally two virtues of character, which perfect the parts of the soul

which do not of themselves “have logos”: courage (andreia), related to the faculty of spiritedness,

(thumos), and moderation, (sophrōsunē), related to the faculty of sense desire, or (epithumia). Aristotle

improves upon this scheme in turn by distinguishing, as we have seen, two main virtues of the part

which has logos, corresponding to the two parts of this part (phronēsis, which is practical, and sophia,

which is speculative). He adds a particular virtue of justice, which wants to realize equality in

agreements and transactions. Finally, he adds virtues for each of the goods in the standard list of

“external goods”: money, honor, and companions. (Aristotle’s general principle for enumerating virtues

is to hold that there is a distinct virtue for each distinct part of the soul. Strictly there is no “money

loving,” “honor loving,” or “companionship loving” part of the soul, presumably because the parts of the

soul are properly those suggested by a sound human psychology, such as Aristotle thinks he presents in

the De Anima, and the “external goods” do not correspond to biological needs but are artifacts of

human social life. But the striving (orexis) for a good of this sort, as perduring, is akin to a part of the

soul and can be thought of as having its own perfecting quality or virtue.)

Note that no one had attempted to define and enumerate virtues in this way before Aristotle. The final

catalogue looks basically like this:

Parts of the soul Virtues

The thinking part

The part which has logos (to logon echōn)

directed toward simply seeing (theoretikon) wisdom, sophia

directed toward action (praktikon) practical wisdom, phronēsis

The desiderative part

The part which desires order and equality (boulēsis) justice, dikaiosunē

The spirited part (thumos) courage, andreia

The sense desiring part (epithumia) moderation, sophrōsunē

Virtual parts

Striving for money (orexis chrēmatōn)

on a large scale magnificence, megaloprepeia

on a small scale liberality, eleutheriotēs

Striving for honor (orexis timēs)

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on a large scale magnanimity, megalopsuchia

on a small scale measured ambition, philotimia

Striving for companionship (orexis philias) friendliness, philia

truthfulness, alētheia

ready wit, eutrapeleia

The republican strand is of service to political authorities not simply as stating accurately what they

should be aiming at in the citizens they govern but also as giving a portrait of what they themselves,

precisely as rulers, should be like—since rulers, if not virtuous, will not seek the good of those they

govern, Aristotle thinks. Non-virtuous rulers necessarily seek above all something good not as

honorable (kalon), but rather as useful (chrēsimon) or pleasant (hēdu), which is therefore a good for

themselves. Indeed, no one can be effective in political life without being good. Note that these

concerns are similar to Plato’s constant concern to channel the ambition of young aristocratic men and

persuade them to become good before they acquire power, also, Plato’s concern in the Republic to

make the interests of rulers align with the interests of those ruled.

Aristotle uses his investigation of virtue as an occasion to introduce and cover anything closely related to

the virtues, which is why, he says, he additionally covers friendship (philia), pleasure (hedonē), and

phenomena of weakness of will and self-control (akrasia and engkrateia). Friendship is the natural and

most suitable context in which virtue is acquired, rendered stable, and actualized. Pleasure is of interest

because pleasures associated with bodily functions (eating, drinking, sex, comfort) need to be demoted

as goods, especially given that corrupt rulers, by seeking these pleasures, testify as it were that these are

the greatest goods; yet pleasures which magnify, elicit, prolong, and focus activity need to be boosted

and given prominence, as these are crucially important to the acquisition and realization of virtue. As

for weakness of will and self-control, Aristotle finds these interesting because they look to be somehow

intermediate between the two ostensible extremes of virtue and vice.

3. Integration of the protreptic and republican strands

The ethical works attributed to Aristotle, which together block out at least what could have been

counted as in the Aristotelian tradition, contain the protreptic and republican strands to different

extents. The Protrepticus cares not at all about virtue except to establish the superiority of the

speculative kind. The probably spurious VV in contrast cares not at all about sophia. MM, of doubtful

authenticity, mentions sophia briefly and says that phronēsis ministers to it, but it apologizes for

introducing sophia into a discussion of republican virtue, and says it will deal with that virtue only

because it would be improper to leave it out when all the other virtues were being covered. NE is

famous for being mainly a catalogue of the virtues, with protreptic arguments breaking through and

becoming decisive in the end.

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Obviously one can try to explain the appearance of these distinct strands, and the differing emphases

they receive, with some kind of developmental theory, or by a theory of different intended audiences,

together perhaps with a dismissal of some of the mentioned works as spurious. Here it seems best to

give a sketch of how Aristotle tended to conceive of these strands as integrated into his practical

philosophy as a whole.

Aristotle holds that political society, the polis, is the naturally complete form of human association. But

the polis is by nature composed of households. Within households free citizens have discretion in the

ordering of their own lives, but subject to their first having met duties toward household life. Similarly,

households and members of households have discretion in ordering their actions in public life, subject to

their following the law of the polis, and given that duties toward the polis (such as military service) do

not supersede. That is, citizens in their relationships and projects are subordinated to the households to

which they belong, and those households to the polis, in a hierarchical relationship of authority like

those sketched in NE I.1 and VIII.9. On this picture of how human social life arises by nature, practical

philosophy has three subject areas: of the polis, or “politics” (politika); of the household, or “economics”

(oikonomika)1; and of an individual citizen and his character and practices, “ethics” (ēthika). The

protreptic strand speaks mainly to the question of what individuals should be like, and what they should

ideally do, insofar as they have freedom over the use of their time, especially their time which is

generally free of necessities (“leisure”, scholē), and the republican to what individuals should be like

usefully to occupy roles as members of households and of the polis.

To look for an Aristotelian “moral philosophy” other than in his complete philosophy of action,

comprising all three subject areas mentioned, will inevitably lead to misunderstandings. For example,

why does one find nothing like “moral law” in Aristotle’s ethics? Because law is provided by the polis,

and, at least in cases where rulers are reasonably aiming to rule for the good of the governed, legal

obligation binds a citizen above all other duties and considerations. Again, why for Aristotle is it the

case that one should not kill? Because any polis will for natural and obvious reasons set down laws

against murder, and one is obliged to keep the laws of the polis before considering what one should do

on one’s own time or for one’s own good.

For Aristotle, an individual does not begin ethical deliberation thinking about what is best for him and

then somehow reasoning to why he should be just or why he should enter into political society or obey

its laws; rather, an individual’s ethical deliberation– a consideration of what kind of person one should

be, and of the best use of the time at one’s discretion—takes place in the context of political justice and

law as already having force. These have force because an individual can reasonably come to regard

himself, precisely as being the individual he is, as part of a larger whole whose good takes precedence

over his own, if both cannot be attained. Here one must attend to the curious notion of a “common

good” (to koinēi sumpheron). A clear example is found in the account of reproduction in DA II.4: animals

want to imitate the divine and attain immortality, Aristotle says; but no animal composed of body and

soul, and therefore inevitably mortal, can do this as an individual; however, the species as a whole can

attain immortality, by reproduction of like by like for eternity; and so what an animal cannot achieve on

1 Which considers the task which Aristotle thinks is distinctive of households, namely, wealth creation.

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its own it achieves through and with others of its own species. On this account, an animal’s dying once

it reaches maturity and reproduces is not contrary to that animal’s good, because its good as a mortal

being is precisely to die and give way, as a part of the species, which continues to live. So too,

Aristotle’s account of courage presupposes that the good of an individual, by nature a part of the polis,

in some circumstances is precisely to perish for the sake of the continuing existence of the polis. The

individual who thus gives up his life can indeed see and affirm this: he is capable, then, of receiving the

relevant law of the polis (say, “citizens are obliged to defend the polis, even unto death, if the polis is

threatened”) not as an alien restriction on an antecedent freedom, but rather as a reasonable

prescription, trumping considerations of his own benefit (even his prospects for future speculative

activity, see NE III.9.1117b7-15), given his position as part of a greater whole.

Such is one way, then, by which the protrepetic and republican strands are integrated for Aristotle. The

other, as mentioned, involves the notion of the “noble,” “admirable,” or “beautiful,” kalon, which

Aristotle takes up following Plato in the Gorgias and Symposium. Aristotle gives no analysis of the kalon,

but as it evidently means something like physical beauty, yet it is grasped by “the part which has logos,”

it must refer to the beauty of something precisely as grasped and understood. If it is a kind of beauty,

then we can take it to have characteristics analogous to classical Greek ideals of beauty generally, and

say that it involves some kind of symmetry, proportion, elegance, efficiency, fittingness of match,

suggestion of fecundity, and radiance or clarity. That Aristotle might have characterized virtuous action,

and the virtues themselves, as kalon is perhaps not difficult to see: virtues such as courage and

moderation involve a subtle rational control and mastery not unlike what is admired in athletic

accomplishments; courage in particular involves (as we have seen) the implicit affirmation, by the

courageous soldier, that it is appropriate for a natural part of a social whole precisely to take its place as

a part for the sake of the whole; justice displays appropriate proportion and a quasi-mathematical ideal

of equality; magnanimity, as being a kind of “crown” of the virtues, draws attention to and expresses the

beauty of virtue itself; a friendship is precisely a relationship in which considerations of condign

reciprocity take precedence; and so on.

Considerations of the kalon serve of course to reinforce the picture of a human being as by nature a

social animal. If it is by nature that a human being is fitted to live in political society, then it would be

appropriate and kalon for an individual in effect to affirm this in his action, and wrongheaded, foolish,

and misguided (aischron) for him in effect to deny this in his action. For a gifted philosopher to desert

his friends on the battlefield on the ostensible grounds that he thereby can claim happiness for himself

through a longer life becomes, at least, exceedingly incongruous. Such a person is open to the charge,

at least, of choosing “mere living” over “living well.” Aristotle additionally seems holds, much along the

lines of an argument in Plato’s Gorgias (574c-584a), that no one is ever advantaged by doing something

aischron, as an aischron action inherently deserves blame, and, if it cannot be corrected for – as an

injustice can be corrected for – it is a standing occasion for shame and disgust felt towards oneself and

reproach and repugnance felt by others. So if an aischron action can be corrected for, it should be, and

therefore implies no advantage: the philosopher mentioned above, who deserted his friends in battle to

save himself, if he were to seek again to attain the kalon without exception, would first of all be bound

to turn himself into authorities and receive the due punishment for desertion.

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But considerations of the kalon integrate the protreptic and republican strands in a more direct way.

Aristotle regards true thought and good action as two varieties of attaining the kalon. His view depends

upon particular understandings of both speculative thought and of practical thought. For Aristotle,

speculative thought is directed at things that cannot be otherwise; our purpose in thinking of them,

therefore, cannot be to control or manipulate anything, but rather simply to admire, appreciate, and

even wonder at them. Furthermore, because in the activity of thinking of something some kind of

identity is forged between the thinker and thing thought of, to think of these wonderful things is to

share ourselves in what makes them wonderful. As for practical thought, Aristotle seems to regard

action and skillful making too as attractive because of the thought behind them, as both involve in

broadest terms the imposition of form, which is an object of thought, upon matter. The author of MM

goes so far as to say that if we could see directly what a virtuous person was purposing to do, there

would be no need for him to do virtuous actions, for us to praise him. Apparently for Aristotle the sole

advantage which actually doing a kalon action enjoys over the deliberate contemplating of it, itself kalon

and praiseworthy, is that the action further realizes the existence of the person contemplating it (NE

IX.7.1167b33-1168a9).

4. Concluding observations

It has been the concern of this introduction and overview to identify the most important

presuppositions of Aristotelian ethical theory, which are taken for granted by him and implicit in the

philosophical tradition which he inherits from Socrates and Plato. These presuppositions may be

summarized as: nature is prior to convention and, as it is teleological, it sets down standards against

which conventions, practices, and actions may be evaluated; by nature a human being is set with the

task of speculative thought, that is, of simply seeing and admiring the world and its parts; in doing so a

human being shares in the kalon, which is that which makes anything admirable; moreover, by his

nature as a rational animal, and as a social animal, insofar as he must attend either on his own or

together with others for the necessary conditions of human life, it is accordingly kalon for him to

acquire the virtues and live with others in justice and friendship; there is a deep kinship between doing

what is kalon and contemplating what is kalon; and the proper rule in life is without exception and

above all to attain what is kalon. These presuppositions serve to group Aristotle with Socrates and Plato

and set all three apart from much of the history of moral philosophy. It has likewise been a concern

here to suggest explanations as to why what have seemed to be great difficulties for recent interpreters

of Aristotle—such as the conflict between a “dominant end” and a “comprehensive” conception of

happiness; or the problem of why anyone should be moral if philosophizing is taken as a dominant

end—were at least not recognized by Aristotle as difficulties. Of course whether these problems

ultimately are put to rest if these presuppositions are embraced cannot be decided here.

The standard tour through the highlights of Aristotle’s moral theory has been avoided here, as there are

many capable accounts which accomplish this. But the following points might profitably be touched

upon specifically in relation to what has already been said.

“Happiness,” eudaimonia. Aristotle takes it as commonplace that the term eudaimonia denotes the

ultimate end of human life. He also regards it as commonplace that non-rational animals have no

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possibility of attaining eudaimonia, whereas God or the gods possess eudaimonia most fully; also, he

thinks that human eudaimonia, insofar attained, is some kind of sharing in a life which properly and of

itself is divine. What this implies is that not only is eudaimonia, for Aristotle, as is often said, a common

standard for human beings and something objective, in the sense that someone could be wrong about

whether he was happy or not, but also that eudaimonia is not something relative to type or kind but

rather an absolute standard for the universe: eudaimonia is not merely the best possible achievement or

realization for a living thing of some kind but rather a sharing in divine eudaimonia (Lawrence, 2005). It

should also be noted, as we have in effect already noted, that Aristotle understands the eudaimonia at

which a particular human being should aim as social: what he should aim at is his own eudaimonia as a

part of the eudaimonia of the polis as a whole. It follows directly and obviously from this that

eudaimonia requires material conditions, just as the polis does. Indeed, an individual’s possibility of

sharing in some full way in speculative activity, according to Aristotle, depends upon the polis’s having

developed sufficiently so as to create the possibility of leisure for some classes of citizen within the polis.

Virtue as a mean. Presumably Aristotle originally proposed his claim that each virtue of character lies in

a mean between two vices at the extremes of deficiency and excess in order to reinforce the idea that

some virtues are not entirely intellectual but involve the rational informing of by nature non-rational

parts of the soul-- since the rational part of the soul simply affirms or denies; and knowledge has only

one contrary, ignorance; but correctness relative to an appropriate goal involving passions and actions

of the body can go wrong by either excess or defect. Yet once this point is taken for granted and

becomes settled, it evidently becomes easy in the Aristotelian tradition to think again of each virtue as

opposed to only one vice, as is evident in the putatively late treatise, VV. Even in NE and EE there was

typically only one vice that really needed to be taken into account for each virtue (e.g. cowardice as

regards courage; self-indulgence as regards moderation), because, as NE takes pains to explain,

frequently either because of the form of the action itself or because of tendencies in human nature

there is only one extreme which proves difficult to avoid. So virtue as a mean proves to be a doctrine of

central importance mainly in a certain argumentative context.

“Right reason,” orthos logos. Certainly Aristotle sometimes uses the multi-purpose word ‘logos’ to

mean a faculty not an argument or an explanation (for example NE III.12.1119b14-15), but the question

of whether the phrase orthos logos means sometimes or mainly the virtue of practical reason (phonēsis)

need not be settled here. Regardless of whether it is taken to be a faculty or rather simply a course of

practical reasoning, what is significant about orthos logos is what is connoted by the term “orthos,”

which means directedness or orientation toward a set goal. The goal toward which this logos is duly

orientated, according to Aristotle is the kalon: so orthos logos indicates a faculty or course of reasoning

which properly directs towards the achievement of that goal. Hence Aristotle can re-describe the

virtues of character as habits of the will which propose the goal of the kalon as regards different

domains of action and feeling (which correspond to different parts and quasi-parts, as we have called

them, of the soul). Thus, according to Aristotle, phonēsis cannot exist without the virtues of character,

since then it would not take the kalon as its goal and would be reduced to mere cleverness, but the

virtues of character similarly cannot exist without phonēsis, as they simply set the goal and imply a

ductibility in moving toward that goal, but like merely natural virtues they could not reliably attain that

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goal on their own. Aristotle affirms the unity of the virtues only insofar as he affirms this mutual

dependence. Note in this regard that if ethical action is fundamentally the application of form to

matter, then it is obvious that successful ethical action must be marked by great sensitivity to facts and

circumstances, as the expert shoemaker must be able to see how to adapt a pattern to the available

leather, and even see when to throw out that pattern altogether and reach for another. To this extent it

has always been a hallmark of Aristotelian ethical theory to stress the sensitivity of ethical judgment to

particular facts and circumstances, the most important example of which is the sensitivity required to

discern the intention of a lawgiver and apply a law to circumstances which were not and could not have

been foreseen: Aristotle’s name for this sensitivity, which he regards as refinement of the virtue of

justice, is epieikeia (traditionally, “equity”).

Friendship, philia. That one-fifth of NE and a comparable proportion of EE is devoted to friendship is

sometimes taken to reflect the great importance placed on friendship in classical society. This is true,

but not a sufficient explanation, since after all friendship in an ordinary sense occupies nothing like that

position in Plato’s ethical thought, for example. Aristotle has his own reasons. If ethics is, as has been

explained, mainly practical philosophy of the individual considered as not antecedently bound by

obligations to the polis or household, then friendship acquires great importance, as the type of

sociability most characteristic of that domain and as the ordinary context in which virtue finds

actualization. Again, Aristotle believes that human sociability by nature is meant to radiate out from

self-love; its motives and habitual dispositions are impossible without genuine self-love and friendships

of the right sort. The positive view developed in NE VIII and IX, and EE VII, is as it were the philosophical

complement of the negative critique developed in Pol II, against Plato’s communism. So a study of the

“springs and sources” (EE) of the household and polis requires a suitable treatment of friendship in the

discipline of ethics. Finally, friendship as a kind of fuller actualization of the relationship that a good

person has with himself (NE IX.4, 9), in effect gives the best available picture of the human person as a

moral agent and serves to explain why considerations of equality, transparency, reciprocity, and non-

coercion are so central to our relationships with others.

Pleasure, hēdonē. Aristotle gives three accounts of pleasure: (i) it is a kind of perceptual activity which

accompanies but is not the same as a bodily process by which some kind of bodily deficiency becomes

remedied through replenishment; (ii) it is the unhindered activity of a nature constituted in its good and

natural condition; and (ii) it is a kind of flower, or complementary realization, superadded to good

activity. Interpreters argue over whether these accounts are consistent and whether the texts in which

the different accounts are found in NE (VII.10-14, and VIII.1-5) belonged originally to the same work.

The explanation given above of the protreptic and republican strands would suggest why there is a place

for three accounts, as (i) argues in effect that what is valuable at all in the widely sought-after bodily

pleasures is a kind of aesthetic activity, which therefore would suggest that better types of aesthetic

activities are better than these pleasures ;(ii) would be a natural way of describing pleasures inherent in

the actions characteristic of the virtues of character—important to the republican strand--where the

impeding of the activity is a possibility; and (iii) would capture the role of pleasure in the activity of

simply seeing—important to the protreptic strand, as surely the grasping and taking thought of the

kalon brings along with it its own kind of pleasure. Note that all three accounts have in common the

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thought that pleasure is somehow incidental and secondary to goodness, though in some cases

inherently related to it, with the suggestion that it is misguided and ultimately self-defeating to seek

pleasure directly and on its own.

Bibliography

Lawrence, Gavin,"Snakes in Paradise: Problems in the Ideal Life in NE 10", Spindel Conference 2004, in

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, (2005), Vol. XLIII Supplement, pp.126-165.