Virtue Ethics from Aristotle: Alternative Approaches to Appropriation

Tristan Laing

Introduction: Problems and Alternatives

Virtue ethics find itself in the throes of a perpetual

identity crisis. While most read Aristotle's ethics as an ethics

of virtue, there are substantial disagreements about how

contemporary virtue ethics should appropriate its Aristotelian

heritage. Even on a basic question of purpose - whether virtue

ethics offers a potential alternative to ethical theories of

consequences or intentions, or we should consider it an addendum

to existing ethical frameworks, remains hopelessly unsettled. I

wish to argue in this paper that these disagreements have not

occurred by accident but are rather the predictable result of

attempting to put Greek moral questioning into conversation with

our own. The insensitivity to relatively well-understood

differences between the Greek way of life and our own have mostly

blocked from the start an appropriation of Aristotle's moral

philosophy which could clarify our own ethical situation.

However, it is possible to take these differences into account,

and by being sensitive to the differences between our situations

and that of the Greeks, enable an appropriation of Aristotle's

ethical thinking which does not make the mistake of comparing

Aristotle with Kant or Mill. I will offer an example of such an

appropriations, from Martin Heidegger's work in the early 1920's.

My contention is that this example of appropriating Aristotle's

ethical thought succeeds precisely because it does not attempt to

offer a competing contemporary ethical theory nor create an

addendum to an ethics either of intentions or consequences – but

rather, sets out to clarify the situation of the life as such. In

other words, rather than using Aristotle to help us answer

directly answer normative questions about how ought we live,

Heidegger uses him as a hermeneutic aid to shed light on the

situation in which life finds itself. These considerations, which

might be called pre-ethical or meta-ethical, might be relevant to

normative ethics insofar as normative ethics finds reasons for

acting in the situation of life itself.

Martha Nussbaum, in “Virtue Ethics: a Misleading Category”,

argues that the account contemporary virtue ethics has of itself,

which is one of transition from ethics based on principle and

universality to an ethics based on tradition and particularity,

is a “confused” and “misleading” story(163-4). It supposes the

existence of such a thing called “virtue ethics” which is an

alternative to the Utilitarian and Kantian traditions, but whose

existence is by no means certain (164,168). She points out that

“virtue” as a category is an important component in both Kantian

and Utilitarian ethics, and that although there might appear to

be a unifying set of concerns between MacIntyre, Baier, Williams,

McDowell, Richardson, and Foot, this concern does not exceed a

common interest in the category of virtue and in the Greeks (166-

8). However, Nussbaum claims, while they may all turn to the

Greeks and to virtue for inspiration, they all remain more or

less within the ethical framework of Kantian and consequentialist

ethics – and that they can be better categorized not as a single

group of virtue ethicists, but as two distinct groups: a group

distinguished by acertain kind of dissatisfaction with

Utilitarianism which wishes to broaden the role of reason in

ethics , and another which expresses dissatisfaction with Kantian

ethics, and which emphasizes the importance of the particularity

of an agents situation (168-9).

...let us speak of Neo-Humeans and Neo-

Aristotelians, of Anti-Utilitarians an anti-Kantians – and then, most important, let us get on with the serious work of characterizing the substantive views of each thinker about virtue, reason, desire, and emotion – and deciding what we ourselves wantto say.”(201)

Nussbaum articulate these categories farther, making sub-

divisions and exceptions, but this is of no consequence to us.

What is essential is that, even if the Greeks might in all cases

be emphasized, brought up, retrieved, shown to be important and

interesting for us, these appropriated concepts never provide

more than richer versions of normativity which continues to

circulate in the regions defined by utilitarian and Kantian

approaches. Thus, while thinking about virtue may be interesting,

as an ethics Nussbaum thinks it cannot “be an alternative to

those [Kantian and Utilitarian] traditions”(200).

I wish to argue that it is no accident that contemporary

virtue ethicists have failed to find in Aristotle a point of

departure for a new way of doing ethics, as a third way between

or aside Kantian and Utilitarian ethics. (a third way,

incidentally, does exist and was developed by Hegel in Philosophy of

Right with the critique of the notion that any ethics could

somehow emphasize either consequence or motives in a way that

would make on subservient to the other. The fact Hegel is almost

entirely ignored has more to do with a culture of dismissal than

with any serious confrontation or critique of the arguments). If

Aristotelian ethics is put into question with modern ethical

dilemmas, it can't help but depart from an Aristotelian mode of

questioning. Martin Heidegger already explained this in a 1924

lecture course on Plato's Sophist: because for the Greeks the

priority was on Dasein's encounter with being, not intentions or

practical consequences.

"...one cannot force Greek ethics into the mode o questioning of modern ethics, i.e. into the alternatives of an ethic of consequences or an ethics of intentions. Dasein was simply seen there with regard to its possibility of Being as such, whereby neither intentions nor practical consequencesplay any role." (122-123)

However, simply citing a pre-emptive prediction of the failure of

virtue ethics means nothing. What is required is a demonstration

out of Aristotle's text of what his way of approaching the

ethical sphere is, and on the basis of this, the recognition of

how it is so radically divorced from our own way – because only

on the basis of this understanding of the difference might we

begin from this difference towards grasping what remains mostly

unthought in our contemporary ethical situation.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: Virtue and the structure of the

Practical Syllogism

According to the Nicomachean Ethics, ethical virtue is habit

(hexis) through intention, and intention (prohairaisis) (pre-

grasping) is desire (horexis) through deliberation (bouleousis).

Deliberation is the rightness of thinking (dianoein) but not yet

assertion (logos apophantikos)(1142b14). Just as thinking should

bring truth to theoretical issues, it should bring the right

desire to practical issues. Said otherwise, desire should pursue

what reason demands. Right reason demands we choose “the mean

and not excess or deficiency”, but the notion of mean on its own

“is not at all clear”, and tells us nothing at all - if we learn

only it and nothing about right reason, “man would not know any

more”(1138b 18, 26, 30). Aristotle demands that we not mere

ramble on about choosing the mean - but rather clarify the

structure of right reason.

In order to clarify right reason (orthetes logos), Aristotle

distinguishes the rational part of the soul into the scientific

(apophantikos) and the deliberative (1139a 14). Whereas the

scientific reasons with respect to those things whose principle

could not be otherwise, the deliberative, or estimative

(logistikon), reasons with respect to those things which could be

otherwise. The estimative part is therefore the part which is

both thinking and practical – and its function is “truth in

agreement with right desires”(1139a 30). So, the estimative part

of the soul brings into being those desires which will pick out

(pre grasp – prohairaisis) the right end. Therefore, a distinction

may be drawn between two kinds of cause that right actions have –

their moving (kinesis) cause lies in intention (prohairaisis,

literally "pre-grasping") – we act out of desire. But all actions

are acted out of desire, and what distinguishes virtuous action,

action done out of right reason, is that it is done out of the

intention which grasps the right end. That end, which is the telos

of right action, the action's for-the-sake-of-which (its ou

eneka), cannot be (for phronesis) a qualified end, I.e. a product

(poeton) which is “for the sake of something”, because those are

the ends of art (poesis) rather than virtuous action (praxis).

Rather, the end must be an unqualified end, which is the good action

itself (1139b 4). It is thus the distinction between poesis

(production) and praxis (action) which enables the end of right

action to be thought as the right activity of the human itself:

“for the end of production is some other thing, but in the case of action there is no no other end (for a good action is itself theend)”(1140b7)

“Hence intention is either a desiring intellect or a thinking desire, and such a principle is man”(1139b5)

So, man himself as acting is the nexus of thought and desire –

desire according to thought, and what is desired above all is

what is good without qualification, and this is the good action.

Man is also the nexus of purpose and consequence – the

unqualifiably good action is done for the sake of itself. What is

desired is the good action itself (which is man as the activity

of acting rightly), and what desires it is man (which is an

activity whose highest completion/perfectibility is continuously

right action). Since the good action is the action of man

according to right reason, the virtuous man thinks to make

himself desire his own good actions, and the product of this

self-making in thought is that he desires his own good activity.

There can be said to be a kind of centrifugal force to right

reason, a circularity that makes the self's actions their own end

insofar as they are themselves unqualifiably good ends. This is

made clear when the striving for right action in this sense,

which is most properly called prudence (phronesis), is contrasted

with other, political sorts of prudence:

“Prudence is thought to be concerned most of all with matters relating to the person in whom it exists and with him only; and this disposition has the common name 'prudence'. Of the other kinds, one is financial management, another is law-giving, and a third is political, of which one part is deliberative and the other judicial.”(1141b 30-34).

“knowing what is good for oneself, and this differs much from the others; and a man who knows and is engaged in matters which concernhimself is thought to be prudent, while public servants are thought to busy themselves with other people's business”(1142a1)

What is essentially meant here by prudence, phronesis? We miss

everything if we interpret it as self-concern in the sense of

selfishness, or any kind of egoism. What is meant by self-

concern, or inwardness here is not concern for one's own values,

I.e. what one affirms as a reason for acting, but rather concern

for one's own existence as the being which can act for the sake

of itself. What it means for an action to be a good action is not

for it to accord with a value posited by a subject, but for the

action to accord with the good – in other words, the Good plays

the role of a primitive rather than derivative descriptor in

Aristotle's ethics. Before grasping the role of the Good in the

goodness of an unqualified action, all these words attempting to

define what is meant by right reason remain empty. So what is

meant by the Good?

“for the end of production (poesis) is some other thing [I.e. a product] (poeton), but inthe case of action there is no other end (for a good action is itself the end). It is because of this that we consider Pericles andothers like him to be prudent, for they are able to perceive what is good for themselves as well as for other men...”(1140b 6-9).

We can see from this passage that the good is something perceived

– it is something that can be recognized in prudence insofar as

it dictates to prudence what is good. But the good is not

perceived as such – Pericles does not perceive the good directly,

but rather that which is good for himself and for others.

Aristotle can be seen here standing close to Plato – the Good is

the condition of intelligibility which makes other things

knowable (Republic 508d). However, Aristotle is not merely

repeating Plato, because he refuses to grant priority to the Good

itself over particular goods:

“...neither will Good Itself and a particular good differ insofar as each is good.”(1096b 2)

“...neither will Good Itself by being eternal be more good than a particular good”(1096b 4)

Thus, Aristotle neither refuses to speak of a “good itself”, nor

accords it priority in the sense of being “more good” - this is

certainly a departure from Plato, and it conforms with his

project in the Metaphysics that the Platonic forms exist but not in

the sense of independent causes. However, if we have any chance

in this paper of thinking the nature of the good we must

concentrate specifically on the role of the Good in prudence

(phronesis):

“[P]rudence is not scientific knowledge; for it is concerned with the ultimate particular,as we said, and such is the object of action. It is thus opposed to intuition; for intuition is of definitions, for which there is no reasoning, while prudence is of the ultimate particular, which is an object not of science but of sensation, not the sensation of proper sensibles, but like that by which we sense that ultimate particular inmathematics in a triangle....But this kind ofsensation is closer to sensation (aisthesis) than to prudence, while the sensation of the other [I.e. by prudence] is of another kind. (1142a 25-30)

What can be gleaned from this puzzling passage, perhaps one of

the most difficult in the Nic. Ethics? The Good does not even

appear in the passage, explicitly, but it is the subject of the

passage – the “ultimate particular” is the good action. The good

action can't be the object of Science because science concerns

those things which could not be otherwise, and these can't be the

objects of praxis. Concerning this ultimate particular, prudence

knows it as something sensed. The Greek word for sensation,

aisthesis, means impression. As for what kind of sensation,

Aristotle compares the sensibility of prudence to the sensation

whereby mathematics is able to sense its proper sensibles, I.e.

mathematical objects. So, the good is more like mathematical

objects, as a thing sensed, than it is like “proper sensibles”

I.e. everyday objects. But this comparison is inadequate –

sensation of mathematical objects is more like sensation of

everyday objects than it is to the sensation of prudence. We

should take this inequality quite seriously – the sensibility of

mathematical shapes, which is not something corporeal at all, is

more similar to everyday sensation than it is to the sensation of

prudence – or in other words, as an object of sensation,

geometric shapes are more like tables than the good is like

geometric shapes. But, while we should pay heed to the

strangeness of the good as something to be sensed by prudence, we

should not be surprised that it is difficult to speak about –

since the good is the condition of intelligibility, it cannot

itself be intelligible – the light of the sun does not light

itself up. What is stunning in this passage is that Aristotle is

able to express the sense in which the good can be known – not as

an idea, eternal, but as a particular manifestation, as it

applies to an “ultimate particular”, a specific good action.

In the dim light of what has been said of the good we must

re-interpret the structure of phronesis. We shall still say that

the good man, as the principle (arche) of desire according to

deliberative thought, has his own good actions as the purpose (telos)

and starting-point (kinesis) of his own activity. However, we can

now say that what it means to choose according to right reason,

to make one's desires pre-grasp the unqualified good, is to

culture a specific kind of sensibility which is open to the Good

as the good manifests itself in specific particularities (I.e.

possible actions). We can thus see why it would be disastrous to

interpret the prudence's concern for the individual as an egoism

or solipsism – for unlike our contemporary notion of the

individual as a self-centered certainty which projects values

over against itself as reasons for acting, and might come to

overcome his or her individuation by sharing values in a

community, Aristotle's notion of prudence as being concerned with

what is good for oneself means being concerned with the good insofar as

oneself can sense it. “One's own good” does not mean that which

benefits myself in the modernist sense: that which increases my

power, fulfills my values, furthers my willing, but rather, the

Good itself as it is for me, as it manifests itself an ultimate

particular for me. Although Aristotle believes action according to

the good will result in happiness, he does not think the good is

simply the fulfillment of needs I.e. desire satisfaction.

Aristotle in fact claims that while the best things ways of being

for man, phronesis and sophia do bring with them pleasure and

happiness, they would be desirable even if they did not bring

happiness with them, because they are "worthy of choice for their

own sake"(1144a 2)The self-sufficiency of the good makes it an

ultimate limit-concept: it (as a characteristic) cannot be

described as it is in itself, and it cannot be conceived as the

result of some function or activity, but rather it makes those

actions which are good possible and possibly knowable for humans.

If we want to keep thinking Aristotle as a resource for

modern ethics, we have various options. Either we misread without

regret, ignore Aristotle's distinctively Greek view, treat it as

a contemporary text, employ a death of the author reading, simply

cross out the bits we don't like. The downside to this would be

that its unclear how using Aristotle this way would still be

philosophy. Strictly speaking it would be literature, or “found

literature” - suitable for inspiration, but not something to

appeal to as a rigorous thinking. On the other hand, we can

recognize that despite the fact that Aristotle's understanding of

practical judgment concerns the Greek situation, it is possible

to rethink it in our own. We could at least take Aristotle as an

example of how to think a theory of judgment which recognizes the

act of judgment itself as the nexus of intention and consequence.

But there is no reason to assume in advance that appropriating

Aristotle, even if one were to do so in an appropriate and

serious manner, would be more fruitful than beginning from any of

the other serious alternatives - Kantian or Utilitarian ethics,

Hegel's constructivist liberalism, Levinas' absolute other,

Frankfurt School's distinctive Marxism, etc... Despite the

obvious difficulties and myriad alternatives, however, there may

still be some advantages to an Aristotelian appropriation. For

one, our philosophical history begins with the Greeks, so perhaps

while the way we see ourselves in the world has changed, there

could still be some deep continuity which an appropriation of

Aristotle, done in the right way, might bring out.

Rather than beginning such an appropriation afresh, it would

be far more economical to evaluate the work of thinkers who had

already engaged in this kind of work. Fortunately, there are at

least two examples of this at our disposal. First, we can look to

Heidegger's work in the early 20's on Aristotle, which for

Heidegger was crucial towards developing his magnum opus Being

and Time, but which for us might be crucial for quite different

reasons. Secondly, we can look to Ed Casey's recent work on the

phenomenon of the glance, which, although more a work in

contemporary applied phenomenology than a hermeneutic work in the

history of philosophy, is interesting to us because of the extent

to which it repeats something like Aristotle, but in our own

historical situation.

Heidegger 1: The Categoriality of Life: Care and World

Heidegger's project in the early 1920s is to

phenomenologically deduce the fundamental categories of life, via

method of repetition and clarification. The course I will draw

from herein is called "Phenomenological Interpretations of

Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research", and was

given in the summer semester of 1921. The second part of the

title is more revealing than the first - while Heidegger's

analysis is certainly inspired and influenced by Aristotle, very

little direct interpretation of Aristotle takes place in the

course. The explicitly declared task of the course is "the full,

concrete appropriation" "of the situation in which understanding

is rooted" (Heidegger 33). The course is this not ethics - not

the "you should do this", but if practical knowledge requires

knowledge of life, then it might be considered part of meta

ethics. This is suggested by the value laden terms Heidegger uses

to describe the contemporary dominance of "worldview" philosophy,

which is "at the bottom of the disaster of our present spiritual

condition" (34). However, certainly not all ways of thinking

ethics require that we know anything about concrete factical life

or current "spiritual" condition - Kant's notion of

freedom/ethics strictly denies that any knowledge of how humans

actually are empirically, which means for Kant simply "in

experience", could have anything to do with ethics. But what is

distinctive about Aristotle that we might want to appropriate is

precisely the sense that we can't know anything about the ethical

until we understand what right reason is. Heidegger does not set

out to redraw the categories of the practical syllogism because

he doesn't want to presume any particular theory of subjectivity

- rather, develop a new notion of the human that is radically

descriptive of the "human condition" by not being tied to

concepts like "human" or "subject". The goal is not to reduce

life to categories so it can be ordered and secured, but use

categories to grasp life. Heidegger's attitude towards answers in

philosophy is made explicit in his determination of the

philosopher as "the genuine and constant beginner"(12).

Philosophy is "not toward an end", not on the way towards

completeness, correctness, positions which can be defended

against attack, but "to proceed toward the beginning", which

opens the possibility of "a genuinely reflective thought"(140).

Answers can be provisional only, they are valid only for one's

own time - "to begin on behalf of another time is

senseless"(140). The emphasis on inquiry, access, and constant

beginning instead of coming to the correct conclusion is

certainly an appealing doctrine of method by which to approach

the question of Aristotle in modern ethics.

Heidegger's attempt to grasp the concrete situation of life

proceeds by way of determining categories. Katagoria for the

Greeks meant originally "what things are called in the Agora

(market place)", and became in Aristotle a technical term for the

manners in which a being is determined according to itself. In

Kant, categories are aspects of the transcendental apperceptive

function (i.e. Transcendental-I). What does "category" mean here?

"Categories can be understood only insofar asfactical life itself is compelled to interpretation" (66)

"The categories are not inventions or a groupof logical schemata as such, "lattices"; on the contrary, they are alive in life itself in an original way: alive in order to "form" life on themselves."(66)

The categories are descriptions of phenomena that exist prior to

us having words for them. The categories are "in" the things

themselves , life is form-engendering out of itself, making

itself intelligible. But, not in a manner of stable continuous

presence, such that humans could determine the categories once

and for all:

"...the categorial interpretation that is nowto be pursued further must essentially be repeated, even when it has already become intelligible. Its evidence matures precisely in its genuine and ever more rigorous repeatability. In concrete repetition, the interpretation itself becomes ever simpler..."(67)

The repetition of interpretation is philosophy as genuine

beginning. It would be tempting to think this as a kind of

Hegelianism - life exists as spirit coming to know itself.

However, this mistakenly assumes the ground of life to be the

drive of clarification itself:

"Living and caring...do not rest on, self-reflection....Such interpretations of experience in one's own world mistake the problematic from the ground up." (71-72)

"Experience in one's own world therefore has nothing to do with psychological or even theoretical-psychological reflection; it has nothing to do with the inner perception of psychic lived experiences" (72)

Life as such does not rely on clarification or reflection, life

goes about its business initially and for the most part not

knowing itself. This is easily accepted - what is more radical is

the claim that experience is therefore not at base psychological

- this is because psychology is itself a human activity itself

requiring clarification based in the categories of life itself.

Life makes itself possible, and does not require post hawk

clarifications to ground it. If one is committed to a

reductionist account of reality such an argument will never be

convincing. On the other hand, if one is committed to the

clarification of life itself on its own terms, and out of itself,

it is plain that all would be lost if we fall to the temptation

of reducing "life" to something more immediately comprehensible.

This is interesting for ethics because only a non reductive

descriptivism can avoid the is/ought fallacy by holding itself

open to the origin of normativity in the movement of life -

something concealed a priori from any inquiry which sets as a

condition for coherent explanation the kind of lawfulness which

would make freedom impossible.

Of the categories of life which Heidegger determines in the

20's perhaps the most important and enduring is Care (Sorge):

"Living, in its verbal meaning, is to be interpreted according to its relational senseas caring: to care for and about something; to

live means to care. What we care for and about, what caring adheres to, is equivalent to what is meaningful. Meaningfulness is a categorial determination of the world; the objects of a world, worldly, world-some objects, are lived inasmuch as they embody the character of meaningfulness." (68)

"Every experience is in itself an encounter and indeed an encounter in and for an act of caring. The basic character of the object is therefore always this: it stands, and is met with, on the path of care; it is experienced as meaningful."(68)

"Care" is to be interpreted primarily as a verb, an activity.

Care is to be understood not in the Christian sense of

compassion, but as concernful dealing with things.1 Things

(objects) are meaningful for us as we encounter them, and this

means nothing other than it is experienced as something which is

1 Heidegger is aware, however, of the relation between the GermanSorge, and the latin, curare. This relation is explicitly thematized in a 1922 paper on Aristotle: "In [the] blockage of the tendency to pursue dealings characterized by concern, these dealings are transformed into a mere looking around without ay iew to directing oneself to routine tasks and gearing things in certain directions. Such looking around takes on the character of merely looking at.... In the care of this looking, i.e. in curiosity (cura [care], curiositas [curiosity]), the world is there for one not as the with-which of dealings directed to routine tasks but solely from teh point of view of its look, its appearance"(115-116).

met by life as something which life takes care of. Life does not

turn mere material into something meaningful by encountering it

(psychological interpretation of life), things which are

encountered as meaningful already have meaningfulness as a

categorial determination, otherwise we would not be able to

encounter them at all:

"...it is not the case that objects are at first represent as bare realities, as objectsin some sort of natural state, an that they are in the course of our experience receive the garb of a value-character, so they do nothave to run around naked"(69)

The second category of life is called "world". What is

essential is that "world" is not the site that pre-exists in

which care encounters meaningful things, but rather "world" is

itself the direction care takes, the pro-jective attuning of the

concernful encounter:

"Life finds direction, take a direction, grows into a direction, give to itself or lives in a direction, and even if the direction is lost to sight, it nevertheless remains present."(70)

"That toward which a factical life is directed in caring, the world in which one lives"(71)

Care is the activity of factical life, world is the direction of

that activity, understood the "towards which". "Towards which"

in Aristotle is ou eneka, "for the sake of which". We should

therefore not assume that "world" here is analogous to my

surroundings in any neutral way. While it would be wrong to say

"world" is normative simply because it implies a direction, it is

not in any sense an environment in which I decide how to comport

myself -

"The distinctive directions of caring set into relief respective specific worlds of care"(70-71)

A "world of care", i.e. a direction which care takes, is a

setting into relief. A world makes some things show up, and other

things conceal themselves. This does not mean "world" can be

interpreted psychologistically, however:

"...one's own world must not be identified with the "Ego". The "Ego" is a category with a complex form, and I do not at all need to encounter it as such in my care over my own world..."(71)

"World" is not a property of selves but a modality of care-ing activity. Thus, because care cannot be interpreted on the basis of a psychic interpretation of life, neither can

a mere explicit paying of attention but is instead primarily a taking of direction on the part of the entire life. This means that,e.g., the setting into relief of one's own world is not a denial of the others, but, quite to the contrary, the setting into relief of one's own world co-actualizes and determines the sense of an appropration of the shared world and the surrounding world..."(71)

It would be easy to read from this that world is really a

property of selves but understood non-psychologistically. This

interpretation would claim that because the activity of "setting

into relief" determines how we "appropriate" the shared world,

that activity as the function of the subject is prior.

Identifying setting-into-relief with the function of a

transcending subject guarantees we interpret Heidegger as yet

another Kantian, and dasein as another name for the subject.

However, if we recognize that the setting-into-relief is not an

activity of the subject but the direction of concernful

engagement, and that the subject or "ego" is not the ground of

that engagement but one way among others of coming to terms with

care retrospectively, we can perhaps see past our Kantian

tendencies. The non-subjectivism of Heidegger's account of World

and Care is made further explicit by an insistence that no world,

i.e. direction of care, has a privileged position:

"In terms of prominence or explicitness, noneof the worlds have a necessarily privileged position; indeed, it is precisely characteristic of the mode of maturation of factical life to live the world in a specificindistinction of worlds. This indistinction is not privative, a lack of setting distinctly apart, but is instead a proper positive character..."(71)

Thus, we must avoid reading "the setting into relief of one's own

world co-actualizes and determines the sense of an appropration

of the shared world and the surrounding world..."(71) as a causal

sequence of one primary world allowing us access to another.

Worlds are, after all, not psychological modalities but

directions of practical engagement. When Heidegger says that a

world "co-actualizes and determines the sense of an

appropriation" of another world, he means explicitly that the

directions of care are neither determined out of each other nor

having existence independent of each other. Rather, their

activity is one of "co-actualization", or as we might say in a

Levinasian way of speaking (although I certainly do not purport

to speak "for" Levinas, or "as" Levinas), "inter-penetration".

The way in which Heidegger’s repetition of something like

Aristotle’s “ethical” determination of man shows us our distance

from the Greek way of understanding normativity is clear -

whereas in Aristotle one World (direction of care - for-the-sake-

of-which, ou eneka) has priority over all the others, i.e. the one

which finds its direction (purpose) in the unqualifiably good end

(the right action itself), here no world has normative priority

over any other. It is precisely for this reason that Heidegger

can say he is in no way doing what is called "ethics". However,

this in itself does not mean that Heidegger's account of the

categories of life could not be useful for ethics- by enabling us

to better grasp where we are, and better grasp the ethical binds

we find ourselves in. However, for this it is not enough to

simply employ the categories of life and world, but we must

further pursue Heidegger's categoriality of life into Life's

movement and relationality.

Heidegger 2: Life's Relationality: Proclivity, Dispersion,

Sequestering

Heidegger is interested not only in renaming and de-subjectifying

our account of life as concernful-engagement in the world, but

also (and more importantly) grasping the veritable character of

that concernful engagement - its inherent tendencies covered up

by biologistic, Kantian, or psychological accounts of life. The

first determination of the relationality of life as care is

"inclination":

"In caring about meaningful things...by way of care...there resides the sense character of "inclination". This categorial sense, inclination,is included in the relationality of life itself and imparts to life a peculiarweight, a direction of gravity, a pull towardsomething."(75)

"Inclination" appears at first to be the same as "World", because

it is a direction of care. But, whereas world is the direction of

care itself, inclination is the pull life feels in particular

direction. Inclination gives life "weight" because it the

tendency towards the recognition of things as meaningful - as

things are engaged as meaningful dasein is pulled towards them,

and life is made heavy with the need to take care of meaningful

things. Inclination is not neutral, however - it brings care,

according to Heidegger, into a particular mode of actualization:

"This character of inclination...brings to maturation a mode of actualization, namely proclivity."(75)

"This proclivity impels life into its world, rigidifies it, and brings to maturation a petrification of the directionality of life. Life genuinely finds itself where its own proper proclivity fixes it..."(76)

Proclivity is the tendency of life's direction, when motivated in

inclination, to become rigidified, structured, petrified. As life

is drawn by meaningful things into specific concerns, this

movement (inclination) has in it the potency and tendency to get

stuck, to remain bound up by particular concerns. This emphasis,

petrification, on particular concerns, tends life to forget

itself as the nexus of care and concern, and become neutral with

respect to which concerns come upon it:

"In its proclivity, life thereby arrives at the mode of being transported. Life abandons itself to a certain pressure exerted by its world."(76)

"The relationality of care, i.e., life i a

world, becomes disperse, an newly awakened proclivities keep life within its dispersions....Life becomes laid out in its world at random, following whatever comes "out of the blue". (76)

Proclivity is thus the tendency of care to forget itself as care

through a taking care which petrifies taking care into a

particular mode of actualization. It can be said that in

proclivity, life does not maintain "distance", which is to say a

perspective on itself. I no longer measures itself, or takes

account of itself as taking-care:

"Living in proclivity and dispersion, life doe not maintain distance....In oversight with regard to distance, life mis-measures itself, it does not grasp itself in the measure appropriate to it."(77)

In not taking its own measure, life takes care of itself by

ignoring itself as something to be taken care of. In other words,

care itself is not cared for - is "sequestered away", such that

only meaningful things, coming "out of the blue" appear as

objects of concern, and care itself is never thematized as an

object of concern:

"The relation of "sequestration" characterize

the peculiar what factical life cares for itself in its world, namely, by bringing to (factical) maturation, within its concern andincreasing care over its world, an actual non-caring about itself: unworriedness (itself a concerned caring). "(80)

Life cares for itself by not caring for itself, which is why

"unworriedness" itself is a mode of concerful care despite being

determined by its character as a lack of concernful care. But

this does not mean in the least that proclivity should be

interpreted as a common understanding of nihilism, in the sense

of life itself being devalued:

"In the concernful sequestration against itself, factical life itself develops ever new possibilities of meaningfulness in which it can bestir itself and can in that way be assured of its own "meaning."(80)

"This very multiplicity of possibilities, however, always implies an increase in the possibility of mistaking oneself in every newways"(80)

Thus, it is not that proclivity is life's tendency to find itself

as "lost". Rather, in proclivity life loses itself by

continuously assuring itself that it has found itself in

meaningful possibilities. It is not that such possibilities which

life loses itself in are not meaningful - they are in fact

determined by their character of meaningfulness in order for care

to encounter them in a mode of concern, however are not life

itself - so they enable life to mistake itself in a multiplicity

of new ways because dasein thinks it has ascertained its own

meaning when in fact it has simply mis grasped itself as if it

were those meaningful things towards which it is inclined. Thus,

Heidegger can say that with the infinity of meaningful

commitments dasein attempts to find itself in, it in fact "blinds

itself, puts out its own eyes"(80). Heidegger connects this

blindness in an infinity to Aristotle's claim that there are

myriad ways to miss the mark in phronesis but only one act that

hits it:

"...a man may make an error in many ways (forevil, as the Pythagoreans conjectured, belongs to the infinite, while goodness belongs to the finite), but he may succeed inone way only; and in view of this, one of them is easy but the other hard. It is easy to miss the mark but hard to hit it."(1106b 29-33)

However, this does not mean we can interpret a normativity to

care such that life knowing itself is virtue, and life mis-

finding itself in particular attachments is a lack of virtue.

Such would be the same mistake as interpreting "authenticity" in

Being and Time to be a species of moral virtue. Rather, life knowing

itself was normative for Aristotle because one world, one

direction of care (purpose, ou eneka) was privileged over all the

others - the one oriented towards phronesis and sophia because

those are the highest possible activities for man. For Heidegger

the issue is not discovering a normativity inherent in life, but

grasping the categoriality of life itself without prejudice,

without assuming we could know in advance the import of the

relations we find in life. Therefore, when Heidegger speaks of

the mistakes dasein makes in a carefree mode of existence, this

cannot be interpreted "ethically":

"Living is caring and indeed is so in the conciliation toward making things easy for oneself, in the inclination toward flight. Thereby arise a directionality toward possible mistakes as such..."(81)

"Life thereby devels its own self-searching which, in falling, change into carefreeness (securitas). Carefreeness is a mode of care, a mode of the concern of life for itself. (81)

"...[Life] is unwilling to be posed upon a primal decision and in it (repeating it)."(81)

However, what is of concern for us in elucidating the lack of

decision in carefree life is how we might understand a non-

normative descriptive account of a lack of decision concerning

one's own concernful taking care as a description of the

conditions under which something like an ethical demand might

arise. Not to simply declare there is an universal moral demand

to "know thyself", and thereby turn authenticity into the primary

virtue. Rather to with a greater subtlety contextualize how

ethical demands arise as a species of meaningful objects of

concern to life which has a tendency to forget itself in those

concerns by mistaking itself for them, and determine without

prejudice what kind of ethics are appropriate to life given such

knowledge of its relationality.

Heidegger 3: The Movements of Life: Relucence and Prestruction

Categories of Movement are distinct from the categories of life

(Care, World) and relationality (inclination, proclivity,

sequestering) because rather than expressing what life is or what

possible relations can life have, they concern the tendency of

life to move through different relationalities. In a sense, the

categories of relation already include movement (we say that

inclination is life being drawn towards particular concerns), but

the categories of movement thematize movements explicitely. The

movements of life are named "relucence" and "prestruction", and

Heidegger's follows through their analysis with respect to life's

3 categories of relation. However here it will suffice to

thematize relucence and prestruction with regard to inclination.

"Relucence" is the movement by which the blindness of life

towards itself inherent in the relation of proclivity is

dispelled:

"Life, caring for itself...reflects light back on itself, which produces a clarification of the surroundings of the currently immediate nexus of care. As so characterized, the movement of life toward itself within every encounter is what we call relucence." (89)

While the categories of relation assure that the situation in

which care finds itself conceals caring itself, the activity of

caring nevertheless illumines caring in the acting itself. Life

in caring cannot help but move also towards itself in any act of

caring. Out of this seeing-itself, care secures its own

possibility for caring by setting up structures which enable

further taking care.

"In caring, life is always projecting, beginning to build; in being relucent, life is at the same time prestructive."(89)

"The result is cultural life as the prestructively organized proclivity of the worldly relucence of the life of care."(89)

Prestruction is setting up for the sake of care. However, the

relation of proclivity (i.e. loosing one’s self in particular

concerns) assures that prestruction can lose sight its being for

the sake of care and believe that it finds in those things which

it secures, the purpose of that securing:

"The tendency to security in this prestruction (which is itself grounded in relucence) can be quite suppressed, so much that cultural activity and cultural life are interpreted o the basis of self-satisfied life as closed off in themselves, autonomous and positive"(89)

When prestruction no longer sets-up for the sake of care but for the sake of that which

is encountered in care, life is "...one stepaway fro determining life itself, in its entirety, encompassing its worlds, as something Objective"(89).

The danger of interpreting care recognizing itself as care as

normative is at its highest point in the categories of relucence

and prestruction. Things are made worse by the following section

in which Heidegger further determines the categories of movement

as "Ruination"(99-115), which becomes in Being and Time,

"Fallenness". This should not at all be a surprising tendency for

interpretation - since it is precisely the fact that praxis

(ethical action) in Aristotle takes itself as acting as its own

end that distinguishes it from productive action (poesis). If

Heidegger were simply copying Aristotle, the tendency of

prestruction towards ruination would be "unethical", and

relucence would be the possibility for "ethical" action. However,

for Heidegger the question of ethics concerns the rightness of

intentions or consequences. For Heidegger to simply assume that

modern ethics should be replaced with a restyled version of

ancient ethics would have been hubris, and for us to assume this

was his intent blinds us from the possible ethical import of the

categoriality of life by lining it up alongside other ethics as a

possible alternative "ethics". Rather than develop a sort of

"Heideggarien ethics" as a possible alternative we could choose

instead of other kinds of ethical thinking, Heidegger's neo-

Aristotelian analysis of the categoriality of life could be

deployed as a kind of meta-ethical supplement to any kind of

ethics which wishes to explicitly thematize life as possibly

ethical (i.e. "character").

Conclusion 1: The Categoriality of Life as Meta-Ethical

Supplement?

In order to situate the value of a categoriality of life as

a resource for an ethics of "character" it is worthwhile focusing

on what Heidegger saw as the purpose of his analysis:

"The interpretation of life with respect to its relationality in caring, or, more exactly, the interpretation of the movedness of care (life), aims at coming explicatively and categorially closer to the sense of movement, as factical movement, in order thereby to make facticity itself available ina certain way ad thus to appropriate it categorially."(92)

In other words, the purpose, the "in-order-to" is the

availability and appropriation of the "fact" of life itself, its

"there-ness". For Aristotle, the purpose of such an appropriation

was clear: for Aristotle, ethics of "virtue" means you need to

have virtue, which means to be good, before you can see the right

thing to do: "[the best end] is not apparent to a man who is not

good"(1144a 34). Since the end you see is the right action

itself, having virtue means being able to see yourself - phronesis

is a mode of truth that works on the object appropriate to it,

i.e. the human(1139b 12). For Aristotle, this self-transparency

was normative because it makes the human in a sense "complete",

and for Aristotle completeness is the highest state for any

activity (energia). God's activity is the highest because it is

perfect permanent stability: "His actuality is in virtue of

itself a life which is best and is eternal"(Met 1072 b29), and

human life finds its highest possibility in approximating as far

as is possible the completeness of God's activity in sophia and

phronesis: "we should try as far as possible to partake of

immortality and to make every effort to live according to the

best art of the soul in us"(1177b34). We reject this, after Nietzsche

we know that the permanent is an illusion anyway-that fixation is

a useful lie, a falsity that is a condition for life. Heidegger's

project recognizes fixation (prestruction) as a movement

undergone by life for its benefit (prestruction is most

appropriately grounded in relucence), but which can also be a

trap (when what is prestructured is thought as self-sufficient in

itself - ruinance). Heidegger's account of life is better than

Aristotle's because it accounts for, after Nietzsche, how

permanence arises as a tendency of humans to fix up the world for

their benefit, rather than an alien perfection which we aim at

and can succeed partially because of a divine partition in our

souls. Therefore, if there is anything like "goodness" it will be

something human, but we might not be able to see it at all if we

are deceived about life. But why should we think that knowing

"goodness", if it is anything, is something human, would somehow

help us do ethics? To start, we must put out of our minds any

notion that the structure of life itself might give us something

like normativity - everything is lost if we interpret "ruinance"

or "fallenness" ethically. Rather, it can be at most a meta-

ethics, or perhaps meta-meta-ethics. What it can do is give a

description of the situation we find ourself, in which (possibly)

something like ethics arises. The most crucial impact for ethics

could be in the enhanced descriptivism about how we ignore the

situation we are in. This is important if we believe that moral

demands are imposed somehow by the situation itself - we will

need to know about how we ignore the situation we find ourselves

in, in general, in order to be generally cognizant of the kind of

moral demands which a situation might manifest but which we could

remain sequestered off from. In other words, before we even start

talking about moral particularism, we need a concrete

interpretation of life. However, this does not mean that such a

concrete interpretation should first be completed and afterwards

the work of ethics could begin - for Heidegger does not think

such an interpretation is ever complete and done with: the

philosopher is "the genuine and constant beginner"(12). The point

of inquiry s not to get the answer for the sake of using the

answer for some useful purpose, but to repeat the inquiry and in

so doing get closer and more reflective, to have a genuinely

reflective thought. This does not, however mean philosophy can

never come to any useful conclusions. Rather, that philosophy

cannot be for the sake of its useful conclusions, or thought to

be complete when a conclusion turns out to be useful. This demand

of repeated inquiry follows naturally from the realization that

"life" is not something fixed and permanent, having unchanging

principles, which could be codified "theoretically" into a fixed

logical structure.

Conclusion 2: After Kant and Mill?

According to Heidegger, contemporary ethics concerns either

intentions or consequences, and can not be put into conversation

with Greek ethics because for the Greeks, ethics concerned the

possibility of becoming immortal - "whereby neither intentions

nor practical consequences play any role"(Sophist 122-123).

However if something like virtue ethics were possible, i.e. as a

modern ethical thinking which thought the ethical on the basis of

character (i.e. the way of being of man), it would be so only on

the basis of an appropriation of the being of man, i.e. by way of

the categoriality of life. Since "alternative" kinds of ethical

thinking, i.e. moral particularism, sentimentalism, ethics of

"the other" proclaim to begin from where we "are", any of them

could be "improved" by way of a more radical appropriation of the

concrete situation. Thus, while "returning" to Greek ethics might

be groundless and only possible on a superficial reading of

Aristotle, we still might learn from Greek ethics by heeding its

emphasis on the particularity of response to particular

situations, i.e. what sort of judgment is appropriate to ethics:

“But first, let us agree on that other matter, namely, that all statements concerning matters of action should be made sketchily and not with precision, for, as we said at first, our demands of statements should be in accordance with the subject-matter of those statements; in matters concerning action and expediency, as in thoseof health, there is no uniformity. And if such is the universal statement, a statement concerning particulars will be even less precise; for these do not come under any art or precept, but those who are to act must always consider what is proper to the occasion, as in medical art and in navigation. Yet even though our present statement is of such a nature, we should try to be of some help.” (1104a 1-11).

Bibliography*

Aristotle. Metaphysics.trans H. G. Apostle. Iowa: Peripatetic Press, 1979.

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. trans H.G. Apostle. Iowa: Peripatetic Press, 1984.

Heidegger, Martin. Plato's Sophist.trans Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana, 1997. (Course given 1924)

Heidegger: Phenomenological Interpretations According to Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research.trans Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana, 2001. (Course commenced 1921)

Heidegger, Martin. "Phenomenological Interpretations in Connection with Aristotle: An Indication of hte Hermeneutical Situation." trans John Van Buren. Supplements. Ed. John van Buren. New York: State of New York Press, 2002.111-146.

Nussbaum, M.C. "Virtue Ethics: A Misleading Category?"The Journalof Ethics 3.3 (1999):13-201.

Plato. Republic. trans Allan Bloom. Perseus Press, 1968.

*Note: All Heidegger references are to Phenomenological

Interpretations to Aristotle, and all Aristotle references are to

the Nicomachean ethics, unless indicated otherwise.