Aristotle and virtue ethics in the context of the course

1 Differences between Aristotle and the Utilitarianism and Kantianism
Aristotle asks: What type of person should we be? Or: How should we develop our character? His ethics is focussed on the agent and his character (character-centered ethics). Kant and Mill try to provide – a bit simplified – a decision making procedure. The question there is: What should we do? These ethics approaches focus on action.

2 Relativism?
As virtues are based on the community, the question arises whether Aristotle’s ethics is relativistic.
In defense of Aristotle and virtue ethics, one might argue the following:
- An ethics discourse might be seen rather as persuasive then prescriptive.
- Part of virtue ethics is an inquiry into our human nature; we have to “know ourselves” as humans
- Going beyond Aristotle, one could come up with the standard that virtues should be universal applicable, as a sort of testing method, in order to determine whether a virtue is truly one.

Aristotle on Virtue

What are virtues?

Distinction intellectual and moral virtues:
Intellectual: sophia and phronesis, understanding
Moral: e.g. self-control, courage, generosity, etc.

- Moral Virtues exist not by nature - but are formed by habit:
“Hence it is no small matter whether one habit or another is inculcated in us from early childhood; on the contrary, it makes a considerable difference, or, rather all the difference.” (1103b 25)

- Aiming at the mean:
Excess and deficiency destroys virtue (analogy strength)
Mean = relative to us
Median cannot simply be put as an arithmetical relation

- Mark of virtue:
Doing the right thing, at a right time, towards the right person, for the right reason, in the right manner.
“bad men have many ways, good men but one.” (1106b 35)

Aristotle on Happiness

1 Starting point
„Every art or applied science and every systematic investigation, and similarly every action and choice, seem to aim at some good; the good, therefore, has been well defined as that at which all things aim.“ (1094a1)
Everything and everyone is directed towards a good, everything has an end (or purpose): a knife to cut, a car to drive etc. Also actions of people have an end: health of medicine, boat of boatbuilding, victory of generalship etc. A good boatbuilder is one making good boats etc.

2 Happiness
However, the different goods are not all equally important. There is a hierarchy of the goods. The highest good of them is eudaimonia: happiness, living well (doing well) or perhaps best translated as human flourishing. This is the central subject of the Nicomachean Ethics: happiness is pursued as an end in itself and everyone strives towards it. (Moral and intellectual virtues and pleasure are pursued as end in themselves as well as for happiness’ sake.)

3 Definition of Happiness
“Happiness is a certain activity of the soul in conformity with perfect virtue.” (1102a5)

“The soul of an animate organism ... is nothing other than its system of active abilities to perform the vital functions that organisms of its kind naturally perform, so that when an organism engages in the relevant activities (e.g., nutrition, movement of thought) it does so in virtue of the system of abilities that is its soul.” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/#4)

Necessity to understand our nature ("Know Thyself!")
Aristotle provides two definitions of the human being:
a)“zoon logon echein” and b) “zoon politicon”
a) Everything has a function, so do human beings. Human function is "logos", which is the characteristic that distinguishes him from other beings.
b) “man is by nature a social and political being” (1097b11 a)
Importance of man leaving the "oikos" an engage others in the "polis".

4 Further Key Sentences on the relation of happiness, virtue and rationality
- “The proper function of man, then, consists in an activity of the soul in conformity with a rational principle.” (1098a6)
- “The good of man is an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or virtue.” (1098a15)

5 Happiness and External Goods
Aristotle denies the view that prosperty equates with happiness. Although the possession of external goods is necessary for a happy and virtuos life.
- for a virtuos life: wealth and health is required to perform virtuos actions (e.g. generosity requires a certain amount of money, courage requires health to excercise it)
- for a happy life: “If we look utterly repulsive or are ill-born, solitary and childless” we can not be said to be happy. (1099b4)

Introduction Aristotle

1 Aristotle (384 – 322 BC)
- student of Plato (427 – 347 BC),
- teacher of Alexander the Great

2 Philosophy of Aristotle
- Universalist: studied and taught all subjects available at the time, on logic, on physics and science (physics, meteoroloy, on the heaven, on the soul, on the sleep, on memory, on animals etc.), on philosophy (Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics and others)
- Philosophical Framework:
i) Shares with the early Wittgenstein the "empirical" starting point
ii) But he perceives (all) things as goal-directed (teleological) and draws further conclusion from this experience that leads to his conception of ethics (unlike the early Wittgenstein).

3 Nicomachean Ethics: Overview
3.1 Naming: Dedicated or edited by his son Nicomachus
3.2 Structure: The Nicomachean Ethics consists out of ten books. It can roughly be divided in three parts:
a) general ethics (book 1): the study of the good/highest good
b) virtues (book 2-4): the golden means, moral virtues
c) ethics in the context of society (book 5-10): justice, intellectual virtues, friendship, politics

Seven General Points about Philosophy

1 How does Philosophy get started?
With questions. Being astonished. Not taking things for granted.

2 Philosophy is a systematization of question

3 Interdependence of Philosophizing and History of Philosophy
Need for both aspects: The questioning, critizising, asking your own questions and the study of the history of philosophy, exact reading of philosophical texts.

4 Systematization of Philosophy with Immanuel Kant
Every philosopher will give another account of organizing the field of philosophy. Kant's systematization provides a short and clear account:
i) What can I know? - Epistemology
ii) What should I do? - Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy
iii) What may I hope for? - Philosophy of Religion
iv) What is man? - Anthropology
For Kant, answering the first three question will answer the fourth one. In the Ateneo syllabus question iv) is tackled before ii) and iii)
What might be the explanation for that?

5 Method of Philosophy - Analysis of Concepts

6 Philosophy arises from the "Lebenswelt"
Philosophy, as well as science in general, arises from concrete questions in a particular historical, cultural and social context. Although aiming at universal truth, the perspective of the question is embedded in a certain culture. This has to be kept in mind when reading philosophy.(E.g. the rise of bioethics in the Western World from the 70s onwards would be an example of the cultural relatedness of science )

7 "Sapere Aude!" (Kant) - Dare to know!
Kant writes in "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?":
"Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding.”

Questioning Wittgenstein

1 Concept of Science
The problem of Wittgenstein is his concept of science. What can be said by means of the picture theory is very limited. Even sentences of logic cannot be accommodated. Should science (and especially philosophy) not try to explain the phenomenons of our life rather then say something about a limited area of our life?

2 Criticizing Wittgenstein from his later philosophy
Is perhaps the scientific language not the only language which has meaning? The later Wittgenstein argues that there is a plurality of languages (or language games, as he calls it), that are equally valid: “The speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life. [There is a] multiplicity of language games ...: Giving orders, and obeying them. Describing the appearance of an object ... Reporting an event. Speculating about an event. Forming and testing a hypothesis... Making up a story; and reading it. Play-acting... Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.
It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used ... with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.” (Philosophical Investigations, §23) All these language games follow their own logic and their own rules.

3 What is the task of philosophy?
We have to decide between a philosophical theory on logicist or empiricist premises and our every day understanding of moral language. Should we deconstruct and deny an important aspect of our life? Or should we try to explain the phenomenons that surround us and decide our life? (The question would also be what are we doing in the “philosophy of the human person”? We try to give an account of the phenomenons that surround us.)

For further discussion please consult also the Entry on Wittgenstein in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (See link list)

Wittgenstein’s “Lecture on Ethics”

1 Broad concept of Ethics:
Including “what is good”, “what is valuable”, “the meaning of life”, the area of aesthetics etc. (Note: this is not the common understanding of what ethics is.)
2 Distinction between the relative (trivial) and absolute (ethical) sense of a word:
Relative: “good”, “right” etc. for a certain purpose (good tennis player, right road)
Absolute: “good person” (e.g. “but you should behave better”)
a) Relative sense of a word is a description of a certain state of affairs, absolute sense of a word is something else: it is a normative judgment or a prescription. We try to say something that goes “beyond the world”: These propositions have therefore no meaning, according to Wittgenstein.
b) Another way of understanding: relative sense of the word is conditional (this is the right road if you want to go to Manila in the shortest time), absolute sense of the word is unconditional (you ought to behave better). The distinction can be compared to the Kant’s distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperative.
3 The “World-Book”:
Another way suggested by Wittgenstein to get aware of the difference (between “relative” and “absolute”) is his thought experience of a world book: Imagine an omniscient person who knows all the movement of all bodies, all state of minds, all facts. He would write everything in a book; “this book would contain the whole description of the world [but] nothing that we would call an ethical judgment.” (p. 3) Even the description of a murder, with all its details, but we would still not find an ethical proposition.
4 Even though that there can be no ethical statement, we make such experiences:
Three examples: a) “I wonder at the existence of the world”, b) “I feel absolutely safe”, c) the concept of “miracle”. In all three examples, it is a misuse of language: a) “wonder” is always about something that might not be the case (an unusually big dog, a house that was there and now has been demolished etc.), b) safe is always relative (e.g. in my room, I’m safe, because no truck can run over me) and c) the word “miracle” does not belong to (scientific) language.
5 Ethical and religious expression just similes?
The use of good, right, valuable etc. in the absolute sense, seem just to be meant as similes. But then, it should be possible to drop the similes, and describe the state of affair on the basis of facts – but there are no such facts. (p. 6)
6 Ethics as a need of human beings
“My whole tendency and, I believe, the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. (...) But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.”