This book is a study of ancient views about "moral luck." It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This updated edition contains a new preface.
M A R T H A C. NUSSBAUM
The Fragility of Goodness
LUCK AND ETHICS IN GREEK T R A G E D Y AND PHILOSOPHY UPDATED
EDITION
The Fragility of Goodness Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy Revised Edition
Martha C. Nussbaum University of Chicago
GLI C A M B R I D G E qjjPF U N I V E R S I T Y
PRESS
PUBLISHED BY T H E PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, U K 40 West 20th Street, New York, N Y 10011-4211, U S A 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, vie 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 15, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1986 © Martha C. Nussbaum 2001 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1986 Reprinted 1986, 1987, 1988 (twice), 1989 (twice), 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999 Revised edition 2001 Printed in the United States of America Typeface Garamond 1 0 / 1 2 pt.
System D e s k T o p P r o ^ [BV]
A catalog recordfor this book is availablefromthe British Library. Ubraiy of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Nussbaum, Martha Craven, 1947— The fragility of goodness : luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy / Martha C. Nussbaum. - 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-521-79126—x (hardcover) — ISBN 0-521-79472-2 (pbk.) 1. Ethics - Greece - History. 3. Fortune in literature. BJ192.N87
2. Greek drama (Tragedy) _ History and criticism.
4. Ethics, Ancient, in literature.
2000
i7o'.938 — dc2i
00-062128
ISBN O 521 7 9 1 2 6 x hardback ISBN 0 5 2 1 7 9 4 7 2 2 paperback
I. Title.
For Rachel
Some pray for gold, others for boundless land. I pray to delight my fellow citizens until my limbs are wrapped in earth - a man who praised what deserves praise and sowed blame for wrong-doers. But human excellence grows like a vine tree fed by the green dew raised up, among wise men and just, to the liquid sky. We have all kinds of needs for those we love most of all in hardships, but joy, too, strains to track down eyes that it can trust. Pindar,
Nemean
vin.37-44
He will see it as being itself by itself with itself, eternal and unitary, and see all the other beautifuls as partaking of it in such a manner that, when the others come to be and are destroyed, it never comes to be any more or less, nor suffers any alteration... In this place, my dear Socrates, if anywhere, life is livable for a human being - the place where he contemplates the beautiful itself... Do you think life would be miserable for a person who looked out there and contemplated it in an appropriate way and was with it? Or don't you understand that there alone, where he sees the beautiful with that faculty to which it is visible, it will be possible for him to give birth not to simulacra of excellence, since it is no simulacrum he is grasping, but to true excellence, since he is grasping truth? And as he brings forth true excellence and nourishes it, he will become god-loved, and, if ever a human being can, immortal? Plato, Symposium 21 IB-2 12A Well, then, what is a human being? A L C I B I A D E S : I don't know what to say. Plato, SOCRATES:
Alcibiades
1, 129E
Contents
Preface to the revised edition
Xlll
Preface
xli
Acknowledgements
xlii
Abbreviations
xlv
Chapter i
Luck and ethics
i
A preoccupation of Greek ethical thought: the good human life is dependent on things that human beings do not control. The search for self-sufficiency through reason; its limits. Why these questions, important for us, are seldom treated in modern ethical writing. Three sub-problems: vulnerable components of the good life; contingent conflict of values; the ungoverned elements of the personality. Sketch of the argument. Why works of literature are an indispensable part of a philosophical inquiry into these questions.
Part I
Tragedy: fragility and ambition
Chapter 2
Aeschylus and practical conflict
i
23 25
Greek tragedy's depiction of practical dilemmas as serious and not resolvable without remainder: the charge that this is a sign of primitive and illogical thought.
15
I A sketch of the problem. Factors we usually consider important in the assessment of these cases. Reasons for not making the moral/non-moral distinction central to our discussion.
z
II Some philosophical'solutions'to the problem.
30
7
III T w o cases of tragic conflict in Aeschylus: Agamemnon at Aulis, Eteocles before the gates.
32
IV The plays' implicit view of proper response in such cases. What it means to say that these experiences might give learning.
41
V This tragic view confronted with the theories of the philosophers of Section II. The positive achievement of the Aeschylean account.
47
Chapter 3 Sophocles' Antigone: conflict, vision, and simplification
51
Could a rational person plan a life so as to avoid the situations of Chapter 2 as far as possible? One way of doing this would be to simplify and narrow the scope of one's commitments. I The guard: an example of ordinary practical reason, torn and conflicted. II Creon. Tension among values precluded by recognizing only one value. His clever redefinitions; strange consequences for love and religion. The motivation for this strategy; its failure.
51 5J
14
vii
viii
Contents III Antigone. Her conception of value narrows in a different way. Her re-interpretation of certain terms and conceptions. Why her strategy, though flawed, is superior to Creon's.
63
IV Hegel's suggestion that the play points to a synthesis in which justice is done to both of the competing spheres of value. The choral lyrics help us to scrutinize this claim. The parodos: eyes and seeing, simple and complex. The ode on the human being: the depth of the grounds of conflict in civic life. The Danae ode: its pessimism about our relation to contingency. A higher-order conflict concerning conflict itself. Schopenhauer's pessimistic response.
67
V Tiresias and Haemon: a flexible human rationality. Its relation to harmony; to luck. The invocation of Dionysus.
79
Conclusion to Part I Tragedy on the vulnerability of individual values.
83
Part II
85
Plato: goodness without fragility?
Introduction
87
The continuity of Plato's thought with tragedy. T w o methodological problems: philosophical development over time, the dialogue form.
Chapter 4
87
The Protagoras: a science of practical reasoning
89
The antithesis between tuche and techne (art or science) and mythic stories of the saving power of techne: a hope for human progress. I The dramatic setting: problems of tuche. II The general concept of techne in Pre-Platonic Greek science.
89 91 94
III Protagoras's story of human progress over tuche. What techne does he teach, and how does it make progress with our problems?
100
IV The science of measurement: what motivates it, what progress it could make. The akrasia argument: the role of pleasure as standard of choice. How commensurabiiity of values works to eliminate akrasia.
106
V A Socratic conclusion to Protagoras's myth.
117
Interlude 1
Plato's anti-tragic theater
122
The philosophical dialogue as a new kind of writing. The absence of any antecedent distinction between the philosophical and the literary. The poet as ethical teacher. The dialogue's positive debt to and repudiation of tragedy: Plato's stylistic break expresses a profound moral criticism.
12.2
Chapter 5 perfection
136
The Republic, true value and the standpoint of
The dialogue's opening: a question about what is truly worth pursuing.
136
I The alleged insufficiency of Plato's arguments to support his ranking of the contemplative over other lives. A profound, though puzzling argument concerning need and intrinsic value. Republic ix; parallels from Gorgias, Philebus. II A defense of asceticism: how activities that are not truly valuable undercut those that are. Phaedo and Republic. III Questions about the standpoint from which true judgments of value are reached. Its relevance to aesthetic judgment; to moral education. IV How harmony among values is achieved.
138 151 152 15 8
Contents V The problem of motivation. Plato's use of negative and positive arguments.
160
Chapter 6 The speech of Alcibiades: a reading of the Symposium
165
The charge that Plato neglects the love of one unique individual for another: this must be assessed against the whole of the dialogue.
165
I The construction of the dialogue. Dramatic dates.
167
II Aristophanes' speech: love of unique individuals for one another; its prospect and its problems. III Diotima and the ascent of love. Its practical motivations. The enabling role of judgments of qualitative hom*ogeneity. How the lover achieves self-sufficiency.
176
IV The entrance of Alcibiades. His clay desires x. (Agreed, 200A2-4) 3. For ally and all x, i f y desires x, then 7 lacks x. (Agreed, 2 0 0 A 5 - 7 ) 2 9 4. For all ^ and all x, if y has x, t h e n j does not desire x. ( 2 0 0 E ; from 3 by contraposition)30 5. For ally and all x, i f y has x , j does not love x. (From 2, 4) 6. For ally and all x, i f j loves x, x is beautiful. (Agreed, 201 A) 7. For all j and all x, ify loves x,y lacks beauty. ( 2 0 I B ) 8. For all j , ify lacks beauty, y is not beautiful. (201B6-7) 9. For ally, i f y loves,y is not beautiful. (From 1, 7, 8)
The trouble comes, for us (though not for Agathon), at step 7. Even if we grant Socrates' controversial claims about the logic of wanting and possessing, even
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if we grant him, too, that all love objects must be kalon (a claim less implausible if we think of the broad range of the Greek word),* we do not understand how he has reached the conclusion thaty lacks beauty. We thought that he was talking about people. We had a situation where somey - let us say Alcibiades - is in love with beautiful Agathon. He wants to possess this beautiful person, and yet he is aware that he does not possess him. If he is lucky enough to be enjoying at present the charms of Agathon, still he cannot count on fully and stably possessing them for the rest of his life. So there is a beautiful person whom he both loves and lacks. This does not, however, show that he himself lacks beauty, even given the earlier premises of the argument. He may be quite beautiful, for all we know. What he lacks is beautiful Agathon. Socrates' conclusion would follow only if we reinterpret step 6 - which, in the Greek text, was literally the claim 'eros is of the beautiful'. From our first interpretation, that the lover's love is for someone (something) that has the property of being beautiful, it follows only that the lover lacks that particular beautiful person (thing). But suppose we now reinterpret step 6 to read: 6'. For ally and all x: ify loves x, x is a beauty. - i.e. an instance of beauty, the beauty of some person or thing. From this there follows, at least, the conclusion that there is an instance of beauty that the lover does not possess, viz., the instance that he (she) loves. (That this is the correct understanding of the ambiguous sentence is suggested by the ensuing claim that 'there cannot be love for the ugly' (201A5): for, as Vlastos remarks, any whole person has uglinesses and faults. To avoid being directed at ugliness, love must be directed at a property of the person, not the whole. 4 Love is not for the half or the whole of anything, unless, my friend, that half or whole happens to be good' (205E1-3).)
But we are not yet all the way to Plato's conclusion. So far there is some beauty loved by the lover: Alcibiades loves the beauty of Agathon. From this it follows only that Alcibiades lacks that beauty - not that he lacks all beauty. He might have some other type of beauty. Or he might even have some other token of the same type. The second possibility may not be relevant: it may be part of the psychological claims of the preceding steps that I will not desire something if I have, stably, something that is qualitatively the same, though a countably different instance.31 But the first seems important: if Alcibiades is kalon in physical appearance, can he not still love and lack the beautiful soul of Socrates? What * In assessing the relationship of this dialogue to the Protagoras, we should bear in mind that 'kalon', which I shall continue to translate as 'beautiful', is here such a broad moral/aesthetic notion that it might be more accurate to render it as * valuable' and the corresponding noun as 'value'. 201C2 states that (all) good things (agatba) are kala\ and the biconditional is required for the validity of the argument at 2 0 1 C 4 - 5 . It may, then, actually be a single unifying notion of value in terms of which we are to see the special values such as justice and wisdom. It is clear, at any rate, that the kalon is supposed to include everything that is relevant to the experience of passionate love, including the love of institutions and sciences - everything that is lovable in the world. Thus a belief in its qualitative hom*ogeneity takes us far along the way to the complete elimination of ethically relevant qualitative differences.
The speech of Alcibiades: a reading of the Symposium
179
we now see is that Socrates' argument depends on a strong hidden assumption: that all beauty, qua beauty, is uniform, the same in kind. All manifestations of the kalon must be sufficiently like one another that if you lack one kind it is natural to conclude that you lack them all. The beauty of Alcibiades must be distinct from the beauty of Socrates not qualitatively, but only in terms of contingent spatio-temporal location (and perhaps in quantity as well). And, in fact, this claim about beauty and goodness is explicitly asserted in Diotima's teaching. In her account of the soul's development towards the fullest understanding of the good, the idea of uniformity plays a crucial role. (The section of her speech is introduced as a revelation for the initiate, which will go beyond what Socrates could understand on his own ( 2 0 9 E 5 - 2 1 0 A 2 ) . ) The young lover beginning the ascent - always under the direction of a 'correct' guide ( 2 1 0 A 6 - 7 ) - will begin by loving a single body, or, more exactly, the beauty of a single body: ' Then he must see that the beauty in any one body is family-related (adelphon) to the beauty in another body; and that if he must pursue the beauty of form, it is great mindlessness not to consider the beauty of all bodies to be one and the same' (210A5).
First, he or she sees only one loved one's beauty. Then he must notice a close family resemblance between that beauty and others. Then - and this is the crucial step away from the Vlastos view - he decides that it is prudent to consider these related beauties to be 4 one and the same', that is, qualitatively hom*ogeneous. He then sees that he 'must set himself up as the lover of all beautiful bodies, and relax his excessively intense passion for one body, looking down on that and thinking it of small importance' ( 2 1 0 B ) . So the crucial step is, oddly, a step of decision, involving considerations o f ' senselessness' and good sense. We begin to wonder what sort of need drives this lover. Where, for example, do all these 'must's come from? Why does he think it foolish not to see things in a way that appears, prima facie, to be false to our ordinary intuitions about the object of love? What leads us to believe that truth is to be found in the denial of these perceptions? The references to 'excessively intense passion' and to a 'relaxing' raise the possibility that this strategy is adopted at least in part for reasons of mental health, because a certain sort of tension has become too risky or difficult to bear. A kind of therapy alters the look of the world, making the related the same, the irreplaceable replaceable. If one 'must' (by nature) 'pursue the beauty of form', be sexually drawn to bodily beauty, it is most sensible to do it in a way that does not involve this costly tension. And one can do this, if one is determined enough and has the help of a skillful teacher. At the next stage, once again, the lover makes a decision to consider something the same and to adjust values accordingly: 'He must consider that the beauty in souls is more honorable than that in the body' ( 2 1 0 B 6 - 7 ) . This judgment must clearly have been preceded, as was the last, by the perception of a relatedness and a prudent decision to treat the related as intimately comparable. Once again, indications are that he is coming to see a truth that he had not previously seen; but, as before, the negative motivation that comes from his need is at least as
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prominent as the positive one that comes from the truth. So, in each stage of the ascent, the aspiring lover, aided by his teacher, sees relationships between one beauty and another, acknowledges that these beauties are comparable and intersubstitutable, differing only in quantity. He emerges with a proportionally diminished, though not fully extinguished, regard for those he formerly prized. His vision is broadened to take in the beauty or value of laws, institutions, sciences. We hear talk about comparisons of st%e between one value and another 4 ( 2 I O B 6 , 210C5), of a vast amount* of value (210D1). (Later Socrates will ascribe to Alcibiades the desire to 'make an exchange of kalon for kalon' ( 2 1 8 E ) - and, since Socrates' kalon is4 entirely surpassing', Alcibiades stands accused ofpleonexia, a greedy desire for more.)*2 The teacher leads him, makes him see (210C7), until at last he is able to conceive of the whole of beauty as a vast ocean, whose components are, like droplets, qualitatively indistinguishable: And looking towards the vast amount of the beautiful, he will no longer, like some servant, loving the beauty of a particular boy or a particular man or of one set of customs, and being the slave of this, remain contemptible and of no account. But turned towards the vast sea of the beautiful and contemplating, he gives birth to many beautiful and grand speeches and reasonings in his abundant love of wisdom. (210c7-d5) Education turns you around, so that you do not see what you used to see.33 It also turns you into a free man instead of a servant. Diotima connects the love of particulars with tension, excess, and servitude; the love of a qualitatively uniform 4 sea' with health, freedom, and creativity. The claim for the change of perception and belief involved in the ascent is not just that the new beliefs are true. In fact, questions of truth seem muted; the gap between 4 family-related' and 4 one and the same' indicates that the ascent may be playing fast and loose with the truth, at least as human beings experience it. (Whatever my brother (adelphos) is, he is certainly not one and the same with me.) Its strategy for progress is no less radical than the techne of the Protagoras, to which it now draws surprisingly close. It is a startling and powerful vision. Just try to think it seriously: this body of this wonderful beloved person is exactly the same in quality as that person's mind and inner life. Both, in turn, the same in quality as the value of Athenian democracy; of Pythagorean geometry; of Eudoxan astronomy. What would it be like to look at a body and to see in it exactly the same shade and tone of goodness and beauty as in a mathematical proof - exactly the same, differing only in amount and in location, so that the choice between making love with that person and contemplating that proof presented itself as a choice between having n measures of water and having » + 100? Again, what would it be like to see in the mind and soul of Socrates nothing else but (a smaller amount of) the quality that one also sees in a good system of laws, so that the choice between conversing with Socrates and administering those laws was, in the same way, a matter of qualitative indifference? What would it be like, finally, to see not just each single choice, but
The speech of Alcibiades: a reading of the Symposium
1 8 1
all choices (or at least all choices involving love and deep attachment) as similarly unvariegated? These proposals are so bold as to be pretty well incomprehensible from the ordinary point of view. We can perhaps, though with difficulty, get ourselves, in imagination, into the posture of seeing bodies as qualitatively interchangeable with one another - because we have, or can imagine having, relevant experiences of promiscuity or of non-particularized sexual desire. We might even imagine the interchangeability of souls, helped by a religious heritage according to which we are all equally, and centrally, children of God. We might even try putting these two together, to get a thoroughgoing interchangeability of persons; and we can see how that sort of replaceability would indeed subvert motivations for certain troublesome and disorder-producing acts. (Think of Epictetus's profound observation that if Menelaus had been able to think of Helen as just another woman, 'gone would have been the Iliad, and the Odyssey as weir.) But the wide sea of the kalon is beyond us. We sense only that to see in this way, if one could do it, would indeed change the world, removing us both from vulnerable attachments and from severe conflicts among them. We can comprehend the extent to which it would erode the motivation for running after Alcibiades, for devoting oneself to a particular beloved person, even for loving one city above all other things. Nor will such commitments collide painfully, since all kalon is one thing (cf. Ch. 5, §v). The lover, seeing a flat uniform landscape of value, with no jagged promontories or deep valleys, will have few motivations for moving here rather than there on that landscape. A contemplative life is a natural choice. At each stage, then, the teacher persuades the pupil to abandon his or her cherished human belief in irreplaceability in the service of his inner need for health. Socrates is among the convinced; and he is now trying to convince us that our human nature could find no better ally or collaborator (sunergos) than this sort of eros ( 2 1 2 B ) . An ally comes from another country to help me win my battles. If the ascent appears remote from human nature, that is because, like the Protagoras science but more explicitly, it is a device for progress beyond the merely human. A central feature of the ascent is that the lover escapes, gradually, from his bondage to luck. The Aristophanic lover loved in a chancy way. He or she might never meet the right other in the first place; if he did, the other might not love him, or might die, or leave him. Or he might cease to love; or leave; or retreat; or be tormented by jealousy. Often his passions will distract him from his other plans, and from the good. Even at the best of times he would be trying to do something both impossible and self-defeating. The philosopher is free of all this. His or her contemplative love for all beauty carries no risk of loss, rejection, even frustration. Speeches and thoughts are always in our power to a degree that emotional and physical intercourse with loved individuals is not. And if one instance of worldly beauty fades away or proves recalcitrant, there remains a boundless sea: he will feel the loss of the droplet hardly at all. But the final revelation to the initiate lover takes him beyond this minimal
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dependence on the world. Like the other advances, this one comes as a new vision ( 2 1 0 E 2 - 3 ) . He sees it 'all at once' (exaiphnes\ the culmination of all his efforts: First of all, it is always, and neither comes to be nor passes away, neither grows nor decays; then it is not beautiful in this respect but ugly in this, nor beautiful at one time and not at another, nor beautiful by comparison with this, ugly by comparison with that, nor beautiful here, ugly there, as though it were beautiful for some, and ugly for others... He will see it as being itself by itself with itself, eternal and unitary, and see all the other beautifuls as partaking of it in such a manner that, when the others come to be and are destroyed, it never comes to be any more or less, nor passively suffers anything... This indeed is what it is to approach erotic matters correctly, or to be led to them by another... In this place, my dear Socrates, if anywhere, life is livable for a human being - the place where he contemplates the beautiful itself. If ever you see that, it will not seem to you to be valuable by comparison with gold and clothing and beautiful boys and youths, the sight of whom at present so inflames you that you, and many others, provided that you could see your beloved boys and be continually with them, are prepared to give up eating and drinking, and to spend your whole time contemplating them and being with them. What do we think it would be like... if someone should see the beautiful itself - unalloyed, pure, unmixed, not stuffed full of human flesh and colors and lots of other mortal rubbish, but if he could see the divine beautiful itself in its unity? Do you think life would be miserable for a man who looked out there, and contemplated it in an appropriate way and was with it? Or don't you understand that there alone, where he sees the beautiful with that faculty to which it is visible, it will be possible for him to give birth not to simulacra of excellence, since it is no simulacrum he is grasping, but to true excellence, since he is grasping truth? And as he brings forth true excellence and nourishes it, he will become god-loved, and, if ever a human being can, immortal? ( 2 1 0 E 6 - 2 1 2 A 7 )
So ends Diotima's speech of persuasion. I have quoted it at length not only to indicate the powerfully rhetorical character of her discourse, which moves and persuades us as it does Socrates, but also to show, in it, further evidence of the practical motivation lying behind the ascent. The lover's final contemplative activity meets the Republic's standards of true value in every way. Its objects are 'unalloyed, pure, unmixed' (21 IE); it is itself in no way necessarily mixed with pain. It is a stable activity, giving continuous expression to our truth-loving and creative nature; and one reason why it can be so stable is that it addresses itself to an unvarying and immortal object. We have, at the end, an object of love that is always available, that will to the highest degree satisfy our longing to ' be with' the beloved all the time. Sexual 'being-with' (the word used at 2 I I D 6 , ( suneinai\ is also the ordinary word for intercourse) cannot be stably prolonged, both because of its internally ' impure' structure of need and repletion, and also because it relies on the presence of an object that is not the lover's to command. Intellectual intercourse ('suneinai* is used of the form at 2 1 2 A 2 ) is free of these defects. Furthermore, as Diotima says, this activity also gets us to the truth, instead of mere simulacra. But considerations of truth are very closely interwoven, in this speech as previously, with motivational appeals based on need. The ascent is true; but it requires us to sacrifice ' truths' that we deeply know. So she must motivate
The speech of Alcibiades: a reading of the Symposium
183
the change in vision for us from where we are. She does so by reminding us of the deep demand of our nature - a demand altogether familiar to us from our empirical lives - for self-sufficient love. The ascent passage accepts Aristophanes' characterization of the misery and the irrational tumult of personal erotic need, agreeing that eros disrupts our rational planning to the point where we would willingly give up everything else, even health, even life. But that is intolerable. Such a life is not 'livable'; 34 we must find another way. Instead of flesh and all that mortal rubbish, an immortal object must, and therefore can, be found. Instead of painful yearning for a single body and spirit, a blissful contemplative completeness. It is, we see, the old familiar eros, that longing for an end to longing, that motivates us here to ascend to a world in which erotic activity, as we know it, will not exist.35 As Socrates concludes, we are moved to think back through this story (which, we now recall, is being told to us through Aristodemus, a convert and 'lover' of Socrates, as reported by Apollodorus, another formerly wretched person whom philosophy has made happy), and to look at the life and behavior of Socrates as exemplifying the benefits of ascent. It is, first of all, striking that the lives of Socrates and the Socratic narrator appear remarkably orderly and free from distraction. ' I used to rush around here and there as things fell out by chance', Apollodorus remembers, at a distance (172c). And his master too seems at this point in his life to be always remarkably in control of his activities, free from ordinary passions and distractions. He is reliably virtuous - courageous, just, temperate - all without lapses of weakness or fatigue. And this seems intimately connected with his imperviousness to happenings in the world. He cares little about clothing, either for beauty or for comfort. We will hear later of his remarkable endurance of cold and hardship. He walks barefoot over the ice, faces the coldest frosts without any coat or hat. This could be interpreted as the behavior of an arrogant man bent on self-display; so, we are told, it was interpreted by the soldiers (220B). But the correct interpretation seems to be that Socrates has so dissociated himself from his body that he genuinely does not feel its pain, or regard its sufferings as things genuinely happening to him. He is famous for drinking without ever getting drunk, and without the hangovers complained of by the others (176A-B, 214A, 220A). He does not succumb to the most immediate and intense sexual temptation ( 2 1 9 B - D ) . He can go sleepless without ever suffering from fatigue (220C-D, 223D). We cannot explain all this by supposing his physiology to be unique. We are invited, instead, to look for the explanation in his psychological distance from the world and from his body as an object in the world. He really seems to think of himself as a being whose mind is distinct from his body, whose personality in no way identifies itself with the body and the body's adventures. Inside the funny, fat, snub-nosed shell, the soul, self-absorbed, pursues its self-sufficient contemplation. We see him, at the beginning of the walk to the party,' turning his attention in some way in upon himself' (174D, cf. 2 20C-D), so that he becomes, at a point, actually forgetful of the world. He falls behind the group; they find him much later, standing in a neighbor's porch, literally deaf
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to all entreaties. The sounds that enter in at the well-functioning ears never penetrate to the mind. There is a gulf. 'Leave him alone', warns Aristodemus. 6 This is a habit of his. Sometimes he stops and stands wherever he happens to be.' These details have usually been read as intriguing pieces of biography. Perhaps they are. But they are also more than that. They show us what Diotima could only abstractly tell: what a human life starts to look like as one makes the ascent. Socrates is put before us as an example of a man in the process of making himself self-sufficient - put before us, in our still unregenerate state, as a troublesome question mark and a challenge. Is this the life we want for ourselves? Is that the way we want, or need, to see and hear? We are not allowed to have the cozy thought that the transformed person will be just like us, only happier. Socrates is weird. He is, in fact, 'not similar to any human being'. We feel, as we look at him, both awestruck and queasy, timidly homesick for ourselves. We feel that we must look back at what we currently are, our loves and our ways of seeing, the problems these cause for practical reason. We need to see ourselves more clearly before we can say whether we would like to become this other sort of being, excellent and deaf. IV The summit of the ascent, Diotima tells us, is marked by a revelation: 'All at once (exaiphnes) he will see a beauty marvelous in its nature, for the sake of which he had made all his previous efforts.' Now, as we begin our reflective descent into ourselves, at this moment when some of the symposiasts are praising Socrates and Aristophanes is trying to remind us again of his view of our nature (212c), we see another sort of revelation, and another beauty. 'And all at once (exaiphnes) there was a loud knocking at the outer door. It sounded like a drunken party; you could hear the voice of the flute girl... And a minute later they heard the voice of Alcibiades in the courtyard, very drunk and shouting loudly, asking where Agathon was and demanding to be taken to Agathon.' The form of the beautiful appeared to the mind's eye alone, looking' not like some face or hands or anything else that partakes in body' (211 A); it was 'unalloyed, pure, unmixed, not stuffed full of human flesh and colors and lots of other mortal rubbish' (21 IE). Alcibiades the beautiful, the marvelous nature, presents himself to our sensuous imagination, an appearance bursting with color and all the mixed impurity of mortal flesh. We are made to hear his voice, vividly see his movements, even smell the violets that trail through his hair and shade his eyes ( 2 1 2 E I - 2 ) , their perfume blending with the heavier odors of wine and sweat. The faculty that apprehends the form is preeminently stable, unwavering, and in our power to exercise regardless of the world's happenings. The faculties that see and hear and respond to Alcibiades will be the feelings and sense-perceptions of the body, both vulnerable and inconstant. From the rarified contemplative world of the self-sufficient philosopher we are suddenly, with an abrupt jolt, returned to the world we inhabit and invited
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(by the parallel' all at once') to see this vision, too, as a dawning and a revelation.36 We are then moved to wonder whether there is a kind of understanding that is itself vulnerable and addressed to vulnerable objects - and, if there is, whether the ascent comprehends it, transcends it, or simply passes it by. (The philosopher asks to be taken to the agathon, the repeatable universal Good. Alcibiades asks to be taken to Agathon, a not-very-good particular boy.) Alcibiades takes up this theme at the very opening of his speech. 4 You there', says Socrates, 'What do you mean to do?' (A question that reverberates ominously for us in view of our greater knowledge of what this man will soon be up to.) 'Do you mean to give a mock-praise of me? Or what are you going to do?' The answer is a simple one, though difficult to understand. 'I'm going to tell the truth. Do you think you'll allow that?' (Why should anyone, especially a pupil of Socrates, think that philosophy might be resistant to the truth?) When, shortly after, he tells us more about his sort of truth-telling, we begin to understand why he is on the defensive. 'Gentlemen, I shall undertake to praise Socrates through images. He may think that it is a mock-praise, but the image will be for the sake of the truth, not for ridicule.' Asked to speak about Love, Alcibiades has chosen to speak of a particular love; no definitions or explanations of the nature of anything, but just a story of a particular passion for a particular contingent individual. Asked to make a speech, he gives us the story of his own life: the understanding of eros he has achieved through his own experience. (The concluding words of his speech are the tragic maxim pathontagndnai,' understanding through experience' or 'suffering' - cf. Ch. 2.) And, what is more, this story conveys its truths using images or likenesses - a poetic practice much deplored by the Socrates of the Republic, since images lack the power to provide us with true general accounts or explanations of essences (cf. Interlude 1; Ch. 7 §111). But his opening remarks indicate that Alcibiades is not simply ignorant of these philosophical objections. He anticipates criticism. He anticipates, in fact, that the philosopher will not allow his truths, or not allow their claim to be the truth. And he asserts, in the face of this danger, that, nonetheless, what he will tell will be truth - that the truth can and will be told in just this way. What could lie behind this claim? Perhaps something like this. There are some truths about love that can be learned only through the experience of a particular passion of one's own. If one is asked to teach those truths, one's only recourse is to recreate that experience for the hearer: to tell a story, to appeal to his or her imagination and feelings by the use of vivid narrative. Images are valuable in this attempt to make the audience share the experience, to feel, from the inside, what it is like to be that. The comparison of Socrates to the Silenus-statue, for example, takes this man who is not intimately known to the hearer and, by comparing him to something that is part of everyday experience, makes available to the hearer something of the feeling of what it is like to want and to want to know him. We shall examine this and other such cases later on; we shall also see that Alcibiades, drunk, wound round with ivy, presents himself to our understanding as an image that tells the truth.
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We now notice that Alcibiades is aligning himself with a tradition that defends the role of poetic or ' literary' texts in moral learning. Certain truths about human experience can best be learned by living them in their particularity. Nor can this particularity be grasped solely by thought 'itself by itself'. As Aeschylus or Sophocles might well have argued, it frequently needs to be apprehended through the cognitive activity of imagination, emotions, even appetitive feelings:37 through putting oneself inside a problem and feeling it. But we cannot all live, in our own overt activities, through all that we ought to know in order to live well. Here literature, with its stories and images, enters in as an extension of our experience, encouraging us to develop and understand our cognitive/emotional responses.38 If this is, indeed, Alcibiades' view, it is not surprising that he is on the defensive in this company. If the symposiasts have anything in common, it is that they seem to believe that eros can and should be praised in the abstract. Particular stories enter in briefly as examples of general principles, but none is described fully or concretely, in a way that would appeal to the sensuous imagination. Aristophanes' myth might be said to teach through an image of human nature; and his poetic gifts are evident in the vividness with which he describes the movements and feelings of the mythic creatures. But the creatures remain anonymous exemplars; and their loved ones, though individuals, are abstractly characterized. We have a hard time seeing ourselves in them, our particular loves in this odd fitting-together. Socrates, meanwhile, has attacked even this limited appeal to lived experience in the name of philosophical wisdom. Nobody loves a half or a whole, unless that half or whole is beautiful and good. Socrates claims to have episteme of erotic matters (177D); and Socratic episteme, unlike Alcibiades' pathonta gnonai, is deductive, scientific, concerned with universals. (When Aristotle wants to defend the role, in practical wisdom, of a non-deductive intuition of particulars through feeling and experience, he does so by contrasting this intuitive grasp with episteme ~ EN H42a2 3ff.). The Socratic search for definitions embodying episteme is, throughout the dialogues, the search for a universal account that covers and explains all the particulars. To answer a Socratic 'What is X ? ' question by enumerating particular examples or telling stories is either to misunderstand or to reject his demand. In the early dialogues, examples provide material towards episteme, material a definition must take into account; they can never on their own embody episteme?* And here in the Symposium Socrates' attitude to the particular case seems to be harsher still. Examples are relevant not as complex wholes, but only insofar as they exemplify a repeatable property. And, as for images, the revelation of the beautiful can count as truth for him only because it is not a (sensory) image ( 2 1 2 A ) and does not present itself through images. Images are contrasted with truth both as objects and as sources of understanding.40 Only with the dulling of the 'sight of the body', the senses and the sensuous imagination, does intellect, the 'sight of the mind', begin to flourish ( 2 1 9 a ) . Socratic philosophy, then, cannot allow the truths of Alcibiades to count as contributions to philosophical understanding. It must insist that the non-repeatable
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and sensuous aspects of the particular case are irrelevant, even a hindrance to correct seeing. And it is not only the philosophy of Socrates against which Alcibiades must defend his claim to teach. It is also most of the tradition of ethical discourse that got its start with Socrates. Very few moral philosophers, especially in the Anglo-American tradition, have welcomed stories, particulars, and images into their writing on value. Most have regarded these elements of discourse with suspicion (cf. Ch. i). 41 As a result, contrasts between the mixed and the pure, between story and argument, the literary and the philosophical are as sharply drawn in much of the modern profession of philosophy as they are in this text by Plato - but culpably, because unreflectively, and without Plato's loving recreation of the speech of the other side, his willingness to call into question the contrasts themselves. The Symposium and Alcibiades have fallen victim to these suspicions. Frequently ignored by the philosophers of our tradition (or studied in judiciously selected excerpts), this entire dialogue has been described in its most recent edition as 'the most literary of all Plato's works and one which all students of classics are likely to want to read whether or not they are studying Plato's philosophy'.42 Which is to say, we will let Alcibiades have his say in some other department, since he clearly has not grasped the way philosophy does things. (And even a piece of critical writing about the Symposium, if it responds to Alcibiades' stylistic claims in its own style, will be likely to encounter this resistance. It will be addressed as a literary diversion, or asked to prove Socratically that it, too, is pure enough to tell the truth.) But to place in this way the burden of proof on Alcibiades - to force him either to argue with Socrates on Socrates' own terms or to take his love stories elsewhere - is simply a refusal to hear him or to enter his world. It is a refusal to investigate and to be affected, where the strangeness of the material calls, above all, for questioning and humble exploration. It is Socrates' response. Alcibiades' story is, in fact, just a love story. It is, however, not a love story, but the story of Socrates, and of the love of Alcibiades for Socrates. Alcibiades, asked to speak about eros, talks about one person.43 He cannot describe the passion or its object in general terms, because his experience of love has happened to him this way only once, in connection with an individual who is seen by him to be like nobody else in the world. The entire speech is an attempt to communicate that uniqueness. He might have begun his answer by enumerating the excellent qualities of this unlikely figure. This might all have been true, and yet it would not have been sufficient to capture the particular tone and intensity of the love; it might even mislead, by implying that another person turning up with these same repeatable properties would make Alcibiades feel the same way. But he doesn't know that. So Alcibiades tells some Socrates stories; he gropes for images and associations to communicate the inside feel of the experience. He mentions Socrates' virtues in the process of describing the wholeness of a unique personality. The speech, disorganized and tumultuous, moves from imaging to describing, response to story, and back again many times over. It is precisely its
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groping, somewhat chaotic character that makes it so movingly convincing as an account - and an expression (cf. ' even now' at 215 D, 21 6A) - of love. Two things in the speech, above all, strike us as strange. Using them as clues we may perhaps be able to understand more fully its teaching and its relationship to Socratic teaching. The first is its confusion about sexual roles. Alcibiades begins as the beautiful eromenos, but seems to end as the active erastes, while Socrates, apparently the erastes, becomes the eromenos ( 2 2 2 B ) . The second is Alcibiades' odd habit of incarnation - the way he speaks of his soul, his reason, his feelings and desires, as pieces of flesh that can experience the bites, burns, and tears that are the usual lot of flesh. The eromenos, in Greek hom*osexual custom (as interpreted, for example, in Sir Kenneth Dover's authoritative study),44 is a beautiful creature without pressing needs of his own. He is aware of his attractiveness, but self-absorbed in his relationship with those who desire him. He will smile sweetly at the admiring lover; he will show appreciation for the other's friendship, advice, and assistance. He will allow the lover to greet him by touching, affectionately, his genitals and his face, while he looks, himself, demurely at the ground. And, as Dover demonstrates from an exhaustive study of Greek erotic painting, he will even occasionally allow the importunate lover to satisfy his desires through intercrural intercourse. The boy may hug him at this point, or otherwise positively indicate affection. But two things he will not allow, if we judge from the evidence of works of art that have come down to us. He will not allow any opening of his body to be penetrated; only hairy satyrs do that. And he will not allow the arousal of his own desire to penetrate the lover. In all of surviving Greek art, there are no boys with erections. Dover concludes, with some incredulity, 4 The penis of the erastes is sometimes erect even before any bodily contact is established, but that of the eromenos remains flaccid even in circ*mstances to which one would expect the penis of any healthy adolescent to respond willy-nilly.'45 The inner experience of an eromenos would be characterized, we may imagine, by a feeling of proud self-sufficiency. Though the object of importunate solicitation, he is himself not in need of anything beyond himself. He is unwilling to let himself be explored by the other's needy curiosity, and he has, himself, little curiosity about the other. He is something like a god, or the statue of a god. (The Philebus (5 3D) cites the pair eromenos j erastes as a paradigmatic example of the contrast between the complete or self-sufficient (auto kath' hauto) and the incomplete or needy illustrating its praise of philosophical contemplation with this sexual analogy.) For Alcibiades, who had spent much of his young life as this sort of closed and self-absorbed being, the experience of love is felt as a sudden openness, and, at the same time, an overwhelming desire to open. The presence of Socrates makes him feel, first of all, a terrifying and painful awareness of being perceived. He wants, with part of himself, to 'hold out' (21 6A), to remain an eromenos. His impulse, in service of this end, is to run away, hide, stop up his ears - openings that can be entered, willy-nilly, by penetrating words ( 2 1 6 A - B ) . But he senses at the same time that in this being seen and being spoken to, in this siren music (21 6A)
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that rushes into his body in this person's presence, is something he deeply needs not to avoid: c There's something I feel with nobody else but Socrates - something you would not have thought was in me - and that is a sense of shame. He is the only person who makes me feel shame... There are times when I'd gladly see him dead. But if that happened, you understand, I'd be worse off than ever' ( Z I 6 A - C ) . The openness of the lover brings with it (as Phaedrus has already insisted - 179A) this naked vulnerability to criticism. In the closed world of the eromenos, defects and treasures, both, hide comfortably from scrutiny. Being known by the lover can, by contrast, bring the pain of shame, as the lover's eye reveals one's own imperfections. On the other hand this pain, as he dimly sees it, may lead to some kind of growth. So Alcibiades is thrown into confusion about his role. He knows himself to be, as an object, desirable. ' I was amazingly vain about my beauty' ( 2 1 7 A ) . He thought of his alliance with Socrates as a decision to grant a favor, while remaining basically unmoved ( 2 1 7 A ) . And yet now he wants and needs, the illumination of the other's activity. More confusing still, he feels, at the same time, a deep desire to know Socrates - a desire as conventionally inappropriate as his desire to be known. His speech makes repeated and central use of the image of opening up the other: an image which is essentially sexual, and inseparable from his sexual aims and imaginings, but which is also epistemic, intended to convey to us his desire 'to hear everything that he knew' (217A) and to know everything that he was. In the early days of his vanity, this longing appears to be confused with personal ambition (217A) ; but as his love persists and his vanity abates (compare the present tenses of 215 D, 21 6A, etc., with the past tense of 2 1 7 A ) , the desire to know and to tell truth about Socrates does not abate. The speech expresses the understanding he has gained, as well as his continuing curiosity. Socrates, he tells us, is like one of those toy Sileni made by craftsmen. On the outside they look unremarkable, even funny. But what you are moved to do, what you cannot resist doing once you see the crack running down the middle, is to open them up. (They can be opened up because they have this crack or scar, and are not completely smooth.) Then, on the inside, you see the hidden beauty, the elaborate carving of god-statues. We might imagine the effect to be like that of the amazing mediaeval rosary bead in the Cloisters in New York. On the outside, a decorated sphere, nothing remarkable. Then you pry the two halves apart to reveal6 the treasure inside' (2 I6E) - a marvelously wrought scene of animals, trees, and men, all carved with the most delicate precision. That something you thought to be a sphere should contain its own world: that is the surprise, and the reason for awe. Among our first and best-loved toys are things that can be opened to show something on the inside. Even before we can speak, we are trying to open things up. We spend hours sitting on the floor in rapt attention, pulling our spherical balls of wood or plastic apart into their two halves, looking for the hidden ball, or bell, or family. By using such toys as images, Alcibiades reminds us that the
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urge to open things up, to get at and explore the inside concealed by the outside, is one of our earliest and strongest desires, a desire in which sexual and epistemological need are joined and, apparendy, inseparable. We long to probe and bring to light what is concealed and secret; and when we see a crack, that is, to us, a signal that this aim can be fulfilled in the object. We long to open the cracked object up, to make the other's beauty less rounded and more exposed, to explore the world that we imagine to be there, coming to know it by means of feelings, emotions, sensations, intellect. Alcibiades sees his sexual aim, the fullest fulfillment of which demands both physical intimacy and philosophical conversation, as a kind of epistemic aim, the aim to achieve a more complete understanding of this particular complex portion of the world. It is easy enough to see structural parallels between sexual desire and the desire for wisdom. Both are directed towards objects in the world, and aim at somehow grasping or possessing these objects. The fulfilled grasp of the object brings, in both cases, satiety and the temporary cessation of desire: no sphere seduces,4 no god searches for wisdom' ( 2 0 4 A ) . (The contemplation of truth is, of course, another matter.) Both can be aroused by beauty and goodness, and both seek to understand the nature of that goodness. Both revere the object as a separate, self-complete entity, and yet long, at the same time, to incorporate it. But Alcibiades appears to want to claim something more controversial and an ti~ Socratic than this parallelism. With his claims that a story tells the truth and that his goal is to open up and to know, he suggests that the lover's knowledge of the particular other, gained through an intimacy both bodily and intellectual, is itself a unique and uniquely valuable kind of practical understanding, and one that we risk losing if we take the first step up the Socratic ladder. (The Phaedrus will develop this suggestion, confirming our reading.) Socratic knowledge of the good, attained through pure intellect operating apart from the senses, yields universal truths — and, in practical choice, universal rules. If we have apprehended the form, we will be in possession of a general account of beauty, an account that not only holds true of all and only instances of beauty, but also explains why they are correctly called instances of beauty, and grouped together.46 Such understanding, once attained, would take priority over our vague, mixed impressions of particular beautifuls. It would tell us how to see. The lover's understanding, attained through the supple interaction of sense, emotion, and intellect (any one of which, once well trained, may perform a cognitive function in exploring and informing us concerning the other - cf. Ch. 7) yields particular truths and particular judgments. It insists that those particular intuitive judgments are prior to any universal rules we may be using to guide us.47 A lover decides how to respond to his or her lover not on the basis of definitions or general prescriptions, but on the basis of an intuitive sense of the person and the situation, which, although guided by general theories, is not subservient to them. This does not mean that their judgments and responses are not rational. Indeed, Alcibiades would claim that a Socratic adherence to rule and refusal to see and feel the particular as such is what is irrational. To have seen that, and
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how, Socrates is like nobody else, to respond to him as such and to act accordingly, is the rational way to behave towards another individual. Nor does it mean that this love neglects the repeatable general features in which Socrates is interested: for Alcibiades sees Socrates' virtues and is moved by them. But his knowledge sees more, and differently; it is an integrated response to the person as a unique whole.48 It is tempting to try to understand the contrast between these two kinds of knowledge in terms of the contrast between propositional knowledge and knowledge by acquaintance. This would, I believe, be an error. First of all, Socratic knowledge itself is not simply propositional knowledge. Because of Socrates' constant emphasis on the claim that the man with episteme is the man who is able to give explanations or accounts, the rendering 'understanding' is, in general, more appropriate.49 Second, both kinds of understanding, not just the Socratic kind, are concerned with truths. Alcibiades is claiming not just an ineffable familiarity with Socrates, but the ability to tell the truth about Socrates. He wants to claim that through a lover's intimacy he can produce accounts (stories) that are more deeply and precisely true - that capture more of what is characteristic and practically relevant about Socrates, that explain more about what Socrates does and why - than any account that could be produced by a form-lover who denied himself the cognitive resources of the senses and emotions. Finally, there is much about the lover's understanding that cannot be captured by either model of knowledge, but can be better conceived as a kind o f ' knowing how'. The lover can be said to understand the beloved when, and only when, he knows how to treat him or her: how to speak, look, and move at various times and in various circ*mstances; how to give pleasure and how to receive it; how to deal with the loved one's complex network of intellectual, emotional, and bodily needs. This understanding requires acquaintance and yields the ability to tell truths; but it does not seem to be reducible to either. Alcibiades suggests, then, that there is a kind of practical understanding that consists in the keen responsiveness of intellect, imagination, and feeling to the particulars of a situation. Of this wisdom the lover's understanding of the particular beloved is a central and particularly deep case - and not only a case among cases, but one whose resulting self-understanding might be fundamental to the flourishing of practical wisdom in other areas of life as well. The lover's understanding obviously has many components that are independent of the success of his or her specifically sexual projects. Alcibiades can tell the truth about Socrates' unique strangeness even though his aims were frustrated. And not just any successful lover would have had his intellectual and emotional grasp. (Indeed, in this case the frustration of sexual vanity is of considerable positive importance.) Aristotle will insist that such intimate personal knowledge arises in the relation of parent to child (cf. Ch. 12). But the speech suggests, as well, that with the failure of physical intimacy a certain part of practical understanding is lost to Alcibiades. There is a part of Socrates that remains dark to him, a dimension of intuitive
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responsiveness to this particular person, an aptness of speech, movement, and gesture, that he can never develop, a kind of 4 dialectic' that is missing.50 Sexuality is a metaphor for personal intimacy; but it is also more than a metaphor, as the Phaedrus, with its connections between 'touching' and knowing, will insist. It is, then, in his openness to such knowing that Alcibiades is revealed as no proper eromenos. To receive the other, he must not be self-sufficient, closed against the world. He must put aside the vanity of his beauty and become, himself, in his own eyes, an object in the world: in the world of the other's activity, and in the larger world of happenings that affect his dealings with the other. Such an object will know more if it has a crack in it. This gives us a key to our second puzzle: why Alcibiades should persistently speak of his soul, his inner life, as something of flesh and blood like the visible body. Alcibiades has no particular metaphysical view of the person; he makes it clear that he is uncertain about how to refer to what is 4 inside' the flesh-and-blood body. What he knows is that this inner part of him is responding like a thing of flesh. He says he feels like a sufferer from snakebite - only he has been 4 bitten by something more painful and the most painful way one can be bitten: I've been bitten and wounded in the heart or soul, or whatever one should call it, by the philosophical speeches of Socrates' ( 2 1 7 E - 2 1 8 A ) . And he tries, without success, to treat Socrates' 'whatever' in the same manner, shooting words like lightning bolts in the hope that they will 4 pierce' him ( 2 1 9 B ) . Whatever is flesh or fleshlike is vulnerable. The mark of body is its ability to be pierced and bitten, to be prey to snakes, lightning flashes, lovers. Alcibiades, without a philosophical view of mind, gives an extraordinary defense of 4 physicalism' for the souls of lovers: All and only body is vulnerable to happenings in the world. I am inwardly bitten, pierced. Therefore this whatever-you-call-it is bodily (or very like body).
It is an argument that appeals to subjective experience, indeed to subjective suffering, to deny a 'Platonic' view of the soul as a thing that is at one and the same time the seat of personality and immortal/invulnerable. The seat of my personality just got bitten by those speeches, so I know it is not' pure',' unaffected', 'unmoved'. It is obvious that such a line of argument shows us nothing about the souls of philosophers, for whom the Platonic account may, for all Alcibiades knows, be correct. (This shows us what the Phaedo did not make explicit: that the Platonic picture of the soul is not so much a scientific fact as an ethical ideal, something to be chosen and achieved.) Both the lover's epistemic aim and his felt vulnerability are captured for us in the central image of Alcibiades' story: the lightning bolt. Images of revelation, appearing, and radiance have been seen before. Alcibiades appears before us ' all at once' (212c), just as, for him, Socrates 'is accustomed to appear all at once' (exaiphnes anaphainesthai, 213c), just when he least thinks he is there, and reminds Alcibiades of the inner radiance of his virtues. But now Alcibiades has spoken of the words and gestures of love as things hurled at the other like bolts of
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lightning. This image knits together, with extraordinary compression, his views about sexual ambition, knowledge, and risk. A lightning bolt strikes all at once, unpredictably, usually allowing no hope of defense or control. It is at one and the same time a brilliance that brings illumination and a force that has the power to wound and to kill. It is, one might say, corporeal light. In the heaven of the philosopher, the Form of the Good, like an intelligible sun, gives intelligibility to the objects of understanding, while remaining, itself unmoving and unchanging.51 It affects the pure soul only by inspiring it to perform self-sufficient acts of pure reasoning. In the world of Alcibiades, the illumination of the loved one's body and mind strikes like a moving, darting, bodily light, a light that makes its impact by touching as well as by illuminating. (It is rather like what happens to the sun in certain later paintings of Turner. No more a pure, remote condition of sight, it becomes a force that does things in the world to objects such as boats, waves, a just man's eyes - all of which are seen, insofar as they are thus illuminated, to be the sorts of things to which happenings can happen. And the light strikes the beholder's eyes, as well, with a triumphant searing power that refutes, again and again, his belief in his own completeness.) The lover has such light in him to deploy or give, and it is this that he longs to receive, even though it killed the mother of Dionysus. If Socrates had carried a shield, its device would have been the sun of the Republic, visible image of the intelligible form - the sun to which, as Alcibiades tells us, he prayed after a night of sleepless thought at Potidaea (220C-D). Alcibiades, placing on his shield the thunderbolt, marks in his own way the sort of being he claims to be, the sort of understanding he desires. Our reading has now put us in a position to move from the interpretation of the image used by Alcibiades to the interpretation of the image that Alcibiades is, as he presents himself before us. He makes his appearance 4 crowned with a thick crown of ivy and violets' ( 2 1 2 E 1 - 2 ) , making dress itself an image that tells the truth.52 The crown of violets is, first of all, a sign of Aphrodite (cf. H. Horn. 5.18, Solon 11.4). This hardly surprises us, except for the strange fact (of which we shall speak more later) that this aggressively masculine figure sees himself as a female divinity. It is also, further, a crown worn by the Muses. As he begins his truth-telling through images, Alcibiades, then, presents himself as a poet, and an inspiring god of poets (Plato?). But the violet crown stands for something else as well: for the city of Athens herself. In a fragment from Pindar (only one of the poems that use this apparently well-known epithet) she is addressed: O glistening and violet-crowned and famous in song, Bulwark of Hellas, glorious Athens, Fortunate city.
The crown of violets is the delicate, growing sign of the flourishing of this strange and fragile democracy, now, in the time of Alcibiades, in its greatest danger. By so crowning himself, Alcibiades seems to indicate that his own attentiveness to the particular, to unique persons rather than repeatable properties, intuitions
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rather than the rules, is the fruit of this city's education. This education values the original and the daring, relies on the ability of gifted leaders to 'improvise what is required' (Thuc. 1.13 8, cf. Ch. 1 o, § 1 1 1 ) and, instead of commanding humble subservience to law, asks free men to ' choose, in their nobility of character' (Thuc. 11.41) a life of virtue and service. Doing away, as it does, with rules, it depends on each man's capacity for practical wisdom and the understanding of the lover. Thucydides' Pericles enjoins the citizens to 'look at the city's power day by day and become her lovers' (erastas autes, 11.43). Eros, not law or fear, guides action. But this reliance on eros puts democracy, like Alcibiades, very much at the mercy of fortune and the irrational passions.53 The violet crown is worn by a gifted drunk, who will soon commit imaginative crimes. The ivy is the sign of Dionysus, god of wine, god of irrational inspiration (cf. Ch. 3).54 (Ivy represents the bodily fertility of the inspired lover, who is, and sees himself, as one of the growing things of the natural world, mutable and green.) Agathon appealed to Dionysus to judge the argument between him and Socrates (175 E) ; Alcibiades' arrival answers his request. Dionysus, male in form yet of softly female bearing, exemplifies the sexual contractions of Alcibiades' aspirations. He embodies, too, another apparent contradiction: he is the patron god of both tragic and comic poetry. This is appropriate, since the speech of Alcibiades is both tragic and comic - tragic in its depiction of frustration and its foreshadowing of ruin, comic in the knowing self-humor of the story-teller, who exposes his vanity and illusions with Aristophanic delight. It is already beginning to be evident to us why Socrates should, at the dialogue's end, argue that comedy and tragedy can be the work of a single man. The Aristophanic view of love is of a piece both with the tragic account of eros and with the vision of Alcibiades in its emphasis on the bodily and contingent nature of human erotic aspiration, the vulnerability of practical wisdom to the world. (Socrates charged Aristophanes with being ' exclusively taken up with Dionysus and Aphrodite' ( 1 7 7 E ) . ) Tragedy and comedy cherish the same values, value the same dangers. Both, furthermore, are linked through Dionysus to the fragile fortunes of Athenian democracy; both are in danger at the dramatic date, dead, along with Alcibiades, soon after.55 Now however, we see a further dimension to the rapprochement. Alcibiades is appealing, gripping, and, ultimately, tragic in part because he is also the comic poet of his own disaster. If he had told a melodramatic tale of anguish and loss, stripped of the wit, the self-awareness, and the laughter that characterize his actual speech, his story would be less tragic, because we would have less reason to care about him. A self-critical perception of one's cracks and holes, which issues naturally in comic poetry, is an important part of what we value in Alcibiades and want to salvage in ourselves. So it seems not accidental that Dionysus, god of tragic loss, should stand for both. There is one more feature of Dionysus to which the ivy crown particularly directs us: he is the god who dies. He undergoes, each year, a ritual death and a rebirth, a cutting back and a resurgence, like the plant, like desire itself. Among
The speech of Alcibiades: a reading of the Symposium 234 the gods he alone is not self-sufficient, he alone can be acted on by the world. He is the god who would be no use for teaching young citizens the 'god's eye' point of view. And yet, miraculously, despite his fragility, he restores himself and burgeons. This suggests that an unstable city, an unstable passion, might grow and flourish in a way truly appropriate to a god - a thought that has no place in the theology of the ideal city. V We now see a positive case for Alcibiades. But the speech is also, at the same time, Plato's indictment. He has invented a priestess whose job it is to save people from plagues; he has suggested that personal eros, unregenerate, is this plague. We want now to discover in detail the reasons for this condemnation. What makes eros intolerable? What gives rise to this overwhelming need to get above it and away from it? There are, it must be said, problems for Alcibiades. First there is the problem of what happens to him and what his curiosity finds. His attempt to know the other encounters an obstacle in the stone of Socratic virtue. It is not without reason that Alcibiades compares Socratic virtues to statues of the gods. For, as we have seen, Socrates, in his ascent towards the form, has become, himself, very like a form — hard, indivisible, unchanging. His virtue, in search of science and of assimilation of the good itself, turns away from the responsive intercourse with particular earthly goods that is Alcibiades' knowledge. It is not only Socrates' dissociation from his body. It is not only that he sleeps all night with the naked Alcibiades without arousal. There is, along with this remoteness, a deeper impenetrability of spirit. Words launched ' like bolts' have no effect. Socrates might conceivably have abstained from sexual relations while remaining attentive to the lover in his particularity. He might also have had a sexual relationship with Alcibiades while remaining inwardly aloof. But Socrates refuses in every way to be affected. He is stone; and he also turns others to stone. Alcibiades is to his sight just one more of the beautifuls, a piece of the form, a pure thing like a jewel. So the first problem for Alcibiades is that his own openness is denied. He is a victim of hubris, pierced, mocked, dishonored66 (219c, 2 2 2 B , D). This might have led Alcibiades to philosophy if he had been able to make Diotima's prudent judgments of similarity. But since he remains determined to care for Socrates' individuality, he remains harmed by Socrates' denial. This is, of course, just a story, and the story of a unique problem. It is the story of an especially vain man, a man whose love of honor and reputation is recognized even by him to be an obstacle to goodness of life. There are, furthermore, not many stones like Socrates, his eromenos. But, there are, on the other hand, many varieties of stone. If there is, by luck, responsiveness on both sides now, still there may be change, estrangement bringing painful loss of knowledge. As even Diotima concedes
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before proposing the method of ascent that will try to remedy the problem, souls, with their thoughts, feelings, and desires, are no more stable than bodies. 'Our understandings come into being and pass away, and we are never the same even in our understandings, but every single understanding suffers this' (207E-208A). Even if there is rare stability in understanding and response, there will surely still be death to put an end to knowledge. So happenings plague the lover; and we might begin to wonder how contingent these happenings are. But let us suppose, for a moment, that Alcibiades is involved in a mutually passionate love, in which both parties are lovers, each trying to explore the world that the openness of the other makes available. We want to know whether Diotima has reason to see personal eros as, in its nature, a plague, or whether her criticisms work only against the unhappy cases, and speak only to those who either fear or are enmeshed in such experiences. Let us, then, imagine Alcibiades happy in love. Is he, then, in love, truly happy or good? The dialogue makes us wonder. No present fortune is guarantee of its own stability (cf. 2 0 0 B - E ) . Therefore, as the dialogue indicates, fears, jealousies, and the threat of loss will be an intimate part of even the best experiences of loving. The playfully threatening banter between Socrates and Alcibiades, the mock violence that points to the real violence to come, are not necessarily to be read against the background of their estrangement. In the best of times such dangerous emotions could be summoned by the fear of the other's separateness. The attribution of value to an unstable external object brings internal instability of activity. There is a strong possibility that Alcibiades wants Socrates to be a statue - a thing that can be held, carried, or, when necessary, smashed. There is a possibility that this sort of intense love cannot tolerate, and wishes to end, autonomous movement. The sentimentalized lover of Greek erotic paintings greets the boy by affectionately touching him on face and genitals, indicating in this tender gesture respect and awe for his whole person.57 The gesture of Alcibiades - the violent smashing of holy faces and genitals - may be, the dialogue suggests, a truer expression of unregenerate eros. There is also the equally troublesome possibility that it is precisely the stoniness of the other that attracts. The remote, round thing, gleaming like a form, undivided, lures with the promise of secret richness. It's nothing to open something that has a crack. But the perfect thing — if you could ever open that up, then you would be blessed and of unlimited power. Alcibiades loves the stone beauty that he finds: only that temperance is worthy of his pride, because only that cleverly eludes him. So, in yet another way, eros, reaching for power, reaches towards its own immobility. When the light of Socrates 'appears all at once' for Alcibiades, it is the sort of light that, radiantly poured round the aspiring body, may seal or freeze it in, like a coat of ice. That is its beauty. Furthermore, this happy lover, in loving a particular, loves a standing ground of conflict. For we have seen how Socrates' conception of all value as a hom*ogeneous 'sea' defuses the most troublesome conflicts of value and also removes motives for akratic action. None of his choices is more troublesome than
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the choice between n measures of value and n + 5 measures. Alcibiades (like Haemon), loving an irreplaceable and incommensurable object - and loving at the same time other distinct things such as honor and military excellence - may be confronted by the world with less tractable choices (cf. Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5 §v, Ch. 7, p. 221). All this leads us to ask most seriously whether personal eros can have, after all, any place in a life that is to be shaped and ruled by practical reason. We tried to think of a life in which eros would play its part along with other component goods - intellectual, political, social. But the nature of personal erotic passion may be such as to be always unstable, both internally and in relation to the lover's whole plan. It fills one part of a life with unstable and vulnerable activity; this, according to the Republic, would be sufficient to disqualify it from goodness. And it also threatens, when given a part, to overwhelm the whole. Aristophanes said that the erotic needs of his mythical creatures made them indifferent to eating, drinking, and' all other pursuits'. We see Alcibiades' jealous passions making him indifferent to truth and goodness. Practical reason shapes a world of value. But the lover, as a lover, ascribes enormous importance to another world outside of his own and autonomous from it. It is not clear that the integrity of his own world can survive this, that he can continue in such circ*mstances to feel that he is a maker of a world at all.58 To feel so great a commitment to and power from what is external to your practical reason can feel like slavery, or madness. Alcibiades compares himself to someone who is gripped by something and out of his senses (215C5, 215D5, 2 1 8 B 2 - 3 ) . His soul is in a turmoil (215E6). He is angry at himself for his slavish condition (215E6). ' I had no resource', he concludes, 'and I went around in slavery to this man, such slavery as has never been before' (219E; cf. 217A1-2). The past is still actual (215D8, 217E6-7). To be a slave is to be without autonomy, unable to live by the plans of your own reason, perhaps unable even to form a plan. But not to do this is not to be fully human. It is no wonder that, as we look on the man who will live, to the end, a disorderly, buffeted life, inconstant and wasteful of his excellent nature, we are tempted to say, with Socrates: ' I shudder at his madness and passion for love' (213D6). We now begin to understand Plato's strategy in constructing this dramatic confrontation. Through Aristophanes, he raises certain doubts in our minds concerning the erotic projects to which we are most attached. And yet the speech of Aristophanes still praises eros as most necessary, and necessary for the success of practical reason itself. He then shows us, through Socrates and Diotima, how, despite our needy and mortal natures, we can transcend the merely personal in eros and ascend, through desire itself, to the good. But we are not yet persuaded that we can accept this vision of self-sufficiency and this model of practical understanding, since, with Vlastos, we feel that they omit something. What they omit is now movingly displayed to us in the person and the story of Alcibiades. We realize, through him, the deep importance unique passion has for ordinary human beings; we see its irreplaceable contribution to understanding. But the story brings a further problem: it shows us clearly that we cannot simply add the
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love of Alcibiades to the ascent of Diotima; indeed, that we cannot have this love and the kind of stable rationality that she revealed to us. Socrates was serious when he spoke of two mutually exclusive varieties of vision. And now, all at once, exaiphnes, there dawns on us the full light of Plato's design, his comic tragedy of choice and practical wisdom. We see two kinds of value, two kinds of knowledge; and we see that we must choose. One sort of understanding blocks out the other. The pure light of the eternal form eclipses, or is eclipsed by, the flickering lightning of the opened and unstably moving body. You think, says Plato, that you can have this love and goodness too, this knowledge of and by flesh and good-knowledge too. Well, says Plato, you can't. You have to blind yourself to something, give up some beauty. 'The sight of reason begins to see clearly when the sight of the eyes begins to grow dim' whether from age or because you are learning to be good. But what, then, becomes of us, the audience, when we are confronted with the illumination of this true tragedy and forced to see everything? We are, Alcibiades tells us, the jury (219c). And we are also the accused. As we watch the trial of Socrates for the contemptuous overweening (ihuperephanias, 219c 5) of reason, which is at the same time the trial of Alcibiades for the contemptuous overweening of the body, we see what neither of them can fully see - the overweening of both. And we see that it is the way we must go if we are to follow either one or the other. But so much light can turn to stone. You have to refuse to see something, apparently, if you are going to act. I can choose to follow Socrates, ascending to the vision of the beautiful. But I cannot take the first step on that ladder as long as I see Alcibiades. I can follow Socrates only if, like Socrates, I am persuaded of the truth of Diotima's account; and Alcibiades robs me of this conviction. He makes me feel that in embarking on the ascent I am sacrificing a beauty; so I can no longer view the ascent as embracing the whole of beauty. The minute I think 'sacrifice* and 'denial', the ascent is no longer what it seemed, nor am I, in it, self-sufficient. I can, on the other hand, follow Alcibiades, making my soul a body. I can live in eros, devoted to its violence and its sudden light. But once I have listened to Diotima, I see the loss of light that this course, too, entails - the loss of rational planning, the loss, we might say, of the chance to make a world. And then, if I am a rational being, with a rational being's deep need for order and for understanding, I feel that I must be false to eros, for the world's sake.59 The Symposium now seems to us a harsh and alarming book. Its relation to the Republic and Phaedo is more ambiguous than we originally thought; for it does make a case for that conception of value, but it shows us also, all too clearly, how much that conception requires us to give up. It starkly confronts us with a choice, and at the same time it makes us see so clearly that we cannot choose anything. We see now that philosophy is not fully human; but we are terrified of humanity and what it leads to. It is our tragedy: it floods us with light and takes away action. As Socrates and Alcibiades compete for our souls, we become, like their object Agathon, beings without character, without choice. Agathon could stand their
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blandishments, because he had no soul to begin with. We did have souls, and we feel they are being turned to statues. So they go their ways - Socrates, sleepless, to the city for an ordinary day of dialectic, Alcibiades to disorder and to violence. The confusion of the body conceals the soul of Alcibiades from our sight. He becomes from now on an anonymous member of the band of drunken revellers; we do not even know when he departs. The ambitions of the soul conceal the body of Socrates from his awareness. Just as drink did not make him drunk, cold did not make him freeze, and the naked body of Alcibiades did not arouse him, so now sleeplessness does not make him stop philosophizing. He goes about his business with all the equanimity of a rational stone. Meanwhile, the comic and tragic poets sleep together, tucked in by the cool hand of philosophy (22 3D). Those two - philosophy and poetry - cannot live together or know each other's truths, that's for sure. Not unless literature gives up its attachment to the particular and the vulnerable and makes itself an instrument of Diotima's persuasion. But that would be to leave its own truths behind. Between one telling of the story and another, or perhaps during the second telling itself - and, for us (in us?) during the time we take to read and experience this work - Alcibiades has died. With him dies a hope that eros and philosophy could live together in the city and so save it from disaster. This was, perhaps, Apollodorus's hope, his companion's hope. It was also ours. Plutarch tells us that the night before his death Alcibiades dreamed that he was dressed in women's clothes. A courtesan was holding his head and painting his face with makeup. In the soul of this proudly aggressive man, it is a dream that expresses the wish for unmixed passivity: the wish to lose the need for practical reason, to become a being who could live entirely in the flux of eros and so avoid tragedy. But at the same time it is a wish to be no longer an erotic being; for what does not reach out to order the world does not love, and the self-sufficiency of the passive object is as unerotic as the self-sufficiency of the god. It is, we might say, a wish not to live in the world. After the arrow had killed him, the courtesan Timandra, ' Honor-the-Man', wrapped his bitten body and his soul of flesh in her own clothes and buried him sumptuously in the earth. When Alcibiades finished speaking, they burst out laughing at the frankness of his speech, because it looked as though he was still in love with Socrates (222c). He stood there, perhaps, with ivy in his hair, crowned with violets.60
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'This story isn't true': madness, reason, and recantation in the Phaedrus
We say indeed that the good man... will be especially sufficient unto himself for good living, and above all other men will have least need of anyone else... So then he will mourn least of all, and bear such things very calmly, when some such occurrence comes his way... So we will be right if we take laments away from distinguished men and give them over to women - and to not very good women at that. Plato, Republic 388A (c. 380-370 B.C.)
Tears were the portion that the Fates spun out at birth for Hecuba and the Trojan women. But you, Dion, had built a monument of noble actions, when the gods spilled your fair-flowing hopes upon the ground. You lie there now, in the spacious earth of your fatherland, praised by citizens. Dion, you who drove my heart mad with love.1 Plato (3 5 3 B.C.)
'My dear friend Phaedrus', calls Socrates. 4 Where are you going? And where do you come from?' So begins this self-critical and questioning dialogue. Socrates has just caught sight of this impressive young person, whose name means 4 Sparkling', and who is clearly radiant with health, good looks, and ability. (And perhaps, catching sight of him, he is struck as if by a 4 stream of beauty entering in through his eyes'. Perhaps he feels both warmed and inundated, filled at once with eagerness and awe.2) He wants to engage Phaedrus in conversation. He follows him. Phaedrus (who appears so far to be cheerfully unmoved) answers that he has come from talking with Lysias, the son of Cephalus. (We are reminded of Republic 1, with its stern warning against the 4 mad' influence of the passions. Lysias's speech to Phaedrus will be continuous with his father's sane advice.) He is going from the urban house where he has been conversing with Lysias to take a walk, for the sake of his health, outside the city walls, in what we shall see to be a place of burgeoning sensuous beauty. It is also a dangerous place: a place where a pure young girl was carried off by the impassioned wind god, where the mad god Pan (son of Hermes, god of luck) has his shrine, where the traveler risks possession by the power of eros at the hottest hour of the day. In this same way, some important features of Plato's thought, and writing, seem to have left the Republic's city house and to be moving in the direction of greater wildness, 200
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sensuousness, and vulnerability. We must ask Socrates' question of Plato: where does he come from here? And where is he going? We begin with certain facts about the distance traveled. In the Republic and Phaedo, the appetites and emotions, particularly sexual feeling and emotion, were held to be unsuitable guides for human action. Only the intellect can reliably guide a human being towards the good and valuable. Nor does the conception of the best human life there ascribe any intrinsic value to the activities associated with these elements. In particular, lasting erotic relationships between individuals are not constituent parts of this life. In the Symposium, which develops this picture further, Plato offers us a stark choice: on the one hand, the life of Alcibiades, the person 'possessed' by the 'madness' of personal love; on the other, a life in which the intellectual soul ascends to true insight and stable contemplation by denying the 'mad' influence of personal passion. Alcibiades' madness is, allegedly, incompatible with rational order and stability; its vision is a barrier to correct vision. The life of the philosopher achieves order, stability, and insight at the price of denying the sight of the body and the value of individual love. In the Phaedrus, however, philosophy itself is said to be a form of madness or mania, of possessed, not purely intellectual activity, in which intellect is guided to insight by personal love itself and by a complex passion-engendered ferment of the entire personality. Certain sorts of madness are not only not incompatible with insight and stability, they are actually necessary for the highest sort of insight and the best kind of stability. Erotic relationships of long duration between particular individuals (who see each other as such) are argued to be fundamental to psychological development and an important component of the best human life. In the Republic, Socrates makes a sharp distinction between poetry and philosophy. He attacks poetry for 'nourishing' the irrational parts of the soul through both its morally dubious content and its exciting style. Repudiating the poet's claim to illuminate the truth, he contrasts that person's cognitive deficiency with the philosopher's wisdom. In the Symposium, we see a style that claims to tell the truth through stories and by the use of images. This style (linked with both tragic and comic poetry) is the style of the erotic madman, and its claim to truth is rejected by the philosopher along with Alcibiades' claim. In the Phaedrus, the highest human life is described as one devoted to either philosophical or muse-honoring activities. Poetry inspired by 'madness' is defended as a gift of the gods and a valuable educational resource; non-mad styles are condemned as retentive, lacking in insight. The style of Socratic philosophizing now fuses argument with poetry; Socrates presents his deepest philosophical insights in poetic language, in the form of a 'likeness'. In the Phaedrus, Socrates covers his head in shame and delivers a stern prose discourse (modelled on the speech written for Phaedrus by his suitor, the successful orator Lysias) which attacks erotic passion as a form of degrading madness, and characterizes the passions as mere urges for bodily replenishment, with no role to play in our understanding of the good. Then, uncovering his head,
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he recants, offering (to a Phaedrus newly shaken by the power of feeling) a defense of the benefits of madness. This recantation begins with a poetic quotation. Socrates recites the Palinode of Stesichorus, who slandered Helen of Troy and, struck blind for his insult, composed these verses to regain his sight: This story isn't true. You did not embark on the well-benched ships. You did not come to the citadel of Troy. What are the connections among these suggestive facts? I shall argue that the Phaedrus displays a new view of the role of feeling, emotion, and particular love in the good life, and that this change of view is explored inside the dialogue itself: Plato embodies important features of his own earlier view in the first two speeches, and then both 'recants' and criticizes those speeches. All this is given special immediacy by being set in the context of Phaedrus's personal erotic choice. And the conclusion about the passions will prove to have implications, as well, for Plato's understanding of the role of poetry and of the connections between poetry and philosophy. There are, then, striking resemblances between the doctrine of Socrates' first speech (together with the speech of Lysias that inspires it) and certain views seriously defended by Socrates in middle-period dialogues. The recantation is a serious recantation of something that Plato has seriously endorsed; the prevailing opinion that finds the two early speeches degraded and disgusting has failed to appreciate their force. They will prove to merit the attention of an aspiring young person of Phaedrus's talent and beauty. But one reason why they have been lightly regarded is that Socrates himself explicitly expresses his shame and disgust. He utters them under a kind of compulsion and quickly recants, claiming that what they said was neither healthy nor true (242c). What, then, within the context itself, could persuade us to think of them as serious competitors for Socrates' own allegiance? First, respect for their author. I do not believe that Plato ever criticizes a straw man, or that he would spend so much time on a position that he finds self-evidently worthless (or, for that matter, on an interlocutor who is deeply drawn to a self-evidently worthless view). But there is also more concrete evidence. The speeches are criticized above all for their naivete (euetheia, 242D7, E5). This is an odd thing to say about a view one thinks to be cynical, debased, and altogether without interest. Second, and more telling, Socrates claims that it was his daimonion, his divine sign, that prompted the recantation. The daimonion is a serious individual who intercedes infrequently to 'hold back' Socrates when he is about to undertake something wrong (Phdr. 242c, cf. ApoL 3ID). Even making allowances for Socratic irony, we would not expect it to intervene if Socrates were merely role-playing, in no way genuinely tempted to the wrong view. A further indication of seriousness is provided by the fact that Socrates depicts his first speech as inspired by certain Muses. Not, to be sure, the Pan, Nymphs, and other gods of wild nature who guide his later discourse (cf. 2 7 9 B - C , 262D, 263D-E), but
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Muses of the 'Ligurian' or ' Clear-voiced' variety. We might understand these to be the muses of the clear and healthy rationalism to which Phaedrus is now attracted; they might also be the muses of the middle dialogues. As Hackforth points out, the presence of Muses here 4 creates a real difficulty' for those who are inclined to be dismissive of the first speech. Finally, a strange feature of the first speech itself, not readily explicable on the assumption that it is intended as merely worthless, gives us a hint about its relationship to the speech that follows. This speech denouncing eros, like the later speech of recantation, is said to be the speech of a man in love to his beloved boy. This lover, however, here pretends that he is not in love, and speaks slandering eros, urging his beloved not to yield to a lover's importunities ( 2 3 7 B ) . This strange piece of byplay is explained by Hackforth as a sign that the speaker is motivated by real concern for the boy's welfare. 'In fact, we get a glimpse of the erastes par excellence, Socrates himself.'3 This promising suggestion can be pressed much further if we take the content of the speech more seriously than Hackforth has, as the expression of a real Platonic view. Here we have a lover who tells us, apparently seriously, that eros is a madness and a disease: anyone for whom he cares should avoid its grip and seek to live in reason with reasonable people. It would not be difficult to view the ascetic arguments of the middle dialogues as the speech of such a lover, a lover convinced that, in order to lead towards the good both himself and his readers, he must not only attack the passions but also pretend that he himself is not a humanly erotic personality. He might even decide to adopt the persona of Socrates, who was impervious to drink, to cold, to the naked body of Alcibiades. In fact, speaking through this same Socrates, Plato has told us in Republic x that a person in love, if he believes that eros is not good for him, will continually rehearse to himself the arguments against eros as a c countercharm' against its spell. Even so, Plato continues, a lover of poetry should rehearse to himself the arguments against this form of madness unless and until a defender of poetry should convince him' in prose without meter, and show that it is not only delightful, but also beneficial to orderly government and all of human life' (Rep. 607D-608B). The Phaedrus, I shall argue, is this apologia - both for eros and (with qualifications) for poetic writing - following upon some of the most powerful countercharms a philosopher and lover has ever composed. We have sensed all along that Plato has a deep understanding of erotic motivation and its power. The Phaedrus would then be a work in which he works out a more complex view of these motivations and accepts some of them as good; a work in which he admits that he has been blind to something, conceived oppositions too starkly; where he seeks, through recantation and self-critical argument, to get back his sight. I
This is a dialogue about madness, or mania. The first two speeches - the speech composed by Lysias and the first speech of Socrates - denounce it, praising
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rational self-possession, or sophrosune. The second speech of Socrates argues that mania is not, as has been said, a 'simple eviP: indeed, it can be a source of the highest goods. This dialogue, furthermore, is a dialogue whose characters go mad. Socrates, for the only time in his life, leaves, his accustomed urban haunts. Following beautiful Phaedrus, he walks to a green place outside the city walls and lies down on the grass by the bank of a flowing stream. He describes himself as 'possessed' by the influence of Phaedrus and the place.4 Phaedrus, too, yields to the influence of beauty and is moved by wonder (257c). From having been the critical and rationalistic 'speaker' of Socrates' first speech (244A), he becomes the loving and yielding boy to whom the manic second speech is spoken (243 E, cf. below). In order to understand what is going on here, and how it is all related to Plato's earlier views, we must, then, go into the question of madness, asking where and on what grounds it was too simply blamed, and how it finds its way back into the good life. What is madness or possession ? Consistently, in pre-Phaedrus dialogues,5 Plato has used 'mania' and related words to designate the state of soul in which the non-intellectual elements - appetites and emotions - are in control and lead or guide the intellectual part. Consistently, as here, mania is contrasted with sophrosune, the state of soul in which intellect rules securely over the other elements. It is linked particularly with the dominance of erode appetite.8 The mad person, then, is one who is in the sway of inner forces that eclipse or transform, for a time at least, the calculations and valuations of pure intellect. The insights of mania will be reached not by the measuring, counting, and reckoning of the logistikon? but by non-discursive processes less perfectly transparent to the agent's awareness and possibly more difficult to control. He or she is led to action on the basis of feeling and response, by complex receptivity rather than by pure intellectual activity. Even after the fact he may be unable to produce the sort of explicit account that subsumes the action under systematic general principles and definitions. An example of the erotic mad person would be Alcibiades (cf. 215 C-E, 2 1 3 D 6 , 2 1 8 B 2 - 3 ) , whose account of his actions is a story concerned with particulars, packed with expressions of and appeals to feeling and emotion. What the Phaedrus will be saying, in effect, is that it was over-simple and unfair to use Alcibiades to stand for all mad people: that a lover can deliberate in a mad way without being bad and disorderly in life and choice. Clearly the $te-Phaedrus dialogues do attack mania as a ' simple evil', a state of the person that cannot lead to genuine insight and one that, more often than not, produces bad actions.8 Mania is called a species of viciousness at Republic 4 0 0 B 2 (cf. Meno 9 1 C 3 , Rep. 3 8 2 0 8 ) . In a number of passages it is linked with excessive appetite-gratification, or wantonness (hubris, Rep. 4 0 0 B 2 , 4 0 3 ; Crat. 4 0 4 A 4 ) . It is linked with delusion, folly, and the' death' of true opinion in Republic 5 3 9 0 6 , 5 7 3 A - B (cf. 3 8 2 E 2 , Tim. 8 6 B 4 , Ps.-Pl. Def 4 1 6 A 2 2 ) ; with the condition of slavery at Rep. 3 2 9 c , Symp. 2 1 5 C - E . And this is not merely a verbal point. For it is unequivocally the view of the Republic that any state in which the non-intellectual elements dominate or guide will be characterized, no matter what we call it, by the defects
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of mania: the loss of true insight and a tendency towards excess. The passage about dreaming in Book ix told us, for example, that when the logistikon is lulled to sleep the 'bestial' elements will take over and attempt to satisfy their 'own instincts', 'released and let off from all shame and good sense' (571c). Dreams can bring truth only if the dreamer can contrive to make them the work of the logistikon alone. Before sleep, he or she must lull the other parts so that they 'may not disturb the better part by pleasure and pain, but may suffer that in isolated purity to examine and reach out towards and apprehend some of the things unknown to it, past, present, or future' ( 5 7 1 D - 5 7 2 B ; cf. Phd. 6 5 A - D ) . It should be stressed that true insight, here, is attained by making the intellect purely active, impervious to influence from outside; forms of passivity or receptivity, like the feelings of pleasure and pain, are held, here as in the Phaedoy to be invariably distorting. This denial of all cognitive value to the non-intellectual elements is not surprising, given Plato's general view of appetition and emotion in middle-period works, as we have set it out in Chapter 5. The Republic, we recall, argued that the appetites are merely brute forces reaching out, insatiably and without any selectivity, each for a characteristic object. Such unteachable forces could not be indices of the good. Emotions, though somewhat more responsive to education, require continual control by intellect, and are always potentially dangerous. Genuine insight can therefore best be achieved by a thoroughgoing disengagement of intellect from the rest of the personality; it should go off, pure and clear, itself by itself.9 The first two speeches in the Phaedrus operate with the dichotomy of the Republic and Symposium: the boy must choose, simply, between good sense and madness, between good control by intellect and a disorderly lack of control. The speech of Lysias urges the fictional boy (and the speaker urges the real Phaedrus)10 to give himself sexually, not to the person who is in love with him, but to the person who is not in love with him.* It supports this advice with an argument that contrasts the irrational state of the person in love with the sophrosune of the person who is not in love: people in love, being ' sick' rather than self-possessed (sophronein), reason badly and cannot control themselves (23 ID). Lysias the person-who-is-not-in-love, by contrast, is 'not overthrown by love, but in control of myself' (233c); he acts not under passional compulsion but, he says, voluntarily (hekon, 231 A) - as if, among the parts of oneself, only the logistikon is the author of genuinely voluntary actions, while the other elements are unselective causal forces. The more detailed analysis of the person that is carried out in Socrates' first speech, a speech that introduces itself as an account of the principles of good deliberation (237B7), makes it clear to us that the view in question is strikingly similar to the view of the middle dialogues. There are, Socrates argues, two ruling * The Greek calls these two people ho eron and ho me eron, * the person in a condition of eros' and "the person who is not in a condition of eros'. Hackforth translates, "the lover' and * the non-lover'; this is certainly less cumbersome, but (today at any rate) misleading. It is clear that what the me eron wants is to be the boy's lover, in the sexual sense, without being in love with him. I shall therefore use the briefer expressions only when the point is absolutely clear.
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principles in a human being: 'innate appetite for pleasures' and 'acquired belief about the good'. The state of the person in which belief about the good is in control is called sophrosune* The state in which the appetite that draws us towards pleasure is in control is called, simply, hubris or wantonness ( 2 3 7 D - 2 3 8 A ) . Hubris is said to be 'many-named: for it is many-limbed and many-parted' ( 2 3 8 A ) . (We are reminded of the 'many-headed beast' of Republic ix.) When the appetite for food is in control, that is gluttony; when the appetite for drink is in control, drunkenness. Eros is finally defined as the state in which the unreasoning appetite for the sensuous enjoyment of bodily beauty has gained control over true opinion. As with food and drink, it is simply assumed that this is an altogether bad state. Accordingly, in the rest of the speech, the person in love is treated as a 'sick' person in the grip of a 'mindless (anoetou) ruling principle' (241A8), 'mindless out of necessity' (241B7). The ex-lover, by contrast, is said to have acquired 'insight (nous) and self-possession (sophrosune) in place of eros and mania' (241 A). Clarity and true insight require the death of passion. The sane person feels only shame about his former erar-inspired actions. We can see that this speech succincdy reproduces four central claims of the Republic concerning madness and the non-intellectual elements: (1) The appetites, including the sexual appetite, are blind animal forces reaching out each for a particular object - e.g. food, drink, sex - without either incorporating or being responsive to judgment about the good.11 (2) The non-intellectual elements, when in control, tend naturally to excess. (Any state ruled by such an element deserves the name of hubris.) (3) The non-intellectual elements can never, even in a well-trained person, perform a cognitive function, guiding the person towards insight and understanding of the good. They are 'mindless', invariably sources of danger and distortion. (4) The logistikon is a leading element both necessary and sufficient for the apprehension of truth and for right choice. It works better the freer it is from the influence of the other elements. In other words, intellectual purity and clarity is a fundamental prerequisite of genuine insight; sufficiently cultivated it is sufficient for this insight. Both Lysias and the speaker of Socrates' first speech give the boy moral advice. Briefly put, it is the advice of Diotima and of the Republic-, cultivate in yourself the state of self-possession, sophrosune. Develop the clarity of your intellect by exercising strict control over bestial non-intellectual elements. Form only non-mad friendships, and only with other self-possessed, non-mad people. Lysias's speech adds the explicit advice to give yourself sexually to the self-possessed person; this * The language of Socrates' first speech brings it into close connection with the middle dialogues at many points. The definition of sophrosune as the state in which reason rules securely over the other elements is the definition of Republic iv (43 IB, 442C-D). The disorderly state is in both cases called a stasis or civil war of the soul, and is opposed to a concord (44201, 257E). The necessity to know 'the being of each t h i n g ' at the outset of an inquiry, asking concerning eros 'what sort of thing it is and what power (dunamin) it has', so that we can 'look to it' in asking further questions, is a typical Platonic demand couched in language familiar from the Republic and other related dialogues (cf. for example Rep. 3 5 4B-C, 3 5 8B). The imagery of appetite 4 ruling' and ' tyrannizing' is common in Republic 1 and ix.
Madness, reason, a//^ recantation in the Phaedrus advice is not made explicit in Socrates' speech. We shall have more to say about this point, which might seem to tell against our claim that this represents an earlier Platonic view. But now we need to enter more deeply into the world of these two speeches, and this for two reasons. First, because they have usually been so flatly denounced, even by people who view with sympathy the arguments of the middle dialogues. Hackforth, for example, speaks harshly of the 'cold prudential calculation' of the Lysian speaker, his obliviousness to 'romantic sentiment'.12 This places on us a responsibility to show that, intuitively and on their own terms (not only in comparison with the Republic) these speeches offer advice that is plausible and appealing. Second, because this dialogue is, after all, the story of Phaedrus. We are trying to understand his moral development, what choices he faces in his efforts to be rational. The first two speeches embody a moral view to which this able young person is deeply attracted. In fact, Socrates tells us explicitly that we are to view his first speech as a speech of ot by Phaedrus (244A); by this he means, we suppose, that it expresses Phaedrus's current view, what he would say right now if asked to give himself advice. Before we can understand how and on what grounds Phaedrus leaves this view behind, accepting the Socratic recantation, we must, then, do more to show the power of the first view for a certain sort of aspiring young person. We must, in other words, ask ourselves who Phaedrus is. 13 We must imagine a small city, in which the most able adult citizens all devote their careers to the city's political and cultural life. These leading citizens all know one another and must continue to see and work with one another throughout their adult lives. We now imagine a gifted and ambitious young man beginning a career in this milieu. (Socrates calls him a son of Pythocles, so his whole name becomes 'Sparkling, Son of Man of Pythian Fame'; this otherwise unknown patronymic, like other names in the context, is likely to be a significant fiction, indicating a connection with civic renown.14) He is attractive as well as talented. He is sexually inclined towards men of the next older generation, and they are, almost all of them, inclined towards men of his generation. On the verge of an exciting career, surrounded by attractive possibilities (cf. 237B3, where the boy is said to have ' a very large number' of suitors for his favors), he must now decide what sorts of personal relationships he wants to cultivate. And he must consider the implications of this choice for his future in the city. Although I shall continue to describe the situation using Plato's chosen milieu and characters, I think it will help us to have a sense of the force of Lysias's advice if we imagine the analogous choices faced by a young woman entering a male-dominated profession in which she knows she will be spending the rest of her life. For in our culture it is clearly (in terms of the numbers) such a woman who is most likely to be in Phaedrus's sexual position, more or less surrounded by potential 'suitors' who are more powerful and more established than she is. Such a woman would want to live a full personal life; but she would be seriously concerned, at the same time, to protect her clarity and autonomy, her chance to live and work on reasonable and non-threatening terms with the people with
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whom she works. Now imagine that the profession is the whole city: everyone she knows is, of necessity, a colleague. There are no other choices. If we imagine what a concerned feminist would say to such a young woman (or what she would say to herself) we will be on the way to understanding what is serious about Lysias. Hackforth and other critics who speak of romance live in a world in which romance naturally terminates in the devotion of the less established female party to the professional ends of the more established male party. This helps them to miss the depth of Phaedrus's dilemma. The first two speeches tell this young man that, in his search for political, social, and intellectual standing, he must above all protect himself from emotional turmoil and emotional domination. He must remain independent, clear, selfpossessed ; free internally from psychological conflict, externally from the influence of a 'mad* lover. If he is going to have any sexual relationships at all (and, as we noticed, the first speech of Socrates omits this positive advice) he should certainly avoid the person who is in love with him. The madness of love is unpredictable and dangerous. The person in love does not judge clearly. He will be bad for Phaedrus's career because he will advise him in a way distorted by self-interest and jealous longing. He will be both indiscreet and possessive, preventing the growth of other advantageous friendships. He may even subtly discourage the younger person from excelling because this will keep him more dependent. Transported by passion, this lover so dreads the young person's separateness that he can neither correctiy see nor kindly nourish his character and his deepest aspirations. And when the affair ends there will be shame, regret, and even hostility. It will be hard for the two of them to be friends or to see each other calmly in the course of daily life. In short, a person gripped by love, loving out of mad passion and deep need, will prove incapable of genuine kindness and friendliness. He can bring nothing but risk and damage to the person who is involved with him. 15 On the other side we have the person who is not in love. (And we must remember that it is he who has just given us this description of the person in love.) Let us call him Lysias, son of Cephalus. (It would not be hard to imagine Cephalus offering his son similar advice.) Lysias, we know, is a successful, established man; a prominent defender of democratic freedoms who will soon become famous for his courageous opposition to the oligarchs; an orator renowned for his clarity and simple lucidity.16 He is urbane, critical, and charming. He prefers a city house to country walks. He sees life very clearly. He dislikes grandiose speeches. Suspicious of powerful emotion, in himself and in others, he is sane, kind, and decent. He offers Phaedrus a well-controlled sensual friendship. If Phaedrus rationally chooses to become involved with him, neither of them will ever see the world differently because of it. Neither of them will 'become someone else', an outcome that Lysias fears and scorns. The affair will be pleasant, full of mutual good will and benefit. Most important, it will enable both of them to preserve autonomy and honesty. And Lysias deeply prides himself on his honesty. (He claims to see and judge Phaedrus without envy, jealousy, passion, or selfish
Madness, reason,a//^recantation in the Phaedrus interest.) We see his conception of objectivity in the spare, chaste prose style, pruned of every emotional indulgence, every appeal to feeling through metaphor and rhythm. The message of this style is that rationality is something crisp and cerebral, something of the logistikon alone.* With a man like this, Phaedrus can trust that no deep changes or upsets will occur. He will be able to see him for the rest of his life in the market or at meetings, without shame, jealousy, or anger. He will never feel like running away. Phaedrus, then, seems to be confronted with two starkly defined alternatives: the beneficent detachment of Lysias, the dangerous passion of the mad lover. What choice will he make? He is himself a lucid man, a man attached to the ideal of health and control. He exercises with unusual zeal and worries about the details of his personal bodily regime ( 2 2 7 A ) . It is not surprising that such a young man should fear the person in love and paint for himself in thought and speech a devastating portrait of that sort of madness. Nor is it surprising that a young vulnerable person concerned with fame and autonomy should find Lysias's proposal attractive. We do not need to ask how most feminists would advise a female Phaedrus; and we know that, given a certain picture of the person in love, a picture that is true a good part of the time, they would be right. As Socrates puts it, lovers love boys - the way wolves love lambs (241 A). That's a good reason for the lambs to protect themselves as well as possible. This may appear to have taken us rather far from the ascetic ideal of the Phaedo. For here, although there is a related attack on eros, there is also, at least in Lysias's speech, the advice to have a sexual relationship with the person who is not in * The continuing controversy about whether this speech was actually written by the historical Lysias testifies to the shrewdness of Plato's stylistic portrayal (cf. Hackforth ad loc.). It is difficult to get from a translation the proper impression of his style, which was famous for simplicity, clarity, and avoidance of feeling. J. F. Dobson, in the article ' Lysias' in the Oxford Classical Dictionary:' Lysias, by his exceptional mastery of idiom, turned the spoken language of everyday life into a literary medium unsurpassed for its simplicity and precision... He avoids rare and poetical words, striking metaphors, and exaggerated phrases, with the result that at times he may seem to lose in force what he gains in smoothness. His blameless style and unimpassioned tones may seem monotonous to some readers... Even when his own personal feelings are deeply concerned he is always moderate.' With these general facts in mind, listen to a few excerpts from the Platonic Lysias (my revision of Hackforth): You know how I am situated, and I have told you that I think it is to our advantage that this should happen. N o w I claim that I should not be refused what I ask simply because I am not in love with y o u . . . Again, a man who is in love is bound to be seen and heard by many people, following his boy around and acting obsessed with him. So whenever they are seen talking together everyone thinks they have either just been in bed or are just going off to bed. With a couple who are not in love, nobody even thinks of this when they are seen together. They know that a man has to have someone to talk to for friendship and entertainment And observe this: a man in love usually wants to enjoy your body before he has gotten to know your character or anything about you. This makes it unclear whether he will still want to be your friend when his desire has gone...And now I think I have said enough. If you want anything more or think I have left anything out, let me know. These bits convey the flavor of the style; the whole speech is, in general, very well done by Hackforth, though here, as we would expect, his choices sound more dated than they do in the rest of the dialogue. The frequent emphasis on the 'clear* and the 'necessary', the general crispness and contemporaneity of the diction, and the repeated use of expressions like' again' {eti de) and 'and observe this' (kai di kat) are well-known hallmarks of Lysias's style.
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2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? love. It is true that this advice is not given in the Phaedo. But the Republic requires non-passionate sex for purposes of procreation. And Book V I I I allows intercourse 4 up to the point of health and well-being' - which, given the extreme restrictions attached to procreative sex, almost certainly permits some comfortable and non-passionate hom*osexual relations.17 In any case, the distance between abstinence and Lysian sex is not as great as it might seem. The crucial point is that in neither case does the person go mad. There is no deep arousal and ferment of ail parts of the personality together, such as we shall see depicted in the defense of mania. There is, instead, a friendly agreement to enjoy, in a closely controlled way, a bodily pleasure. Lysias insists that this pleasure never threatens the person's self-control and coolness of vision. Having sex in this spirit might be, for some people, a very good way precisely of distancing oneself from its power and gaining intellectual control. This is likely to be what Republic V I I I means by 4 up to the point of health and well-being'.18 We need only to recall the prevailing Greek cultural ideal of the self-sufficient eromenos (Ch. 6) in order to become convinced that Phaedrus's sexual life with the Lysian suitor, chosen out of just such an interest in health and self-sufficiency, would be, as far as passion goes, appropriately closed and non-erotic.19 The difference between this view and the ascetic view of the Phaedo is only a difference about means: about whether it is easier to remain intellectually calm by having sex in this non-erotic way, or by abstaining. The answer to that question may vary with the individual, the culture, the time of life: the condemnation of passion remains constant. We know that Phaedrus will not long remain a devotee of anti-erotic argument. He will soon, in fact, be deeply moved by a speech that attacks Lysias's condemnation of the lover's madness. And it is pretty clear that in the end he will not accept Lysias's offer. So our picture of Phaedrus is not complete. We must add to it the observation that non-erotic purity, attractive though it in one way is, already fails to satisfy him. Now we remember his attraction to the wilder country outside the city walls. It is true that he admires the clear purity of the stream, so suitable for the play of young girls (229b). But he also loves to go barefoot, to get his feet wet; and he rather seductively mentions to Socrates that if they like they can lie down, instead of sitting, on the grass (229B1-2). All this hints at responses and tendencies that are absent from the speech of his thoroughly urban suitor. He excuses this love of the country by mentioning his doctor's orders ( 2 2 7 A ) ; but we see enough to suspect, at least, that he longs for madness even as he wards it off, reciting and admiring the 4 countercharms' that depict it as a 'simple evil'. And as he accepts Socrates' carefully chosen words of praise for Lysias's speech - 'lucid', 'economical', 'precise and well-crafted' ( 2 3 4 E ) seems to acknowledge already that this elegant and reasonable man lacks access, both in his work and in his human relationships, to sources of creative energy for which the younger man obscurely yearns. For when Socrates playfully suggests that Phaedrus is inspired and awestruck by Lysias's speech, Phaedrus recognizes immediately that this can only be a joke ( 2 3 4 D ) . Such emotions (fundamental, as he will soon grant, to the soul's growth) are not and could not
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i 2 1 1 be awakened by this non-mad person, who begins to look retentive and ungenerous. At the brightest and hottest hour of the day,20 Socrates finishes his speech against eros. Although Phaedrus tries to convince him to stay and discuss it further, he starts to leave. But it is at this point, as he is crossing the river, that his daimonion stops him, forbidding him to leave until he has atoned for his speech, which was both naive and blasphemous ( 2 4 2 B - C ) . 4 If eros is a god or a divine being, as indeed he is, he cannot be something bad; but these two speeches spoke of him as if he were bad. In this way they missed the mark concerning eros' (242E). This claim, we notice, is in direct contradiction to the view of Diotima, who made a great point of denying the divinity of eros.21 Something is happening. Socrates has to 'purify' himself ( 2 4 3 A ) by recanting the view that made so much of purity.22 It is at this point that he recites the Palinode of Stesichorus, applying its ' This story isn't true' to his own first speech and implying that he, like the poet, needs to recover his sight. The speech that follows, as he shortly tells us, finds him speaking in a new persona. Whereas the first speech was the speech 'of Phaedrus a Murrhinousian man', the second will be the speech 'of Stesichorus, son of Euphemus, from Himera' ( 2 4 4 A ) . The names are significant. Euphemus,' reverent in speech', is clearly connected with the second speech's respectful treatment of eros, against which the earlier speeches had blasphemed ( 2 4 2 E - 2 4 3 B ) . The earlier speeches are now called a slander (kakegoria, 243A6); this one, by contrast, finds Socrates in a state of 'fear and shame before the divinity of eros\ And the pious speech is at the same time the work of a poet, ' Stesichorus', and of a man from Himera - from a place which (the word for passionate, desire - usually for a present object - being ' himeros') might well be called Desire Town or Passionville.23 Socrates tells us, then (by the use of a poetic figure of speech) that the reverent speech will be the speech of a poet and a needy lover; and, furthermore, that he is now that lover. He hints that the object of his love is not far away. This lover is speaking, like the person-not-in-love, to a boy; in this case it is the boy whom he loves. Socrates, assuming the lover's persona, now needs to find a suitably responsive addressee. 'Where', he asks, 'is the boy to whom I was speaking? I want him to hear this speech too, so that he won't run off, through failure to listen, and give himself to the person who is not in love' ( 2 4 3 E ) . The boy who accepts this speech, he implies, will be changed. He asks whether there is a boy who is willing to receive it. The reply is, I think, among the most haunting and splendid moments in philosophy. Phaedrus, the brilliant, self-protective boy, the admirer of the non-lover, answers, simply,' He is here, quite close beside you, whenever you want him.' I say that this moment of yielding is a moment in philosophy. I certainly do not say that it is a moment in the literary trimming surrounding the philosophy. Nor, clearly, does Plato. For it is the genius of Plato's philosophical writing to show us here the intertwining of thought with action, of the experience of love with philosophical speech about love, of the philosophical defense of passion with
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? a personal acknowledgment of openness and receptivity. If these characters can bear to experience passion as they do, it is in part because they dare t o think and argue as they do, because philosophical speech shows them ways o f looking at the world. If, on the other hand, they speak philosophically as they d o , it is, too, because they are here lying beside one another as they are, on this grass beside the river, willing to go mad; and this madness leads them to a new view of the philosophical truth. It would be futile, and also perhaps unimportant, to try to say precisely whether experience or thought came first, so thoroughly do they interpenetrate here, illuminating one another. Their entire lives become ways of searching for wisdom; and part of their argument for the new view of madness comes from within their lives. So even within the dialogue and from the viewpoint of its characters, the separation between this moment and philosophical thinking cannot be made. On the level of authorship, furthermore, Plato, who displays to us this fusion of life and argument shows us thereby something serious that is certainly, for him, a deep part of the truth and therefore itself a part of his philosophy. And suppose, as I shall later suggest, this fusion is also a part of Plato's life; suppose he wrote about passion here out of a particular experience of his own. Would this make the Phaedrus less philosophical? Surely not. Perhaps more philosophical, if the more philosophical is that which is a deeper part o f a thinker's committed search for truth and value, that for which his or her choices, as well as words, constitute the argument. As we continue to consider the larger design of the dialogue, we now notice yet another way in which it revises the world of the Symposium. Stesichorus had told the story believed by everyone, according to which Helen was seduced by Paris and went off adulterously to Troy, causing trouble for everyone. In the Palinode he apologizes to Helen by creating a myth about her, a story that says that all during the war she was instead living peacefully and piously in Egypt. We can now see that the Phaedrus as a whole has the form of this Palinode. It has long been observed that a number of internal indications require us to place the dialogue's dramatic date between 411 and 404.24 But an inscription discovered in this century now shows us that there is a problem about doing this. Phaidros Murrhinousios, this very Phaedrus, was implicated, along with Alcibiades, in the mutilation of the Herms and the profanation of the mysteries; he was forced to go into exile from the city between the years 415 and 404.25 It is thus historically impossible that Phaedrus should really have been in Athens during this time. We might take refuge in the claim that Plato does not care for consistency: the setting is an impossible fairy-tale melange.26 But, given the notoriety of the events and the precision with which Plato dates the dialogue, there is another possibility that deserves to be advanced, at least as a conjecture. In the light of history, we might see the Phaedrus as Plato's own Egypt-legend. That story wasn't true. You did not get led into disorder and impiety through y o u r appetitive passions, your devotion to mania. You did not have to go into exile. All the time, in spite of appearances, here you were at Athens, living a good and orderly life,
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dW living a good life without closing off the influence of eros. Instead of mutilating the holy statues of Hermes, you were saying a reverent prayer at the shrine of Pan, his son (cf. Cratylus 4 0 7 - 4 0 8 ) . Eros and its madness are not the simple causes of confusion and impiety that we suggested when we used the story of Alcibiades to stand for mania in general. We reopen the case. (Recall the judicial metaphors at the end of the Symposium.) 'This story isn't true', of course, in the literal historical sense. Alcibiades and Phaedrus were both forced into exile. Probably Stesichorus also continued to believe, as his contemporaries did, in the literal historical truth of the received story of the Trojan war. But Plato's Phaedrus-legend and Stesichorus's Egyptlegend attack the deep moral that has been drawn from the stories of Helen and Alcibiades. They claim that, although perhaps literally false, their stories will express, metaphorically, a deeper truth about eros: that it can be a constituent of an orderly and pious life dedicated to understanding of the good. II Socrates now begins his second speech, his head uncovered. Madness, he declares, is not, as we had said, a simple evil. The two speeches27 had operated with a simple dichotomy between mania and sophrosune, treating the former as entirely a bad thing, the latter as entirely good ( 2 4 4 A ) . But in fact neither of these claims is correct. Some kinds of madness can be responsible for ' the greatest of goods for us' ( 2 4 4 A ) ; and in some circ*mstances self-possession can result in narrowness of vision. An irrationally inspired prophetess can accomplish much good for the country, a self-possessed one 'little or nothing' ( 2 4 4 B ) . The inspired kind of divination is' more perfect and more honorable' that the divination' of reasonable men' (ton emphronon), which works 'through discursive reasoning' {ek dianoias).28 Similarly, the poet who is truly possessed and mad can instruct the tender soul of a young person, making it join the bacchic revels; without this madness 'he is imperfect, and he and his poetry, being that of a self-possessed (sophronountos) person, are eclipsed by the work of people who are mad' (245 A). Finally, Socrates applies these observations to the case of eros: the' transported' (kekinemenos) friend or lover (philos)29 should be preferred to the self-possessed (sophron, 245 B). What follows will be, it is said, a 'demonstration' of the truth of these claims. There is little doubt that something new is here. Certain states of madness or possession are said to be both helpful and honorable, even necessary sources of the' greatest goods'. The thoroughly self-possessed person, who subdues emotion and feeling to techne, will neither aid his or her city much through prophecy, nor achieve honor and fame as a poetic teacher, nor be the best sort of lover. The ethical thinker cannot, it seems, afford to make sharp and simplistic divisions between bad madness and good sophrosune as the first two speeches did, as the Republic and the Symposium did. He must examine the cases more closely, divide artfully, and not, in his divisions, 'hack off a part in the manner of a bad butcher'
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? (265 E). But we must look to the 4 demonstration' that follows to find out exactly what the value of madness is and what elements of the previous view are being recanted. Three points emerge above all. The non-intellectual elements are necessary sources of motivational energy. The image of the tripartite soul in Socrates' mythic account likens the person to a charioteer with two horses. Since the charioteer is clearly the planning, calculating logistikon, we are invited by the image to consider that intellect alone is a relatively impotent moving force. Plato's logistikon is not, like Hume's reason, a pure means-end calculator, with no role in choosing ends and goals; on the contrary, one of its major functions appears to be that of ranking and valuing.30 But we are still asked to see that, as we are, we require the cooperative engagement of our non-intellectual elements in order to get where our intellect wants us to go. The power of the whole is a sumphutos dunamisy a 'power naturally grown-together' ( 2 4 6 A ) . If we starve and suppress emotions and appetites, it may be at the cost of so weakening the entire personality that it will be unable to act decisively; perhaps it will cease to act altogether. The idea of 4 nourishing' the non-intellectual plays an important part in Plato's myth. Even divine beings have horses; even these horses need their food ( 2 4 7 E ) . 3 1 And the 'food of opinion' (trophe doxaste, 2 4 8 B ) , though less fine than the gods' food, is both the best we can get for our horses and a necessary item in our search for understanding and the good life. Here Plato seems to grant that the ascetic plan of the Republic, which deprives emotion and sense of the nourishment of close ongoing attachments, of the family, of dramatic poetry, may result in crippling the personality even while it purifies it. The starved philosopher may, in his effort to become an undisturbed intellect, block his own search for the good. 32 The non-intellectual elements have an important guiding role to play in our aspiration towards understanding. The fact that the continuing good health of intellect requires the nourishment of the non-intellectual parts would not show that these could or should ever steer or guide intellect. But Plato's contrast between madness and sophrosune is a contrast between passion-ruled and intellect-ruled states. He is clearly claiming that certain sorts of essential and high insights come to us only through the guidance of the passions. Socrates' story of the growth of the soul's wings shows us what lies behind this claim. The non-intellectual elements have a keen natural responsiveness to beauty, especially when beauty is presented through the sense of sight. Beauty is, among the valuable things in the world, the 'most evident' and the 'most lovable' ( 2 5 0 D - E ) . We 'apprehend it through the clearest of our senses as it gleams most clearly' ( D 1 - 3 ) ; this stirs our emotions and appetites, motivating us to undertake its pursuit. Earthly examples of justice and practical wisdom, since they do not 'provide a clear visible image' (D5), and so do not engage the guiding appetites and emotions, are harder to discern; they can be grasped only after an initial education in beauty has quickened intellect (2 5 OB, D).33 Sometimes the sight of beauty arouses only a brutish appetite for intercourse, unconnected with deeper feeling ( 2 5 0 E ) . But in people of good nature and training, the sensual and appetitive response is linked with, and arouses,
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i215 complicated emotions of fear, awe, and respect, which themselves develop and educate the personality as a whole, making it both more discriminating and more receptive. The role of emotion and appetite as guides is motivational: they move the whole person towards the good. But it is also cognitive: for they give the whole person information as to where goodness and beauty are, searching out and selecting, themselves, the beautiful objects. They have in themselves, well trained, a sense of value. We advance towards understanding by pursuing and attending to our complex appetitive/emotional responses to the beautiful; it would not have been accessible to intellect alone. The state of the lover who has fallen in love with someone good and beautiful is a state of passionate inspiration, in which all elements of the personality are in a state of tremendous excitement. Sense and emotion are guides towards the good and indices of its presence: But when one who is fresh from the mystery, and saw much of the vision, beholds a godlike face or bodily form that truly expresses beauty, first there comes upon him a shuddering and a measure of that awe which the vision inspired, and then reverence as at the sight of a god: and but for being deemed a very madman he would offer sacrifice to his beloved, as to a holy image of deity. Next, with the passing of the shudder, a strange sweating and fever seizes him: for by reason of the stream of beauty entering in through his eyes there comes a warmth, whereby his soul's plumage is fostered; and with that warmth the roots of the wings are melted, which for long had been so hardened and closed up that nothing could grow... Meanwhile [the soul] throbs with ferment in every part, and even as a teething child feels an aching and pain in its gums when a tooth has just come through, so does the soul of him who is beginning to grow his wings feel a ferment and a painful irritation. Wherefore as she gazes upon the boy's beauty, she admits a flood of particles streaming therefrom - that is why we speak of a4floodof passion' - whereby she is warmed and fostered; then has she respite from her anguish, and is filled with joy. But when she has been parted from him and become parched, the openings of those outlets at which the wings are sprouting dry up likewise and are closed, so that the wing's germ is barred off; and behind its bars, together with the flood aforesaid, it throbs like a fevered pulse, and pricks at its proper outlet; and thereat the whole soul round about is stung and goaded into anguish; howbeit she remembers the beauty of her beloved, and rejoices again. So between joy and anguish she is distraught at being in such strange case, perplexed and frenzied. With madness upon her she can neither sleep by night nor keep still by day, but runs hither and thither, yearning for him in whom beauty dwells, if haply she may behold him. At last she does behold him, and lets the flood pour in upon her, releasing the imprisoned waters; then has she refreshment and respite from her stings and sufferings, and at that moment tastes a pleasure that is sweet beyond compare. ( 2 5 1 A - E , trans. Hackforth) This moving and extraordinary description of passionate love is obviously the work of the poet from Himera. It takes the same experience described by the earlier two speeches in detached and clinical terms and enters into it, capturing through imagery and emotive language the feeling of being in a state of mania,34 At the same time it shows us how the very madness criticized by the other two speeches can be an important, even a necessary, part of moral and philosophical development. The stimulus of this particular boy's beauty (seen not as a
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? replaceable piece of the beautiful, but as uniquely linked to his particular presence) proves necessary for the growth of the soul's wings; in the boy's absence the personality dries up, and all parts of it cease, alike, to develop. The ferment of the soul is cognitive: a reliable indicator of beauty's presence and of progress towards true understanding. (This picture becomes a lasting part of Plato's moral psychology; for in the second book of the Laws, we are told that the character of young citizens will be tested by putting the intellect to sleep through drunkenness. By observing the choices they make in this ' mad' condition, we will see how their souls are trained with respect to values. It is clear that this test works only given a belief in the independent discriminating power of sense and emotion; in the psychology of the Republic the drunken sleep of intellect simply releases bestial urges and could show nothing of moral value.) The picture of moral and cognitive development in the middle dialogues is one of a progressive detachment of intellect from the other parts of the personality. The more the person can 'prepare for death', i.e. allow the intellect to go off itself by itself, unmixed, unaffected, the more nearly will true philosophical understanding be achieved. The intellect is, ideally, something pure and purely active; it has about it, at its best, no passivity or receptivity. It is 'very similar' to the form (Phd. 8OB). Its pure lucidity is comparable to the dry clean beams of the sun.35 The developing soul of the Phaedrus is in a very different state. Complex and impure, throbbing with ' ferment in every part', fevered and in constant motion, it depends for its growth on just these impure aspects of its condition. In order to be moved towards beauty, this soul must, first of all, be open and receptive. The stream of beauty that enters in at the eyes must be admitted by the whole soul (25 IB, c). And a crucial moment in its development is a moment not only of reception but of passivity: the roots of the soul's wings are melted by the warmth of the entering stream. The lover of Diotima's ascent was, like Creon, a hunter, out to immobilize the beauty of his object ( 2 0 3 D ; cf. Protag. 3 0 9 A ) , a master of devices and strategems. Now plant imagery is used to characterize the receptivity and growth of the entire soul.36 All parts of the soul accept and are affected; and they interact with one another in such a way that it becomes impossible to separate them clearly. The growing wings belong to the soul as a whole (232c; cf. 253c, 254c). The deep sensual response to a particular person's splendor, the emotions of love and awe, the intellectual aspirations that this love awakens - all of these flow together, so that the person feels no gap between thought and passion, but, instead, a melting unity of the entire personality. This is no ordinary sexual response to a beautiful body; indeed, the myth suggests that it may happen only once in a lifetime. Like Aristophanes' mythical creatures, these lovers search (262E) for an appropriate soul, and there is no guarantee that the search will be rewarded. But in the rare case of success, we have a response to another individual so deep and complete, involving so fully every part of the self, that it casts doubt on the story of separate parts. All the lover can say is that he or she feels warm and wet and illuminated all at once, everywhere. Instead of being like a dry beam of light looking upon dry light, he receives a mysterious substance that begins by being
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i217 light, but transforms itself into fluid. (Its source is not the clear heaven of the Republic, but, perhaps, Pindar's 'liquid sky'.) 37 Receiving the other person's soul, allowing to melt the hard or impassive parts of him, he feels the sudden release of pent-up liquid within him, which makes of him another flowing, liquid light. In the' flowing' of his desire he resembles a person with ' streaming' eyes (2 5 5 D). 38 So transformed, he begins to have access to insights that are not available within the dry life of the non-lover (cf. 23908). He would not have had them if he had remained 'very similar' to the form. What this account achieves is, on the one hand, to make us see human sexuality as something much more complicated and deep, more aspiring, than the middle dialogues had suggested; and, on the other hand, to see intellect as something more sexual than they had allowed, more bound up with receptivity and motion. (These changes were already adumbrated in the Symposium's ascent, which linked the erotic appetite with beauty (cf. n. 11) and stressed the continuity of erotic motivation as the lover ascends towards contemplation. But Diotima's emphasis on self-sufficiency and on the superior value of intellect (cf. 212A1) left her view, nonetheless, quite close to that of the Phaedo and Republic. Only Alcibiades was able to speak of philosophy as a form of mania ( 2 1 8 B 2 - 3 ) - because he had failed to see what Socrates wanted it to be.) The erotic appetite is now not a blind urge for the 'replenishment' of intercourse; as we have sv sn, it is responsive to beauty and serves as a guide as to where true beauty will be found. Even the basest people look for beautiful objects. And in people of more complex aspiration, eros sets its sights very high, searching for a sensual experience that will lead to a mysterious transformation of the entire soul, including the intellect. When they do fall in love, furthermore, they are moved by emotions of tenderness and awe; these emotions give them new information, both about themselves and about goodness of action. They realize that certain ways of acting towards the other person are good when and if they meet with the approval of these emotions; they reject certain ways of acting when they sense that these do not accord with felt reverence. For example, Plato's lovers choose not to have intercourse with one another, even though they express their love regularly in physical caresses that stop short of this (cf. 25 $B)- because they feel that the extreme sensual stimulation involved in intercourse is incompatible with the preservation of reverence and awe for the other as a separate person. Appetite is curbed not by contemplative intellect, but by the demands of the passions that it has awakened. The Republic had urged that the only reliable moral witness was intellect. The Phaedrus has a more complicated view. On the other side, intellectual activity emerges here as something different in structure from the pure and stable contemplation of the Republic. As the philosopher reaches out here towards recollection and truth, his mental aspiration has an internal structure closely akin to that of the lover's sexual yearnings and fulfillments. The account of the growth of the wings uses unmistakably sexual metaphors to characterize the receptivity and growth of the entire soul. Intellect, no longer separated from the other parts, searches for truth in a way that would
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? not meet the demands of the middle dialogues for purity and stability. 4 Purity' is compromised by the contrast between pain and replenishment, parched dryness and refreshment. Stability is compromised both by the internal rhythm of the activity, which seems to involve a sequence of changes and could not be imagined continuing ceaselessly in the same way; and by the contingent and mutable nature of the object, which leaves a dryness when it departs. It is not only the fact that the object of intellect's attention is a person; worse still, from the Symposium's viewpoint, is the fact that this person is loved and valued in a unique, or at least a rare and deeply personal way. Such loves are not easily transferable. Even if at the beginning there might have been more than one soul of the appropriate character-type who could answer the lover's inner needs (cf. 25 2E), it is evident that the history of the relationship, its deepening over time, is one of the sources of its intellectual value as a source of knowledge, self-knowledge, and progress towards recollection. The focus on character takes away much of love's replaceability; the focus on history removes the rest. Clearly, too, this love's value is closely linked to the fact that this unique person is valued, throughout, as a separate being with his or her own self-moving soul - not as something to be held, trapped, or bound by any philosophical techne?9 As for Truth, intellect still attains to that. But not all of its most valuable truths will be general accounts or definitions of the sort required by the middle dialogues. Not least of the lover's learning is learning about the other person. Each, through complex responses and interactions, comes, we are told, to understand and honor the4 divinity' of the other person (2 5 2D); his effort is to know the other's character through and through. This leads, further, to increased self-understanding, as they 'follow up the trace within themselves of the nature of their own god'. In his state of possession (25 2E), the lover learns the other person's 'habits and ways', and, through these, his own (252E-253A). If we ask what sort of understanding this is and what truths the lovers can tell, we get a complicated answer. No doubt they will know some general truths about characters of a certain type. But some of their truths may well be more particular and more like stories. And some of their knowledge of habits and ways may reveal itself not so much in speeches as in the intuitive understanding of how to act towards the other person, how to teach, how to respond, how to limit oneself. But Socrates (like the Alcibiades of the Symposium) insists that it is insight nonetheless, insight crucial to moral and intellectual development.* The lover owes gratitude for this insight to the beloved, whom gratitude causes him to love all the more. Once 'looking to the lover' was opposed to looking to philosophy ( 2 3 9 A - B ) . Now the lover's soul is a central source of insight and understanding, both general and concrete. The passions, and the actions inspired by them, are intrinsically valuable components of * The Statesman will develop this proto- Aristotelian point. Arguing for the prionty of judgments of a person of practical wisdom over standing law, the Stranger (in language very close to that of the Nicomacbean Ethics) claims that a political techne cannot give precedence to fixed rules, because the variety and the temporally changing character of human beings and their actions require a more particularized and contextual knowledge (294x6".). It has long been noted that this overturns a major element in the political epistemology of the Republic.*0
Madness, reason,
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the best human life. So far, we might believe that Plato has revised only his view of motivation and education, not his view of the best life. Once intellect has been led by mad passion towards the norms of beauty and justice, we can cease to rely on the ferment of madness and clearly contemplate the truth. To say that the highest goods come to us through madness is certainly not to say that madness, or mad actions, are themselves intrinsically good. But the Phaedrus gives the passions, and the state of mania, much more than a merely instrumental role. From the beginning of the recantadon, this is suggested. The speeches critical of eros, says Socrates, would not be convincing to a listener who was ' of noble and gende character, who was or had ever been in love with another person of similar character' (243c). This person would think the speeches the work of 'people brought up among sailors, who have never seen a case of free and generous love* (243E). Even if we think that Plato's aristocratic disdain for the unpropertied classes has led him to speak unfairly of the navy, we can see what he has in mind. To him, the person ' brought up among sailors' is likely to take a merely instrumental view of love. He will think of it as calming needs and as yielding positive pleasure. What he will not learn from his experience in this milieu is that love can be a stable and intrinsically valuable part of a good life, a life worthy of a person of free and generous character. The lovers of the Phaedrus, unlike the exploitative sailors of Plato's imagination, live their lives with one another, bound to one another by their erotic passion and by their respect for the other's character, their shared interest in teaching and learning (cf. esp. 2 5 2 C - 2 5 3 E , 2 5 5A-F). Each lover seeks a partner who is similar in character and aspirations ( 2 5 2CFF.). Having found one another, they treat one another with respect for the other's separate choices ( 2 5 2D~E), fostering one another's continuing development towards the flourishing of their deepest aspirations, 'using no envious spite or ungenerous hostility' towards the other (25 3b), but genuinely benefiting him for his own sake. They are both mutually active and mutually receptive: from the one the other, like a Bacchant, draws in the transforming liquid; and he pours liquid back, in his turn, into the beloved soul (25 3 A). Plato describes their passionate longing and emotion for one another in a way that stirs us (and Phaedrus) with its beauty and strongly indicates that he finds their madness beautiful and good. It is crucial that the lover be 'not one who makes a pretense of passion, but one who is really experiencing it' (25 5 A). All other friends and associates having nothing to offer, Socrates now tells us, in comparison with this inspired lover, whose beneficence moves the beloved to awe. In this speech eros is not just a daimon, but a god: a thing of intrinsic value and beauty, not just a way-station towards the good. The best human life involves ongoing devotion to another individual. This life involves shared intellectual activity; but it also involves continued madness and shared appetitive and emotional feeling. The best lovers are said to deny themselves sexual intercourse. But this, as we have said, is because they feel that in intercourse they risk forfeiting other valuable non-intellectual elements of their relationship: the feelings of tenderness, respect, and awe. Plato still insists that as time goes on they will
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? continue to 'draw near and touch one another, both in the gymnasia and in other places where they meet' (255B). The passage continues with an account of how, apparently during this habitual physical contact, they receive from one another the 'flood of passion' that nourishes their souls. The reference here to the love of Zeus and Ganymede (cf. below) underlines the sexual nature of these metaphors of spiritual growth. And they are more than metaphors, since sexual arousal seems to be an enabling part of the experience of growth. The lovers are, then, encouraged in any sensuous exploration of the other person that stops short of an act which they see as potentially selfish and/or violent. We may feel that here Plato's lovers have allowed the presence of a risk of harm to make them forfeit a further and deep value. We may feel that the old Platonic suspiciousness of the body here reasserts itself in a way that does not accord with the rest of Plato's argument. But Plato's rejection of intercourse, whether justified or not, is a rejection neither of the sensuous, which they continue to explore, nor of sexuality broadly interpreted, which permeates the whole of their madness. And it is prompted by the demands not of pure intellect but of respect and love. The lover of the Symposium also began by loving a single person - or that person's beauty. But he or she soon moved on to a more general appreciation of beauty, relaxing his or her intense love for the one. The pairs of lovers in the Phaedrus never do this.41 Their search for understanding and goodness is accomplished, throughout life, in the context of a particular relationship with an individual whose distinctive character is nourished within it. Instead of loving one another as exemplars of beauty and goodness, properties which they might conceivably lose without ceasing to be themselves, these lovers love one another's character, memories, and aspirations - which are, as Aristotle too will say, what each person is 'in and of himself'. Nothing the lovers learn about the good and beautiful ever makes them denigrate or avoid this unique bond or cast aspersions on anything about it. They do not move from the body to the soul to institutions to sciences. They pursue science or politics in the context of a deep love for a particular human being of similar commitments. (Here it makes no difference whether we refer to the highest human type as ' the one who philosophizes without guile' or 'the one who pursues the love of a boy along with philosophy' ( 2 4 9 A ) ; before it would have made a great difference.) They grasp the good and true not by transcending erotic madness, but inside a passionate life. It is true that the philosophical lovers share an obscure vision of another life, a life better than any available human life (cf 2 50B5). It is true that this dim vision contains images of lightness and purity, and that the gods who are its characters seem to lack the tumult of erotic feeling that characterizes human aspiration. But human recollection and human ascent can recover for these human lovers only what their souls have in some previous cycle seen or known; and a careful examination of Plato's myth reveals that the complete divine wisdom is, for a human being, permanently unavailable. The life of the lover's madness is not defended here, then, as the best life for a god or for any living being whatever. It is defended as the best life for a human being, a being with human cognitive
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i221 limits and prospects. But, what is most striking, Plato here shows himself (as elsewhere in the later dialogues)42 ready to judge questions about the best life from the point of view of the interests, needs, and limits of the being in question. The best life for a human being is found not by abstracting from the peculiarities of our complex nature, but by exploring that nature and the way of life that it constitutes. Unlike the life of the ascending person in the Symposium, this best human life is unstable, always prey to conflict.43 The lovers have continually to struggle against inappropriate inclinations, to expend psychic effort in order to hit on what is appropriate. Unlike the ascending person, again, they risk, in the exclusivity of their attachment to a mutable object, the deep grief of departure, alteration, or inevitably - death. This life, unlike Diotima's, seems to admit full-fledged conflict of values as well, since the lovers' devotion to one another is so particular that it might in some circ*mstances pull against their political commitments or their pursuit of knowledge (contrast Ch. 5, §v, Ch. 6, pp. 181, 196-7). But Plato seems to believe that a life that lacks their passionate devotion - whether or not it had this at some former time - is lacking in beauty and value next to theirs. Socrates concludes his advice to Phaedrus with these unequivocal words: 4 Such and so many, my child, are the divine gifts that the love of a person in love will bring you. But a familiarity with the person who is not in love, mingled with mortal self-possession, dispensing retentively its mortal and nigg*rdly benefits, giving birth in your beloved soul to a stinginess that is praised by the many as a virtue, will render it devoid of insight (anous) and cause it to roll around and beneath the earth for nine thousand years' (2 56E-2 5 7A).This condemnation is not restricted to the bad person-not-in-love: for Lysias, we know, is an honorable man. Nor is it restricted to the non-lover who has at no former time been passionately in love. All lives bereft of madness and the ongoing influence of the other's madness are alike condemned as drab and ungenerous, lacking in depth of insight. Once, in the Phaedo, the passions were nails binding the soul to its bodily prison house. Now it is Lysias who appears to be imprisoned, held near and beneath the earth by his lack of generous passion. If we now return to the four points in Plato's indictment of the passions, we find that he has recanted or seriously qualified all of them. (1) The appetites are blind animal forces reaching out for their objects without discrimination or selectivity. This has been denied at least for the erotic appetite. Even in its most degenerate form, eros is responsive to beauty; and in aspiring souls it involves a complex, selective response of the entire soul. Phaedrus and Socrates remain critical of certain bodily pleasures (cf. 2 5 8 E ) . They do not deny that some human appetites conform to the old picture. What they claim is that this picture was too simple and, in particular, that it was a slander against eros. (2) The appetites tend naturally to excess when not suppressed. Plato still seems to believe that the unruly horse needs constant reining in; it is called a 4 companion of hubris' (25 3E). But he also seems to believe that this horse should be well fed and that, properly controlled, it can play a good and a necessary role in motivating
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? the person, even in teaching the person about the beautiful. The other horse does not tend towards excess at all; in fact it helps prevent excess. (3) The passions cannot function cognitively. Here, as we have argued, they can and do. They are not invariably sources of distortion; indeed, their information proves necessary for the best insight. A major development is Plato's detailed account of the motivating and cognitive role of certain emotions and his picture of the interaction of sense, emotion, and judgment in eros, which the Republic had treated as simply a bodily appetite. (4) The intellectual element is both necessary and sufficient for the apprehension of truth and for correct choice. Here it is not. Alone, 'itself by itself', it will be doomed to the nigg*rdly life of mortal self-possession. Even its own aspirations are best advanced by a richer ferment of the entire personality, in which it is difficult to separate the contributions of one part from those of the others. We can use these discoveries to approach what has long been a contested problem in Phaedrus interpretation: what to make of the fact that this dialogue uses a conception of the person different from that of the Phaedo and the Republic. The Republic tells me that what I really am is an immortal, intellectual soul, only contingently associated with a body and with appetite. The conflicts that give rise to talk of'parts' of the soul arise from the soul's union with body; the conflict-free intellectual element, the only one that is immortal, is sufficient to preserve personal identity outside of the body. The Phaedo, using a similar picture, urges me to dissociate myself from my bodily nature and from the accompanying passions, and to use my life as a practice for separation. Socrates is convinced that everything that goes to make him Socrates will depart from the body at death. His conception of his identity as an aspiring philosopher gives no part either to appetite or to emotion.44 In the Phaedrus, as is well known, all souls are tripartite, even the souls of the immortal gods. The proof of immortality does not depend on a premise of non-composition, as in the Phaedo, but only on the self-moving nature of soul. Once again, the shift seems to be permanent: for in Lawsx self-motion is the one essential characteristic of soul as opposed to body, and such things as appetites, hopes, fears, and pleasures are all classified as motions of soul.45 I think we cannot gloss over this problem by saying that the tripartite gods are just part of the myth.46 Human beings are tripartite too, before as well as after incarnation; middle-dialogue souls are not. And the list of soul-motions in later dialogues give clear evidence of a change. Besides, the myth is not 'just a myth'; it is Plato's central teaching. This change should not surprise us by now. The image of the soul is an image of what I value in myself, what I am willing to acknowledge as a part of my identity. The dualism of the Phaedo is not prior to that dialogue's moral theory. It expresses it. Neither Plato nor Aristotle thinks of a theory of personal identity as a matter of value-neutral fact. It articulates our deepest values. A way of
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i223 expressing my repudiation of the passions is to say that that is not really me, not what I really, in my true nature, am. (I could survive after death and be essentially myself without that.) The Republic's myth of Er, which makes my soul out to be a pure, non-composite intellectual substance, albeit crusted over by barnacles and other remnants of my earthly existence, is an image of a view about value which, as we saw in Chapter 5, is carefully defended in that dialogue. Since the Phaedrus argues against these arguments, we should expect to find in it a new image of the person. In this respect the agent of the Phaedrus is tolerant. The radiant vision of the myth of Er, a myth that was meant to save us (Rep. 621b-C), is laid aside in favor of Socrates' open question: am I a being more complex and puffed up than Typho, or rather some tamer and simpler creature? (230a)47 And later on this question itself is implicitly rejected as still too much in the grip of the stark dichotomies of the Republic and Symposium: you can be complex without being Typho, orderly without being simple, a lover of the individual without being Alcibiades. The action of this dialogue illustrates its view of learning.48 It begins, as we have seen, when an older man pauses, struck by a younger one; he notices a kinship between the young man's character and his own ( 2 2 8 A ) . Their shared aspirations, like the proverbial carrot held before a hungry animal's nose ( 2 3 0 D ) , lead him to venture, in Phaedrus's company, outside the city walls. Together they pursue their deep concerns, receiving the influence of this wild and sensuous place. Although in some sense Socrates is the leader and the teacher, the process of education that we see - like the one we hear described - involves, on both sides, madness and receptivity, as Socrates, going outside his usual haunts, is transported through Phaedrus's influence ( 2 3 4 D , 2 3 8 D , 23IE), and Phaedrus leaves aside the sheltering structure of his sophrosune to accept the vulnerable position of a lover.49 On both sides we find emotions of wonder and awe, a careful concern for the other's separate needs and aspirations. Each discovers more about his own aims as he sees them reflected in another soul. (For wasn't it the thought of Phaedrus accepting the proposals of Lysias that made Socrates long to express a more complicated ideal of rationality? Wasn't it Socrates' inspired poetic recantation that led Phaedrus to express his own receptive neediness?) Neither imposes on the other a vision already fixed. Each, responding with awe to the other's soul, elicits from his own a deeper beauty. Ill This is a dialogue about the making of beautiful speeches. Socrates' criticism of Lysias's speech is addressed to its style as well as its content - and shows us how thoroughly interwoven these are. The education of Phaedrus through the second speech is a development of his stylistic tastes as well as his moral imagination. And, as we might expect, Plato's new thought about madness affects his own
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? stylistic choices. It is now time to recognize the implications of this work on madness for the question of philosophy's style and for the status of Plato's ongoing argument with literary or poetic moral teachers. In a number of dialogues of his 'early' and 'middle' periods (cf. Interlude i), 50 Plato sharply contrasts the poet and the philosopher, rejecting the claim of the former to genuine understanding. There is, he tells us, 'an old difference' or ' opposition' between poetry and philosophy (Rep. 6 0 7 B ) . The poet is characterized consistently, in the Apology, Ion, Meno, and the tenth book of the Republic, as a person who works in a state of irrational inspiration or transport, and whose creations are expressive of this state. Poets are 'in a state of frenzied enthusiasm' (enthusiontes, Apol., Meno)\ they 'hold their bacchic revels' (bakcheuousi, Ion), they are' not in their senses' (ouch emphrones, Ion),' inspired' (epipnoi, Ion),' god-inspired' (entheoi, Ion), 'possessed' (katechomenoi, Meno, Ion). Their irrational state is contrasted with the self-possessed good sense of the philosopher. It comes, then, as no surprise to find that poetic writers are criticized on much the same grounds as other mad people: being possessed and in a state of psychological ferment, they are unable to have access to true insight. As in other cases, madness is taken to be incompatible with understanding: although they might by accident hit upon the truth, the poets ' know nothing of what they say' (Apol., Meno). Furthermore, works that express a poet's madness encourage madness in their audience. Unlike the philosopher, who addresses himself to the pure logistikon alone and promotes its separation, the poet addresses himself to, and thereby nourishes, the passional elements in the soul. He finds that the emotions present him with his best opportunities for interesting poetry; displays of intense feeling, especially anger and love, are especially moving to his audience (Rep. 6 0 4 E - 6 0 5 A). But by showing them and moving the audience he feeds and strengthens their passions, jeopardizing their efforts at rational control (Rep. 3 8 6 A - 3 8 8 E , 6 0 5 B , 6 9 6 A , D, 6 0 7 A ) . 5 1
For these two separate reasons, then, the middle dialogues reject the poets who were traditionally the moral teachers of young souls. We have seen in Chapter 5 some of Plato's arguments for a new type o f ' literature' which will develop the potential for objective rationality. And in Interlude 1 we began to see the effect of Platonic intellectualism on Plato's own discourse, as he creates a purified theater which, while preserving tragedy's ability to engage the spectator actively as an interlocutor, addresses its claim to the intellect alone. (The mixed appeal of the Symposium (cf. Ch. 6) might be called the exception that proves the rule, since Plato here allows himself to engage the sympathies of the non-intellectual parts, but as part of a process of showing the disastrous failure of these elements to guide or make an orderly rational life.) We can see that the earlier dialogues are indeed inspired by the clear-voiced or 'Ligurian' Muses who also inspire the first two speeches of the Phaedrus, with their spare, flat, unemotional and unemotive style. We might expect, then, that any new thoughts on moral psychology would be taken by a writer as serious and honest as Plato to have implications for his own
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i225
view of his written teaching. The Phaedrus reminds us (cf. Interlude 1) that all writing is merely a 'reminder': the real activity of teaching and learning goes on not on the page but in the souls of people.52 But our view of how a soul learns, and with which parts, will surely affect our view about how a written text should perform its own limited function. From the very beginning of the Phaedrus, we suspect that some such reassessment is taking place. Phaedrus asks Socrates whether he believes in the truth of the myth of Boreas (229c) - in which a virginal girl, who was playing with her companions in the very place where Socrates and Phaedrus now talk, was carried off by the passionate wind-god, who had fallen in love with her. Socrates, in answer, speaks harshly of some' clever people' who doubt the truth of myths and, 'using a somewhat crude science', ingeniously devise rationalizing explanations for their origin. (In this case, he conjectures, the rationalizer would claim that what happened was not a seduction by Boreas the anthropomorphic wind-god, but simply a gust from the wind we call Boreas, that blew the girl away.) Although Plato has used myths of his own devising to buttress his philosophical arguments, he has, of course, been at the forefront of the attack upon traditional stories of the dubious exploits of the gods. The Republic would instantly have rejected the truth claim of this story of a god's eros; and it would have denounced it further for its appeal to the lower parts of the soul. But here Socrates defends the passionate myth as a source of insight, in keeping with the new view of insight that he is about to develop; and the rationalizing attacker is dismissed as an 'excessively clever and hard-working and not entirely fortunate man' (229D4). It is truly entertaining to observe the strategies devised by commentators to accommodate this passage to the views of the Republic. Thomson, for example, simply announces that, after all, the story is perfectly harmless.53 But of course this story of the clear virgin who yields to the overwhelming passion of a divine lover is far from harmless, by the Republic's standards of harmlessness. And it is just this difficult and dangerous psychological material that the Phaedrus now urges us to explore. Our next literary surprise comes in Socrates' criticism of the prose of Lysias - where the orator is praised for his clarity and conciseness, but scolded, among other things, for his lack of interest in his subject (23 5 A). Again, we remember that the poets had been criticized precisely because they wrote in a state of passionate arousal. Now Plato seems to be reopening the question about the proper relation between a view and its author. Most significant, of course, is the role played by poetry in Socrates' second speech. It is said to be the speech ' o f ' a poet, Stesichorus the son of Reverent from Passionville; and in so saying Socrates assumes a disguise, and tells a lie things that could not have happened in the heroic literature of Ideal City. (The entire dialogue, we should recall, has the form of a fiction about the actions and character and 'madness' of Phaedrus.) The mad, inspired poet is ranked above the self-possessed craftsmanly poet, and honored as a person whose works instruct and benefit posterity. Socrates presents his own deepest teaching about the soul
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? in the form of a 'likeness' ( 2 4 6 A ) , teaching the truth, like Alcibiades, through sensuous images; and he regards this ability to produce a likeness as sufficient to give him the right to call himself a philosopher and a teacher. Only a god, he implies, could do better ( 2 4 6 A ) . It then comes as no surprise to find that when Socrates later ranks lives in order of their excellence, the first place is occupied by a strange hybrid:' a person who will be a lover of wisdom or a lover of beauty or some follower of the Muses and a lover' ( 2 4 8 D ) . 5 4 In the world of the Republic, when lives are ranked, the philosopher is alone at the top. Certainly he does not share his berth with unsavory bacchic types like the poet and the (boy)-lover (cf. 2 4 9 A ) . His own sort of eros is sharply distinguished from theirs: it is 'correct' just because it has nothing to do with' mania or sexual desire (403 A). NOW philosopher, image-maker and Muse-follower, lover - all are seen as possessed types, and madness comes at the top. 55 It is unlikely that these changes would lead to a rehabilitation of the poets whose work Plato knew. Philosophical activity still seems to be necessary for the highest sort of understanding; it is also necessary, as we have seen, for the highest sort of love. The disjunction 'either a lover of wisdom or a lover of beauty or some follower of the Muses' probably does not imply that any one of these, taken without the others, would be sufficient. The point is, rather, that they are taken, as they could not have been before, to be compatible - perhaps even, in their highest realizations, to imply one another. (It doesn't matter which of these names you call him, because if he's one, he's the other too.) The speech about madness has already dismissed the uninspired poet; and in the list of lives the ordinary craftsmanlypoietes, 'maker' (who is not said to be Muse-inspired), comes in sixth place, quite far down the ladder (248E). Later we are told that Homer will be permitted the title of philosopher only if he can show his understanding by answering questions about his writing (278c). But this, as the Apology showed, is something that actual poets are unable to do. (This would probably be so even with the more inclusive conception of understanding that seems to be present in the Phaedrus.) So the change implies no softening towards the non-philosophical poet. The really significant point, however, is that philosophy is now permitted to be an inspired, manic, Muse-loving activity. And in this conception it is more intimately related to poetry than Plato has hitherto led us to think. It can, for example, make use o f ' literary' devices such as mythic narrative and metaphor in the center of its teaching; and it can, like poetry, contain material expressive of, and arousing, a passional excitation. The rest of the dialogue confirms this close relationship. At the conclusion of Socrates' second speech (a speech which Phaedrus praises as 'more beautiful' than the preceding), Phaedrus is called a ' lover of the Muses' (philomouson andra). The myth of the cicadas which follows tells us that philosophy, along with the dance and erotic love, is one of the arts that made its appearance in the world with the advent of the Muses. The philosophical life is said to be a life dedicated to 'Calliope and Urania' - that is, to the Muse traditionally associated with poetry, as well as to the mother of cosmology ( 2 5 9 B - C ) . (We notice
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i227 that ordinary poetry is not mentioned as an art genuinely inspired by the Muses; this is consistent with the low placement of the mere poietes before, and with the distinction between this person and the higher mousikos: the poet does not genuinely serve the Muses, unless he is both inspired and able to join his art with philosophy.) The last part of the dialogue breaks with the Gorgias*s very general condemnation of rhetoric, describing a4 true* rhetorical art in which a central place is given to the knowledge, through experience, of the souls of individuals ( 2 6 8 A - B ) . And, at the dialogue's end, the philosopher's message to Homer tells him that Socrates and Phaedrus have heard the words they relay from the' stream and Music haunt (mouseion) of the Nymphs'. What the nymphs told them, apparently, is that poetry is philosophy if it is combined in the right way with answers and accounts. What we see emerging, then, is not so much a rehabilitation of the old poetry, as a new understanding of philosophy that reinterprets the distinction between philosophy and poetry; not so much an acceptance of Homer's innocence of logoi, as an announcement that philosophy, like Socrates, may have a more complex soul than has been imagined. But we do not need to rely only on explicit metaphilosophical remarks to know this. For Plato's praise of the inspired poet profoundly affects the shape of his own discourse. The speech of the poet from Himera is still a prose speech. And it does not employ internal dramatic representation in its depiction of the lovers who are its characters. It even contains a section that is in the form of a formal demonstrative argument (245 c). But there is no doubt that, more than any other Platonic speech we have so far encountered, this clearly is the speech of an inspired philosopher-poet. It uses metaphor, personification, colorful, rhythmic, and elaborate language. It makes its appeal to the imagination and the feelings as much as to the intellect. And, by calling all of this a 'demonstration' of the value of madness, it forces us to question the legitimacy of separating these parts, and these ways of writing, so starkly. Finally, we must acknowledge that the whole of what we read here is a play, a dramatic representation. It is not a representation of ideally good or perfect people; for both characters are self-critical, and both are in the process of growth and change. But it is this sort of representation that is now taken to be what the developing soul requires.56 This dialogue may be our first example of the philosophical poetry that Plato has in mind. Nobody else had ever served the two Muses adequately together, combining the rigor of speculative argument with sensitive responses to the particulars of human experience. It demands from us a boldness, and a freedom from set ideas, in our own response. Plato tells us that we cannot throw away the images and the drama as delightful decorations, or lift out his arguments from the 'literary' context for isolated dissection. Still less can we abandon the arguments or relax the demands of our critical faculties. The whole thing is a Music discourse, which asks of us the full participation of all parts of our souls.
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? IV
We have spoken repeatedly here of change and recantation. So much change, if it is there, calls for explanation. We feel like asking, what happened to Plato? What brought it about that this most intolerant of human beings would decide, at some time around 365 B.C., that he has been too simple in his condemnation of madness? This is only one of several roughly contemporaneous shifts in Plato's thinking. We have spoken already of changes in his view of the soul and of practical knowledge. Related changes in his political thought have often been discussed. It is generally admitted, too, that his thought about understanding, the forms, and dialectic underwent a development during this period. The Phaedrus is apparently the first dialogue of a group that uses a new picture of dialectic, known as the Method of Division; one of the jobs of the second half of the dialogue is to announce and defend this method. In my earlier essay on the Phaedrus, I stressed the connection between the newly anthropocentric conception of dialectic that is present in this and other late dialogues and the anthropocentric conception of the good life defended by Socrates' second speech. I traced this conception back to arguments in the Parmenides that completely 4 unqualified' understanding was unavailable to a human being; I argued that the same position is present in the Phaedrus myth. I still believe that all of these connections are interesting and important; I shall have more to say about them in discussing Aristotle's anthropocentrism. But I would prefer not to stress them here, for two reasons. First, because the complex interpretative issues would have to take us far beyond the Phaedrus; they would require a careful examination of the use of the method in Sophist, Statesman, and Philehus, and of the interactions between epistemology and morality in all of those dialogues. I would rather attempt this on another occasion. But, second, I do not believe that the completion of this project would offer a fully^ satisfying answer to the question that we are asking here. Suppose Plato did decide that the conception of understanding articulated in the middle dialogues was not, for human beings, viable. It hardly follows from this that he would become better disposed to the limits of a merely human understanding. The new developments would explain what the limitations of inquiry are and why Plato believes that they are there; it would not show us why he defends anything as good and valuable, rather than giving way to cognitive/moral despair. Epistemology by itself cannot explain acceptance. And, if anything, the connections, as we saw in Chapter 6, go the other way: a certain sort of object for understanding was required by a view about what has value, what life is worth living, how immune from contingency that life must be. We would feel happier, then, if we could find something to say about Plato's reevaluations that came from his own practical intuitions and experience. And in fact such a story is forcefully signaled to us by Plato himself. It has frequently been observed that, in discussing the love of4iis philosophical couple (the pair described in Socrates' second speech), Plato brings the beloved younger one into
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i229 association, in two ways, with the name of the human being whom he himself most passionately loved. The couple are said to be followers 'of Zeus'; the name of Zeus, as we see clearly in its oblique cases, has the root Di-: the genitive 4 of Zeus' is 4Dios'. The soul of the younger man, furthermore, is described at 25 2E as ' diony - 'brilliant' or ' s h i n i n g ' - a word derived from the same root. Plato strikingly juxtaposes the two words in this passage, signaling to us that he wishes us to think of them as etymologically connected: hoi men de oun Dios dion tina einai 3etousi ten psuchen ton huptf hauton eromenon, ' Those who are followers of Zeus seek that the soul of their beloved should be brilliant (Zeus-like).' Interpreters have not hesitated to see in all this a reference to Dion of Syracuse - and, by extension, to see the love described here as an account of Plato's own passionate devotion to Dion.57 We can now go even further, however: for we notice that the name 'Phaidros' has the same meaning as the name 6Dion\ Both mean 'brilliant' or 'sparkling'. Plato is fond of playing with the significance of proper names; this we know from etymologies that occupy most of the Cratylus, from his epigram on the boy Aster (' Star'),58 and not least from the opening of Socrates' second speech in the Phaedrus. Given the prominence accorded to the actual name of Dion within this dialogue, it seems impossible that this fact about 'Phaedrus' could have escaped Plato's attention; it seems virtually certain that Plato is telling us, in this way, that Phaedrus in some sense represents Dion. This complex literary intention would help us to solve two outstanding problems about the dramatic structure of the dialogue. One great problem has always been that at the date when the dialogue must take place, Phaedrus, though portrayed in general as young, is no mere boy. He would, in fact, be nearly forty; and Socrates is clearly about sixty. (A sign of the confusion is that Lysias, about thirty-five, is called Phaedrus'spaidika ('beloved boy') at 236B.) This does not exactly fit with the conventional expectation about the ages of erastes and eromenos; it does, however, fit precisely with the actual ages of Plato and Dion at the most plausible time of composition, when Dion will be between thirty-five and forty, Plato between fifty-five and sixty. This, then, looks like Plato's way of playfully telling us that the ' boy' to whom he is speaking in this piece of writing is his beloved pupil, like him both a political and a philosophical character. (Both Gilbert Ryle and many other less controversial critics have already closely linked the Phaedrus with the time of Plato's second visit to Syracuse.59) This would also help us to understand the' plot' of the dialogue, which puzzles us at the end, in that Socrates and Phaedrus, who have appeared to exemplify the philosophical eros described in Socrates' speech, historically did not go back and spend their lives together. But if we see them as standing in for Plato and Dion, we are free to leave this fact aside and to respond by thinking of two people who did attempt to spend their lives together and to govern a philosophical city. What Plato will then be saying is that his erode speech, his recantation of former ' slanders' against eros, are truly said 'dia Phaidron\ through Phaedrus - i.e. through Dion and his influence. This dialogue has the character of a love letter, an expression of passion, wonder, and gratitude. (Ryle argues from separate evidence that he wrote it just
2 3 * Plato: goodness without fragility ? after leaving Syracuse, on his journey back to Athens.) This is not, of course, to say something so simple as that love made Plato change his mind; for his experience of love was certainly also shaped by his developing thought. The dialogue has explored such interrelationships with too much complexity to allow an oversimple story; but it does ask us to recognize experience as one factor of importance. We know that the relationship between Plato and Dion was in a number of ways like the relationship described in Socrates' second speech. It was built on complex passion, mutual respect and benefit, a shared devotion to both political and philosophical goals. But we have a piece of evidence that links it even more strikingly with the Phaedrus's rehabilitation of mania and its new acceptance of the goodness of the risky and the mutable. Upon the sudden death of Dion at the hands of his enemies (around ten years after the composition of the Phaedrus), Plato wrote the elegiac verses that appear as our epigraph here. These verses, which contrast the unrelieved misery of the women of Troy with Dion's surprising and premature death in the midst of happiness, make mention of eros, of mania, and of the thumos - the ' second' or emotional part of the soul. (The last line reads, literally,4 O Dion, you who drove my thumos mad (ekmenas) with eros*) The intense passion expressed in these verses has often been noticed; what has not been noticed is that this passion, and its poetic expression in the form of conventional lamentation, directly contravene the prohibition of the Republic against lamentation for the deaths of beloved individuals. Indeed, they contravene the whole moral scheme of the Republic and Symposium-, for if one saw persons, and their value, in the way recommended by these two dialogues, one would have, in the death of an individual, no basis for grief. One ' drop' of the good and beautiful more or less - it should not affect us, if we have correct beliefs. Furthermore, the good person's stable activity should not be risked by the formation of intense particular attachments that would bring the shock of this deep grief. Therefore the Republic banishes both grief and poetic lamentation, leaving them, at most, to the ' not-very-good woman' (cf. Ch. 5 §iv, Interlude 2). In his epigram, and by writing an epigram of this sort, Plato acknowledges himself to be not a self-sufficient philosopher, but a 4 not-very-good woman'. He got these verses, clearly, not from the Symposium's ascent, but by 'going down', like Socrates and Phaedrus ( 2 7 9 B ) , into the Muses' Cave. Love has rendered him incomplete in his aspiration. He acknowledges that he feels grief; that he felt, before that, deep passion in his thumos\ that this passion threw him into a condition of mania. But he appears unashamed of this passion. It is unlikely that the Plato of the Republic would have published such a poem, even if he had been moved to write it. The Phaedrus, I think, tells us why this mania is now something that can be praised and acknowledged, and how the experience of mania has left the philosopher with an altered view of the good of self-sufficiency. What happened to Plato, we are invited by his hints to conjecture, was that he discovered that merely human life was more complicated, but also richer or
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus
z
better, than he had imagined. Obviously he had been aware before this of the power of passion; what he had not seen so clearly was its power for goodness. He tells us that he was struck in all parts of his soul by the splendor of another whole person; being struck, he formed, and in this dialogue depicted, a close and exclusive relationship in which wonder, respect, passion, and careful concern all fostered, in both, the growth of philosophical insight. In this love between an older established person and a younger aspiring person, he found access to elements of his own personality as a thinker and writer that he would before have derided as merely womanly, perhaps because they had too much to do with passivity. The complex imagery of Socrates' second speech - in which a flood of liquid entering into the lover brings intense pleasure and the release of his own ' imprisoned waters' ~ metaphorically expresses a certain type of male hom*osexual point of view towards sexual experience. (It is significant that the aspects of this experience which Plato selects for emphasis are those that have a great deal in common with the experience of the female, frequently derided for her passivity and emotionality.) It would not be fanciful to see Plato as expressing, both in the Republic's denunciation and in this praise, his complex attitude towards the passive and receptive aspects of his own sexuality, aspects which, for a proud Greek gentleman of this time, could not have been easy to accept. We remember that a central example in the entire argument for the middle dialogues' view of value was the sexual pleasure of the passive hom*osexual, and that this was the only pleasure that the hedonist interlocutor Callicles agreed with Socrates in finding truly disgusting. Now it appears as a metaphor for the good life. If we doubt that the Gorgias's example is being reconsidered here, we have only to consider the role played in the Phaedrus by Ganymede, boy beloved of Zeus, carried off to be cup-bearer of the gods - whose name gives our English word' catamite' its origin. Socrates tells us that the word 4himeros' was made up as the name for passionate desire by Zeus himself when he was the lover of Ganymede, after the flowing stream (irheuma) of passion that went (ienai) from him bearing particles (mere) which were received by his beloved (251c, cf. 255B-C). We are to realize, too, that Ganymede, made cup-bearer, became himself, in turn, a pourer of liquids. The central pair of lovers in Socrates' speech are not only both Zeus-like souls (25 2E, i.e. having the Dionpsuchen)\ they are also both Ganymedes in their receptivity, mutually pouring and receiving. And Ganymede is explicitly connected with Phaedrus through another complex etymological game: for the word 4ganos\ too, means 'bright gleam', and Phaedrus is said to 'gleam brightly' (ganusthai) with delight as he reads ( 2 3 4 D 2 - 3 ) , while Socrates from Himera is passive (epathon, 234B).60
What Plato is saying, in all this complicated play, is that the truly blessed life involves the proper cultivation of both activity and passivity, working in harmony and mutuality. A horror of passivity is what lies beyond his culture's (and his own) condemnation of the life of Ganymede; he tells us that this hatred of openness leads to a life impoverished in value and knowledge. (And by presenting these
i1
23 *
Plato: goodness without fragility ?
insights in the form of play, he also defends the richness of lovers' play, reminding us that this receptivity expresses itself in jokes, puns, and laughter as well as in the shared pursuit of wisdom.) But we would surely underestimate the complexity of this work, and its play, if we did not also acknowledge now that Plato, who figures so far in the drama as Socrates the erastes, is also at the same time Phaedrus, the brilliant pupil of Socrates. Phaedrus, we said, is here chronologically forty; he is depicted as a much younger man. This contradiction invites us to recall that at the dramatic date of the dialogue, when Socrates was indeed sixty, Plato himself was around seventeen, a sparkling boy moved and transported by this philosophical influence. (Perhaps Lysias, in the Republic his brothers' friend, really was his aspiring lover.) Phaedrus is both forty and seventeen because he stands for two people, just as Socrates stands for Plato, but also for himself. Everything we know about Socrates outside of this dialogue testifies that he never did, in fact, go mad with eros. The passion and wonder of his pupils were answered with a coolly ironic distancing. He was Socrates to Plato's passionate Alcibiades: he remained aloof, stony, self-contained. And if the Symposium's portrait of Alcibiades is in some sense Plato's own self-portrait - a denunciation of his teacher for the overweening of irony and at the same time of himself for love's tumultuous confusion - we might see the Phaedrus as a wish, per impossibile, for the deep mutual love of teacher and pupil, a wish that Socrates had been a little more mad, receiving and teaching the insight of eros. The double reference also tells us that Plato now claims to be the Socrates that Socrates should have been but refused to be; that he has found what eluded his teacher, a fusion of clarity and passion.81 The life of mania is not the life of stable contemplation. Plato shows us that it would be safer to choose the closed, ascetic life of the Phaedo - or, not so different, the Lysian life of non-involved and painless sexuality. Stinginess is in general more stable than generosity, the closed safer than the open, the simple more harmonious than the complex. But he acknowledges that there are in this risky life (whose riskiness itself is made to seem rather splendid) sources of nourishment for the soul of a complex human being that are not found in any other type of philosophical life. He rejects the simplicity of his former ideal - and its associated conception of insight - in favor of a view of creativity and objectivity that expresses itself in imagery of flowing light and illuminated water, of plant growth, of movement and instability, reception and release. Such a view about the ethical value of passion is itself an unstable achievement in most human lives, and Plato indicates as much. For he places the poetic quotation, 'This story isn't true', so that it can equally, at any point, be turned against Socrates' second speech, or against the whole of the action of the dialogue. (Since it is not true that Phaedrus was leading an orderly good life at Athens. And Socrates never talked philosophy on the grass outside the city walls. And Helen went to Troy, not Egypt. And Boreas, anthropomorphic only in stories, did not make love to a human girl. And Lysias the self-possessed found lasting fame in the city, while Phaedrus son of Pythocles, who joined philosophy with madness,
Madness, reason,atf*/recantation in the Phaedrus z i233 was exiled and eclipsed. And Plato and Dion of Syracuse did not succeed in living their adult lives together, bound by philosophical love.) And if the dialogue's end should remind us of the discussion of Pan's name in the Cratylus ( 4 0 7 E - 4 0 8 B ) , we would discover this etymological lesson: Speech, says Socrates, 'signifies everything {topan), and rolls about and wanders continually, and is double-natured, both true and false'. (For it is both true and false, perhaps, that love is compatible with order, that passion can be passion and still be rational.) But here, for the present, in this dramatic action and in this mixed piece of writing, the insights stand, published and not denied. This is, perhaps, all that can be asked of a human commitment to a view, or to a passion. At the dialogue's end, Socrates prays to Pan the mad erotic god, son of Hermes god of luck, and to the other gods of this wild place, asking for a beautiful inside and an outside that will be loved by that inside (279B-C). 8 2 The prayer expresses both the dialogue's discoveries and also its risks: on the one hand the positive role of guiding divinities associated with passion, not' pure' intellect; on the other, the standing possibility of conflict - for a prayer for love between soul and body is not a celebration of their oneness. But in the dialogue's discovery of a mutual love of individuals based upon character and aspiration, Socrates has found a powerful resource towards the continued pursuit of these very questions.63 He now asks Phaedrus whether 'we' need anything more: 'For in my opinion the prayer was appropriate' (279c). And Phaedrus replies, in his turn, with acknowledged need and good will. 'Pray the same for me too. People who love each other share everything.' 'Let's go', says Socrates.64
Part III Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot, 4 Little Gidding'
That with which people most continuously associate - the discourse that orders everything - with this they are at variance; and what they encounter every day seems strange to them. Although the discourse is shared (.xunou), most people live as if they had a private understanding. The person who speaks with understanding (xun noot) must insist upon what is shared (,xunoi) by all, as a city insists upon its law. Heracl*tus, D K 72, 2, 114
235
Introduction
Aristotle develops a conception of a human being's proper relationship to tuche that returns to and further articulates many of the insights of tragedy. His philosophical account of the good human life is, as I shall argue, an appropriate continuation and an explicit description of those insights. We shall examine his criticisms of Plato's revisionary picture of the good human life and of the Platonic conception of philosophy as radical life-saver. The structure of this section will differ from the structure of the Plato section, much as Aristotle's philosophical writing differs from Plato's. That is, it will move from problem to related problem, rather than from complex multi-voiced dramatic work to work. And it will attempt to show the interconnections of various apparently separate inquiries in their bearing on our problems. This seems fitting when we are dealing with a philosopher who constantly employs crossreferences, and who is known to have rearranged his lectures in several different orderings, depending upon the purpose and the occasion. Two chapters may at first glance seem extraneous to the purposes of an ethical inquiry. Chapter 8 contains a general discussion of Aristotle's philosophical method, using material from science and metaphysics as well as ethics. Chapter 9 gives an account of human action and the explanation of action, drawing on ethical texts, but also on general discussions of the explanation of animal movement. Why should an account of Aristotle's conception of the good human life begin with such issues? Chapter 8 first. A central theme in this book so far has been the ambition of human reason to subdue and master tuche through the arts or sciences. Plato took it to be the task of philosophy to become the life-saving techne through which this aspiration could be accomplished - through which, then, the human being could make decisive progress beyond the ordinary human condition. Aristotle begins his criticism of Plato's accomplishment in ethics from a very general criticism of this conception of philosophizing. Not only in ethics but in every area, the philosopher must place himself in a balanced relationship to the beliefs and the discourse of existing human beings. To study this conception of philosophy and the arguments by which Aristotle defends it against Platonism thus seems of the first importance for any attempt to understand the apparent conservatism of his ethical conclusions. In the Platonic dialogues that we have studied, concern with reason and its development has rarely been far removed from a concern to describe and to realize a valuable human life. Aristotle's talk about philosophical reason is not always this directly connected to practical questions (except insofar as the 237
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life pursuit of science is one very important part of our human way of life). We must therefore, in studying his conception of philosophical reason, deal with material that is not explicitly ethical, except in that sense. This will establish a necessary foundation for the pursuit of our more specifically ethical questions. Plato's middle-period ethical views, furthermore, ascribe supreme value to the pursuit of mathematical and scientific reasoning; these activities are chosen on the grounds that they are pure of pain, maximally stable, and directed at truth. Part of the reason for their superior stability lies in the nature of their alleged objects, which are eternally what they are regardless of what human beings do and say. In assessing Aristode's response to these ethical arguments, it will thus be important to ask what his conception of these same pursuits is; for his arguments against Plato's conception of them will affect his understanding of their relationship to other more mundanely human activities. Finally, the acceptance of an anthropocentric conception of ethical truth increases the vulnerability of ethical trust and confidence in situations of upheaval. Chapter 10 on Aristotelian deliberation and Chapter 13 on tragedy will argue that a belief that the fundamental distinctions in the world of practice are human, backed by nothing more eternal or stable than human things, contributes to an agent's sense of ethical risk. For Aristode this ethical anthropocentrism is a special development of a general argument denying that our belief commitments do, or can, attach themselves to objects that are altogether independent of and more stable than human thought and language. To study that general view, in this way as well, provides essential background for a study of the ethical. Chapter 9 will also move outside of ethics narrowly conceived, in order to understand Aristotle's reaction to a major element in Plato's attack upon tuche. Again, these related arguments must be pursued in order to grasp the force of his ethical reply. Any inquiry into a human being's relationship to tuche and the world of natural happening must, implicitly or explicitly, give some account of what it means to be a human animal, a being who attempts to control nature, but who is also influenced and acted on by nature. From the beginning of this book we have been brought back repeatedly to the question, how far is a human being like a plant (or a non-rational animal), how far like a god or a solid immutable form? How far are we passive towards the world, and what is the relationship between passivity or receptivity and activity in a human life? How much vulnerability or passivity is compatible with worth and goodness? Aristotle believes that his philosophical tradition has not dealt with these questions well because it has not brought to their study an adequate account of what it is to be a self-moving animal. The richness of ordinary beliefs about action has been lost from view through the influence of bad philosophical theories of action; so it will take an explicitly corrective philosophical account to return us to that complexity, telling us why our passivity is not such as to remove us from ethical assessment, why our animality is not incompatible with our aspirations to goodness. Accordingly, in the De Anima and the De Motu Animalium he works out a conception of action and of the self-moving animal's causal relation to the world
Introduction
239
that should provide a better basis for ethics. Chapter 9 describes this project. In the process it will deal with issues in Aristotle's thought about scientific explanation that may seem rather technical for the non-specialist reader, who might prefer to turn directly to the chapter's concluding section (v), where the ethical implications of the explanatory project are described. We then turn to the ethical treatises more narrowly construed: examining, in Chapter 10, Aristotle's account of a non-scientific picture of practical reasoning and evaluation; in Chapters 11 and 12, his defense of the view that the best human life is vulnerable to catastrophe, and his arguments in favor of including some particularly vulnerable pursuits in that life; in Interlude 2, the implications of these views for the role of poetry and the ' tragic' emotions in human moral learning. Our three original problems of tuche are addressed within these chapters in interconnected ways. The role of 'irrational' passion and desire in the good life is discussed in Chapters 9, 10, and 12 and in Interlude 2; the vulnerability of individual component goods, in Chapter 11 and especially Chapter 12; the plurality of values and the problem of conflict of values in parts of Chapters 10, 1 1 , and 12 and (with reference to tragedy) in Interlude 2.
8
Saving Aristotle's appearances
At the beginning of Book vn of the Nicomachean Ethics, just before his discussion of akrasia, Aristotle pauses to make some observations about his philosophical method: Here, as in all other cases, we must set down the appearances {phainomena) and, first working through the puzzles {diaporesantas)y in this way go on to show, if possible, the truth of all the beliefs we hold (ta endoxd) about these experiences; and, if this is not possible, the truth of the greatest number and the most authoritative. For if the difficulties are resolved and the beliefs (endoxa) are left in place, we will have done enough showing. (1145biff.)
Aristotle tells us that his method,' here as in all other cases V is to set down what he calls phainomena, and what we shall translate as 'the appearances'. Proper philosophical method is committed to and limited by these. If we work through the difficulties with which the phainomena confront us and leave the greatest number and the most basic intact, we will have gone as far as philosophy can, or should, go. This theoretical remark is closely followed by an application of the method. Aristotle first reports some of our most common beliefs and sayings about akrasia, concluding his summary with the words, ' These, then, are the things we say (ta legomena)* (1145b2o). Next he presents the Socratic view that nobody does wrong willingly: we choose the lesser good only as a result of ignorance. Of this theory he says brusquely, 'This story is obviously at variance with thephainomena\ He then sets himself to finding an account of akratic behavior that will remain faithful to the 'appearances' in a way that the rejected Socratic account does not.2 Here, then, is an ambitious and exciting philosophical view, one that asks us, as we have seen, to revise much of what we ordinarily say and believe. What kind of reply has Aristotle made to this view when he rejects it because it is at variance with the phainomena - by which, from the context, he seems to mean our ordinary beliefs and sayings? What sort of philosophical method is this that so thoroughly commits itself to and circ*mscribes itself by the ordinary? I have indicated by the title of this chapter that I believe that Aristotle's phainomena need saving. This implies that they are in trouble, or under attack. This I believe to be true, on two quite different levels. First, on the level of the text itself, the phainomena are in danger of vanishing altogether. Aristotle's word 4 phainomena' receives so many different translations that a reader of the standard English of the passages that I shall discuss would have no clue that they had anything in common. Ross, in the passage from EN vir, uses 'observed facts'. 3 240
Saving Aristotle's appearancesz53 Elsewhere we find 'data of perception', 'admitted facts', 'facts', 'observations' - almost everything but the literal' appearances', or the frequently interchangeable 'what we believe', or 'what we say'. Even G. E. L. Owen, who did so much to salvage the close connection of the phainomena with language and ordinary belief, did so, as we shall see, only by charging Aristotle with serious ambiguity of usage.4 To understand Aristotle's method we must, then, salvage and be more precise about these phainomena, which are, as Aristotle tells us in the Eudemian Ethics, both the 'witnesses' and the 'paradigms' that we are to use in philosophical inquiry (I2l6b26). 5 Second is the deeper problem to which we have alluded. As a philosophical method, the method that announces appearance-saving as its goal was when it was introduced, and still is, in danger of abrupt philosophical dismissal. It can strike us as hopelessly flat, tedious, underambitious. All philosophy does, apparently, is to leave things where they are; when it has done that it has, Aristotle tells us, done 'enough showing'. Enough, we might ask, for what? For whom? For Protagoras, who failed to feel the urgent force of practical problems? For Sophocles? For Plato? Aristotle was well aware of such questions. In fact, he seems to have chosen the term 'appearances' deliberately, so as to confront them. By using this term for his philosophical' paradigms', he announces that he is taking a position about philosophical method and limits that is very unusual in his philosophical tradition. 'Appearances' standardly occurs, in pre-Aristotelian Greek epistemology, as one arm of a polarity, on the other side of which is 'the real' or 'the true'. The appearances - by which Plato and his predecessors usually mean the world as perceived, demarcated, interpreted by human beings and their beliefs - are taken to be insufficient ' witnesses' of truth. Philosophy begins when we acknowledge the possibility that the way we pre-philosophically see the world might be radically in error. There is a true nature out there that 'loves to hide itself' (Heracl*tus BI 23) beneath our human ways of speaking and believing. Revealing, uncovering, getting behind, getting beyond - these are some of early Greek philosophy's guiding images for the philosophical pursuit of truth. The Greek word for truth itself means, etymologically 'what is revealed', 'what is brought out from concealment'.6 Pirmenides, the boldest of the philosophers whom Aristotle will be charging with violation of basic appearances, tells us unequivocally that truth is to be found only in a place ' far from the beaten path of human beings', after you depart from 'all the cities'.7 He puts the contrast between the true and the appearances this way: You will learn the unshakeable heart of well-rounded Truth. You will, on the other hand, also learn the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true confidence.
The opinions of finite and limited beings provide no good evidence at all for the truth; far less do they provide truth with its 'witnesses' and 'paradigms'. Plato inherited this tradition and developed it, as we have seen. It is Plato who
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life most explicitly opposes phainomena, and the cognitive states concerned with them, to truth and genuine understanding ;8 it is Plato who argues that the paradeigmata that we require for understanding of the most important subjects are not to be found in the world of human belief and perception at all. Plato, then, is Aristotle's central target when he tells us that the phainomena are our best and only paradeigmata. We recall Socrates' attack, in Republic vi, against the philosophical adequacy of a method that remains within the human point of view. 'Nothing imperfect is a measure of anything, though sometimes people think that it is enough and that there is no need to search further.' 'They do this', says Glaucon, 'out of laziness.' 'Laziness, however', Socrates replies, 'is a quality that the guardian of a city and of laws can do without.' Nothing imperfect, that is, no limited being, a fortiori no human being or human agreement, is ever good measure of anything. Protagoras's anthropocentric dictum is a recipe for inadequacy. The ability to go outside of shared human conceptions and beliefs is here, as in Parmenides' poem, made a necessary condition of access to the real truth about our lives. The perfect god's-eye standpoint is the only reliable one from which to make adequate and reliably true judgments. (And this is so because the aspects of our humanity that separate us from this god, aspects that pervade most of our everyday beliefs and conceptions, have been rejected as distorting and impeding.) The fact that Plato is at pains to show the appeal of his arguments for an ordinary interlocutor such as Glaucon, giving them a deep rootedness in pre-philosophical belief, does not change this picture. For the assent of Glaucon is in no way criterial of their truth; it is only a lucky fact about Glaucon. If neither he nor any other ordinary person had had an interest in contemplation, it would still have been the most valuable activity in the world.* Nor was Plato's claim concerned with ethics alone. For an adjacent passage criticizes mathematicians on the grounds that they practice their science starting from hypotheses - from something 'laid down' by human beings. They never attain to a pure and unhypothetical point entirely outside these deep human beliefs,9 a starting-point that is eternal, stable, and not relative in any way to the conditions and contexts of human life and language. Such starting-points are alleged to be the only adequate basis for any science or understanding. When Aristotle declares that his aim, in science and metaphysics as well as in ethics, is to save the appearances and their truth, he is not, then, saying something cozy and acceptable. Viewed against the background of Eleatic and Platonic philosophizing, these remarks have, instead, a defiant look. Aristotle is promising to rehabilitate the discredited measure or standard of tragic and Protagorean anthropocentrism.f He promises to do his philosophical work in a place from * We should also remember that the world's most valuable activities are this, for Plato, partly because they transcend ordinary experience in the way they do, achieving a superior stability by attaching themselves to objects more stable than the objects we experience in daily life, f It is important here to bear in mind that anthropocentrism need not imply relativism. Plato's Protagoras, as we have argued, is no relativist (Ch. 4); and the same may well have been true of the historical figure. I an suggesting, then, that Aristotle promises a return from the search for external justification to an inttrnality that is deeply rooted in Greek tradition, if at odds with one specifically philosophical tradition.
Saving Aristotle's appearances z 5 3 which Plato and Parmenides had spent their careers contriving an exit. He insists that he will find his truth inside what we say, see, and believe, rather than 'far from the beaten path of human beings' (in Plato's words) 'out there'. When he writes that the person who orders these appearances and shows their truth has done 'enough showing', he is replying to the view expressed in Republic vi by insisting that it is not laziness, but good philosophy, that makes one operate within these limits. I want to arrive at a deeper and more precise account of Aristotle's method and of his reply to these opponents of anthropocentricity. Three questions (or groups of questions) will be important: 4
9
(1) What are Aristotle's pbainomena? How is the term pbainomena best translated? How are pbainomena related to observation? to language? (2) What, more exactly, is the philosophical method described? How does the philosopher gather and set down the appearances, and what does he do with them then? For what reasons might he throw out some of them, and what has been accomplished when he has done that? (3) Why should we, or our philosophers, be committed to appearances? Where do they get their claim to truth? What can Aristotle say to an opponent who claims that some of our deepest and most widely shared beliefs are wrong?
I 'Pbainomena' is a neuter plural of the present participle of'phainesthai\ 'appear'. The {prima facie unlikely) translation of 'pbainomena' as 'observed facts' comes out of a long tradition in the interpretation of Aristotelian science. The tradition ascribes to Aristotle a Baconian picture of scientific/philosophical method that it also believes to be the most acceptable characterization of the scientist's procedure. The scientist or philosopher, in each area, begins by gathering data through precise empirical observation, scrupulously avoiding any kind of interpreting or theorizing; he or she then searches for a theory that explains the data. Aristotle's pbainomena are his Baconian observation-data; the attempt to 'save' them is the attempt to find a comprehensive theory. It is readily evident that in many contexts this cannot be the meaning of 'pbainomena'. In our Etbics passage, for example, Ross's translation plainly does not fit. The passage goes directly on to substitute for the word 'pbainomena' the word 'endoxa'; endoxa are the common conceptions or beliefs on the subject. What Aristotle actually goes on to collect and set down are, in fact, our common beliefs about akrasia, usually as revealed in things we say. There is no attempt to describe the incontinent agent's behavior in language free of interpretation; instead Aristotle looks at the ways we standardly do interpret such behavior. And the summary of pbainomena concludes, as we noticed, with the words, ' These, then, are the things we say (ta legomena)' (ii45b8-2o). Again, Socrates' theory clashes not with some hard Baconian facts or some theory-neutral description - how could it? - but with what we commonly say, our shared interpretations. In his justly famous article, G. E. L. Owen convincingly established that not only in the ethical works, but also in Physics, De Caelo, and other scientific works,
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life Aristotle's phainomena must be understood to be our beliefs and interpretations, often as revealed in linguistic usage. To set down the phainomena is not to look for belief-free fact, but to record our usage and the structure of thought and belief which usage displays. For example, the Physics accounts of place and time begin not with an attempt to gather 4 hard' data, but with observations about what we say on this subject, designed to give us a perspicuous view of our current conceptions. By showing us the prominence of conceptual and linguistic considerations in the scientific works, Owen went a long way towards correcting a previously prevalent view, according to which Aristotle makes a sharp distinction between 'science' and 'metaphysics' or Weltanschauung- a view in which the Physics had always figured as a problematic, or even a confused work. But Owen did not, I think, go far enough in his criticism of the Baconian picture. He still held on to the view that in certain scientific contexts the Baconian translations are appropriate, and that Aristotle's defense of a method concerned with phainomena is, in these cases, a defense of what Owen explicitly calls a 'Baconian picture'. His criticism of the traditional view limits itself to pointing out that it does not fit all the evidence; in particular, that it does not even fit all the evidence of all the scientific works. But Owen is then forced to conclude that Aristotle uses the term 'phainomena* ambiguously. There are two distinct senses - and, we must add, therefore two distinct methods. In one sense, 'phainomena' means ' observed data' and is associated with a Baconian picture of natural science. In the other, it means 'what we say' or 'our common beliefs', and is associated with a method that aims at sorting out and arranging our descriptions and interpretations of the world. 10 Owen's article is a major contribution to the study of Aristotle. But its uncharacteristically conservative stopping-place does Aristotle an injustice. First, Owen forces us to charge Aristotle with equivocation concerning his method and several of its central terms. 11 This would be a serious lapse, without any cautionary note, in just the area where Aristotle's precision and attentiveness are usually most striking. Fortunately, however, we do not need to charge him with this. For the entire problem arises only because of a second more serious difficulty in Owen's account, one whose removal will remove this one with it. Owen finds ambiguity because he believes that in biology Aristotle is committed to 'Baconian' empiricism. There is, in feet, no case for crediting Aristotle with anything like the Baconian picture of science based on theory-neutral observation. He was not concerned, in his talk of experience or how the world ' appears', to separate off one privileged group of observations and to call them the 'uninterpreted' or ' hard' data. Such a bounding-off of a part of the data of experience as ' hard' or 'theory-free' was, in fact, unknown to any early Greek scientist. Instead of the sharp Baconian distinction between perception-data and communal belief, we find in Aristotle, as in his predecessors, a loose and inclusive notion of'experience', or the way(s) a human observer sees or 'takes' the world, using his cognitive faculties (all of which Aristotle calls 'kritika\ 'concerned with making distinctions').12
Saving Aristotle's appearancesz53 This, I suggest, is the meaning of Aristotle's talk of phainomena. It is a loose notion, one that invites (and receives) further subdivisions; but it is neither ambiguous nor vacuous. If we do not insist on introducing an anachronistic scientific conception, the alleged two senses and two methods can be one. When Aristotle sits on the shore of Lesbos taking notes on shellfish, he will be doing something that is not, if we look at it from his point of view, so far removed from his activity when he records what we say about akrasia. He will be describing the world as it appears to, as it is experienced by, observers who are members of our kind. 13 Certainly there are important differences between these two activities; but there is also an important link, and it is legitimate for him to stress it. We distinguish sharply between 'science' and 'the humanities'. Aristotle would be reminding us of the humanness of good science. Owen correctly emphasizes that Aristotle is composing these methodological remarks in the shadow of Parmenides, who repudiated together, without distinction, both the evidence of sense-perception and the data of shared language and belief; all this he derides as mere 'convention' or 'habit'. Plato, too, repudiates perception and belief together, as 'mired' in the 'barbaric mud' of the human point of view. Aristotle, answering them, promises to work within and to defend a method that is thoroughly committed to the data of human experience and accepts these as its limits. II
If Aristotle's method simply spoke in vague terms of preserving perceptions and beliefs, it would be no substantial contribution to philosophy. But we can elicit from his theoretical remarks and from his practice a rich account of philosophical procedure and philosophical limits. First the philosopher must 'set down' the relevant appearances. These will be different (and differently gathered) in each area. But in all areas we are to include both a study of ordinary beliefs and sayings and a review of previous scientific or philosophical treatments of the problem, the views o f ' the many and the wise '. 14 To judge from what Aristotle sees fit to set down, the 'we' that bounds the class of relevant appearances is a group whose members share with each other not only species membership, but also some general features of a way of life. The scientific tradition around Aristotle was fascinated by ethnography and by parallels between animal and human customs. Aristotle's practice implicitly denies the relevance of their more remote material for any inquiry into human conceptions or values. We find no mention, in the relevant parts of the Ethics, Politics, or Physics, of the ways in which animals train their young or conceive of time and place. Nor do we find a record of the views and conceptions of the weird primitive communities so lavishly described by Herodotus and his followers. The phainomena are drawn from Aristotle's own linguistic community and from several other civilized communities known to him to have recognizably similar general conditions of life, though with different particular institutions. (In other scientific cases, data will be drawn from aspects of the natural world observed or experienced by people from such
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life communities.)15 Aristotle has often been accused of cultural chauvinism for this selectivity. But there are deeper and more interesting reasons. In Politics 1 he tells us why he omits from his political study both bestial beings and heroic or divine beings. The human being he says (in a passage that we shall also study in Chapter 11) is the only living creature who has experience of the good and bad, the just and unjust, and the other ethical concepts with which this study deals; in consequence only the human being has the capacity to express these conceptions in speech.16 This unique experience seems to be connected with the fact that humans alone among creatures are both reasonable - capable of association in the institutions that take their form from these articulated conceptions - and lacking in individual self-sufficiency. They are neither beasts nor gods (125 3a27~9). It is, then, likely that Aristotle is following a philosophical tradition begun in the writings of Heracl*tus, according to which the ability to use the name of justice is based on experiences of need and scarcity that a godlike being would not share.17 It seems to follow, if we generalize this principle, that data for an inquiry into our conception of F can come only from peoples whose ways of life are similar to ours with respect to those conditions that gave rise to our use of the term *F\ Other groups and species not so related to us could not have 'F' (or a term closely enough related to our 'F') in their language, and we do not, therefore, need to ask them what they think about it. (We shall see later that these observations derive support from Aristotle's general remarks about discourse.) The philosopher has now gathered together all the relevant phainomena. His next job, Aristode argues, is to set out the puzzles or dilemmas with which they confront us. The phainomena present us with a confused array, often with direct contradiction. They reflect our disagreements and ambivalences. The first step must, therefore, be to bring conflicting opinions to the surface and set them out clearly, marshaling the considerations for and against each side, showing clearly how the adoption of a certain position on one issue would affect our positions on others. Without this serious attempt to describe the puzzles, the philosopher is likely to accept too quickly a solution that disguises or merely avoids the problem. 4 It is not possible to resolve anything if you do not see how you are bound; but the puzzles of the intellect show you this about the issue. For insofar as the intellect is puzzled, thus far its experience is similar to that of someone in bonds: it cannot go forward in either direction' (Metaph. 995a29~33). Having said this, Aristotle goes on to devote the entire third book of the Metaphysics to setting out his most serious puzzles about identity and understanding in preparation for the more positive work of the later books. The scientific works proceed in a similar fashion. If philosophy simply preserved the status quo, it would stop here. Some people think this, but some think this. There are these good reasons for p, these other good reasons for not-p. The Greek skeptic did stop at this point. The conflict of opinion, and the apparently equal weight of opposing beliefs displayed in the puzzles, left him poised in the middle, released from all intellectual commitment.18
Saving Aristotle's appearancesz53 And he found this experience of dissociation from belief so delightfully pleasant that he sought it out as the human good, designing his arguments, from now on, so as to produce this ' equal weight'. Aristotle does not stop here. His imagery of bondage and freedom indicates that he found the experience of dilemma anything but delightful. (Here we begin to notice some of the deep human differences that can separate one metaphilosophical position from another.) 'All human beings by nature reach out for understanding', he writes at the opening of the Metaphysics. This profound natural desire to bring the matter of life into a perspicuous order will not be satisfied, he believes, as long as there is contradiction. Our deepest intellectual commitment (as we shall see) is to the Principle of Non-Contradiction, the most basic of all our shared beliefs. The method of appearance-saving therefore demands that we press for consistency. But in resolving our difficulties we are not, Aristotle insists, free to follow a logical argument anywhere it leads. We must, at the end of our work on the puzzles, bring our account back to the pbainomena and show that our account does, in fact, preserve them as true - or, at any rate, the greatest number and the most basic. Aristotle repeatedly criticizes philosophers and scientists who attend to internal clarity and consistency, ignoring this return. In the De Caelo (19 5^27) he criticizes men who 'look for conviction not out of the pbainomena, but out of argument'; the context reveals that they have been pressing a theoretical claim which, like Socrates' view of akrasia, is seriously at odds with prevalent beliefs.19 In Book HI, he criticizes the Platonist theory that physical bodies are generated from triangular surfaces: 'What happens to these people is that in a discussion about the pbainomena they say what is not in conformity with the pbainomena. The reason for this is that they have the wrong notion of first principles and want to bring everything into line with some hard-and-fast theories' (Cael. 3o6a5ff.). Similarly, in On Generation and Corruption (325 aijff.), he criticizes the Eleatics for failing to follow the pbainomena - judgments based on our experience - all the way through their inquiry. They were 'led to overstep' experience, he says, by their view that 4one ought to follow the argument'. What these thinkers did, evidently, was to begin in the right way, with the pbainomena - in this case, with human perceptual experience of the world. But then they got fascinated by the internal progress of their argument and trusted the argument, even though it ended in a place incredibly remote from, and at odds with, human beliefs. Instead, Aristode thinks, they should have regarded the strangeness of the conclusion as a sign that something was wrong with the argument. Of the Eleatic conclusion - the denial that distinctions and plurality are genuine features of our world Aristotle goes on to say, 'Although these opinions appear to follow if one looks at the arguments, still to believe them seems next door to lunacy when one considers practice. For in fact no lunatic seems to stand so far outside as to suppose that fire and ice are one' (GC 325a!8-22). Theory must remain committed to the ways human beings live, act, see - to the pragmata, broadly construed. To follow the Eleatic is to attempt to believe things that not even the abnormal members
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life of our community seem to believe, if we judge from what they do. Even madmen do not generally store butter in the fireplace, or huddle for warmth in front of a block of ice. But what principles and procedures can we, then, use in deciding what appearances to keep and what to throw out, as we press for consistency? Here Aristotle's procedures vary, as we might expect, with the subject matter and the problem, and it is difficult to say anything illuminating at this level of generality. But we can make a few remarks. First, nothing universally believed is entirely discarded. 4 For that which seems so to everyone, this we say is' (EN 1 ijz^G). Earlier in the Ethics, Aristotle quotes with approval the poetic lines: 4 N o report is altogether wiped out, which many peoples...' (EN ii5 5b27-8). 20 (Here the context (concerning pleasure) shows that this does not prevent us from qualifying the belief in the light of other beliefs.) Second, nothing that we have to be using in order to argue or inquire can get thrown out. We shall look at that point in the following section. Beyond this, we must, Aristotle believes, ask ourselves whether, in the inquiry at hand, we share some conception of the good judge, of the person or persons whom we will trust to arbitrate our disputes. Very rarely is truth a matter of majority vote (Metaph. 1009b2). Often our idea of the competent judge is more broadly shared among us, and less subject to disagreement, than is our view of the subject matter concerning which this judge is to render a verdict. In ethics, for example, we agree more readily about the characteristics of intellect, temper, imagination, and experience that a competent judge must have than we do about the particular practical judgments that we expect him or her to make. The same is true in other areas as well. In Metaphysics iv, Aristotle answers thinkers who create puzzles about perception by pointing out that our practices reveal a set of standards for arbitrating disagreements: It is worthy of amazement if they create a puzzle about whether magnitudes are of such a size, and colors of such a quality, as they appear (phainetai) to those at a distance or to those who are near, and whether they are such as they appear to the healthy or to the sick; and whether those things are quite heavy which appear so to the weak or to the strong; and whether those things are true which appear so to the sleeping or to the waking. It is obvious that they do not really think that these are matters for doubt. At any rate nobody, if, while he is in Libya, he has imagined one night that he is in Athens, [wakes up and] heads for the Odeion.21 Again, as for the future, as even Plato says, the opinions of the doctor and the ignorant man are not equally authoritative as to whether someone is or is not going to be healthy. (ioiob3-i4)
Aristotle asks us to look at our practices, seeing, in the different areas, what sorts of judges we do, in fact, trust. The judgment about whom to trust and when seems to come, like the appearances, from us. We turn to doctors because we do, in fact, rely on doctors. This reliance, Aristotle insists, does not need to be justified by producing a further judge to certify the judge (ionajff.); it is sufficiently 4 justified5 by the facts of what we do. The expert, and our reasons for choosing him, are not behind our practices; they are inside them. And yet such experts do, in fact, help us to unravel puzzles.22
Saving Aristotle's appearancesz53 The importance of the expert emerges clearly if we consider Aristotle's account of our basic linguistic practices of introducing into discourse and defining. In Posterior Analytics n.8, Aristotle develops an account of the transition from our initial use of a natural kind term to its scientific definition.23 The kind term enters our use on the basis of some communal experience or experiences (the pronoun 4 we' is used throughout). For example, 'We are aware of thunder as a noise in the clouds, of eclipse as a privation of light, or of the human being as a certain species of animal' (93a2 2-24). At this point we are able to 'indicate' (semainein) human beings or eclipses, to introduce them into discourse or refer to them; but we do not yet have the scientific definition that states the nature of things of this kind. We may have sorted our experience and assigned our kind terms very roughly - ' sometimes incidentally, sometimes by grasping something of the item in question' (93a2i-2). We move from this rough grouping and this thin account to the full definition only when we have some account or theory that states the nature of the phenomenon: in the case of thunder, he tells us, when we have a theory that tells us that it is the quenching of fire in the clouds, and how this produces the sound we hear. The expert, not the layman, uncovers this theory. In the case of most species of animals, we do not yet, Aristotle believes, have a theory that satisfies our demands. But our broadly shared belief that natural beings are 'things that have within themselves a principle of change' (Ph. n. 1) implies a commitment to abide by the results of scientific investigation into these inner structures.24 When the scientist comes up with a theory that offers a satisfactory account of the growth and movement of some type of natural being, we are committed to regarding this theory as defining and bounding (at least pro tempore) the nature of this being - even if some individuals whom we have previously tended to include in the extension of the term will have to be excluded. Our agreement in a commitment to scientific exploration proves more basic than our prima facie disagreement with the biologist over the extension of the term. We can use Aristotle's account of defining to make progress on two of our previous problems. First, we can now see more clearly why Aristotle gathers his phainomena only from communities relevantly like ours. The suggestion of the Politics passage is confirmed by his general account of discourse. We take our evidence about Fs only from communities where the relevant conditions of experience are similar to those that obtain in our own community, because the very meaning of ' F ' is given by an account couched in terms of laws and conditions of our actual community. Our ability to introduce Fs into discourse arises from actual experience, and the nature of Fs is given by a scientific account arrived at by research in and into the world of our experience. In some cases, for example in the case of species terms, the relevant community may be the whole earth; in the case of ethical and political language it may well be much narrower. We can now also begin to give Aristotle an answer to the charge that his method shuns the hard work involved in making real philosophical or scientific progress. Aristotle can insist that there is no tension - or at least no simple tension - between the appearances-method and the scientist's aims. This is so because our practices and our language embody a reliance on such experts, frequently making their
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judgments constitutive of truth. This method is attempting at once to be seriously respectful of human language and ordinary ways of believing and to do justice to the fact that these very practices reveal an ongoing demand for scientific understanding. The method should not be taken to prevent us from doing what we in fact do. It is, however, also crucial to see that the expert plays here no deeper role than the role that he or she in fact plays. He is normative for our use only to the extent that we in fact agree in accepting his authority. Aristotle shows no tendency to convert these descriptive remarks about discourse into a prescriptive theory of discourse; we, in reading him, should not build in more structure than is present in the text, whose main aim is to argue against those who create specious puzzles by denying an actual feature of our practice. I have so far said little about how this account of Aristotle's philosophical/scientific method, constructed largely from the Metaphysics and the specific scientific treatises, is to be put together with the account of scientific understanding developed in the Posterior Analytics. Two pressing questions might be raised at this point. The first concerns the Analytics' ideal of a finished science as a hierarchical deductive system: how does this norm cohere with Aristotle's aims and procedures in the appearance-saving passages on which I have drawn ? This is clearly a huge question, which can barely be broached here. But w e can provisionally say that the appearance-saving method could be fully compatible with the Analytics' demand that, in the natural sciences (as opposed to ethics), the expert should in the end be able to validate his claim to understanding by giving systematic demonstrations of the type described. The two aims would be compatible if the deductive ideal were seen as something that arises, itself, from the appearances, a commitment which we believe ourselves to undertake when we do science. And this, in fact, is how Aristotle presents his account of episteme there: as an articulation of what 4 we' believe scientific understanding should be and do. He begins from an account of the conditions under which 4 w e ' 4 think we understand' something (APo 7ib9), and goes on to show what this shared conception requires of the scientist. Similarly, the Physics discussion of explanation begins from the ways in which 4 we' ask. and answer 4 Why?' questions, and criticizes earlier scientists for insufficient attention to the variety of our usage. At every step Aristotle is concerned to show how his norm arises out of the appearances and embodies their requirements.28 In ethics, on the other hand, he takes pains to argue that our beliefs about practice do not yield the demand for a deductive system.26 He is evidently not interested in assimilating the appearances to a theoretical ideal where the appearances themselves do not reveal a commitment to such an ideal. But a more troublesome question arises when we consider that the first principles of science in the Analytics have been thought by centuries of commentators, via the medieval tradition, to be a priori truths grasped by special acts of intellectual intuition, apart from all experience. Surely, we might object, the finished structure of an Aristotelian science rests on these, and not, ultimately,
Saving Aristotle's appearancesz53 on the appearances. Or, if the scientific works do rest on appearances, they depart, in so placing themselves, from the ideal set forth in the Analytics. The objector and I can agree on a number of points about the principles mentioned in the Analytics: that they are to be true, indemonstrable, necessary, primary, both prior to and more knowable than the conclusion; that they transmit their truth to the conclusion; even (as it will turn out) that they are a priori according to some understanding of the a priori. But this leaves, it is plain, much scope for disagreement: for a deep and basic human appearance can be all of those things, as I shall show; and to say this about a principle commits us neither to special acts of rational intuition, nor to the notion that the principles are true outside of all conceptual schemes, all language. The objector, it emerges, derives these extra elements of this famous interpretation from an exiguous amount of evidence, especially from some alleged evidence in Posterior Analytics 11.19. Fortunately (since I have no space here to argue the case in detail) recent work on nous (intellect) and episteme (understanding) in the Analytics has convincingly shown that the objector's picture is a misreading of the text. Work by A. Kosman, J. Lesher, and, most recently, an excellent article by Myles Burnyeat, have established that the model of understanding that emerges from this and connected texts does not introduce either intuition or extra-experiential truth.27 To have nous, or insight, concerning first principles is to come to see the fundamental role that principles we have been using all along play in the structure of a science. What is needed is not to grasp the first principles - we grasp them and use them already, inside our experience, as the text of n. 19 asserts. As Burnyeat puts it, 4 What [the student's belief] is not yet is understanding and that kind of [grasp] that goes with understanding. To acquire this at the level of first principles what we need is greater familiarity, perhaps some more dialectical practice; in short, intellectual habituation.'28 We move from the confused mass of the appearances to a perspicuous ordering, from the grasp that goes with use to the ability to give accounts. There is no reason to posit two philosophical methods here, one dealing with appearances, one resting on the a priori; dialectic and first philosophy have, as Aristotle insists in Metaphysics iv.2 (cf. below) exactly the same subject matter. The appearances, then, can go all the way down. Ill But if the Analytics does not help the objector, neither does it really answer our remaining questions about the status of Aristotelian first principles. What is, then, meant by the claim that they must be both 4 true' and 4 undemonstrated', and where do we get our conviction of their truth, if undemonstrated is what they are? If they are found in and through experience, it then becomes all the more pressing to inquire how they get their claim to truth and to priority. The Analytics tells us some of the characteristics of first principles; it also tells us how, through experience, we can acquire insight into their fundamental status. It does not yet
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answer our question concerning that status, since it does not encounter any sort of skeptical challenge.29 Now we must turn, therefore, to Metaphysics iv, where we shall see how Aristotle defends their claim against the skeptic's attack. In Metaphysics iv.4, Aristotle considers how we should deal with an opponent who challenges the Principle of Non-Contradiction (contradictory predicates cannot belong to the same subject at the same time). He calls this principle 'The most secure starting-point (arche) of all'. How then, are we to deal with the opponent who challenges us to justify our inquiry by demonstrating its truth? Aristotle's answer is revealing. 'They demand a demonstration', he says, 'out of apaideusia. For it is apaideusia not to recognize of what things you should look for a demonstration, and of what you should not.' Now apaideusia is not stupidity, absurdity, logical error, even wrong-headedness. It is lack ofpaideia, the education by practice and precept that initiates a young Greek into the ways of his community; the word is usually translated 'acculturation' or 'moral education'. Apaideusia is, for example, the condition of the Cyclopes (Euripides, Cycl. 493), humanoid creatures who live in isolation from human community. ' They have no assemblies that make decisions, nor do they have binding conventions, but they inhabit the summits of lofty mountains... and they have no concern for one another' (Horn. Od. ix. 112-15). 3 0 It looks significant that the opponent is charged with this defect, rather than with ignorance or dumbness. It is not so much that he is stupid; he just does not know how to do things (or he refuses to do things) the way we do them. He lacks what Burnyeat has called ' intellectual habituation' - the sensitive awareness, produced by education and experience, of the fundamental role this principle plays in all our practices, all our discourse. (Cf. GC 3i6a5: 'The reason for their deficient ability to survey what we all agree on is their inexperience (apeiria).') And, for some reason, he has decided to dissociate himself even from the incomplete paideia that characterizes the person in the street; for he is assailing a principle that that person uses as fundamental, whether he is aware of this or not. Aristotle now goes on to propose a way of dealing with this objector. First, he says, you must find out whether this person will say anything to you or not. If he will not say anything, then you can stop worrying about him. ' It is comical to look for something to say to someone who won't say anything. A person like that, insofar as he is like that, is pretty well like a vegetable' (ioo6ai3-i5). But if he does say something, something definite, then you can go on to show him that in so doing he is in fact believing and making use of the very principle he attacks. For in order to be saying something definite he has to be ruling out something else as incompatible: at the very least, the contradictory of what he has asserted.31 So if the person does not speak, he ceases to be one of us, and we are not required to take account of him. If he does speak, we can urge him to take a close look at his linguistic practices and what they rest on. In doing this we are giving him the paideia he lacks, a kind of initiation into the way we do things. Sometimes the opponent will not listen. 'Some need persuasion, others need violence',
Saving Aristotle's appearances
z5 3
Aristotle remarks somewhat grimly in the next chapter (ioo9ai7-i8). Philosophy, at the level of basic principles, seems to be a matter of bringing the isolated person into line, of dispelling illusions that cause the breakdown of communication. Sometimes this can be done gently, sometimes only with violence; and sometimes not at all. Several things strike us in this reply to the skeptical challenger. First, it is not the sort of reply he demands. In the century after Aristotle, Stoic philosophers answered skeptical attacks against basic beliefs by arguing that these beliefs rest on a perceptual foundation that is absolutely indubitable. The 'cataleptic impression' was a perception that certified its own accuracy; this foundation was, they felt, secure against the skeptic.32 But Aristotle does not point to this sort of foundation for our knowledge of the world. He says that the principle is true and primary; that we are entitled to assert it; that, in fact, we cannot be wrong about it; that it is what any thinking person must believe. He does not say that this basic principle is true apart from the 'appearances' and from human conceptual schemes, true of the way the world is behind or beyond the categories of our thought and discourse. In fact, in the next chapter he even refuses to take up the popular contemporary question, which animate species is the standard of truth? All he says is that we cannot assail the principle; but neither, he insists, can we demonstrate it in the demanded way. It is, for us, the starting-point of all discourse, and to get outside it would be to cease to think and to speak. So in a very important way Aristotle does not answer the opponent's challenge. He does not offer him the exterior, Platonic certainty he wants. And if the opponent does choose to isolate himself from discourse, even the limited 'elenctic demonstration' will not succeed. In a penetrating account of this passage, the third-century A.D. Greek commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias writes that to attempt to converse with such a silent opponent is 'to try to communicate something through discourse to someone who has no discourse, and through discourse to try to establish fellowship with someone who is bereft of fellowship' (272.36-273.1). We cannot satisfy the skeptic's demand for external purity; we can ask him to accept our fellowship. But perhaps, if he is a skeptic bent on securing his equanimity against the risks attendant on community and human involvement, he will refuse that. We cannot, in any harder sense, show him that he is wrong. (This is why Aristotle's crucial next step, in Metaph. iv.5, is to search for a diagnosis of the opponent's motivations, asking what beliefs and aims might lead an intelligent person to take up this position, and how we might cure the motivating error in each case.) A similar position is implied in the passage we examined earlier, where Aristotle rejected the Eleatic One on the grounds that not even a lunatic believes in it, if we judge from his actions. Here, too, Aristotle stops short of calling Parmenides' conclusion wrong of the world as it is apart from all conceptualization. All he says is that no human being who undertakes to act in the human world - no human being who does not ' stand so far outside' as not to be acting among us at all can be seriously holding the view. Action, even bizarre and abnormal action,
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life commits itself to the existence of movement and plurality. Aristotle makes this same point later in Metaphysics iv.4, extending his discourse argument for the Principle of Non-Contradiction to cover cases in which the opponent, though possibly silent with respect to the argument's verbal demands, reveals his commitment to the principle through his practices: It is most obvious that nobody really is in this condition [sc. of believing the denial of the Principle of Non-Contradiction], neither those who make the argument, nor anybody else. For why does he go to Megara and not stay put, when he thinks he should go? Why doesn't he go straight out early in the morning and throw himself into a well or off a precipice, if there chance to be one, but instead obviously avoids this, as though he does not actually hold that it is not good and good to fall in? It's clear, then, that he believes one thing better and the other thing not better. (1008b 14-19)
The opponent can defeat us, then, only by ceasing to act humanly in our world, as well as by ceasing to speak. As soon as he acts in some definite fashion, he is being responsive to definite features of the world as it strikes a human being, namely himself. He is accepting certain appearances, both perceptions and common human beliefs - e.g. beliefs about the badness of early death, about the danger of being killed if one walks off a precipice, about the fact that he is a mortal, bodily creature with bones that can be broken and blood that can be spilled as having a bearing on his life and actions. He is not accepting their contradictories as having equal force. He is allowing the humanity that he shares with us to govern his choice.33 But this Aristotelian reply, once again, comes from within human practices. It makes clear the cost of refusing the principle: immobility as well as silence, the utter loss of community. It does not seek to ground the principle in anything firmer than this. But this is firm enough; this is true, necessary, as firm as anything could be. Aristotle does not, however, assert that there is nothing more to non-contradiction than paideia or our practices. He would say, I think, that we are not in a position to judge this; that this claim, like the skeptic's denial of the principle, asks us to stand outside language and life, and is therefore doomed to fail. No argument rules out that some god might be able to say more, or something different. All we can say, however, is that everything we do, say, and think rests on this principle. Is the principle then for Aristotle an a priori principle?34 This question is frequently raised, but often without sufficient care to define the type of a priori principle involved. It is certainly a priori if an a priori principle is one that is basic or unrevisable, relative to a certain body of knowledge (what has sometimes been called the 'contextual a priori'). It is even a priori in a somewhat stronger sense: it is so basic that it cannot significantly be defended, explained, or questioned at all from within the appearances, that is to say the lives and practices of human beings, as long as human beings are anything like us. But it is not an a priori principle if that is a principle that can be known to hold independently of all experience and all ways of life, all conceptual schemes. This is the question that
Saving Aristotle's appearances z 5 3 we are in no position either to ask or to answer. This is what the skeptic wanted to be shown, and this we do not offer him. We cannot illustrate this point more clearly than by contrasting the Aristotelian and the Platonic nodons of the 4 unhypotheticaF foundations of a science. For Plato, as we said, each science must start from a principle or principles that are 4 unhypotheticaF in the sense that they are known to hold 'themselves by themselves ', entirely independently of all conceptualization and thought. Aristotle also calls his 'most secure principle' an 'unhypotheticaF principle; but his account makes clear the difference of his position: ' For that which it is necessary for anyone who understands anything at all to have, this is not a hypothesis' (ioo5bi5-16). A hypothesis is, in his view, quite literally something 'set down beneath' something else. Anything that we must use in order to think at all obviously cannot be posited or 'set down' at will; therefore, we are justified in calling such a principle' unhypothetical'. But this Kantian kind of non-hypothetical status is all that Aristotle ever endeavors to claim for it. To try to say 'more' would be, in his view, to say less, or perhaps nothing at all. Scientific truths are certainly true of or about the world of nature; they are not (any more than they were for Kant) all about human beings or their mental states. But the status of the basic truths on which science is based is a status of necessity for discourse and thought. It is this necessity, and only this, that they can transmit to their dependents. One further example will show us a connection between Aristotle's replies to skeptical opponents and his views about language. In Physics 11, Aristotle considers Parmenides' claim that change and motion are merely conventional. As in the Metaphysics, he rejects the Eleatic demand that he demonstrate this basic appearance: To try to show that nature exists is comical; for it is obvious that there are many such [i.e. changing] things. And to show the obvious through the obscure is what someone does who is unable to distinguish what is self-evident from what is not. It's possible to be in that state: a man blind from birth might try to give a proof from premises concerning colors. But it is necessary that the talk of such people will be mere words, and that they will have no nous about anything. (193a!ff.)
Once again, we notice that there is a sense in which the challenger goes unanswered. Aristotle says not that the opponent is wrong about the way things really are apart from the categories of thought, not that he says what can be decisively falsified by appeal to some foundational evidence, but that what he says is comical. He is trying to say what be, at any rate, is in no position to say. Just as a person blind from birth is in no position to use in an argument premises about colors, since he can have had no experience of color, so the Eleatic is in no position to use premises having to do with the unitary, unchanging Being of the universe. Change and plurality are in everything we experience; even Parmenides grants this. They are for him among the very deepest of the facts that form the bounds of our ordinary experience of the world. Even his philosopher-hero is aware of
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himself throughout the poem as a changing natural being. How then, Aristotle asks, can he make his argument? These remarks can be better understood if we recall Aristotle's views about linguistic indicating. The Eleatic is 'comical' because he does not succeed in singling out or indicating the unchanging, undivided One. This unity is, by the Eleatic's own story, 'far from the beaten path of human beings'. Neither he nor anyone else in his community can have had experience of it. 35 Therefore, Aristotle would say, he cannot introduce it into discourse; discourse, even when vague and imprecise, is bounded by the experience of the group. Therefore, although the Eleatic believes that he is saying something bold and strange, he is really saying nothing at all. This is why we can say that his talk is 'mere words' without understanding. And as for the Platonist, who charges with 'laziness' any philosopher who refuses to take the ' longer route' that moves away from appearances to grasp the form of the Good, Aristode says, elsewhere, that this opponent, too, fails to 'indicate' or refer to his cherished entities. In a remarkable passage in the Posterior Analytics, he remarks how queer it is that the Platonist introduces monadic, self-subsistent forms of properties which, like colors, always occur in our experience as the properties of some substance or other. Then, with a burst of exuberant malice that shows us aspects of Aristotle's temperament usually masked by a measured sobriety, he exclaims, ' So goodbye to the Platonic Forms. They are teretismata, and have nothing to do with our speech' (APo Teretismata are meaningless sounds you make when you are singing to yourself; we might render them as' dum-de-dum-dums'. Jonathan Barnes's new translation calls them 'noninoes'. But, besides the fact that this suggestion of highbrow musical taste makes the criticism too polite, we also miss the emphasis on solitude and isolation conveyed by the Greek. We are supposed to think not of a madrigal society, but of a completely self-absorbed individual saying to himself what neither anyone else, nor, ultimately, he can understand. When the Platonist speaks of The Good or The White, he is not referring to anything, much less communicating anything to us. He is just crooning away in a corner. For forms are self-subsistent, monadic, where our experience makes properties dependent on substance; forms are non-relational, even where the property (e.g. equality, doubleness) always turns up, in our experience, in a relational context. (In Metaphysics i, Aristotle says that Plato's arguments tried to create a non-relative class of relative terms, 'of which we say there is no all-by-themselves class' (99obi6-i7).) But to say 'goodbye' to the forms is not to assert that they do not exist entirely outside of the world of our experience and thought. That we could not say either. Even the contrast between the world as it is for us and the world as it is behind or apart from our thought may not be a contrast that the defender of a human internal truth should allow himself or herself to make using human language. Here we might say that Aristotle usually maintains his internality more consistently than Kant, refusing, most of the time, even to try to articulate what it is that we cannot
Saving Aristotle's appearances z 5 3 say. Aristotelian reason is not so much in bonds, cut off from something that we can, nonetheless, describe or point to, as it is committed to something, to language and thought, and the limits of these.36 Appearances and truth are not opposed, as Plato believed they were. We can have truth only inside the circle of the appearances, because only there can we communicate, even refer, at all. This, then - if we may characterize it for ourselves using language not known to Aristotle himself - is a kind of realism, neither idealism of any sort nor skepticism. It has no tendency to confine us to internal representations, nor to ask us to suspend or qualify our deeply grounded judgments. It is fully hospitable to truth, to necessity (properly understood), and to a full-blooded notion of objectivity. It is not relativism, since it insists that truth is one for all thinking, language-using beings. It is a realism, however, that articulates very carefully the limits within which any realism must live. Talk of the eternal or the immortal has its place in such a realism - but, as Aristotle makes clear, only because such talk is an important part of our world. 'It is well to join in by persuading oneself that the ancient beliefs deeply belonging to our native tradition are true, according to which there is something deathless and divine' (Cael. 285a 1-4; and cf. the preservation of the theistic 'appearances' of'all human beings' at Cael. 270b 5 ff.). The belief in the divinity and eternity of the heavenly bodies has weight in philosophy because of its depth for us, because it has survived so many changes of social and political belief of a more superficial nature (Metaph. 1074a 3 9ff.). But, by the same token, an 'internal' truth is all we are entitled to claim for such beliefs.37 Even the existence of an unmoved mover is established as one of the conclusions of a physical science, none of whose principles has a deeper status than the Principle of Non-Contradiction, and many of which are obviously less firmly grounded. To opt out of a basic 'appearance' will not always entail silence or inaction. Appearances come at different levels of depth: by which we mean that the cost of doing without one will vary with the case, and must be individually scrutinized. We notice, for example, that none of the beliefs most central to ethics and politics proves as deeply grounded as the basic logical laws. To deny the prevalent belief in gods will lead to a certain loss of community: there will be a very real sense in which theist and atheist do not inhabit the same world or look at the same stars. But the gulf will not be totally unbridgeable. Similarly, to opt out of very basic communal ethical judgments will lead to a way of life that more normal humans may judge bestial or inhuman. A life of extreme intemperance does bring a communication problem with it, for 'the person who lives according to his impulses will not listen to an argument that dissuades him' (EN 1 i79b26~7); and, at the other end of the spectrum, the extreme ascetic also ceases to be one of us, 'for insensibility of this sort is not human.. .and if there should be someone to whom nothing is pleasant, he would be far from being a human being' (EN 1119a6—10). But the cost of asceticism is not the same as the cost of denying the Principle of Non-Contradiction; presumably this is a life that could be lived among us, though the liver would in significant ways fail to be one of us.
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life Furthermore, whereas the opponent of the Principle of Non-Contradiction could not find a place from which to argue with us, the opponent of a prevalent but less basic appearance can always try to show us (relying on the Principle) that some other, more basic appearances conflict with this one and ought to lead us to abandon it. For example, a feminist opponent of Aristotle's conservative view about the social role of women could try to show Aristotle that a progresssive position actually preserves certain deep human beliefs about the equal humanity of other human beings better than his own political theory does. If Aristotle agreed about the conflict, and agreed that these other beliefs were deeper (i.e. that the cost of giving them up would be greater, or one we are less inclined to pay), then we would expect him to change his view. The method does not make new discoveries, radical departures, or sharp changes of position impossible, either in science or in ethics.38 What it does do is to explain to us how any radical or new view must commend itself to our attention: by showing its relationship to our lived experience of the world and giving evidence of its ability to organize and articulate features of that experience. Sometimes it may remain unclear over a long period of time whether a bold hypothesis - including many of Plato's and some of Aristotle's own - has or has not successfully made this return, whether it is the human truth, or just empty words. (This is true in part because it frequently remains unclear which appearances should count for us as deep and regulative and which we may be willing to give up.) It can also remain unclear what form the return itself should take - i.e. whether, in a particular subject, we demand the systematic hierarchical grasp that goes with episteme, or whether we prefer, instead, a more elusive type of perception. In Chapter 10 we shall see Aristotle claim that practical wisdom is not episteme \ and we shall see how he argues, within the appearances, for this conclusion. In general, the role of the marks of Platonic techne, such as generality, precision, and commensurability, in the final result must be appropriate to the subject matter; and it is from the appearances themselves that the appropriate criteria must be elicited. The meta-view, like the content of the view, comes from our demands and our practices, and must commend itself as the sort of organization we can live with. IV The Platonist has charged the Aristotelian with philosophical laziness. We might now answer this charge in Aristotle's behalf by saying to him that his kind of hard work, struggling for an unconditional vantage point outside the appearances, is both futile and destructive: futile, because such a vantage point is unavailable, as such, to human inquiry; destructive, because the glory of the promised goal makes the humanly possible work look boring and cheap. We could be pursuing the study of ourselves and of our world in ethics, politics, biology, physical science. We could be investigating our human conceptions of place and time, our practices of explaining change, of counting, of individuating. The Platonist encourages us to neglect this work by giving us the idea that philosophy is a worthwhile enterprise only if it takes us away from the ' cave' and up into the sunlight.
Saving Aristotle's appearances
z5 3
The Platonist might now reply that the Aristotelian conception makes of philosophy a flat and unexciting activity, one that makes no distinctive addition to ordinary human life. It seems to destroy philosophy by depriving it of its claim to make decisive progress on our behalf. It is no longer clear why we are doing it, if we have no prospect of going 'outside the beaten path of human beings'. But Aristotle would surely not accept the charge that his conception makes philosophy something unimportant. First, he would insist on the good done by the negative and deflationary aspect of the return to appearances, an aspect that occupies a great part of his own wridng. The moment we begin to theorize we are, as Aristotle again and again illustrates, in acute danger of oversimplifying. His historical and critical chapters show the variety of the dangers: materialist reductionism in the philosophy of mind, mechanism in scientific explanation, dominant-end hedonism in ethics, Socratism in talk about language and definition. By returning us, in each case, to the ' appearances', he reminds us that our language and our ways of life are richer and more complex than much of philosophy acknowledges. Insofar as such oversimple theories were, and are, powerfully influential in human life, the return that blocks them can have a corresponding power. But this answer does not go deep enough to capture the full power of Aristotle's position. So far, it appears that appearance-saving has a point only because a certain tribe of strange professionals, call them philosophers, has somewhat arbitrarily decided to push for severity and simplicity, going beyond and doing violence to ordinary human ways. For the ordinary person in the agora, there is no need for Aristotelian philosophy, because this person has never been gripped by the other kind of philosophy. If philosophy is a neatly demarcated professional activity, appearance-saving would appear to have force only within that profession, and the rest of us can go about our business, knowing what we know. This is clearly not Aristotle's view. The Metaphysics begins, as we saw, with the claim that 'all human beings by nature reach out for understanding'. The discussion that follows these famous words traces the development of philosophy back to a natural inclination, on the part of all human beings, to sort out and interpret the world for themselves, making disdnctions, clarifying, finding explanations for that which seems strange or wonderful. Other creatures live by the impressions and impulses of the moment; human beings seek to comprehend and grasp the world under some general principles that will reveal an order in its multiplicity. Our natural desires will not be satisfied so long as something apparendy arbitrary eludes us. Philosophy grew up, in fact, as one expression of this hatred of being at a loss in the world: It is because of wonder that human beings undertake philosophy, both now and at its origins... The person who is at a loss and in a state of wonder thinks he fails to grasp something; this is why the lover of stories is in a sense a philosopher, for stories are composed out of wonders. (Metaph. 982b! 2-19)
Our encounter with the world is, he continues, rather like what happens when we watch a puppet show performed by mechanical marionettes, with no visible
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life human control: we wonder, and we look for an explanation for the apparently wondrous motion. There is a natural continuum between wonder and story-telling, between story-telling and theorizing: continually we seek to expand the comprehensiveness of our grasp. But if it is a universal human desire to grasp the world and make it comprehensible to reason, then it seems clear that oversimplification and reduction will be deep and ever-present dangers. In seeking to be at home, we may easily become strangers to our home as we experience it. In our anxiety to control and grasp the uncontrolled by techne, we may all too easily become distant from the lives that we originally wished to control. The theories that Aristotle attacks as over-simple are not all, or even for the most part, the work of narrow professional sects; many of them come from popular tradition and exercise a great hold over the popular imagination - even the imaginations of those who at the same time, in their daily life and speech, reveal a commitment to a more complicated world. Philosophy answers to a human demand, and the demand is such that we are easily led by our pursuit of it to become estranged from the beliefs that ground our daily lives. Aristotle (like the Heracl*tus of our epigraph)39 believes that most of us have, to one degree or another, through the grip of hedonism, materialism, mechanism, or some other simple picture, become strangers to some aspect of the life we live, the language we use. We need philosophy to show us the way back to the ordinary and to make it an object of interest and pleasure, rather than contempt and evasion. Sometimes the return encountered resistance; sometimes Aristotle's audience seems to have rebelled against his taste for the ordinary and the worldly, demanding instead the lofty and rarefied concerns to which the philosophical tradition had accustomed them. In the Parts of Animals (1.5), he addresses some students who had evidently protested against the study of animals and their form and matter, asking for something more sublime. He tells them that this reluctance is actually a kind of self-contempt: for they are, after all, creatures of flesh and blood themselves (PA 654327-31). That they need to be reminded of this fact is a sign of the depth of Platonism; or, rather, a sign that Platonism appeals to an already deep tendency in us towards shame at the messy, unclear stuff of which our humanity is made. We could generalize Aristotle's point by saying that the opponent of the return to appearances is likely to be a person not at peace with his humanity; and that this is an inner problem for that person, not a defect of the method. Some sorts of philosophizing have their origin in what Aristotle here calls 'childish disgust' (645a 16); to undo the edifices built by disgust requires, in turn, another kind of philosophy - much as friends who have become strangers or enemies need a mediator to effect a reconciliation. Aristotle has a further answer to the students, one that shows us how this therapeutic aim might be connected with positive benefits. He says that we experience joy and exhilaration whenever we discover order or structure in our world, no matter how apparently trivial the sphere of our investigation (PA 645a7~n). (This is, we remember, a philosopher who devoted years of his life
Saving Aristotle's appearances z 5 3 to the precise description of previously overlooked marine species, making a contribution to biology that went unmatched for centuries. This is also a moral philosopher who speaks with respect of the ability to tell a good joke at the right time, and calls jokes 'the movements of the character' (EN 1 i28ai 1). Many small animal structures elicited his delight.) Philosophy, inspired by wonder, takes us to the world and its ever more precise description. In so doing it reveals and makes explicit the order that is in the appearances: in our view of our natural surroundings, in our beliefs about the universe, in our political and moral lives. In this way it does not simply leave everything where it was: it pursues in a serious and thoroughgoing way the natural human demand for order and understanding. In Metaphysics iv.2, after insisting that the dialectician and the philosopher 4 range over the same subject matter', Aristotle draws a distinction. 'Dialectic makes conjectures about things concerning which the philosopher seeks understanding' (Metaph. 1004b22-6). The philosopher differs from the dialectician, and from the ordinary man as well, not so much in subject matter or even in desire. He differs primarily in the thoroughness and the dedication with which he presses, in each area, the human demand to see order and make distinctions. Empedocles claimed to be a god. Parmenides and Plato's Socrates compare themselves to initiates into a mystery religion. Aristotle's philosopher, by contrast, is what we might call the professional human being. He is the sort of person who, in ethics, gives us a clearer view of the target at which we were aiming all along (EN io94a2 3~4); who, in logic, describes explicitly the principles that we use in assessing one another's inferences. He is less distracted, more serious, less reluctant than the rest of us. For that reason he can help us to satisfy, appropriately, our natural desires. There may appear to be an ongoing tension between the therapeutic and the positive aims of the method of phainomena. It has sometimes been thought, in our own philosophical tradition, that the therapeutic task can be satisfactorily accomplished only by knocking away all order and structure; therefore one might suggest that Aristotle, whose work obviously presents us with a great deal of structure, cannot be seriously devoted to the human return of which he speaks. Think, for example, of the more purely negative imagery used by Wittgenstein in this well-known passage: Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand. {Philosophical
Investigations, 1 118)
This paragraph begins with the question we have all along been asking Aristotle. And both Aristotle and Wittgenstein could presumably agree on a part of the answer. Much of the importance of their ways of philosophizing comes from the destruction of philosophical illusion, the careful exploration of language that shows the structures of Platonism to be houses of cards. But the passage is one that could never have been written by Aristotle. For Wittgenstein's image of the
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life result (whether or not this is a reliable indication of his overall view) is a purely negative image. We are left with nothing ' interesting', only with bits of stone and rubble and with the ground to be swept clean of these. Aristotle would speak differently. When we knock down the houses of cards we are still left with a lot of order and structure - the order that is in our language and in the world around us as we see and experience it. The order that is in the digestive system of a crayfish; the structure of a well-told joke; the beauty of a close friend's actions and character. What is left would include houses; it would also include laboratories - structures used by human beings in their efforts to know the place where they live. We do not know this place just by living in it and using it; this is clear from our many acts of simplification, our fondness for falsifying theory. The place needs to be perspicuously mapped by serious researchers, so that we will not lose our way in it or from it. And this job is interesting, because human life is interesting, because jokes, and laws, and stars, and rocks, and inferences, and insects, and tragic and epic poems are all interesting and important. Aristotle's positive task is thoroughly connected with the negative one. Seeing clearly the order that is there helps us to overcome 'childish disgust', so that we will be content to live where we live, 'not making a sour face' (PA 645a24). On the other side, we will attend to this order more effectively if the illusory promise of a glorious Platonic order is explicitly demolished. The most serious obstacle to good philosophy is not ignorance, but bad philosophy, which captivates by its pleasing clarity: There are some people who put forth arguments that are both alien to the matter at hand and empty, and get away with it, because it seems to be the mark of a philosopher to say nothing at random but to use reasoned argument. (Some argue this way out of ignorance and some out of ambitious crookedness.) Even men of experience and practical capability are taken in by these people, who have no capacity for organized or practical thought; this happens to them through apaideusia. (EE mj&i—j) Aristotelian negative work, by removing imposture, makes it possible for the practical person to begin to get, and to appreciate, the positive paideia which he or she desires. Aristotle concludes his appeal to the biology students by telling a story.40 Some visitors, he tells them, once wanted to be introduced to Heracl*tus. When they arrived at his home,'they saw the great man sitting in the kitchen, warming himself by the stove. They hesitated. (Presumably they had expected to find him out contemplating the heavens, or lost in reflection - anything but this very ordinary activity.) He said to them, 'Come in. Don't be afraid. There are gods here too' (PA 6 4 5 ai 9 -23). Aristotelian philosophy, then, like (and as a part of) our human nature, exists in a continual oscillation between too much order and disorder, ambition and abandonment, excess and deficiency, the super-human and the merely animal. The good philosopher would be the one who manages humanly, guarding against these
Saving Aristotle's appearancesz53 dangers, to improvise the mean. (And 'that's a job, in every area'. 41 ) In his lost work On the Good, Aristotle is said to have written, 'You must remember that you are a human being: not only in living well, but also in doing philosophy.'42 Concerning which the ancient author who reports the sentence observes, 'Aristotle must have been a very balanced character.'43
9
Rational animals and the explanation of action
What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of man: not curiosities however, but rather observations on facts which no-one has doubted, and which have only gone unremarked because they are always before our eyes. Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics i 141
Our central question has been, how far and in what ways does (and should) the world impinge upon us as we attempt to live in a valuable way? How far are we creatures who, like plants, depend passively upon what is outside of us in the world of nature? How far are we purely active intellectual beings like the souls of Plato's middle dialogues? And what is, for a human being, the best (most praiseworthy) way to be? One of the things such questioning demands is, clearly, an account of human action. We need to consider how our various movements in the world are caused, if we are going to be able to say what sorts of causal relationships between world and agent diminish, or remove, the praiseworthiness of a life. Plato's thought about ethical self-sufficiency has relied implicitly on a picture of action. In the middle dialogues we are presented with a double story. On the one hand, there is the self-moving, purely active, self-sufficient intellect, generator of valuable acts; on the other, there are the bodily appetites, which are themselves passive and entirely unselective, simply pushed into existence by the world and pushing, in turn, the passive agent. The Phaedrus, as it suggested a new picture of value, suggested, along with it, a new picture of action. The causality of intellect was said to involve responsiveness and receptivity as well as pure activity; the causality of desire was both more active (selective) and less brutishly constraining. Aristotle, as I shall argue, develops and extends the suggestions of the Phaedrus concerning both value and action.1 He will argue for a picture of the causes of action that permits us to see our neediness vis-a-vis the world as not inimical to, but at the very heart of, our ethical value. But Aristotle pursues this ethical project in his own characteristic way, by looking beyond the ethical question narrowly construed to develop an account of movement and action in the animal kingdom as a whole. It is one of his complaints against his fellow philosophers that they isolate the human being too much in their studies, failing to link the study of the human with a comprehensive inquiry into the functioning of living beings in general. This leads, as we shall see, to various failures to preserve deeply shared appearances concerning our links with other forms of life. It is not surprising, 264
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then, that in pursuing his views on the topic of action we need to consult not only the relevant portions of the ethical treatises but also the two texts where he discusses the explanation of animal movement and action in a general way: the third book of De Anima, and a work entirely devoted to this question, the De Motu Animalium. Clearly there is a close connection between an account of action and the ethical assessment of persons and lives. We expect that, in deciding what to say about action, Aristotle will be influenced by the ethical implications of his account, its tendency to support or to undermine our evaluative practices. We would be surprised indeed if his account yielded the result that no human animal movement is caused in such a way as to meet our criteria for the ascription of praise and blame. The desire for a livable outcome will constrain - appropriately - his selections.2 But on the other hand an account of action is, he believes, committed as well to other appearances; it should bring our beliefs in other areas to bear on the finding of this human ethical starting-point. Specifically, we must search for a fit between our understanding of human action and our beliefs about the movements of living things in the universe as a whole. We should not cut off the human, with the result that we say about this case what is not in keeping with the whole range of our beliefs on the subject. When we turn to the De Anima and the De Motu, we discover, then, something that is very strange if we are used to Plato's ways of approaching the subject. Instead of Plato's moving accounts of human ethical dilemmas, we find a narrative whose leading characters are fish, birds, and insects as well as humans. Instead of what looks self-evidently important for us, we find what seems - and, we know, seemed to Aristotle's students - trivial and even disgusting. The inquiry into human action is carried out as a part of a larger inquiry into the movements of animals. Human action is very little singled out; instead we find a discussion of sweeping generality that ranges over the entire animal kingdom. It is this generality that we must seek to understand if we are to understand the distinctive contribution this account makes to ethics. The De Motu begins by telling us that we need to consider in general the common explanation {aitia) for moving with any movement whatever (698a4~7).3 The project is restricted explicitly to the movements of animals, implicitly to their movement from place to place. But the remaining subject matter is still oddly general and oddly heterogeneous. Under the rubric of the 'common' we are treated to a mixture of concerns which, from the point of view of a Platonic ethical orientation, and even from the point of view of ordinary belief, might at first seem anomalous. To put the issue succinctly, the 'common' aitia seems both too common and not common enough. Not common enough, because, instead of a single account of animal motion, what we seem to find is the juxtaposition of two quite different accounts: an account using the psychological language of perception, thought, and desire, and an account using the physiological language of tendons, sinews, and bones. These two accounts do not have anything obviously in common, and it is not even apparent how they are related. All too 'common',
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life because the project of giving a general account for all sorts of animal motions leads Aristotle to run together explananda which we might think a scientist should keep distinct: the purposive action of human beings, and animal motions such as the swimming of fish, the flying of birds. Any account that tries to take in all of this without spending a lot of time drawing relevant distinctions might turn out to be so4 common' as to be entirely lacking in content. Aristotle himself makes this warning: 'It is humorous to search for the common account (ton koinon logon),... which will be the proper account of nothing in the world, if one does not also search according to the peculiar and indivisible species, but abandons the search for such an account.'4 Does Aristotle escape his own strictures in this case (and in the similar case of De Anima H I . 9 - 1 1 ) and say something with serious content? Or can the De Motu be that very rare item, a humorous work of Aristotle?5 We must press, then, the following questions :6 (1) What is the force of Aristotle's claim that we ought to give a koine aitia for animal motion? And, more concretely, what is the force of the claim made in MA 6 that the common account will be one involving reference to the animal's desires and cognitive faculties? What other candidates for the explanation of animal motion does Aristotle intend to rule out here, and on what grounds? (2) What, more precisely, is this koine aitia? What type of explanation is it, and why is it supposed to be a good one? (3) What is the connection between this desire/cognition explanation and the physiological account of motion in De Motu Chapters 7-9? Do we have alternative answers to the same question here, or answers to different questions? (4) What sort of basis does this account provide for our practices of ethical assessment?
To pursue these questions we must first do some more historical work; for the force of Aristotle's position can best be grasped as a response to two over-simple philosophical accounts of action, one that attempts to preserve, against them, the complexity of ordinary beliefs on the subject. We shall, consequently, proceed towards Aristotle's account in Aristotelian fashion, considering the views of the 'many' and of the 'wise'. I Consider the following accounts of animal movement: A
He charged like a hill-bred lion, ravenous for meat, whose proud heart urges him to dare an attack on the flocks in a close-kept sheepfold. And even should he find herdsmen there watching over the sheep with spears and dogs, he will not think of turning back, empty, without attacking.
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B
Where has the poor man gone? N E O P T O L E M U S It's obvious to me. Because of his need for food he is dragging himself along his painful path, somewhere near here. For the story is that he leads that sort of life, hunting with his winged arrows, poor wretch. Nor does anyone come near him to treat his sickness.
C
Holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk... Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but they met danger face to face, and in one brief moment, at the summit of their glory, they were released, 1 not from fear, but from luck {tuche).
CHORUS
In each of these passages (selected more or less randomly, in that hundreds of others could have been used to make the same points) we are given not only a description of some animal movement, but also an aetiology of that movement. The speaker answers not only to the question, 'What did he (it, they) do?' but also to the question, 'Why did he (it, they) do it?' In A, the lion (to whom the human hero Sarpedon is being compared) attacks a sheepfold. He evidently does so because he has a very pressing need of food and he sees there what will satisfy that hunger. (Something similar is supposed to be true of Sarpedon: his heart urges him to attack because he needs or wants something (to get across the wall) and sees that attacking is a way to get that.) In B, what Philoctetes has done is to go away from his cave. Neoptolemus does not hesitate to make up an aetiology in terms of the man's desires and beliefs about the possibilities: he must need food, he has nobody to help him, so he (sees that he) has to go out and shoot it himself, painful though it is. C, though grander and apparently more complicated, has a similar structure. What the soldiers did was to stand their ground and fight bravely until death. Why did they do this? Pericles ascribes to them certain desires - for their own personal glory, for civic vengeance, for avoidance of dishonor - and certain beliefs (this is the most glorious of hazards, to flee would bring dishonor) which suffice, in his view, to explain their movements. The examples form a spectrum, from animal action through animal-like human action to rational virtuous human action. But in all we see the bare bones of a common structure of explanation. In however many ways the cases are distinct, they are alike in four salient points. (1) The motion of the animal(s) in each case is explained by ascribing to the animal(s) a certain complex of desires and beliefs or perceptions: he (it, they) wanted this, and believed (saw) that this was a way to the object desired. Humans and other animals move about from place to place because there are things that they want or need and things that they see or think that bear on how they are to get them. (This broad agreement in finding a common structure is, in fact, what the Homeric animal simile relies on: for this passage is about Sarpedon as much as about the lion, and Sarpedon is being said to be ' like' the lion concerning the reasons for his action.)
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life (2) The factors cited in the explanation are intentional: (a) the desires and beliefs (perceptions) are directed towards a goal, and (b) the explanation characterizes the goal as it is seen from the animal's point of view. (3) The desires and beliefs (perceptions) appear to have both a logical and a causal connection with the goal: logical, because we cannot give an account of what the desire (belief) is without mentioning the goal on which it is focused; causal, because they are seen as the things that make the action happen. (The lion's heart urges, Philoctetes goes this way 'in virtue of' or 'because of' his need for food.) (4) If the physiological equipment of the animal is mentioned in the context, it is not introduced in answer to the question, ' Why (on account of what) did it move?', but, at most, in answer to the question,' How did it move?' or perhaps, ' How (given that it had the desires and beliefs we have mentioned) was it able to move?' We see this particularly clearly in the Philoctetes example, where later passages dwell on the physiological difficulty involved in his movement and focus on the question: how, given the disability, does he manage to get to what he wants? But try to imagine an animal simile that says,' He charged like a hill-bred lion, who leaps because he has strong muscles and well-developed sinews...'; or an answer to the Chorus's question that goes, 4 It's clear to me that he has gone out because his spine is well-equipped to bend in such-and-such ways, and is connected in turn to the other joints...'; or a funeral oration that says, 'And so, because their gymnastic training had equipped them with firm muscles and because those muscles were firmly anchored to their bones, they did not weaken in the onslaught.' In all these cases (which are certainly not to be found in ordinary pre-philosophical discourse) we would know, once we recovered from the initial hilarity, that something was amiss. Something is parading as an explanation which, though not without its own interest, is not the sort of thing we are inclined to count as an explanation of movement. We would feel that we did not yet have an answer to our 'Why?' questions; and I think we would also feel that we did not yet know the real causes of this movement, what the factors were that really made this happen. On the other hand, the accounts produced by our speakers do strike us as satisfactory. Speaking in each case to a group of more or less ordinary people, these speakers seem to know the sort of thing they have to say in order to satisfy the hearer's demand for an explanation of what has occurred. Their accounts satisfy not so much because of their truth (for B and C, at least, are clearly conjectural) as because they have the right structure: this is the sort of account which, if true, would suffice as an explanation of the movement.8 All this, so far, is loose and general, as we might expect. But we also might expect that a Greek philosopher, setting to work on the explanation of animal movement, would set himself in some fruitful relation to these paradigms of explanation, drawing on them and attempting to elucidate their common structure. What happened in fifth- and early fourth-century philosophy was something altogether different. Aristotle is keenly aware of a complex philosophical heritage on the topic of animal motion and its explanation. This heritage confronted him with two prominent models of explanation, both of which - as
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he says and as we shall see — break sharply with the tradition of discourse about movement exemplified in our three passages; and both of which do so by misrepresenting in some way the relationship between active selectivity and passivity in animal movement. One model, provided by the influential tradition of materialistic natural science, replaced ordinary psychological explanation by physiological explanation, in a way that depicted the animal as a kind of puppet, simply pushed around by the causal forces of nature and contributing nothing to its movement from its own active selectivity. The other (Platonic) model, critical of this scientistic reductionism, restored some of the ordinary psychological categories and the idea that creatures act for reasons - but only in connection with the rational actions of human beings, and at the price of hyper-intellectualizing the explanation of these. If we study, somewhat schematically, this twofold background, we will be in a position to understand why it was philosophically revolutionary and important for Aristotle to lay such stress on what, from the point of view of Sophocles and Thucydides, might look like obvious truisms.9 II The natural science tradition before Aristotle devoted considerable attention to animal movement and its explanation. Aristotle reports that self-motion from place to place was standardly held to be an essential characteristic of the animal; its aetiology must therefore occupy a central place in any account of soul.10 But in keeping with the rest of their explanatory program these scientists offered as the aitia of animal movement an account that made reference only to the interactions of basic constituents of the animal's physiology, both with one another and with the environment. For example, Diogenes of Apollonia said that the soul of all animals was air, that air is what thought really is, and that air is what 'steers and rules' all things, including animals.11 According to Aristotle, he justified his claim that soul was air by pointing to air's lightness as a property that makes it particularly suitable for producing movement.12 Democritus explained movement by hypothesizing that the soul (assumed to be that which produces movement) is composed of spherical atoms, whose shape equips them to penetrate everywhere and thereby to impart movement to other things.13 In these and other similar cases, a demand for the explanation of animal movement is answered not with reference to desires, perceptions, and beliefs, but by mentioning the properties of some physiological entity (or entities) in virtue of which the entity is capable of imparting (causing) movement. The animal is pushed about by this entity, as the entity itself responds to pushes from the environment. These people are all offering a causal explanation of movement for which they claim a certain importance. What is not so clear is whether they are prepared to do away altogether with the more common explanatory framework or to reduce psychological explanations to physiological ones. The passages I have cited never explicitly insist that the question, 'Why did this animal move from A to BP' must be answered (by the scientist) only in materialistic terms; it is never said that the physiological account provides the real or genuine answer to the request for
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life explanation. But we can, I think, infer that this is the attitude of at least Diogenes and the Atomists. Diogenes, in fragment B4, argues directly from the premise that air is necessary for life and thought in animals to the conclusion that air is life and thought.14 This pattern of argument plainly does conflate the question,4 What is it?' with the question, 'What conditions are necessary in order for it to be?', and, similarly, the request for the explanation of certain events with a request for an account of the material necessary conditions for those events. If air-movement is shown to be necessary for thinking, thinking just is air-movement. This is a way of arguing that is typical of reductionist scientism in all ages, not least in contemporary neurobiology, which frequently infers from the necessity of certain brain-functions for certain cognitive activities that the cognitive activities just are these brain functions. There is an enduring temptation to think that our ordinary categories are, as Democritus puts it, 'by convention' only, and that we have gotten at the real or really scientific explanation of some phenomenon only when we have reached the basic building blocks of matter.15 It seems virtually certain that fifth-century science succumbed to this temptation, treating the animal as an assemblage of material bits that gets pushed (as a whole) by the reaction of some of its bits to other pushes - rather than as a creature that intentionally does things, actively and selectively influencing its own motion. But whatever the real position of these thinkers was, it is plain that Aristotle took them to be offering a replacement for the categories of ordinary discourse, and not simply a supplement. He frequently speaks of their neglect of other sorts of explanation, their belief that material explanation was all the explanation there was. 16 And in the passage in which he describes Democritus's view of animal movement, he says something revealing: ' In general it seems that it is not in this way that the soul moves the body, but through some sort of choice and thinking' (DA 4061^24-5). 1 7 This, of course, would be an objection to Democritus only if he is a reductionist of some sort about the explanation of purposive action. What is most relevant for our account of Aristotle's philosophical motivations, however, is that Aristotle plainly believes that this is an appropriate objection. At first sight this might look like a peculiar remark to make against the physiologist. For it is not as though this person has simply neglected choice and thought. Indeed one of the concerns of this tradition obviously is to give an account of thinking in physiological terms. What, then, can Aristotle mean by his 'not in this way, but through choice and thought'? He certainly does not explain himself in this passage. But his remark does lead us to notice certain peculiar results of the physiologist's project. First, intentionality has been altogether eliminated from scientific explanation. Ordinary explanations of movement referred to the animal's ways of focusing on some external object and described that object as the animal sees, thinks, desires it. The physiologist's account uses the viewpoint of the neutral observer to characterize the animal's physiological states; it picks these out, furthermore, in a way that does not involve any essential reference to an external goal, except perhaps as the stimulus that was the cause of the physiological state. The way in which perception and desire are object-directed, are ways of sorting out and focusing on pieces of the world, drops
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out. This leads to several further results. One is that we lose crucial distinctions among different internal animal activities. The different types of cognition perceiving, imagining, thinking - are all being cashed out in exactly similar physiological terms, as the motions of certain sorts of atoms; the same is true of different types of desiring, which we ordinarily distinguish by speaking of their objects and the ways in which they relate to their objects. Furthermore, perceiving and desiring are themselves very closely assimilated. Finally, all of these (formerly) intentional features of the animal are given the same treatment as non-intentional items like blood-circulation and digestion. It is difficult to see how such an account could make room for the richness that is in our ordinary talk, and easy to see that the atomist does not much care about preserving that richness. Beyond this - and this takes us to the heart, I think, of Aristotle's cryptic criticism - the non-intentional account of movement, by effacing these internal distinctions, also effaces certain distinctions among types of movement that are very important to our practices. Because the external object enters in only as a cause of certain changes, and not also as the object of intentional states and activities, we are left with no way of distinguishing the mechanical physiological response of the organism to a bodily stimulus (reflex motions, for example, or the ongoing processes of digestion) from activity which we generally characterize in intentional terms and assess accordingly. (It is revealing that Diogenes uses going to sleep as an example exactly on a par with movement from place to place.)18 We lose, in other words, the distinction between movement that has a 4 why' in terms of the creature's beliefs and desires and movement for which there is no 4 why', but only causal explanatory factors that do not function as reasons. But this is, in effect, to do away with the whole idea of chosen action as we ordinarily understand it - and, indeed, with the whole idea, too, of non-chosen intentional action. However much Democritus may use the words 'choice' and 'thinking', he has done away with distinctions crucial to our conception of these. His program would certainly lead to the breakdown of our ordinary distinction between causal explanation simpliciter and the giving of reasons, and to the breakdown of such legal and moral institutions and practices as rest upon this distinction. Moral education, for example, would come to look like simply a kind of doctoring or conditioning. The animal is just a plant, passive before the causal forces of the world. Aristotle seems right to point to the radical consequences of the scientist's apparently innocuous move. 19 The physiological model was influential, even among those who, in their discourse, continued to acknowledge a more complicated pattern of distinctions. Plato tells us that 'the many, groping in the dark', fastened on these scientific theories as the real explanations of movement.20 Since some of the most striking results of the physiological program were in the area of rational human action, it is not surprising that the first objections to it should have focused on this subject rather than on the broader question of intentionality in general. The brief remark of Aristotle which we have just discussed continues a tradition of criticism started by a famous passage in Plato's Phaedo. Socrates here takes the natural scientist to
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life task for offering an account of the disposition and interactions of his sinews and bones as the answer to his request for an aitia or explanation of why he is sitting in prison. He objects, clearly, not to the mention of these facts, which he allows to be true and even important, but to the scientist's claim that these facts explain his action, or answer a ' w h y ' (dia ti) question about it. ' T o call these items an aitia is too out of place.' The real explanation, he insists, is one that makes reference to deliberation and rational choice - in short, he says, to intellect (nous, 99A). This is the real explanatory factor (aition), and the bones and sinews enter in, properly, only as necessary conditions for the operation of this factor: 'that without which the aition would not be an aition' (99A4-5, 9 9 B 2 - 4 ) . 2 1 For it would be true to say that without these bodily parts thus disposed Socrates would not be able to do what seems best.22 Plato's criticism is not trivial. We have already seen how hard it is to remember that isolating the bodily condition of an activity does not necessarily amount to isolating that activity itself. But we must now attend carefully to the way in which his interesting criticism is made. Plato here offers us, apparently, a choice between two patterns of explanation: explanation by physiology and explanation by reason and intellect. Having rejected the former, we seem to have decided on the latter. And it is only actions that fit the latter, by which he means rational actions understood as the products of intellectual activity, that are said to be inadequately explained by the former. Nothing is said one way or the other about other sorts of intentional action; nothing is said about the failure of the physiological model to do justice to the intentionality of perception and desire.* Plato does not here explicitly say that a causal physiological account would be sufficient in the case of the non-rational intentional movement of animals. (Although I shall not grapple here with the complexities of the Timaeus account of explanation, I believe that it shows that he does in fact believe this.) But, by drawing the salient distinction where he does, and by failing to mention that there may be other distinctions and other faculties of the animal at least as relevant to our decision for or against the physiological model as intellect is, Plato encourages an intellectualistic reading of his objection.23 Such an intellectualist view would have a number of important consequences. First, it would confront us with a very sharp distinction between human beings and other animals. The motions of the latter would be assimilated to the movements of non-sentient, non-desiring entities and treated as reactions to a push from the environment. Second, it would force a sharp division between those human actions that are motivated by intellect or rational choice, and all other human actions. Again, the latter would be regarded as explicable by necessity alone. Third, we would lose our customary distinction between the movements of animals that are caused and explained by their desires and beliefs, and other movements such as the movements of the digestive system and reflex responses. * The Republic complicates this picture, of course, by introducing the middle part of the soul, whose relation to reason is more complex (cf. Ch. 5). Aristotle's criticisms do not, perhaps, take sufficient account of this development; but Plato's account of the middle part is cryptic, and it is not consistently invoked.
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We would lose that distinction because we would have lost the distinction between an external intentional object and an external item that functions as a cause without being an object. This reordering of our ordinary distinctions would, like the physiologist's, have serious consequences. It would lead to changes in our treatment of animals, and of our own animality.24 It would have consequences, as well, for moral training, where the stark division between intellectual judgment and brute reaction would lead in the direction of a division between teaching for the intellect and manipulation or conditioning for everything else. And in fact we are by now aware that the Plato of the Phaedo and the Republic is willing, even eager, to pay this price. We have seen in ethical contexts how he does in fact treat desires as brutish unselective reactions that push the creature around; the way in which, while denying to intellect any share in passivity, he starkly opposes its pure activity to the passivity of desire. We have seen that he does in fact draw from this picture its radical consequences for education. All of this confirms Aristotle's judgment that an account of action will have important implications for ethics, especially where questions of our vulnerability and passivity are concerned. And it prepares us to receive Aristotle's claim that all animal action is caused by desire as a claim that might have some serious content. Ill When Aristotle arrives on the philosophical scene, he is, then, confronted, on the one hand, by a model of explanation whose aitia is so 4 common' that it assimilates all intentional actions both to one another and to other cases of response to an external physical stimulus; on the other, with a model that is not 'common' enough to do justice to our beliefs about what we share with 4 the other animals', and about what links together different elements in our own behavior. With an eye to the appearances embodied in our literary examples, we could sum up the situation by saying that we so far lack a general notion of desiring or reaching out for an object - this being the feature with respect to which the movement of all three of our animals differs from a purely mechanical response to a push from the environment. The 'appearances' implicitly contain such a general conception, as a study of animal similes alone would show. But sometimes the absence of a single unifying term in the theoretical language can conduce to a disregard of such an implicit general notion; sometimes, in order to recover and protect what was all along implicit in the appearances, a philosopher will need to step in and create a term of art. Such a term can enable us to recognize the salient features of our antecedent conception and to defend it against superficially attractive philosophical rivals.25 To meet this need, Aristotle selects (or, very probably, invents) a word well suited to indicate the common feature shared by all cases of goal-directed animal movement: the word 'orexis'. Much work has been done on the meaning and origin of other Aristotelian additions to the philosophical language. But the extent to which this word is an item of his own creation goes widely unacknowledged. The word 'orexis' occurs, in pre-Aristotelian Greek, in only one alleged place:
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life in the dubious ethical fragments of Democritus.26 (I believe that this constitutes further evidence in favor of a post-Aristotelian redaction.) The word is altogether absent from the Platonic corpus (except the spurious and late Definitiones) and in general from every prose and poetic author. Similarly absent are 1 orekton' and ' orektikon (the object of orexis and the orectic element). The verb * oregesthaV does, of course, occur. But even in Plato (where it is very rare, occurring five times in the Laws and only seven times elsewhere27) it seems to retain its original sense of 'reach out for', * grasp at\ At the same time, there is no other word that performs the function for which Aristotle will use ' oregesthai\ the function of introducing a general notion of wanting or desiring. 'Epitbumia' and 'epithumein' (both of which occur regularly in fifth- and fourth-century authors) are closely linked with the bodily appetites; 'boulesthai' and 'boulesis' (again, both regular items from the late fifth century, though the latter is not terribly common) seem to be more closely linked with judging good and reasoning.28 It seems worthwhile, then, to examine more closely Aristotle's generic word of choice: its selection looks the more marked for being, apparently, innovative. It may shed some light on his 'common' explanatory project. The active verb 'orego'29 consistently, from Homer onwards, seems to mean 'stretch out', 'reach out'; it is transitive, and the context is usually one of extending one's hand to somebody or handing an object to somebody. The medio-passive forms have the closely related sense of 'reach out for', 'stretch (oneself) towards', 'grasp at', also 'aim at' or 'hit at'. At a certain point in the Attic use of the word (I have really found this to be clearly true only in certain authors, particularly Euripides and Thucydides), it is transferred to the inner psychological realm and is used in such a way that we could translate it as ' yearn for', 'long for'. 30 But there is no reason why we could not also continue to translate it in the original way and think of it as a metaphorical transferral from the external to the internal realm. For example, in Thucydides,' oregomenoi touprotos hekastosgignestbai9 and c toupleonos oregonto' can be rendered as 'each one reaching out (or: straining) to become first', and' they were grasping after more'. The same close association with ideas of (inner or psychological) reaching, striking, or grasping can be observed in Plato. In general we may say two things about this word: (i) It strongly implies directedness towards an object. (The verb occurs only with some sort of object.31) It connotes, then, in the inner realm, not a vague state of yearning or being-affected, but a focusing on something, a pointing towards something. (2) It is active more than passive: it is a going for, a reaching after (whether bodily or psychic), as opposed to a being-overwhelmed, or an empty being-in-need. Or rather, it indicates how wanting, which might be taken to be simply a form of passivity, is at the same time active: instead of pure passive being-affected, we have a complex responsiveness that receives from the world and in turn focuses itself outwards towards the world. To find an English translation that brings out these nuances is difficult. The modern German use of 'die Strebung' and 'das Streben' seems pretty good. English 'inclination' has the right directedness, but (compare Kant's use of 'Neigung') too much connotes
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passivity and being-affected. 'Need* and 'want* are too suggestive of an empty gap or a lack; they lack both the object-directedness and the activity involved in the Greek word. 'Desire* is more appropriate; at least it is clearly object-linked. But it is such an overused and therefore weak and unmarked word that it is very hard to see it as having any definite content or connotation. This is clearly not the case with Aristotle's new choice. In any case, once we recover a sense of the philosophical newness and strangeness of this word, we can begin to see, too, what content there might be to Aristotle's claims that houlesis, thumos, and epithumia are all forms of orexis and that some orexis is involved in every animal movement. He is saying, apparently, that they are all forms of object-directed, active inner reaching-out; and that this sort of reaching-out is common to the movements of both human and other animals. These claims are first made in De Anima 111.9, where Aristotle turns to the subject of explaining animal movement. He remarks that, as soon as we approach this topic, there is a pressing difficulty about what 'parts of the soul' we ought to recognize. Others, he says, have employed as the basis for their movementexplanations either a bipartite division into the rational and the irrational, or a tripartite division into the calculative, the spirited, and the appetitive. (Having focused on the physiologists in Book 1, he now appears to be preoccupied with varieties of Platonism.) Aristotle makes several objections to these as basic explanatory divisions of the soul for this purpose; but the one that will most immediately concern us is that these divisions fail to bring out the unity of the orektikon, an element of the animal that is not simply identical to any one of their other 'parts'. 'And indeed it is out of place to carve this up - for wish (houlesis) comes to be in the rational part, and appetite (epithumia) and emotion (thumos) in the irrational. And if the soul is tripartite, there will be orexis in every part.' In the next chapter he repeats his criticism of the Platonist part-divisions, insisting that they fail to indicate what is single and common among epithumia\ thumos, and houlesis: for orexis, he insists, is a single thing. Furthermore, by indicating that the rational part is a sufficient origin of movement, they fail to recognize that in every movement, including movement according to intellect, some sort of orexis is involved. ' Intellect does not impart movement without orexis, for houlesis is a type of orexis, and when the creature moves according to reasoning, it also moves according to houlesis.'32 What is the content of this assertion that orexis is involved in every action? Is it more than a verbal game, seeing that the Platonist conception of reason does not make it an inert contemplative faculty like Hume's reason? The contribution of Aristotle's innovation seems to be precisely that it does enable us to see and focus on what is common to all cases of animal movement, whereas the Platonist structure does not. Aristotle, by choosing this particular word, is saying that the single or common element which Plato fails to recognize is this element of reaching out for something in the world, grasping after some object in order to take it to oneself. Both human and other animals, in their rational and non-rational actions, have in common that they stretch forward, so to speak, towards pieces
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life of the world which they then attain or appropriate. Take a rock on the one hand, the unmoved mover on the other. Neither one moves or acts. What explains this difference between them and all animals? There is nothing for which either of them reaches out - they are complete as they are. Animals, on the other hand, are not self-sufficient, but the sorts of beings that go for items which they see and imagine - and not for any of these, but just for the ones towards which, having a need, they inwardly strain. Moving is seen to be intrinsically connected with a lack of self-sufficiency or completeness, and with the inner movement towards the world with which needy creatures are fortunately endowed. These are points about animals (both human and other) which the Platonist would do well to ponder.33 The invention of orexis accomplishes several purposes directly. First, it makes us focus on the intentionality of animal movement: both (a) its object-directedness and (b) its responsiveness not to the world simpliciter but to the animal's own view of it.34 Second, it demystifies rational action by asking us to see it as similar to other animal motions. Like them it is a selective reaching-out, and like them it goes after objects that are seen to have a certain relation to the animal's needs. Animals look less brudsh, humans more animal. This gives us some general sense of what Aristotle is up to. But now we must examine in detail the schema of explanation that he himself wishes to defend. IV Like the De Anima chapters,35 the De Motu begins (i.e. begins this part of its argument, in Chapter 6)36 by asking for the arche, the origin or starting-point, of animal movement. It then quickly asserts that animals all move things and are moved for the sake of something. The context makes it plain that what is in question is the explanation of purposive motion towards an intentional object, and not the more general teleological explanation of organic processes such as growth and nutrition. At this point, the more schemadc De Motu begins to provide a superior clarity. Aristotle lists five items which he calls ' movers of the animal': reasoning and phantasia and choice and wish (boulesis) and appetite (epithumia)}1 These, he continues, can all be subsumed under two heads: cognition (noesis)z* and desire (orexis). He justifies this (making his lists more complete at the same time) by arguing that phantasia and aisthesis ' hold the same place' as intellect, fill the same slot in an explanatory schema, in that all of them are concerned with drawing distinctions (are kritika39), while boulesis, thumos, and epithumia are all forms of orexis. We now have what the De Anima did not clearly supply: (genetically) two 'movers' of the animal, both of which will play a vital role in our explanations. The full story told by De Motu Chapters 6 and 7 seems to be as follows. Many objects in the world are presented to the animal by its cognitive faculties. Among these, some will be objects of some sort of orexis and some will not. Among the objects of orexis, in turn, some will turn out to be available or' possible': the animal
Rational animals and the explanation of action 314 will either see them or reason out some way to get them. The full answer to Chapter 7's question,' How does it happen that cognition is sometimes accompanied by action and sometimes not?' involves reference not only to the creature's orexeis but also to some cognitive activity that will supply the 4 premise'' of the possible'. The cognitive faculties perform, then, a double role. They present the goal to the animal's awareness initially, and they also perform work that gets the animal from orexis for the goal to action directed at a specific available object in the world. In many cases, these two operations will not be distinct: the animal's orexis may be aroused to activity just by seeing the very item for which it then goes. But in a large number of cases (including many non-human cases, like the 'drink' example), they will be.40 The final result is that orexis, as a 'mover', is absolutely central; but it does nothing alone, without the aid of perception or thought. Animals act in accordance with desire, but within limits imposed by the world of nature, as they see it. The 'good' and the 'possible' must come together in order for movement to result. What sort of explanation of animal movement is provided by this schema? Aristotle calls the cognitive and orectic factors ' movers'; he uses the active verb 'imparts motion' both for the activity of the object of desire and for the way in which the soul gets the animal going (kinei, 700b33, 700b 10). He says that animals move 'by' or 'in virtue of' desire and choice (dative, 70^4-6). He also speaks of certain things following thought 'out of necessity' (70^34-5). In the absence of an impediment, the thought (plus orexis) and the movement are 'nearly simultaneous' (702a 16). He sums up the situation by saying that the cognition 'prepares' the orexis, and orexis the pathe (702ai7-i9); and it all happens 'simultaneously' and 'rapidly' because of the way in which action and passion are naturally relative to one another.41 All these remarks certainly lead us to suppose that here, as in De Anima 111.10 (where orexis is 'that which imparts movement (to kinoun)', the psychological elements are regarded as efficient causes, as providing an explanation of the type ' from which comes the origin of motion'. It is rather difficult to flesh this out more fully. The background notion seems to be the general one of something that acts in such a way as to make something happen. This is certainly the suggestion contained in active verbs such as ' kineV and 'paraskeua%ei\ as well as in the dative and in the preposition 'dia\ 42 It looks, then, as if the orectic element and the cognitive element are, in each case, individually necessary and (in the absence of an impediment)43 jointly sufficient active causes of the movement. But I have already said that the connections among orexis, cognition, and motion are logical or conceptual. These conceptual links appear to be of two kinds. First, on the level of the particular desire or perception, each is identified, and individuated from other similar items, by reference to the goal or object in view. We cannot give an account of the orexis that leads to an action without mentioning the object for which it is an orexis. Second, on the general level, Aristotle ascribes the possession of orexis and phantasia (i.e. the interpretative, selective element in perception, in virtue of which things in the world 'appear' (phainetai) to the
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life creature as a certain sort of thing)* to a creature just because it is a creature that moves, as a part of unpacking the notion of what it means to be a moving creature. The general notion of orexis, if we have been correct so far, is the notion of something going on internally, an inclining towards or reaching for, such that in certain circ*mstances (in combination with the right sort of perception or thought) action will naturally and swiftly result. Both here and in the comparable passage in Metaphysics ix, Aristotle insists that movement will result, unless there is some impediment, if the animal really wants something in a decisive way (kurios oregetai).44 This seems to be at least in part a remark about what it means to have an orexis for something, about the conditions under which we are logically entitled to say of an animal that it has an orexis for something. If movement does not follow, and we cannot produce any impediment to explain the failure, we will be more likely to withdraw our crav/V-ascription than to regard it as a counter-example to an empirical thesis about the causes of action. In my earlier book on the De Motu I said more about these conceptual connections. I now believe, however, that I was in error to find Aristotle's assertion of both a logical and a causal connection a serious problem for his account. 45 1 suggested that desire and cognition, because of their close conceptual link with action, could not be genuine independent items in a causal explanation of that action. Whether Aristotle realized this or not (so I said), we would have to look for some other description, most likely a physiological one, under which desires and beliefs could be genuine causes. In fact, I speculated that Aristotle might actually be looking for such an independent physiological specification in the second half of Chapter 7. It is in fact, however, not possible to avoid the fact that the De Motu does assert that orexeis and cognitive activities, characterized as such and not in some other way, are causes of the movement. This is abundantly clear from the passages mentioned above. Below I shall present a different account of the second part of Chapter 7, and argue that the physiological story not only does not, but, given Aristotle's overall view of explanation, could not, provide a causal explanation of an action. What I want to say here is that it is also quite clear that this is no philosophical problem for Aristotle, who sees the philosophical issues more clearly than his reductionist opponents both ancient and contemporary.46 Suppose Aristotle does hold (what seems true) that our general conceptions of wanting, perceiving, and moving towards an object are logically interrelated: i.e. that any good story about our conception of one will make reference somehow to the others. Suppose he also holds, as he does and as seems true, that the account of each particular orexis and each particular phantasia or aisthesis or noesis will involve some essential reference to an object in the world towards which that activity is directed, characterizing it under some intentional description. Nonetheless, none * The standard translation of 'phantasia1 is 'imagination'. In my Aristotle's De Motu,, Essay 5 , 1 argue (on the basis of a study of all its uses, especially in connection with action) that this is inadequate, and that the best account requires linking it closely with the verb 'phainesthai\ 'appear', in the way I have indicated here.
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of this ought to prevent the orexis from having the particular sort of logical independence of the goal required in order for it to play its role as moving cause. For the occurrence of the desire is obviously (as Aristotle says, and as seems true) entirely independent of the attainment or realisation of the goal in action. Aristotle stresses this independence in several ways. (1) He says that desire must be combined in the right way with perception in order for movement to follow. (2) He insists that the cognitive faculties must come up with a possible and available route to the goal, or else motion will not follow. (3) He makes it clear that the desire must be not just one among others, but the one that the agent is acting on at the moment, the 'authoritative' one - however we understand this. (4) He points out that even when all this is true there may be .some impediment, in which case motion will not follow. Indeed, so far from being incompatible, the logical and the conceptual links are, in their explanatory role, closely related. It is just because a desire has the close conceptual relation it does to movement and action that it has the causal relation it does to action. It is because what this orexis is, is an orexis for object 0, and because what the creature sees before it is this same 0, that the movement towards 0 can be caused in the way it is by the orexis and the seeing. Suppose a dog goes after some meat. It is relevant to the causal explanation of its motion that its orexis be for meat (or this meat), and that what it sees before it, it also sees as meat. If it saw just a round object, or if its orexis were simply for exercise, the explanatory causal connections would be undermined. It is just because the goal 'vengeance on the enemies of Athens' figured as a part of the content of the orexis and the beliefs of the Athenian soldiers that these items could combine as they did to cause their action towards this goal. They might, for various reasons, not have acted, while having this same desire and belief: in this sense the desire and belief are independent of the goal-directed motion. But their close conceptual relatedness seems very relevant to their causal explanatory role. This, I think, is what Aristotle means when he insists that objects of desire cause motion precisely by being seen as the sort of thing that is desired, and when he insists that the ' premises' that are ' productive' of action must mention the goal both as desired and as available.47 All of this has an obvious bearing on what we shall want to say about the role of the physiological description. Aristotle, according to my early view, believes that there is, for each token occurrence of each of the psychological causal factors, some physiological realization that might conceivably be captured in a scientist's description. I still believe that there is some truth to this. For perception explicitly, for desire and phantasia implicitly, Aristotle seems to believe that such activity is always realised in or constituted by some matter or other. He even sometimes says that perceptual activities ' are' certain qualitative changes in the body - though it is likely, given his adherence to a principle resembling Leibniz's Law, that this 'is' indicates not identity, but the weaker relation of constitution or realization.48 In any case, there is no solid evidence that the correlations involved would be of sufficient regularity and precision for any interesting general theory useful to
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life the scientist to emerge. 49 1 recognized this, but then went on to say that we would have a genuine causal explanation only when the physiological factors had, in the particular case at least, been isolated. This now seems to me unsatisfactory in several ways. First, as we have just seen, the 4 only when' is not warranted: we have a perfectly good causal account already, on the psychological level. Second, if the 'two descriptions' are not 'related in any constant or predictable fashion', as I said, then the consequence seems to be that we will never have a genuine causal explanation: for explanations, for Aristotle, must be general in order to impart understanding.50 Third, it is not clear to me on what basis we could ever confidendy assert of some physiological condition that it was the bodily realization of this orexis or this phantasia. At most we could say that it was necessary for the occurrence of the orexis; and even to say this we would have to be in a position to generalize beyond the particular case. To say this, however, is to fall far short of what we need to say if the physical state is to be explanatory in any way; for example, it could look as if the activities of the heart, being necessary for all orexis, thereby constitute every orexis. But finally, and most important, the physiological feature, just because it lacks both the general and the particular conceptual link with the resulting action, links which the orexis does possess, seems to lack the sort of relevance and connectedness that we require of a cause when we say, 'This was the thing that made that happen.' In other words, to use Aristotle's terminology, it could not be a proper cause of the action. Take Aristotle's Physics 11.3 example of Polycl*tus the sculptor. We want to say that not just any attribute of Polycl*tus was what caused, brought about, prepared, that statue. It was the skill of sculpting (together, as Metaphysics ix makes clear, with the relevant desires). For it is that about Polycl*tus that has the appropriate conceptual connection with sculpting, although no doubt at every point he had many other properties, and at every point his body was in some physiological condition. There is an intimate connectedness (oikeiotes) to the one factor that is lacked by all the others, which seem, therefore, to be only incidentally connected with the action (Ph. i95b3~4; cf. Cat. 2b6ff.). This factor, then, seems to answer our 'why' question properly, and the others don't. It is a tricky matter to know how to unpack this further. Aristotle, in the Physics passage, says little more that would help us: only that' the man builds because (hoti) he is a builder', and that the builder builds' according to (kata)' the art of building. Connectedness and efficient causality are closely linked; but we hardly know whether we ought to say that factor A is properly the cause because of its connectedness with the goal, or that its relevance comes from the fact that it, and nothing else, operates as the cause; or perhaps both of these. Furthermore, it remains unclear exactly how this notion of efficient cause itself ought to be fleshed out. We might try a counterfactual analysis: desire D and belief B are the causes of action A and physiological conditions P are not, because we could always have P occurring without A; but D and B could not occur without A, unless there were some impediment. Some of Aristotle's talk of impediments in the De Motu
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suggests this; and there is strong confirming evidence from Metaphysics ix for connecting cause with necessity in this way. But to go any further here would require opening up all the knotted and difficult issues surrounding Aristotle's treatment of cause and necessity, issues that cannot possibly be adequately stated and resolved in this context.51 We must therefore simply let it remain indefinite exactly what more we are to make of this notion of causing. The central point is that, however it is to be construed, the physiological features are not causes of the animal's movement any more than Polycl*tus's having kidneys is the cause of his sculpting the statue. The proper place for a physiological description seems, in fact, to be what the Phaedo said it was. It provides an account of certain necessary conditions for the operation of the causal factors. The story of sinews and bones should be included not as an answer to the dia ti question ('IVhy did the dog go after the meat?'), but as the answer to a somewhat different question: 'How was it able to go after the meat?' In other words, in virtue of what equipment or organization did the desires and the cognitive activities have the power to set in motion this complex bodily creature?52 This division of questions need not presuppose or imply any form of dualism: it need not imply that orexeis are odd sorts of non-physical substances, or that the activities of the animal are not in every concrete case realized in some suitable matter or other. It simply recognizes that desires and cognitions, not physiological states, are the proper causes of the action, the salient items in its causal explanation, therefore the things that really can be said to impart motion or make things happen. And this is, in fact, exactly the way the De Motu and (with its forward reference to the De Motu) the De Anima divide up the question.53 The De Anima says precisely this: that the answer to the question, 'What imparts movement?' is 'Desire' — desire is the causal factor, the answer to our request for causal explanation. 'But as for the equipment in virtue of which desire imparts motion, that is something bodily' - and there follows a reference to the account of bones and joints in the De Motu. We could hardly ask for a clearer articulation of the Phaedo picture (without the Phaedo's overemphasis on intellect); but this statement of the issue in De Anima would help us little without the De Motu to make good on this promise. The De Motu, too, makes it very clear to us that two different questions are in view. Chapter 10 clearly distinguishes 'the account that gives the aitia of movement' from the specification of the bodily equipment that is necessary in order for orexis to function.54 And the transition to the discussion of physiology in Chapter 7, though less clearly worded, contains indications that it is an answer to the 'how' question about motion (70^7). The question how it is possible for movement to follow so rapidly follows upon the conclusion of the account of the 'origin' of motion, which answered our 'why' question (cf. dia at 7oia33ff.); it shows how the animal is well equipped for movement in the arrangement of its physiological features. There are certainly unclarities; and sometimes Aristotle's language is compressed and ambiguous in a way that does not satisfy us.55 But
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life the general picture that emerges seems to be a reasonable one. We can conclude that the De Motu provides a basically adequate and rather rich account of the causal and conceptual issues involved in the explanation of animal movement. V
The De Motu has offered us an account of what it, like the ethical works, calls hekousios or £ voluntary' movement. This account focuses, more clearly and plainly than the anthropocentric ethical works, on what is evidently there too a matter of central concern: to isolate and characterize a group of movements which, unlike various other movements of the animal - unlike, for example, the automatic movements of the digestive system and the reflex motions of certainly bodily parts56 - may be said to be the ones for which the animal itself is the explanation, the ones that are done 'through the creature itself', not through some external force that uses the creature as its instrument. This vague notion of the hekousion, a notion which is said in the ethical works to be of considerable importance for our practical attitudes and practices - we praise and blame when and only when the creature itself is the origin (arche) of the motion or action - has now been further unpacked. The hekousioi motions of animals are just those movements which are caused by their own orexeis and cognitive activities, their own reachings-out towards objects and their own views of those objects. This account of the hekousion seems to be what underlies and explains Aristotle's repeated and entirely consistent ascription of it to other animals and to human children, as well as to human adults: though these less developed creatures lack deliberation, choice, and general principles (cf. further below), they do have in common with human adults that their own view of the world and their own orexeis, rather than physical necessity, are the causes of their actions. Although this positive account of the hekousion does not appear at first glance to be the same as the accounts of the ethical works, which characterize the hekousion negatively by enumerating the circ*mstances that make an action akousios, 4 involuntary' or not appropriate for ethical assessment, we can see upon further inspection that the two accounts are extensionally equivalent and do in effect put forward, though with difference of emphasis, the same criteria.57 The De Motu account is the appropriate unpacking of the ethical works' notion of the agent's being the 'origin' (arche) and 'explanation' (aition- cf. n. 21) of the action. According to the De Motu, an action A is hekousios if and only if it is caused by the animal's own orexis for A and cognitive states concerning A. This would clearly suffice to exclude one group of akousioi actions given prominence in the ethical works, actions performed under external physical constraint. Would it also suffice to rule out the other main group of akousioi actions, namely actions done out of ignorance? At first we think not. Oedipus kills an old man at the crossroads. Clearly, as described, this killing is hekousios by De Motu criteria, caused by his own angry desire to remove this troublesome obstacle and his belief that hitting
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the man with a stick was a good way to bring this result about.58 There is the right sort of conceptual connectedness among the contents of desire, belief, and resulting action. But Oedipus's action was a parricide; and, as such, it looks like a paradigmatic case of an action done out of excusable ignorance, and therefore akousios. So we have an apparent extensional gap between the De Motu and the EN criteria. When we examine the matter further, however, we see that, described as parricide, this action is akousios by De Motu criteria as well. There is no orexis for parricide and no belief concerning parricide that can explain it. Parricide is not the intentional object of any of Oedipus's orectic or cognitive activities, so far as we know. The EN puts this point a little circuitously, by saying that the man acted * out of' ignorance, as if ignorance were the cause of the action. The issue to which this criterion points is more clearly seen in the light of the De Motifs way of putting things: the desires and beliefs of the agent are not directed at that action in such a way as to explain it.59 We have, then, not a single action, hekousion according to the De Motu and akousion according to the EN. We have, instead, two actions, a homicide and a parricide, the former being hekousion by both accounts, the latter akousion by both accounts. The alleged gap has been removed. We have spoken of ethical and legal assessment. This brings us to the question with which we began: what does this account of action, constructed with an eye to all our 'appearances' concerning the movements of animals, imply for the ethical problems in which we are interested? Does the combination of vulnerability and activity involved in Aristotelian orexis provide a good or a bad basis for our practices o f ' praising those who deserve praise and sowing blame for wrong-doers' ? We can focus the question by considering a recent objection to the De Motu/De Anima account, which has a clear connection with what Plato would have said had he had the opportunity to make a criticism of that account. The objection is that by giving this 'common' account of the hekousion and thereby admitting to this class many actions of animals and children, Aristotle has failed to provide an adequate basis for an account of ethical responsibility. Terence Irwin is the objector;60 he has developed this argument eloquently and at length. The conclusions of his very interesting study are as follows: (1) Aristotle has a 'simple theory' of responsibility (which Irwin finds in the EN and which is similar to what we have found in the De Motu), according to which an action is responsible if and only if it is caused by the creature's own beliefs and desires, functioning as reasons. This view allows the actions of children and animals to count as responsible. (2) But Aristotle also has a 'complex theory' of responsibility (found in other parts of the ethical works) that sets tougher conditions: an action is responsible if and only if it is the voluntary action of a creature capable of effective deliberation, or prohairesis.61 (Much of Irwin's article is devoted to a fruitful exploration of that notion, and I shall not attempt to summarize those results here.) The 'complex theory', however, implies that the actions of children and animals
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life are not responsible. Irwin believes that the complex theory is superior to the simple theory, in that it provides a more adequate basis for our ethical attitudes and practices. Irwin and I can agree, I believe, more or less, about what Aristotle actually says. We can agree, that is, that there is in Aristotle's text a distinction between hekousioi movements and other movements that is not the same, either extensionally or in account, as the distinction, also present in his text, between actions done by agents capable of prohairesis and actions done by agents not capable of prohairesis. We can agree that both of these distinctions are connected by Aristotle in one way or another with the appropriateness of praise and blame. We can also agree that the two distinctions have different results for the classification of many actions. In particular, we agree that the texts clearly deny deliberation and choice to animals and children, but consistently ascribe hekousios action to them.62 But here, I believe, our stories will diverge. Irwin believes that the two distinctions are alternative attempts to capture a single notion, the notion of moral responsibility; that there is only one ethically interesting distinction here and that Aristotle ought to have employed only a single contrast, choosing between these two ways of giving an account of it. Irwin clearly believes that Aristotle ought to have opted for the 'complex theory', with the result that animal and child actions will be classified simply as non-responsible acts. He tells us that the' simple theory' is 'dangerous' 63 in its extension of the voluntary (construed as the responsible) to children and animals; such an extension seems reasonable only because the definition of the hekousion in the EN fails, through oversight, to rule it out. The purpose of a distinction like this, Irwin argues, is to justify our ethical practices and attitudes; but no justification can be found for treating animals and children like responsible agents. Now Irwin is clearly aware that for Aristotle praise and blame come in several varieties. He produces and stresses the evidence that Aristotle believes it to be inappropriate to speak of flourishing living (eudaimonia) or of excellence of character, when praising a creature who lacks the capacity for deliberation and choice, therefore when dealing with an animal or a child. As both Irwin and I can agree, Aristotle nowhere hesitates to say that the most serious sorts of ethical assessments we make, those having to do with judgments of character and of overall goodness of life, are appropriately made only of adults who have formed a character and chosen a way of life, who are capable ofprohairesis, i.e. deliberation concerning their ultimate ends or values. And yet Aristotle plainly does also say that praise and blame of some sort, and some weaker ethical attitudes, are appropriate so long as the action satisfies certain weaker conditions. This is the heart of the issue: for in Irwin's view nothing short of full adult prohairesis ever could justify any of these attitudes and practices. If we do apply praise to a child or an animal, he thinks, this can be nothing more than the deploying of a kind of causal force directed at manipulating behavior; and this has very little to do with real praise.64 Irwin's is an admirable and serious ethical view. And although it is clearly
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Kantian in origin, it corresponds to much in Plato's account of action, as we have sketched it. For Plato, too, clearly thinks that there are two choices only: brutish necessity on the one hand, on the other the purely unaffected self-moving causality of reason. Serious ethical assessments require the capability for intellectual causality; the quickest way to speak of a human being as beyond the pale of ethical assessment is to say that that person does things the way an animal does. And for such people external manipulation is the only sort of training there is. To be passive to natural causality is to be an unselective object, without any active share in choosing the good. What I now want to argue is that Aristotle's 'common' account offers a serious ethical alternative to this serious view, an alternative that we cannot see or properly appreciate if we demand of Aristotle that he opt for the serious view. To answer Irwin on Aristotle will help us to appreciate Aristotle's own answer to Plato. Aristotle can agree with Irwin (as I believe he does) that certain very high standards must be met in order to justify the most serious of our ethical judgments of persons. And yet, compatibly with this, he can continue to insist (as he plainly does) on the ethical relevance of the different distinction which we have been exploring. The two distinctions seem to be put forward not (what Irwin assumes) as rival accounts of a single notion, but as accounts of two related notions that have complementary roles to play in his ethical theory. Some reasons for keeping both distinctions begin to emerge if we consider how an account of moral development and training might go. On Irwin's view there is at some point in the development of a child a sudden and mysterious shift. From being the object of a process of behavioral conditioning to which he or she actively contributes little or nothing, the child becomes an adult capable of prohairesis, that is, capable of deliberation about values, capable of altering and criticizing his or her own desires. We are not given any account of what, in the child, makes this development possible, or indeed of how an educator might help to bring it about. For Aristotle, centrally concerned as he is with education, and believing, as he does, that the main job of politics is to educate children in such a way that they will become capable of leading good lives according to their own choice, this result would be very unfortunate. But because he retains his 'simple theory' as well as his 'complex theory', he can present a plausible and interesting answer to these questions. The 'common account' (a phrase that I prefer to Irwin's ' simple theory' for several obvious reasons) tells us that we begin the educational process not with a creature who is simply there to be causally affected and manipulated, but with a creature that responds selectively to its world via cognition and orexis, and whose movements are explained by its own view of things, its own reachings-out for things as it views them. The 'common account' of the hekousion is not meant to be a rival to the account of deliberate choice: it is the account of the animal basis for certain ethical attitudes and practices that are central in the development of an animal creature towards deliberate choice. Because we are dealing with a selective creature who interprets, reaches out, and acts accordingly - because from the very beginning
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life there is a distinction between animal movements that are merely externally caused and movements that are caused by the creature's own point of view - we can embark on a program of habituation and training that is not simply a mindless type of behavioral manipulation. Praise and blame are from the beginning not just pushes, but appropriate modes of communication to an intelligent creature who acts in accordance with its own view of the good. They are attempts to persuade that creature to modify, actively, its view of the good, to reach out for more appropriate objects. If we do not take Irwin's very pessimistic view of animals and children, we do not need to despise the 'simple' hekousion: it is the necessary basis for more complicated developments ahead. And if we think of what actually happens when one educates a child, Aristotle's insistence on the centrality of intentionality and selective attention seems far more empirically right than Irwin's behaviorist picture. It offers us an attractive account of the natural animal basis for the development of moral character.65 In the ethical works Aristotle goes one step further. We can say not only that a study of our beliefs about orexis reveals its intentionality and selectivity; we can also say that the practices of education and exhortation in which we engage would be unintelligible if orexis were, as Plato (and Irwin), say, purely mindless: The digestive does not partake in reason in any way, but the appetitive and in general the desiderative (iorektikon) partake of it in a certain way, inasmuch as they are attentive and obedient to it... That the irrational is persuaded in a way by reason is indicated by the practice of giving advice and by all reproof and exhortation. And if we are to say that this element, too, has reason, we must say that there are two sorts of having reason: one being to have it strictly and internally to itself, the other being to have something that is like that which listens to a parent. (EN iioibz^-iio^a.y, cf. EE lziybzjfi.)
The existence and the efficacy of certain ethical practices shows that the appetites cannot be as simple and brutish as Plato has alleged, mere pushes responding to other pushes, like the movements of the digestive system. We give advice, injunction, and training to people with respect to appetitive pursuits as well as those that involve the pure intellect. We train children to develop appropriate desires for appropriate sorts of gratification, not by brute suppression of their push towards these activities, but by appealing to them through discourse and motivational interaction to modify their selections. Then there must be a kind of reasonableness to the appetitive forces themselves - something like a listening attentively and responsively to parental injunction. The intentional selectivity of appetite shows us how it can be engaged for positive support in the search for the good. We might say that it is the Plato/Irwin view that fails to justify and give point to the ethical practices in which we actually engage; whereas Aristotle's appears to fit them well. What we could now do at greater length would be to show how a non-behaviorist account of habituation, which stresses object-relations and selective attention, could chart the child's gradual development from the simple hekousion to complex prohairesis. The Politics provides much of the material for such an account. We
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shall turn shortly to the job of characterizing the nature and structure of Aristotelian deliberation; so we shall not set out the developmental picture in detail.68 The general point is, however, clear: that Aristotle's complex ethical views need not be seen as at odds with his account of 'voluntary' animal movement in the De Motu, because it is a part of his ethical view that our shared animal nature is the ground of our ethical development. It is our nature to be animal, the sort of animal that is rational. If we do not give a debased account of the animal or a puffed-up account of the rational, we will be in a position to see how well suited the one is to contribute to the flourishing of th^ other. This, like much Aristotelian argument inside the appearances, may seem insufficient. For Plato, surely, this description of practices that in fact rest upon a distinction between intentional and mechanical causality would not go far towards answering the important question, namely, whether those practices are reallyjustified by that distinction. (And this is, of course, the question that would be pressed against Aristotle by Irwin's Kantian view as well.) Just because we believe that the distinction justifies the practices, this does not show that they really are justified by so little. And Plato is prepared to argue that they are not. As the good judge, the person not deluded by human desire, can see, a purely active causal element, altogether 'unmixed', 'unaffected', is necessary to make our lives worth living, more than brutish. Aristotle will have several replies to this challenge. First, he has already called into question the distinction between what we all believe and what is really so. We have no access to any truth beyond the deepest and most pervasive appearances. So if his account has succeeded in correctly articulating those appearances, it will have the strongest claim to be the truth. In the strongest sense of justification available within the Aristotelian method, these practices have now been justified by Aristotle's account of motion: that is, they have been shown to be internally in order, to fit with the other things we believe, do, and say. It is not even clear, furthermore, from what vantage point the Platonist can articulate his challenge. Suspending, as he asks us to do, distinctions and beliefs that are so fundamental to the daily conduct of our lives, he must manage, nonetheless, to motivate the challenge and to make it intelligible within human experience. In posing questions, he must not tacitly trade on the very practices and beliefs he questions; he must, then, put himself outside all relevant commitments and judgments concerning animality, causality, motion. But, on the other hand, he must speak from a position that does not 'stand so far outside' that we will not recognize him as one of us or care about what he says. Even supposing that he does find an appropriate place from which to address us, and supposing that it is a place in which we recognize him as among us, there is still, furthermore, a deep difficulty about the unmixed and unaffected causal element to which he alludes. If such an element is not familiar to us from our experience, if all our experience of causality and motion is of an impure sort, mixing passivity with activity, then Plato's talk of nousmxy fall victim to the same criticism
2 5 o Aristotle:
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that Aristotle has levelled against his talk of forms (see Ch. 8 above): that it is insufficiently rooted in experience even to be coherent talk. But since our experience of our own agency is a highly various and variable matter, and since it is not unlikely that some persons in Aristotle's audience would endorse the Platonic description of a split between nous and brute necessity as a correct description of experience, Aristotle cannot simply rely on this sort of argument. And implicit in his account of orexis is a further line of defense. If we think of his account in connection with the Phaedrus, we can suggest that the hard, impassive nous of the Phaedo is neither necessary nor sufficient for true insight and correct choice. Not necessary, because insight can be reached, as the Phaedrus shows and as Aristotle will also show (cf. Ch. 10) through a responsive interaction with the external; not sufficient, because this element lacks the sort of openness and receptivity that seems to be requisite for the best and highest sort of insight. Without being-affected, as Aristotle explicitly reminds us, there will be cleverness and even contemplative wisdom, but not, for example, gentleness, or courage, or love - praiseworthy elements of the person without which a human life would not be a good one (EE i22oau-i3). Far from being a way of securing our values and our praiseworthiness, Plato's strategy actually deprives us of many praiseworthy ways of moving, acting, and being, narrowing the ways in which we can be good. (We shall investigate this response in more detail in Chapter 10.) In short, Aristotle will be ready to claim that a correct and duly subtle articulation of the appearances concerning action will remove the motivation for Plato's strategy, showing that what we want to secure can be not only secured, but better and more fully secured, in his account of action and its causes. In concluding, we may now return to the appearances with which we began, and ask how the Aristotelian account has preserved them. Let us, then, allow Pericles to conclude his funeral oration in the following way: You must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes on her from day to day, until love of her fills your hearts. And then, when all her greatness breaks in upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage and knowledge of practical necessities and a sense of shame in action that men were enabled to win all this And judging that the good human life is the free life, and the free life the courageous life, do not decline the dangers of war. For this is the way animals move forward to motion and to action: the immediate cause of motion is desire, and this comes into being either through perception or through imagining and thinking. And with creatures that reach out for action, it is sometimes through appetite or emotion and sometimes through rational wish that they create or act.67
What would we think of the author of such a conclusion? And what would we take to be his or her motives in so concluding? We would think of him or her, I imagine, as, first of all, a person determined to deflate the pretensions of the intellect: or rather of any view of human action and human rationality that would cut the human being off from its membership in a larger world of nature. This is something implicit in the first sentences of Pericles' conclusion, with their
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emphasis on the role of perception and love in motivating acdon; but the last (grafted) sentence, which makes their role explicit, helps to prevent certain sorts of misreading. We would think of this person as someone anxious to stress, on the other hand, the richness and complexity of animal action in the world of nature, refusing to yield to any scientific pressures to see it as a mindless and mechanical matter. Human action and the human being are placed squarely within nature; the human being is taken to be a creature of love and desire, even in his or her rational action. But desire is not something altogether brutish: it involves selective focusing upon objects in the world and an equally selective set of responses to that focusing. Finally, the speaker would be a person who was eager (as both Thucydides and Aristotle usually are) to stress the lack of self-sufficiency that characterizes all animal lives, including our own. Neither inert objects nor perfected gods, neither simply pushed around from without or spontaneously self-moving, we all reach out, being incomplete, for things in the world. That is the way our movements are caused.68
10
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I was just conscious, vaguely, of being on the track of a law, a law that would fit, that would strike me as governing the delicate phenomena delicate though so marked - that my imagination found itself playing with. A part of the amusem*nt they yielded came, I daresay, from my exaggerating them - grouping them into a larger mystery (and thereby a larger 'law') than the facts, as observed, yet warranted; but that is the common fault of minds for which the vision of life is an obsession. I should certainly never again, on the spot, quite hang together, even though it wasn't really that I hadn't three times her method. What I too fatally lacked was her tone. Henry James, The Sacred Fount, Chapters 1 , 1 4
Aristotle says two anti-Platonic things about practical deliberation. First, that it is not and cannot be scientific:* 'That practical wisdom is not scientific understanding (episteme) is obvious' (EN 114Z2U5-4).1 Second, that the appropriate criterion of correct choice is a thoroughly human being, the person of practical wisdom. This person does not attempt to take up a stand outside of the conditions of human life, but bases his or her judgment on long and broad experience of these conditions. These two features of Aristotle's view are connected, clearly: for the reason why good deliberation is not scientific is that this is not the way this model good judge goes about deliberating; and the reason why this judge is normative for correct choice is that his procedures and methods, rather than those of a more ' scientific' judge, appear the most adequate to the subject matter. Both features are connected, as well, with Aristotle's defense of an anti-Platonic conception of the good human life. The decision that practical wisdom is not a techne or episteme2 and that the best judge is one who does not use a techne both supports and is supported by the view that the best life is more vulnerable to * When I speak o f ' science' in this chapter, I do not ignore the fact that some technai were accorded that status even without measurement - compare my account of Protagoras in Ch. 4. Aristotle himself recognizes the existence of 4 stochastic' arts - e.g. medicine, navigation - that are similar to (his account of) ethics in their concern for the particular. But when he denies that ethics can be an episteme he is not, I believe, thinking of these examples, but, instead, of Plato's ethical episteme and also of his own (similar) technical notion of episteme as a deductive system concerned throughout with universals. His own account of ethics, being a systematic ordering of appearances, has just about as much claim to techne status as does Protagoras's proposal; what he means is, that it is not techne or episteme in the sense demanded by either the Republic or the Posterior Analytics.
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ungoverned tuche, more open and less ambitious for control, than Plato said it was.* (These apparent circularities in Aristotle's account will concern us towards the end of this chapter.) Before we move on to the concrete investigation of Aristotle's views about tuche and the good life, we need, then, to look closely at his non-scientific conception of the procedures by which good judgments of value are reached. If we are going to understand on what grounds he refuses to 4 save' our lives from certain incursions of tuche, we must understand his refusal of the Platonic aspiration to make ethics into a techne. This chapter will, then, be the Aristotelian counterpart of Chapters 4 and 5, showing how an epistemology of value and an account of the vulnerability of the valuable things go hand in hand. It will ask who the person of practical wisdom is and how he deliberates, how the Platonic aspiration to universality, precision, and stable control is met and criticized in Aristotle's more 4 yielding' and flexible conception of responsive perception. We shall begin with an examination of Aristotle's claims that practical deliberation must be anthropocentric, concerning itself with the human good rather than with the good simpliciter. Next we shall look at Aristotle's attack on the notion that the major human values are commensurable by a single standard. We shall then give an account of the interplay of universal rule and particular perception in Aristotelian deliberation. Finally we shall examine the role of passional response in good deliberation, showing that the person of practical wisdom both values and allows himself to be guided by these (allegedly) unreliable features of his human makeup. This will give us the materials to put together, finally, a picture of the sort of deliberation that Aristotle finds most appropriate and relevant to our human lives. I The Platonic aspiration to an external 'god's-eye' standpoint has already been criticized in our account of the method of appearances (Ch. 8). Aristotle has defended the view that the internal truth, truth in the appearances, is all we have to deal with; anything that purports to be more is actually less, or nothing. The standpoint of perfection, which purports to survey all lives neutrally and coolly from a viewpoint outside of any particular life, stands accused already of failure of reference: for in removing itself from all worldly experience it appears to remove itself at the same time from the bases for discourse about the world. Our question about the good life must, like any question whatever, be asked and answered within the appearances. But ethics is anthropocentric in a stronger sense as well. When we ask about motion or time or place, we begin and end within experience of these items: we say only what has, through experience, entered into the discourse of our group. * By 'Plato* here I mean the dialogues of the 'middle period' and not the Phaedrus (or Laws or Statesman). Aristotle's writing about tuche is a response to these works and these views; he shows little concern with Plato's later dialogues, possibly as we have suggested, because many of his criticisms antedate them and they are composed in response to these criticisms. On Aristotle's relationship to the arguments of the Phaedrus, see this chapter, §iv and Chapter 12, pp. 368-71.
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life But we may still legitimately aspire to arrive at a unified account of motion or of time or place for the entire universe within which we live and have our experience. The Physics does not give one account of human time, another account of time for shellfish, another of time for the heavenly spheres.3 Animals move in different ways; but there is also a general overarching account of motion in the universe, which has serious content. With the good, things are otherwise. It would in principle be available to Aristotle to attempt a unified account of The Good Life for all beings in the universe, ranking and ordering them in a non-species-relative way. He is familiar enough with projects of this type - above all, with Platonic attempts to discover and articulate an altogether non-contextrelative notion of goodness, making it the subject matter of a single science or episteme. But he devotes considerable space to the criticism of this project - a criticism that is all the more marked for its being, as he acknowledges, personally difficult: This inquiry is an uphill task, since men who are dear to us have introduced the Forms. But it would seem to be better, in fact to be necessary, to uproot even what is one's own for the sake of preserving the truth - both as a general principle and because we are philosophers. For when both the people and the truth are dear to us, it is fitting to put the truth first. (EN 1096a! 2-17) Aristotle argues, first, that our notion of goodness falls short of the unity required for the establishment of a single science, since ' g o o d ' has application to items belonging in different logical categories.4 In each case its presence commends the item in question; but we have no reason to think that it singles out a single common nature across all the disparate items. This argument is interesting and deep. We shall not, however, pursue it further here, since the items in which we are most interested - human and other animate lives - presumably are logically hom*ogeneous; they might, then, give rise to a Platonic science even if this argument should be accepted. What is of most interest to us, then, is that Aristotle emphatically asserts that the goodness of lives is, and must be, a species-relative matter. 4 The good is not single for all animals, but is different in the case of each', he writes in Nicomachean Ethics vi, contrasting practical value, in this respect, with the theoretical study of nature (114ia3 1—2). Accordingly, all three ethical works announce that their subject matter is the human good, or the good life for a human being. 'We must speak about the good, and about what is good not simpliciter, but for us. Not, therefore, about the divine good, for another discourse and another inquiry deals with this' (MM ii82b3~5). The Nicomachean discussion of the good life begins with an account of the specific and characteristic functioning of the human being, and, in effect, restricts its search for good functioning for us to a search for the excellent performance of these characteristic functions.5 But why should this be so? First of all, Aristotle emphasizes repeatedly that the goal of his ethical discourse is not theoretical but practical. It follows from this that there is no point to talking about the good life in an ethical inquiry insofar as this life is not practically
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attainable by beings with our capabilities.6 The life of a divine being might be ever so admirable; but the study of this life, insofar as it lies beyond our capabilities, is not pertinent to the practical aims of ethics.7 Then too, the life we choose must be one that is possible for us in a different and stronger sense. It must be a life that we, as we deliberate, can choose for ourselves as a life that is really a life for us, a life in which there will be enough of what makes us the beings we are for us to be said to survive in such a life. Therefore, at the very minimum, it must be a life that a human being can live, not one which failed to include something without which we think no characteristically human life would be there. We begin an ethical treatise by looking at the characteristic functioning of humans - both its shared and its distinctive elements — because we want a life which includes whatever it is that makes us us.8 For example, we might attempt to endorse a mindless hedonism, 'choosing the life of dumb grazing animals' (EN 1095^9—20); such a life would be possible for us in the first sense. But if we are brought to realize the central importance of practical reason in our conception of characteristic human functioning, we will realize, Aristotle thinks, that no life without this element would be, for us, an acceptable choice. (We shall see in Chapter 12 the role played by this sort of consideration in arguments about politics and friendship.) The beginning of the ' human function argument' makes a useful analogy to the crafts, whose point is as follows. The understanding of good shoemaking or lyre-playing must begin from an understanding of what those functions are. It could not, logically, turn out that the function of the good shoemaker was to play the lyre: good functioning for any craft practitioner must remain within the boundaries of what that activity, in its nature, is. In the same way, it could not, logically, turn out that the best life for a human being was the good living of a life characteristic of ants; that life would contain certain features that human life does not contain, and it would lack certain features that we regard as essential to properly human life. This sort of consideration leads us to the conclusion that a search for the good life for any being 0 must begin with an account of the essential ingredients of an O-ish life and O-ish activity - those features without which we will not be willing to count a life as O-ish at all. And if the essential features of lives are not the same across the species, as it looks evident to Aristotle that they are not, then the search for the good life must be a species-relative, rather than a general search. I cannot choose for myself the good life of an ant, a lion, a god. Closely connected with the argument is a further consideration. The things that are good and valuable may not be so relatively to all imaginable ways and conditions of life. The good of some genuine values may be context-relative and not any the less good for that. Plato, as we saw in Chapter 5, is committed to the idea that what is truly and intrinsically valuable is so always and from a perspective totally severed from particular context; if a value is only species- or context-relative, this disqualifies it from being true intrinsic value. But Aristotle, as we shall see in detail in Chapter 11, questions this notion. Already in his attack
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life upon the singleness of the Platonic Good, he remarks that' it is not any the more good for being eternal, any more than the longer-enduring item is whiter than the transient one* (io96b3~-4). In the same way, it may turn out that what is good only relatively to the contingent conditions of a certain way of life may be no less genuinely good on account of that4 limitation'; it may even turn out (cf. Ch. II, §vi) that there is no ethical value that is not in this sense context-relative.9 Aristotle urges that this question cannot be settled in advance, but must be discovered through a deeper understanding of the shared and non-shared features of human life. II An anthropocentric ethics could still be scientific. The demands of Platonic techne for generality and commensurability could, at least arguably, be met in an account of value that looked for the best and most valuable life for the sort of being we are. The Protagoras saw Socrates arguing that a techne in which all values were commensurable on a single quantitative scale was still a way of saving the lives of human beings. Diotima claimed that the ascent towards a general understanding of beauty, which denies qualitative distinctions in favor of quantitative measuring, the uniqueness of the individual in favor of a grasp of the general, would be the only way of making life 'livable for a human being'. We saw that in both cases questions of identity were indeed raised by the proposed progress; but it was not self-evident that the answer to these questions ruled out the Platonic life as a life for us. Aristotle rejects both of these salient features of Plato's scientific scheme for ethics. He argues that the values that are constitutive of a good human life are plural and incommensurable; and that a perception of particular cases takes precedence, in ethical judgment, over general rules and accounts. We must now look at the nature of these arguments. For we can see that to answer the Platonic proposal for progress Aristotle must do more (even in terms of his own method) than to say that this is how we currently do things. He must also show the importance and the depth of the aspects of our current practice that we would relinquish by accepting the Platonic proposal. Commensurability had in Aristotle's time become, for many, a hallmark of the truly scientific.10 Aristotle pointedly fails to endorse an art of measuring for ethics. 11 First, it is a central concern of the ethical works to assail the most plausible and appealing candidate for'the single standard, namely pleasure. There are many difficulties surrounding the interpretation of Aristotle's two accounts of pleasure.12 What we can confidently say is that they agree in denying that pleasure is a single thing yielded in a qualitatively hom*ogeneous way by many different types of activity. For EN vn, my pleasures just are the activities that I do in a certain way: the unimpeded activations of my natural state.13 Pleasures are, then, just as distinct one from another and just as incommensurable as are the different kinds of excellent activity. For EN x, pleasure supervenes upon the activity to which it attaches, like the bloom on a young person's cheek, completing or perfecting it. 14 It is not
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something that can be prised apart from the activity to which it is attached and sought out on its own, any more than blooming cheeks can be genuinely cultivated as such apart from the health and bodily fitness with which they belong. Pleasures, furthermore, 'differ in kind* as the associated activities differ (1173b28ff.). Some are choiceworthy and some are not, some are better and some worse. Some, furthermore, are pleasant only to corrupt people, while some are pleasant to good people (1 i73b2off.). Like (middle-period) Plato, then, Aristotle finds in the qualitative variety and the observer-relativity of pleasure good reasons not to base an ethical science upon it as a single end. But pleasure does not fall short of the requirements of science by its lack of singleness alone: it also lacks inclusiveness. For, Aristotle insists, 'There are many things that we would eagerly pursue even if they brought no pleasure, such as seeing, remembering, knowing, having the excellences. And even if pleasures follow upon these of necessity, it makes no difference; for we would choose them even if no pleasure came from them' (EN 117434-8). Pleasure, even if firmly linked to excellent activity as a necessary consequence, is not the end for which we act. We choose the action for its own sake alone; and deliberative imagination can inform us that we would do so even if that link with pleasure were broken. This is not simply a counterfactual thought-experiment: for elsewhere Aristotle will insist that a good person will sometimes choose to sacrifice life itself, and therefore all possibility of present and future pleasure, for the sake of acting well or helping a friend (ni7bioff., cf. Ch. 1 1 , p. 336).15 And in general, the good person chooses to act well even if the world prevents the completion of this activity and its attendant pleasure (Ch. 1 1 , p. 336). The Protagorean science, then, misrepresents the nature of our commitment to the excellences. And Aristotle makes a strong case for the preservation of our current commitments. They protect the continued possibility of personal sacrifice, of disinterested benefit to others, of the committed and non-instrumental pursuit of each value. Insofar as we think these commitments a valuable part of our lives with one another, we will be reluctant to eliminate our disagreements and vexing conflicts by opting for this kind of life-saving art. Argument against hedonism is strong argument against the science of measurement itself, since no other candidate for the measure was being seriously put forward. 16 But it is also plain that Aristode's opposition to this sort of techne is quite general. One of his arguments in the attack on the Platonic Good insists that' the definitions of honor and practical wisdom and pleasure are separate and different qua goods' (io96b2 3-4). This fact is supposed to yield the conclusion that there can be no single common notion of good across these things. And in the Politics he explicitly repudiates any view that would make all goods commensurable. In this important passage he has been describing a theory about the basis of political claims according to which any and all differences between persons are relevant to political distribution. If A is the same as B in all other respects but excels B in height, A is eo ipso entitled to a greater share of political goods than B; if A excels B in height and B excels A at playing the flute, we
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life will have to decide which excels by more. And so on. Aristotle's first objection to this scheme is specific: it recognizes as relevant to political claims many features that are quite irrelevant to good political activity. But his second objection is quite general. The scheme is defective because it involves treating all goods as commensurable with one another: height and musicianship are measured against wealth and freedom. 'But since this is impossible, it is obvious that in politics it is reasonable for men not to base their claim upon any and every inequality' (i283a9-i 1). At this point, the proponent of a political techne might object that Aristotle is simply describing the status quo. But it is no compelling objection to a proposed techne that it does not always observe current practice. If it is now impossible to measure freedom against height, musicianship against wealth, the science itself may show us the way to do so tomorrow. 17 What reasons do Aristotle's judgments give us for believing that no techne could take us beyond where we currently are in an acceptable way? Here we must return to Aristotle's remark about difference of definition, interpreting it by considering his actual accounts of the different intrinsic ends of human life. The ethical works display a conception of the best human life as a life inclusive of a number of different constituents, each being defined apart from each of the others and valued for its own sake.18 Part of the very account of excellence of character, in fact, is the stipulation that the fine actions be chosen in each case for their own sake, not simply for the sake of some further reward or consequence (1105a3 2). Each excellence is defined separately, as something that has its value in itself. Moreover, Aristotle explicitly asserts that there are many things in life that we choose for their own sake: * We would choose each of them even if nothing resulted' (i097b3~4, cf. 1096^6-19). But to value each of these separate items, each of which has its separate account, for what it itself is, seems to entail recognition of its distinctness and separateness from each of the others. The student of the EN will have, and/or acquire, a good understanding of what courage, justice, friendship, generosity, and many other values are; he will understand how, in our beliefs and practices, they differ from and are noninterchangeable with one another. He will then be in a position to see that to effect the commensurability of the values is to do away with them all as they currently are, creating some new value that is not identical to any of them. The question will then be whether his single-valued world can possibly have the richness and inclusiveness of the current world. A world in which wealth, courage, size, birth, justice are all put into the same scale and weighed together, made in their nature functions of a^ingle thing, will turn out to be a world without any of these items, as now understood. And this, in turn, looks likely to be an impoverished world: for we value these items enough in their separateness not to want to trade them all in. There is still one outstanding problem for this interpretation. This is that Aristotle explicitly says that deliberation and choice are concerned not with ends, but with the means to the end.19 But if this is so, it will be argued, then the things
Non-scientific deliberation 334 with which choice concerns itself, including the major values that go to make up a good human life, must, after all, be seen as (comparable) means to something beyond themselves (say, happiness or satisfaction); the end will be some single separate item of which they are productive, in greater and lesser degrees.20 This seems to bring back the idea of commensurability: for among the productive means to end E, the rational agent would select the ones that generate more of E ; and to ask about this requires measuring. Fortunately, we are not stuck with an insuperable problem here. For Aristotle's text (as a number of critics have by now pointed out) does not say that we deliberate only about means to ends.21 Aristotle actually writes,4 We deliberate not about ends, but about what is towards the end' - or, 'whatpertains to the end'. This looser phrase does not suggest that only instrumental means are in question. Indeed, it is broad enough to accommodate deliberation about what is to count as the end, what are the constituent parts of the end - a type of deliberation that Aristotle plainly recognizes elsewhere.22 Aristotle's point is only that for any given piece of deliberation, there must be something that it is about, which is itself not up for question in that particular piece of deliberation. But within that piece of deliberation, I can ask both for means to that end and for a further specification of the end.23 Plainly this demand for a further specification of the end or ends need involve no notion of commensurability. Starting, for example, from the valued end of love and friendship, I can go on to ask for a further specification of what, more precisely, love and friendship are - requesting, as well, an enumeration of the different types of love - without implying in any way that I regard these different relationships as commensurable on a single quantitative scale, either with one another or with other major values. And if I should ask of justice and of love whether both are constituent parts of eudaimonia, the best life for a human being, I surely do not imply by my question that we are to hold them up to a single standard, regarding them as productive of some further value. As Aristotle reminds us, something can be an end in itself and at the same time be a valued constituent in a larger or more inclusive end. The question whether something is or is not to count as a part of eudaimonia is just the question, whether something is a valuable component in the best human life. Since it is agreed that the best life must be inclusive of everything that is truly valuable for its own sake (everything without which the life would be incomplete and lacking in value),24 then this is equivalent to the question whether that item has intrinsic value, is choiceworthy for its own sake. But Aristotle has argued that to choose it for its own sake (for the sake of what it itself is) not only does not require, but is actually incompatible with, viewing it as qualitatively commensurable with other valuable items. To view it in that way would not be to have the proper regard for the distinctness of its nature.25 His view of ends seems, then, to be the explicit theoretical articulation of the position about plurality and richness that we found in the Antigone - and, more generally, in Greek polytheism. Once again, he ' saves' the appearances of his culture.
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life III Aristotle's attack on the scientific aim of commensurability has relied upon the notion of giving an account or definition of each of the values in question. We expect that, like all Aristotelian definitions, such accounts will be universal in form and will not mention particular cases except insofar as they exemplify a universal concept or rule. This makes us wonder whether Aristotle is denying one part of the scientific project only in order to emphasize and affirm another equally important part, the demand for universality. We need to recall what motivates this demand and how its fulfillment would affect our relationship to tuche\ The scientist sees that in the daily business of deliberation we are confused and vexed by the complex particularity of the cases that present themselves to us, ever freshly, for decision. Each new situation can strike us as in certain respects unlike any other; each valuable item can seem qualitatively individual, unlike any other. This way of seeing things has at least two unfortunate consequences. First, we lack comprehensive understanding of the practical sphere: we cannot organize it for ourselves, explain in a perspicuous fashion its salient features, bring ourselves to a new situation prepared to find features that we have grasped already.26 We are, cognitively, at the mercy of each new event, and each presents itself to us as a mystery. This severely limits our attempts to plan a good life and to execute these plans. Insofar as the world of practice does make sense to us, is understood by us, it is because we find it exemplifying certain repeatable and therefore general features: we say, 'Here's a case where courage is called for', 'Here's an injustice', carving up the indeterminate ' matter' of the new by picking out items that we have seen and grasped before. We guide ourselves cognitively by working towards an understanding of these items; meanwhile, we guide ourselves morally by giving ourselves, or being given, precepts or rules in terms of these repeatable items and shaping our desires in accordance with these. The (Platonic) scientist would like to propose that we press this demand for universality as far as we can, trying to get ourselves a system of practical rules that will prepare us before the fact for the demands of the new situation, and also trying to get ourselves to see the new situation in terms of this system, as merely a case falling under its authority. Then we will never be taken by surprise. The second unfortunate consequence of ethical particularity is vulnerability to loss. We have seen repeatedly how the idea that one valuable item is qualitatively like and replaceable by many others helps us to avoid vulnerability. The shift from seeing a beloved person (an institution, a pursuit) as uniquely valuable to seeing it as just a participant in some general value brings with it, as Diotima says, a relaxing and easing of the tensions of planning a life. If the world does something to one of the items you love, there is a ready supply of other similarly valuable items. Plato's scientific project urges that for this reason as well we ought to press and extend the demand for generality in value. Aristotle gives general definitions of the excellences. He also defines excellence in general with reference to the notion of a logos, a rule or account: ' Excellence
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is a state of character (hexis) concerned with choice, lying in a mean, the mean relative to us, this being determined by a logos, the one by which the person of practical wisdom would determine it' (EN 1 io6b36-7a2). So the person whose choices are paradigms for ours is depicted as using a rule or account; and elsewhere, too, Aristotle speaks of the role in practical wisdom of the orthos logos, the 'right rule' or 'correct account'.27 On the other hand, he insists that practical wisdom is not episteme, not a deductive scientific understanding concerned with universals.28 He defends this judgment by pointing out that it is concerned with ultimate particulars (ta katW hekasta), which are not in the province of episteme, but are grasped with insight through experience (1 i42ai iff.). 29 Thus, although there is some prima facie reason for thinking him sympathetic to this part of the scientific project, it is also clear that there are limits to his sympathy. We need to ask, then, what Aristotelian general rules and accounts are and are not, and how the person of practical wisdom uses them. We can begin by noticing two distinct functions that rules might have in ethical deliberation and justification.* One possibility30 is that the rules and universal principles are guidelines or rules of thumb: summaries of particular decisions, useful for purposes of economy and aids in identifying the salient features of the particular case. In deciding to work with such principles we would be acknowledging that choices of this sort have, in concrete cases in the past, been judged appropriate by people whom we revere as people of practical wisdom and appropriate, presumably not simply because they adhere to the rule, but because of their intrinsic character or because of other benefits to which they contribute. Principles are perspicuous descriptive summaries of good judgments, valid only to the extent to which they correctly describe such judgments. They are normative only insofar as they transmit in economical form the normative force of the good concrete decisions of the wise person and because we wish for various reasons to be guided by that person's choices. We note that their very simplicity or economy will be, on this conception, a double-edged attribute: for while it may help the principle to perform certain pedagogical and steering functions, it will also be likely to make it less correct as a summary of numerous and complex choices. Another possibility is that the universal rules are themselves the ultimate authorities against which the correctness of particular decisions is to be assessed. As the aspiring Platonic philosopher scrutinizes the particular to see the universal features it exemplifies, and considers it ethically relevant only insofar as it fails under the general form, so the aspiring person of practical wisdom will seek to * I add * justification' because the person of practical wisdom might believe that a rule or system of rules was authoritative in justifying concrete choices without believing that one must explicitly use the rule in each case of deliberation. On both conceptions of rules, some choices will be made as a matter of routine or habit, without conscious deliberation. The important question then is, to what standard would the wise person point in justifying this choice as the correct one? Aristotle plainly believes that the good person decides some things at once, without explicitly going through each piece of deliberation; nonetheless, the correct account of his or her action may make reference to principles that have not been explicitly * said' (cf. esp. De Motu, Ch. 7).
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bring the new case under a rule, regarding its concrete features as ethically salient only insofar as they are instances of the universal. The idiosyncratic cannot be relevant.81 The universal principle, furthermore, is normative because of itself (or because of its relation to higher principles), not because of its relation to particular judgments. The second picture of rules promises a science or techne of practical reasoning, while the first really does not, or not to the same degree.32 The first allows the contingent features of the case at hand to be, ultimately, authoritative over principle; it thus keeps us in a significant sense at the mercy of tuche. A new, unexpected, or even idiosyncratic feature can cause us to revise the rule: for the rule, to be correct, must correctly describe the cases. There is, thus, room for surprise, room for both the cognitive insecurity and the human vulnerability that the Platonic scientific conception is seeking to avoid. A particular beloved person's particular salient properties can have ethical value when they are not anticipated by the principle - even when they could not because of their very nature be captured in any general formulation. Thus we must always be on the lookout for what is there before us in the world: we cannot rest secure in the thought that what we are to see and respond to is something that we have already seen before. And we must also be prepared for loss - for the valuable does not necessarily stay with us just on account of being exemplified in a universal principle that continues to be elsewhere instantiated. Thus Aristotle's talk of rules and his commitment to the giving of general definitions of the excellences are not necessarily incompatible with his claim that ethical reasoning is not and cannot be an episteme or techne. For his conception of the point, nature, and authority of rules may be the first, non-technical conception. We can now point to some of the textual evidence that this is, in fact, his view. First, Aristotle says two things about the ultimate criterion of correctness in ethical choice that tell strongly in favor of the non-scientific picture. He says that the standard of excellence is determined with reference to the decisions of the person of practical wisdom: what is appropriate in each case is what such a judge would select. And he says that the 'judgment' or 'discrimination' in ethical matters rests with, or is 'in', something which he calls perception (aisthesis), a faculty of discrimination that is concerned with the apprehending of concrete particulars, rather than universals.33 The context of this claim makes it clear that he wishes to express grave reservations about universal principles as arbiters of ethical correctness: The person who diverges only slightly from the correct is not blameworthy, whether he errs in the direction of the more or the less; but the person who diverges more is blamed: for this is evident. But to say to what point and how much someone is blameworthy is not easy to determine by a principle {toi logoi aphorisai) : 34 nor in fact is this the case with any other perceptible item. For things of this sort are among the concrete particulars, and the discrimination35 lies in perception. (1109b 18-25)
Principles, then, fail to capture the fine detail of the concrete particular, which
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is the subject matter of ethical choice. This must be seized in a confrontation with the situation itself, by a faculty that is suited to confront it as a complex whole. General rules are being criticized here both for lack of concreteness and for lack of flexibility. 4 Perception' can respond to nuance and fine shading, adapting its judgment to the matter at hand in a way that principles set up in advance have a hard time doing. These two criticisms are pressed repeatedly by Aristotle in order to show that universal statements are posterior in ethical value to concrete descriptions, universal rules to particular judgments. 'Among statements (logoi) about conduct', he writes in a nearby passage,' those that are universal (katholou) are more general (koinoteroi), but the particular are more true - for action is concerned with particulars (ta kattf hekasta), and statements must harmonize with these' (1107a29~32). Rules are authoritative only insofar as they are correct; but they are correct only insofar as they do not err with regard to the particulars. And it is not possible for a simple universal formulation intended to cover many different particulars to achieve a high degree of correctness.36 Therefore, in his discussion of justice Aristotle insists that the wise judgment of the agent must both correct and supplement the universal formulations of law: All law is universal; but about some things it is not possible for a universal statement to be correct. Then in those matters in which it is necessary to speak universally, but not possible to do so correctly, the law takes the usual case, though without ignoring the possibility of missing the mark... When, then, the law speaks universally, and something comes up that is not covered by the universal, then it is correct, insofar as the legislator has been deficient or gone wrong in speaking simply, to correct his omission, saying what he would have said himself had he been present and would have legislated if he had known. (EN ii3 7 bi 3 ff.)
The law is regarded here as a summary of wise decisions. It is therefore appropriate to supplement it with new wise decisions made on the spot; and it is also appropriate to correct it where it does not correctly summarize what a good judge would do. Good judgment, once again, supplies both a superior concreteness and a superior responsiveness or flexibility. This requirement of flexibility, so important to our understanding of Aristotle's non-scientific conception of choice, is then described in a vivid metaphor.37 Aristotle tells us that a person who attempts to make every decision by appeal to some antecedent general principle held firm and inflexible for the occasion is like an architect who tries to use a straight ruler on the intricate curves of a fluted column. Instead, the good architect will, like the builders of Lesbos, measure with a flexible strip of metal that 4 bends round to fit the shape of the stone and is not fixed' (1137b30-2). Good deliberation, like this ruler, accommodates itself to what it finds, responsively and with respect for complexity. It does not assume that the form of the rule governs the appearances; it allows the appearances to govern themselves and to be normative for correctness of rule. It might be objected that Aristotle here makes reference only to the defectiveness
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life of actual systems of rules, and says nothing against the idea that an ethical techne could come into being if the rules were precise or complicated enough, capturing in a fine-tuned way the complexities of many different types of experienced situations. But this does not, in fact, capture the full force of his criticism of the universal. He points elsewhere to three features of 'the matter of the practical' that show why practical choices cannot, even in principle, be adequately and completely captured in a system of universal rules. These three features are: mutability, indeterminacy, particularity. These three features are not very clearly distinguished by Aristotle, so we must introduce the passages in which they are mentioned and then go on to distinguish them ourselves. In this same section of EN v, Aristotle tells us that practical matters are in their very nature indeterminate or indefinite (aorista) - not just so far insufficiently defined (ii37b29). The general account of ethical matters is imprecise, he tells us, not because it is not as good as a general account of such matters can be, but because of the way these matters are: 'The error is not in the law or in the legislator, but in the nature of the thing, since the matter of practical affairs is of this kind from the start' ( 1 1 3 7 ^ 7 - 1 9 ) . In Book n, discussing the role of universal definitions and accounts in ethics and preparing to offer his own definition of the excellences, he writes: Let this be agreed on from the start, that every statement (logos) concerning matters of practice ought to be said in outline and not with precision, as we said in the beginning that statements should be demanded in a way appropriate to the matter at hand. And matters of practice and questions of what is advantageous never standfixed,any more than do matters of health. If the universal definition is like this, the definition concerning particulars is even more lacking in precision. For such cases do not fall under any science (techne) nor under any precept, but the agents themselves must in each case look to what suits the occasion, as is also the case in medicine and navigation. (1 io3b34-i io4aio) Aristotle argues here that the universal account ought to be regarded as only an outline, not the precise and final word. (Although some translations write, more weakly, 'have to' or 'must', there is no doubt that the force of opheilei is one of obligation.) It is not just that ethics has not yet attained the precision of the natural sciences; it should not even try for such precision. As applied to particular cases, which are the stuff of action, general scientific accounts and definitions are woefully lacking, of necessity, in the kind of suitedness to the occasion that good practice would require. Three different reasons for this deficiency are suggested in this brief passage. First, there is the mutability or lack of fixity of the practical. A system of rules set up in advance can encompass only what has been seen before - as the medical treatise can give only the recognized pattern of a disease. But the world of change confronts agents with ever new configurations, surprising them by going beyond what they have seen. Even natural justice for human beings is 'all mutable', i.e. historically rooted, not backed by anything more enduring than the ongoing world of human social practice (EN 1134^8-33). And, as he correctly says, if this is true of a general conception of justice it will be all the more true of concrete
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context-bound requirements of justice, whose shape will be likely to change with economic and social changes. A doctor whose only resource, confronted with a new assortment of symptoms, was to turn to the text of Hippocrates would surely provide woefully inadequate treatment; a pilot who steered his ship by rule in a storm of unanticipated direction or intensity would be, quite simply, incompetent at his task. Even so, the person of practical wisdom must be prepared to meet the new with responsiveness and imagination, cultivating the sort of flexibility and perceptiveness that will permit him (as Thucydides appropriately articulates a shared Athenian ideal) to 'improvise what is required' (cf. Ch. 6, §iv). 38 In several important contexts, Aristotle speaks of practical wisdom as involved in an enterprise of stocha^esthai at the correct.39 This word, which originally means 'to take aim at a target', comes to be used of a kind of improvisatory conjectural use of reason. For Aristotle, 'the person who is good at deliberation without qualification is the one who takes aim (stochastikos) according to reason at the best for a human being in the sphere of this to be done' ( 1 1 4 ^ 1 3 - 1 4 ) ; he associates this norm with the reminder that practical wisdom is concerned with particulars, and not universals ( 1 1 4 1 ^ 4 - 1 6 ) . * Aristotle also speaks of the indefiniteness or indeterminacy of the practical. (He mentions this explicitly only in the passage from EN v; but in both passages he argues that a practical techne is impossible on account of the nature o f ' the matter of the practical'; and in EN v he tells us that indeterminacy (to aoriston) is one of the characteristics of this 'matter' in virtue of which this is true.) It is rather difficult to know what this claim means - but it appears to have something to do with the variety of the practical contexts and the situation-relativity of appropriate choice. One example given elsewhere is revealing. There is no definition (horismos) of good joke-telling, Aristotle writes, but it is aoristos, indeterminate or indefinable, since it is so much a matter of pleasing the particular hearer, and 'different things are repugnant and pleasant to different people' (1128a25ff.). To extrapolate from this case, excellent choice cannot be captured in universal rules, because it is a matter of fitting one's choice to the complex requirements of a concrete situation, taking all of its contextual features into account. A rule, like a manual of humor, would do both too little and too much : too little, because most of what really counts is in the response to the concrete, and this would be omitted; too much, because the rule would imply that it was itself normative for response (as a joke manual would ask you to tailor your wit to the formulae it contains) - and thus would impinge too much on the flexibility of good practice. The architect's flexible strip of metal is called an aoristos ruler, presumably because, unlike such precepts, it varies its own shape according to the shape of what is before it. So, whereas in speaking of the mutability of the practical Aristotle had stressed change over time and the importance of surprise, * Here we notice that Aristotle denies that ethics is episteme in the Platonic or the Posterior Analytics sense by pointing to its similarities with stochastic arts that would also be called techne in a broader sense, being to some degree general and teachable. Hellenistic divisions of the technai will consider the stochastikai technai as a separate class, contrasting them with other technai.
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life in speaking of the aoriston he stresses complexity and contextual variety. Both features seem to call for responsiveness and yielding flexibility, a rightness of tone and a sureness of touch that could not be adequately captured in any general description. Finally, Aristotle suggests that the concrete ethical case may simply contain some ultimately particular and non-repeatable elements. He says that such cases do not fall under any techne or precept, implying that in their very nature they are not, or not simply, repeatable. This is in part a function of the complexity and variety already mentioned: the occurrence of properties that are, taken singly, repeatable in an endless variety of combinations makes the complex whole situation a non-repeatable particular. But Aristotle also thinks, in speaking of correct choice, of the ethical relevance of particular non-repeatable components of the situation. The moderate diet for Milo the wrestler is not the same as the moderate diet for Aristotle, because Milo's concrete (and presumably unique) size, weight, needs, and occupation are all relevant to determining the appropriate for him. The good friend will, in similar fashion, attend to the particular needs and concerns of his friend, benefiting him or her for the sake of what he or she is in and of him or herself, not for the sake of some general good. Much of this 4 in and of himself' will, as we shall see (Ch. 12), consist of repeatable character traits; but in love and friendship features of shared history and family relatedness that are not even in principle repeatable are permitted to bear serious ethical weight. 'Practical wisdom is not concerned with universals only; it must also recognize particulars, for it is practical, and practice concerns particulars' (ii4ib4~i6). In all of these ways, rules, seen as normative according to the second conception, fail in their very nature to measure up to the challenge of practical choice. Seen according to the first conception, however, they have a distinct though limited usefulness.40 They are guidelines in moral development: for people not yet possessed of practical wisdom and insight need to follow rules that summarize the wise judgments of others. And even for virtuous adults, they have a function. They guide us tentatively in our approach to the particular, helping us to pick out its salient features (cf. below). When there is not time to formulate a fully concrete decision, scrutinizing all the features of the case at hand, it is better to follow a good summary rule than to make a hasty and inadequate concrete choice. Furthermore, rules give constancy and stability in situations in which bias and passion might distort judgment. (This is Aristotle's primary argument for preferring the rule of law to rule by decree.) Rules are necessities because we are not always good judges; if we really were operating ethically as well as we should, we would not have the same need of them. Finally, as Aristotle stresses in Politics n, an anthropocentric ethics will in one sense need to rely on its standing rules more and not less firmly than a Platonic conception. For if there is no divine law or eternal form-grounded episteme backing ethical judgment - if, as he alleges, human justice is a historically grounded thing that exists only in the human world and if, in consequence,' the law has no power
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towards obedience but that of habit' (i268b28ff.), frequent changes in law may conduce to a climate of moral rootlessness. This is not a relativistic claim - for Aristotle can believe compatibly with this, as he plainly does, that there is a single best human way of life. He simply warns us that at no point, in working towards better laws, will we replace the merely human with something harder and more authoritative than the human, something with an extra-human 'power towards obedience'. And if this is so, knowing that humans heed merely human authority best in conditions of stability or slow change, we should nof quickly alter our rules, even to improve them. Practical wisdom, then, uses rules only as summaries and guides; it must itself be flexible, ready for surprise, prepared to see, resourceful at improvisation. This being so, Aristotle stresses that the crucial prerequisite for practical wisdom is a long experience of life that yields an ability to understand and grasp the salient features, the practical meaning, of the concrete particulars. This sort of insight is altogether different from a deductive scientific knowledge, and is, he reminds us again, more akin to sense-perception:41 It is obvious that practical wisdom is not deductive scientific understanding (episteme). For it is of the ultimate and particular, as has been said - for the matter of action is like this. It is the analogue of theoretical insight (nous): for nous is of the ultimately simple principles, for which there is no external justification;42 and practical wisdom is of the ultimate and particular, of which there is no scientific understanding, but a kind of perception - not, I mean, ordinary sense-perception of the proper objects of each sense, but the sort of perception by which we grasp that a certain figure is composed in a certain way out of triangles. (1142325)
Practical insight is like perceiving in the sense that it is non-inferential, non-deductive; it is, centrally, the ability to recognize, acknowledge, respond to, pick out certain salient features of a complex situation. And just as the theoretical nous comes only out of a long experience with first principles and a sense, gained gradually in and through experience, of the fundamental role played by these principles in discourse and explanation, so too practical perception, which Aristotle also calls nous, is gained only through a long process of living and choosing that develops the agent's resourcefulness and responsiveness: ...Young people can become mathematicians and geometers and wise in things of that sort; but they do not appear to become people of practical wisdom. The reason is that practical wisdom is of the particular, which becomes graspable through experience, but a young person is not experienced. For a quantity of time is required for experience.
(1142ai2-i6) And again: We credit the same people with possessing judgment and having reached the age of intuitive insight and being people of understanding and practical wisdom. For all of these abilities are concerned with the ultimate and the particular,... and all practical matters are concerned with the particular and the ultimate. For the person of practical wisdom must
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life recognize these, and understanding and judgment are also concerned with practical matters, i.e. with ultimates. And intuitive insight (nous) is concerned with ultimates in both directions... [There follows a development of the parallel between grasp offirstprinciples and grasp of ultimate particulars.]... This is why we should attend to the undemonstrated sayings of experienced and older people or people of practical wisdom not less than to demonstrations. For since experience has given them an eye they see correctly. (ii43a25-bi4)43 What does experience contribute, if what practical wisdom must see is the idiosyncratic and the new ? Here we must insist that Aristotelian practical wisdom is not a type of rootless situational perception that rejects all guidance from ongoing commitments and values.44 The person of practical wisdom is a person of good character, that is to say, a person who has internalized through early training certain ethical values and a certain conception of the good human life as the more or less harmonious pursuit of these. He or she will be concerned about friendship, justice, courage, moderation, generosity; his desires will be formed in accordance with these concerns; and he will derive from this internalized conception of value many ongoing guidelines for action, pointers as to what to look for in a particular situation. If there were no such guidelines and no such sense of being bound to a character, if the * eye of the soul' saw each situation as simply new and non-repeatable, the perceptions of practical wisdom would begin to look arbitrary and empty. Aristotle insists that a person's character and value commitments are what that person is in and of himself;45 personal continuity requires a high degree, at least, of continuity in the general nature of these commitments. This continuous basis, internalized and embodied in the agent's system of desires, goes a long way towards explaining what that person can and will see in the new situation: an occasion for courage, for generous giving, for justice. We have insisted that the general background does not bind real practical wisdom. The conception is not immune to revision even at the highest level; and this revision may come from the perceptions embodied in new experience. We have also insisted that the general conception is not inclusive of everything that is of relevance - for some relevant features are non-repeatable. Still, it is now time to say that the particular case would be surd and unintelligible without the guiding and sorting power of the universal. (We do not even love particular individuals in the Aristotelian way without loving, centrally, repeatable commitments and values which their lives exemplify.) Nor does particular judgment have the kind of rootedness and focus required for goodness of character without a core of commitment to a general conception - albeit one that is continually evolving, ready for surprise, and not rigid. There is in effect a two-way illumination between particular and universal. Although in the way we have described the particular takes priority, they are partners in commitment and share between them the honors given to the flexibility and responsiveness of the good judge.
Non-scientific deliberation 3 0 7 IV The project of constructing a techne of practical choice has included as one of its central aspirations the elimination - or at least the reduction - of the troublesome force of the passions. To make our lives safe from tuche was to make them safe, as well, from these internal sources of uncontrolled danger. Commensurability and universality both contributed to the pursuit of this aspiration: for to make objects of desire commensurable is to remove, already, one source of our passional intensity about them; and to see them as instances of a universal rather than irreplaceably particular is so to transform emotions such as love, hate, and grief that their power for damage will be minimized, Aristotle's assault on these two norms thus indirectly reopens the space in which the emotions operate and have their force. But Aristotle's interest in the passions goes deeper than this mild permissiveness. Far from seeing them as obstacles to good reasoning, he makes proper passivity and passional responsiveness an important and necessary part of good deliberation. Since his arguments parallel, in their general outlines, the arguments presented in the second Socratic speech of the Phaedrus, it will be helpful to discuss them in an order that corresponds to our discussion of that speech in Chapter 7. First, as we have seen and shall see further in Chapter 12, the appetites and passions have an essential motivational role to play in human excellence - both in getting a child to excellence in the first place and in motivating continued action according to excellence in the adult. Aristotle agrees with the Phaedrus that a model of rationality which suppressed or neglected these elements would starve the soul of nourishment essential for living well.46 Furthermore, as we saw in Chapter 9, Aristotle devotes considerable attention to developing an account of the appetites and emotions according to which they are selective, responsive to training, and therefore able to play a constructive role in moral motivation, impelling the person towards more appropriate objects in keeping with his or her evolving conception of the appropriate.47 It is not just that we cannot do without them: it is that they are well equipped (when properly developed) to do well by us. The responsiveness of Aristotelian emotions to developing belief is clear and evident; In Interlude 2 we shall see how emotions are actually individuated with reference to their constitutive beliefs. But even appetites are not, as the Republic suggested, as mindless as the automatic workings of the digestive system, mere automatic pushes towards the world that can be directed only by brute suppression. They are responsive intentional elements, capable of a flexible ethical development. But, like the Phaedrus, Aristotle accords to the 4 irrational' more than a merely motivational role. Although he does not speak of 'madness', he does recognize and cultivate states in which emotions or appetite, well trained, lead or guide reason in the situation of choice. The intuitive perception that we have seen him praise as the essence of practical wisdom is not an ability of the detached intellect alone. Choice (prohairesis) is described as an ability that is on the borderline between the intellectual and passional, partaking of both natures: it can be
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life described as either desiderative deliberation or deliberative desire.48 So too, practical wisdom functions in close connection with the correctly disposed passions; it is necessarily interdependent with excellence of character, which is, in turn, a disposition concerning appropriate passion as well as appropriate action.49 The experienced person confronting a new situation does not attempt to face it with the intellect4 itself by itself'. He or she faces it, instead, with desires informed by deliberation and deliberations informed by desire, and responds to it appropriately in both passion and act. Frequently the perception of the salient features will be achieved in a way that relies centrally upon the discriminating power of passion. In the De Anima Aristotle tells us that frequently our very view or even imagination of a situation contains, as it were 4 marked' or 4 determined' in it, elements that correspond to our desires. The pleasurable and painful, the to-be-pursued and the to-be-avoided, are marked out for us in the very way things present themselves to desire ; 50 and we might say that it is really desire itself that does the marking, showing us the sort of situation we are dealing with. We do not notice intellectually that there is something here that corresponds to desire; we recognize this with desire itself. We would not have been able to perceive those ethically relevant features without passional reaction. Aristotle's accounts of the so-called 'practical syllogism', 51 similarly, ascribe to the desires a sorting or discriminatory power: out of the many things presented to the agent by thought and perception, desire will single out some and not others to be foundations of action. Sometimes this selecting role is played by rational desire or 'wish'; but the appetitive forms of desire, too, 'speak', informing the whole creature of its needs and responding directly to the presence of what will satisfy those needs. The emotional desires play an equally important informing or cognitive role, as we shall see in Interlude 2. Aristotle does not dwell, as does the Phaedrus, on the special cognitive function of the sense of beauty. His concern is more inclusive. None of the appetites, not even the appetite for food, which Plato seems to hold throughout his life in unmitigated contempt, lacks, properly trained, its cognitive function. A well-formed character is a unity of thought and desire, in which choice has so blended these two elements, desire being attentive to thought and thought responsive to desire, that either one can guide and their guidance will be one and the same. But Aristotle, like the Phaedrus again, does not restrict the role of the non-intellectual elements in deliberation to the instrumental one of showing us how to act well. He completes his non-scientific picture of deliberation by according them intrinsic value in good choice. We can see this in several ways. Proper virtuous choice requires, if it is to be virtue, the combination of correct selection with correct passional response. Without the right 'passion', the very same choice and action will cease to be virtuous. The passion is one constituent of the virtuousness and goodness of the choice, the thing that makes it more than merely self-controlled. If I do generous acts, but only with constant effort, strain, and reluctance, I am not really acting generously; I am not worthy of the same commendation as the person who enjoys his generosity and does the action with
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his whole heart. If I benefit others but do not love them, I am lacking in practical excellence next to the person who both does and feels good things. It is because the passions are intelligent and educable that they can be assessed in this way: to have serious internal struggle between reason and passion is to be in a condition of ethical immaturity, to be in need of further training.52 Furthermore, appetitive activity itself now has full intrinsic value in the best human life. The deliberations of the person of practical wisdom make' moderation' (sophrosune) one of the central excellences; its activities are choiceworthy for their own sake. Moderation is appropriate choice with respect to bodily pleasure and pain. And Aristotle makes it very clear that it is not compatible with practical wisdom to seek to minimize the appetites or unduly to dissociate oneself from their claim. ' For this sort of being-without-feeling is not human... If there is someone for whom nothing is pleasant and one thing does not differ from another, he would be far from being a human being' (11 i9a6-io). Aristotle here goes even beyond the Phaedrus in insisting - not just for an isolated case, but quite generally - that the appetitive elements in our nature, which both take us to a world of u> stable objects and are in themselves difficult to control,53 must be accorded intrinsic value in the plan of the best human life. Appropriate eating, drinking, and sexual activity has intrinsic value, not in spite of, but because of the way in which it satisfies contingent needs; and to be needy is not a bad, but an appropriate thing for a human being to be. A being without hunger, thirst, and sexual need would not be received into our society, would not be counted as one of us at all. Finally, we must insist, as we have suggested already, that the 'perception' that is the most valuable manifestation of our practical rationality, and an end in itself, is not merely motivated and informed by the desires. Perception is a complex response of the entire personality, an appropriate acknowledgment of the features of the situation on which action is to be based, a recognition of the particular. As such, it has in itself non-intellectual components. To have correct perception of the death of a loved one (cf. § vi) is not simply to take note of this fact with intellect or judgment. If someone noted the fact but was devoid of passional response, we would be inclined to say that he did not really see, take in, recognise, what had happened; that he did not acknowledge the situation for what it was. (Cf. §vi below, and Interlude 2.) V Aristotle has, then, attacked the techne conception of practical reason (or its Platonic development) on several fronts. He has insisted upon anthropocentricity, denied the commensurability of the values, shown both the limits (and also the positive contribution) of the general, placed the allegedly ungovernable ' irrational parts' at the heart of rational deliberation. He has developed further a conception of practical reasoning that we saw adumbrated in the Antigone, in which receptivity and the ability to yield flexibly to the 4 matter * of the contingent particular were
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life combined with a reverence for a plurality of values, for stable character, and for the shared conventions of which character, through moral education, is the internalization. He can claim to have a techne of practical reason just in the sense and to the degree that Protagoras can also make this claim: for Aristotelian practical wisdom is, up to a point, both general and (both through early moral education and through reflective material like the Nicomachean Ethics) teachable. And this art will in a sense expand our control over uncontrolled tuche\ for Aristode reminds us that we, like archers, will be more likely to hit our target if we try through reflection to get a clearer view of it. But Aristotle warns against pressing such an aim too far: for he shows that each of the strategies used to make practical wisdom more scientific and more in control than this leads to a distinct impoverishment of the world of practice. Commensurability loses us the distinct nature of each of the values we cherish. Giving priority to the general loses us the ethical value of surprise, contextuality, and particularity. Abstraction of the practical intellect from the passions loses us not only their motivating and informing power but also their intrinsic human worth. Indeed, a creature who deliberated with all the superiority of an acute scientific intelligence but did not allow himself or herself to respond to his surroundings through the passions would both miss a lot that is relevant for practice and be inhumanly cut off from much of the value of our lives. Like James's narrator in our epigraph, he might be ever so strong on method, but he would fall short of the fine responsiveness of 'tone' that is the mark of true practical wisdom. Detienne and Vernant,54 whose account of practical intelligence we have followed as we have moved from the tragic poets to the philosophers (cf. Ch. u Ch. 7 n. 36), give an account of Aristotelian practical wisdom that will, by contrast, clarify ours. They agree with us that Aristotle's view of practical intelligence constitutes a kind of return from a Platonic conception of truth to pre-philosophical ideas; they agree that one of the primary areas in which a return is made is in the criticism of Platonic generality in favor of an emphasis on the grasping of contingent particulars. They agree in stressing the importance of flexibility and attentiveness to change, in both pre-Platonic and Aristotelian practical intelligence. They correctly emphasize the importance of improvisation in the Aristotelian, as in the earlier, conception. But just as their account of Plato's break with tradition seems to ignore a deep continuity between that tradition's interest in binding or trapping and the Platonic aspiration to rational self-sufficiency, so too their account of Aristotle seems to ignore the extent to which Aristotle's break with Plato is a rejection of that aspiration. The pre-Aristotelian tradition, we have argued, is not single-mindedly devoted to the ideal of controlling and immobilizing: it is deeply critical of that aim. The Antigone, for example, has articulated the idea that the right sort of relationship to have with the contingent particulars of the world is one in which ambition is combined with wonder and openness. Aristode, we have argued, returns to this tradition, in all of its complexity, defending an attitude to contingent particulars that renounces the Platonic aspiration to control and unblemished activity.
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As with Plato's conception of 'god's-eye' deliberation, so too with this more immersed and vulnerable human conception we have, it seems, a problem of circularity.55 The standpoint of the person of practical wisdom is criterial of correct choice. In Aristotle's conception, unlike Plato's, this standpoint is not just heuristic towards a value that would be valuable without this person and his choices; it is definitive of value, and this value would not be value but for its relation to this human person. This makes the circularity even more urgent. For if this person is our standard and his or her judgments and procedures are going to be normative for ours, how do we characterize this person and his procedures in a way that does not already make reference to the good content of his choices? Surely part of what makes this person acceptable to us as a standard is that he chooses the values that we are disposed to think appropriate. He is chosen not from any Archimedean point, but from within the appearances; but the appearances contain, as well, a conception of correct action that is surely at work in some way in this selection. So what point is there to saying that this person is the standard of appropriateness? Just as, in the Platonic case, it was only someone antecedently convinced of the negative role of appetite in judgment, and therefore antecedently sympathetic to a normative view critical of appetite, who would accept the god as a standard of judgment, so here it will only be someone who is committed to the moral relevance of contingent particulars, the value of the passions, and the incommensurability of the values that will tend to approve of this particular sort of judge as a guide. Should we find this problem a fatal one for Aristotle's non-scientific standard? One route out of this circle is not available to us. In an early article on this very problem, John Rawls proposed a way of characterizing the abilities and procedures of a competent ethical judge that would be non-circular, making reference not to any of the judge's ethical commitments, but rather to value-neutral abilities, such as imagination, empathy, factual knowledge.56 Aristotle's view ofpbronesis cannot avail itself of this strategy, for two reasons. First, in the context of his debate with Platonism it becomes very clear that many of the intellectual abilities he cherishes are not value-neutral. To emphasize imagination, empathy, perceptiveness, and responsiveness is already to skew the outcome in an anti-Platonic direction. The sight of the body, as Diotima says, just cannot see the same things as are seen by the sight of the pure disembodied intellect; nor can its pure and purely valuable objects be seen by the eyes of Alcibiades. Second, Aristotle would not believe an enumeration of intellectual abilities to be a sufficient characterization of the procedures and nature of the person of practical wisdom. To pick him or her out in an adequate way (even to characterize the full range of his cognitive equipment), we must make reference to character, to well-trained desires, and to the responsive quality of his desire. This, clearly, enmeshes us much more deeply in the circle from which we were trying to escape. We can, however, point out that Aristotle's argument, like Plato's, starts from an intuitive sense of what the obstacles to correct choice are, an account that has, it would seem, a strong claim to be deeply rooted in the appearances. It aims,
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life by giving an account of these obstacles that is grounded in broadly shared experience, to make the circle at any rate more complex. If we respond as Aristotle hopes we will to the picture of the bad architect or the bad doctor, and agree, as we respond, that there is an analogous picture of a bad ethical judge, then we have reasons that are to some extent independent of the positive characterization of the person of practical wisdom for approving his choice as our judge. We have reasons, that is, for suspecting that the strategies of middle-period Platonism are themselves impediments to correct vision of human matters. Furthermore, to the extent to which Aristotle's choice of a judge issues from the general methods and procedures described in our Chapter 8, Aristotle has, again, enlarged the circle: for his defense of this method, while it would still be said by a confirmed Platonist to have an element of circularity,57 brings other areas of the appearances, for example a conception of knowledge and reference, to bear on the concrete questions that will confront the philosopher in each area. This method chooses this judge; but the method is chosen partly as a result of independent arguments about language. Circularity by itself need not dismay us. An element of circularity is probably bound to be present in any complex moral theory (cf. Ch. 5 §iv). But in the end our feeling about the circle, as to whether it is small and pernicious or large and interesting, will depend upon our sense of whether Aristotle has indeed done well what his method dictates: to work through the complexities of our beliefs concerning choice, correctly describing the conflicts and contradictions they present, and to produce the ordering that will save what we most deeply consider worth saving. If the Symposium claims that the engagement of pure intellect with non-contingent objects is a paradigm of practical choice and that the ascending philosopher is capable of seeing and responding to everything of beauty and value in the world, Aristotle must answer by showing that this judge is blind to something of genuine value, and blind because of the way in which he or she judges. It is this challenge to which he has directed his efforts; and if he has succeeded the circularity can be viewed with equanimity and interest. VI It will be charged that Aristotle's non-scientific view does too little. By refusing so firmly the progress offered by commensurability, universality, and intellectualism it has left itself with no elaborated theory of deliberation, no systematic account of good deliberative procedure. Aristotle would be happy to accept this charge: 'Every account concerning practical matters ought to be said in outline and not with precision.' His writings give us a sketch, which must be filled in by character and experience. But it still seems important to show the nature of Aristotelian perception in more detail than we have done so far, showing what content there is to the claim that choice resides in a perception that responds flexibly to the situation at hand. If a general theoretical account is just what Aristotle is trying to undermine, then it would be in the spirit of his argument to turn for further
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illumination to complex examples, either from life or from literary texts. Like Alcibiades, he seems to support the claim of concrete narrative to show the truth. We could exemplify Aristotelian perception using texts of many different sorts. I think, above all, of the novels of Henry James.58 But in order to avoid anachronism, we shall conclude instead with an example from Euripidean tragedy, followed by a commentary. HECUBA
Achaeans I All your strength is in your spears, not in the mind. What were you afraid of, that it made you kill this child so savagely? That Troy, which fell, might be raised from the ground once more? Your strength meant nothing, then. When Hector's spear was fortunate, and numberless strong hands were there to help him, we were still destroyed. Now when the city is fallen and the Phrygians slain, this baby terrified you? I despise the fear which is pure terror in a mind unreasoning. O darling child, how wretched was this death. You might have fallen fighting for your city, grown to man's age, and married, and with the king's power like a god's, and died happy, if there is any happiness here. But no. You grew to where you could see and learn, my child, yet your mind was not old enough to win advantage of fortune. How wickedly, poor boy, your fathers' walls, Apollo's handiwork, have crushed your pitiful head tended and trimmed to ringlets by your mother's hand, and the face she kissed once, where the brightness now is blood shining through the torn bones - too horrible to say more. O litde hands, sweet likenesses of Hector's once, now you lie broken at the wrists before my feet; and mouth beloved whose words were once so confident, you are dead; and all was false, when you would lean across my bed, and say: 'Mother, when you die I will cut my long hair in your memory, and at your grave bring companies of boys my age, to sing farewell.' It did not happen; now I a homeless, childless, old woman must bury your poor corpse, which is so young. Alas for all the tendernesses, my nursing care, and all your slumbers gone. What shall the poet say, what words will he inscribe upon your monument?
Here lies a little child the Argives killed, because they were afraid of him. That? The epitaph of Greek shame. You will not win your father's heritage, except for this, which is your coffin now: the brazen shield. O shield, who guarded the strong shape of Hector's arm: the bravest man of all, who wore you once, is dead. How sweet the impression of his body on your sling,
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life and at the true circle of your rim the stain of sweat where in the grind of his many combats Hector leaned his chin against you, and the drops fell from his brow! Take up your work now; bring from what is left some robes to wrap the tragic dead. The gods will not allow us to do it right. But let him have what we can give. That mortal is a fool who, prospering, thinks his life has any strong foundation; since our fortune's course of action is the reeling way a madman takes, and no one person is ever happy all the time.
(Euripides, Trojan Women 1158-1207) 59
It seems peculiar to select this speech as an example of deliberation and choice, since Hecuba appears to have no room for choice. What can she do? She is a slave, she has lost this last hope for the restoration of her city and family. We select such a relatively inactive case in order to indicate that proper response, in speech, passion, and circ*mscribed action, can be just as much a virtuous act as a big heroic deed. Narrowing the scope for movement does not always remove the opportunity for excellent perception.60 What confronts Hecuba is the death of her grandchild. What she chooses is to mourn for him; to denounce the Greeks; to mourn for Hector; to order the child's fitting burial, despite the evident neglect of these human matters by the gods. These, though confined, are still choices expressing character and exemplifying practical perception. (EN 1 stresses that they are important indices of good character in adversity: cf. Ch. 11.) The person of practical wisdom inhabits the human world and does not attempt to rise above it. The contrast between the human and the divine pervades Hecuba's speech. She herself speaks from the center of human life, making no attempt at all to distance herself from her merely human values and attachments. In fact, it is one of her major purposes to point out that the point of view of the needless god does not bring with it sufficient concern for very important human things. The perspective of the god - as elsewhere in the play - looks, from the point of view of these tragic events, too detached and cold, lacking in the background of concerns and needs that would make possible an appropriate responsiveness. As a person of practical wisdom, Hecuba brings to the concrete situation of choice a disparate plurality of attachments and commitments, many of which have been nourished by early moral training, long before reflective adulthood. She also brings her prima facie reflections about what, for her, will count as a good life for a human being. She brings her love of her son, of her grandson; her love of Troy; her attachment to religious duties and duties to the family; a conception of proper courage, both in battle and in politics; a conception of proper reasonableness. She brings her view that a good life for a human being involves growing up in a family and a city and serving both the city's good and that of one's loved ones in it; that it involves going on to the end of life performing
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these excellent activities and receiving, at the end of life, a pious burial; that it is a better thing, nonetheless, to die prematurely for these values than to make cowardly compromises. Training in these values has evidently made her well acquainted with her 'target', so that in this new situation she knows what to look for; the kitentionality of her desires has a focus. As a result she is adept at sorting out the new situation before her, singling out without hesitation the features of ethical relevance. Each of the features in the situation is seen by Hecuba as a distinct item with its own separate nature, generating its own separate claims. She does not offer definitions of the values she prizes; but this does not mean that she does not implicitly conceive of each of them as having a distinctive nature. She has a pretty good idea of what piety is, what courage and cowardice are; and it is clear from what she says about them that she takes them to be distinct and incommensurable items. There is not the slightest sign of a measuring scale, or any other reductive device. Hecuba's deliberation begins from an antecedent conception; but it does not show the inflexible application of a pre-set general scheme to this new case. We do not have the impression that Hecuba is bringing forth an arsenal of general rules and conceptions and using them simply to govern the indeterminacies of the new, impressing their order upon it. First of all, we are impressed by the extent to which Hecuba is passive or receptive before the situation. She is simply overwhelmed by response to what she sees, to the mangled body and the sweaty shield. Her discriminatory activity is not, so to speak, prior to her response; it is in and constituted by her response. She does not intellectually perceive that this is the death of a grandson to whom she is committed, and then respond with grief. It is the response of overwhelming grief and horror at the sight of those broken bones, those hands, the ringlets shining round the bloodied face, that is her perception of the death of a loved one. And we could say that it is in this yielding responsiveness that we find some of the highest value in her deliberation. If we attempt to imagine a Platonic reasoner approaching this same situation with the activity of intellect alone, if we try to imagine what sorts of perceptions and recognitions such a passionless judge would be capable of, what sort of speech he would use, then we begin to have a sense of the cognitive value of her loves and desires, as features that show her the way to and help to constitute a proper practical perception of what she has lost and what the Greeks have done. We find, as well, that these responses strike us as humanly valuable and constitutive of her goodness even apartfrom their motivational and informational value. Even if she had been able to see the same things in the situation without the guidance of feeling, we would feel that a cold criticism of the Argive command, without her extreme anger and deep grief, showed a deficient and even inhuman response. We would find her exceedingly strange if she recognized the death of her grandchild with a cold intellectual eye; we would have a hard time treating her as one of us. We would not praise her for excellent practical perception. But it is not only in her passivity that Hecuba goes beyond rules. Her
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life deliberative activity makes of the situation confronting her far more than an occasion for their application. The features belonging to her antecedent general conception are discovered by and in a response to the particular and are important primarily as they illuminate, for her, its salient features. It is not that a general rule about grandchildren constrains her mourning and has authority over it. Instead, her long commitment to this particular relationship (informed no doubt at some formative stage by rules, but flowing, afterwards, into particular love for this boy) prepares her to respond to this tragedy as she does, with mourning. It is not that she consults some authoritative code in order to denounce the Achaeans for cowardice. Instead, the code of behavior prepares her to perceive before her a concrete situation in which cowardly action is manifested. The background conception contributes preparation and valuable illumination; but the seeing is in the particular, and is not legislated in advance. It has the power to enrich or change the general conception. We have here what we would expect to see in most good examples of Aristotelian deliberation: a flexible movement back and forth between particular and general. She denounces the Achaeans, and then moves to a general reflection about cowardice that is, no doubt, part of her antecedent training, but has now been informed by this new experience. From this she turns to a mourning for the child which itself moves from reflection on the general shape of a good human life to the most vividly concrete mourning over the parts of the body, in which each part conjures up particular memories. The ethical appropriateness of her response is, we feel, inseparable from its concreteness. She might have omitted the general reflections without giving the impression of deficiency. But had she mourned in a purely abstract way, without this vividness of detail, we would have assessed her differently: we would probably have judged her deficient in love. Had she denounced the Achaeans by enumerating general precepts, we would have criticized her for an odd inhuman remoteness. This talk of the general and the particular informing one another does not, however, do full justice to the importance of what actually happens during this scene. The experience of the particular does not only inform Hecuba further about what her conception of the good life has been all along, showing her more about its constituent values; it can also lead to a shifting or revising of the general conception. The first happens, clearly: for she comes to see more vividly than ever before the importance of her grandchild; the connection between this bond and the future of her city; the incompatibility between true courage and the brutal slaying of a loved one; and so on. She learns more about her concerns taken singly; she also learns more about how they stand to one another. But this is not all: she is led, in at least one case, to revise her conception. For the concrete situation reveals to her an indifference or callousness on the part of the gods that had not figured in her antecedent conception of piety. She has throughout the play been questioning and searching concerning the divine. Now she openly charges the gods with wicked action, with willful obstruction to the moral aspirations of humans. A feature of her prima facie conception of the good has now been rejected because the nature of its perceived opposition to other elements makes it not
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simply in conflict with them but unworthy, itself, of serious respect. The situation is a source of illumination; the illumination becomes the source of a new general account of the human good. In this sense and to this extent, the particular is prior. She improvises what is required. This deliberation is itself fragile, easily influenced and swayed by external happenings. In its openness to passion and surprise, it risks being overwhelmed by the extreme situation - for appropriate passion, in such a case, can easily become a mind-numbing surge of blind affect, eclipsing deliberation and even coherent discourse. To listen to the passions at all opens up these risks of distortion and derailment. (The approach of the Platonic person, refusing wonder and surprise, cuts off these deep risks also.) Aristotelian deliberation, furthermore, is well suited to the high evaluation of fragile constituents of human life. For in allowing herself to use perception, rather than conformity to rule, as her standard, Hecuba opens herself to the value and special wonder of a particular city, a particular child; therefore to the deep grief she here expresses. There would be little of grief left without the vivid particular vision of the small hands, the loving, childlike face, the stain of Hector's sweat upon the shield. In allowing herself to see and care about these things, using the passions as guides, she binds herself to the possibility of loss. It is not at all surprising, then, that the heroine who deliberates according to this model should conclude that fortune is madly unstable and that human happiness is a rare and elusive item. We are likely to feel, however, that it would not have been a solution to her problem to have looked upon her deliberative world with the calculative gaze of the Protagoras's measuring scientist, or with the transcendent, supra-human eye of the Republics god. For these are not the eyes that such a human situation requires.61
11
The vulnerability of the good human life: activity and disaster
4
Nevertheless, it is evident that eudaimonia* stands in need of good things from outside, as we have said: for it is impossible or difficult to do fine things without resources' (EN 1099331-3). We have now filled in the background for a study of this claim. We have seen how every Aristotelian philosophical inquiry is conducted within the world of human experience and belief, limited by the limits of that world. We have seen Aristotle defend a conception of action appropriate to a needy animal being vulnerable to influences from its world; he has argued that to view human action as combining activity with passivity in this way is fully compatible with our most serious sorts of ethical assessment. We have, finally, seen him articulate and defend a conception of* non-scientific' practical deliberation in which proper 'passivity' and responsiveness plays a very important role, and in which the touchstone of correctness is a good person's refined perception of the contingencies of a particular situation. With all of this in place, we must now ask what Aristotle ultimately concludes about our central questions. How far is human good living, eudaimonia, vulnerable? What external events can disrupt or distract it, and how (and how far) should it attempt to make itself safe? Aristotle clearly regards this as a pressing and a delicate question. For the appearances ascribe to luck considerable ethical importance. 'Most people suppose that the eudaimon life is the fortunate life, or not without good fortune; and no doubt correctly. For without the external goods, which are in the control of luck, it is not possible to be eudaimon' (MM I2o6b3o~5).1 On the other hand, deeply shared conceptions of practical rationality make luck the natural enemy of human efforts at planning and control: 'Where there is most insight (nous) and reason (logos), there is the least luck; and where there is the most luck there is the least insight' (EE i207a4~6).2 How is this tension to be handled in our understanding of what a good human life, lived according to practical reason, might be? Our strategy will be to examine, first, Aristotle's general view concerning the dependence of the good life upon circ*mstances and resources, the degree and nature of its vulnerability in conditions of deprivation or calamity. We shall examine, at the same time, his argument for the view that the good life for a human being requires not only a good state of character, but actual activity as well. In a subsequent section of this chapter we shall consider whether the good condition of character is itself, in his view, vulnerable to erosion by uncontrolled events. We shall, finally, examine his argument that the very being and value of certain human virtues is inseparable from, and partly constituted by, conditions of risk, * On eudaimonia, which will remain untranslated, see Ch. i, p. 6.
*i8
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 deficiency, or impediment. Then, in our next chapter, we shall look at two specific areas in which good living becomes particularly dependent upon externals not under the agent's control-in which externals are not merely instrumentally related to good activity but enter themselves into the specification of what good activity is. All of this will put us in a position to appreciate the importance that Aristotle attaches to tragic poetry as a source of moral learning and to draw some conclusions about the relationship between Aristotelian philosophizing and tragedy. I We are asking, then, about the power of luck or fortune* to influence the goodness and praiseworthiness of a human life.3 Aristotle approaches this question, as he approaches many others, by describing two extreme positions. Some people, he tells us, believe that living well is just the same thing as having a fortunate life (EN to 99 b7-8). Good living is a gift of the gods that has no reliable connection with effort, learning, or goodness of stable character (EN loyybyfi.). In other words, observing the great power of luck in human affairs, they are led to say that it is the single decisive causal factor in achieving a certain sort of life. Nothing else counts for much. Eudaimonia, as its name suggests, is just having a good daimon or (external) guardian spirit. In this way, they 4 turn what is greatest and best over to luck' (io99b24). On the other side are those who maintain that luck has no power at all to influence the goodness of a human life. The causal factors relevant to living well, to eudaimonia, are all, they claim, within the agent's firm grasp; external uncontrolled happenings can neither significantly enhance nor significantly diminish good living. It is worth noting that these people, as Aristotle describes them, are philosophers determined to establish a thesis, even at the cost of denying some prevalent and obvious appearances. Aristotle makes us aware of two routes by which such opponents have arrived at their denials of luck. One route (associated with Platonism)4 involves narrowing the specification of the good life, acknowledging as intrinsically valuable only activities that are maximally stable and invulnerable to chance (cf. io98b24~5). Aristotle deals with this strategy indirectly, by defending, one by one, the claims of more vulnerable values; we shall examine some of these arguments in Chapter 12. The strategy of his other group of opponents5 is to deny that actual activity according to excellence is any part of good living: if one is in a virtuous condition or state, then that is sufficient for eudaimonia. This means, for example, that a virtuous person who is enslaved, imprisoned, or even tortured is living just as good and praiseworthy a human life as the person whose activity is unimpeded. * Here, as before, there is no suggestion that we are dealing with random or uncaused events. For Aristotle, to say that an event happens by tuche is not only not incompatible with, but even requires, concomitant causal explanation (see Ph. 11.4-6). As elsewhere, we are asking here about events that influence the agent's life in a way that is not amenable to his or her control.
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life Aristotle wants to set out these extreme views so that we can ask ourselves what would motivate someone to adopt one of them. This should help us to arrive at a position that does justice to the motivating concerns in each case, while avoiding their excesses and denials. This procedure might be read as a kind of simple-minded conservatism, a mechanical steering of a safe middle course between two dangerous extremes. Carefully examined, it is neither simply a middle course nor mechanically pursued. The strategy is to take each extreme view seriously as a genuine part of the appearances - that is to say, as motivated by something that is really there to be preserved and taken account of. As he remarks of these and other one-sided views, 4 Some of these things have been said by many people over a long period of time, others by a few distinguished people; it is reasonable to suppose that none of them has missed the target totally, but each has gotten something or even a lot of things right' (EN io98b28~3o). He studies the major accounts of a problem handed down by tradition because he supposes that no view could have gained currency that did not respond to real ethical concerns in a way worthy of serious notice. Now he must show how each extreme position, while seriously grounded, is also defective because of the way in which it forces the rejection of other deep beliefs. II The first extreme view on luck6 receives less extensive consideration than the second; but the manner in which Aristotle dismisses it is of considerable interest. There is, he says, a puzzle about whether the good life is available by some sort of effort, or whether it just comes by luck. He mentions a pervasive belief that goes with the former view: 4 The good will be common to many: for it is capable of belonging to all those who are not maimed with respect to excellence through some sort of learning and care' (1099b!8-19). He now says something very revealing about this belief: if it is better that this view of eudaimonia, rather than the luck view, should be true, 4then it is reasonable that things should be so'. For 4 to turn what is greatest and best over to luck would strike too false a note' (i099b20-5). In other words, the rejection of the luck-supremacy view is the outcome not of a neutral empirical survey, but of a deliberation in which what we desire to find, what we feel we can live with, enters heavily into practical wisdom's weighing of the alternatives. Given the choice between the two views, we ask ourselves, among other things, which view would make our lives worthwhile. The luck view is rejected not because it has been found to be at odds with scientific fact about the way things are in the universe, discovered by some value-neutral procedure, but because it strikes a false note, i.e., is too much at odds with our other beliefs, and specifically with our evaluative beliefs about what sort of life would be worth the living.7 For we believe that human life is worth the living only if a good life can be secured by effort, and if the relevant sort of effort lies within the capabilities of most people. (It will emerge that we do not
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 insist that this effort be always sufficient for good living; but in general it must have the most important role.)8 This point is further developed in a passage of the Eudemian Ethics that deals with suicide. After talking about those who kill themselves because of some chance catastrophe, Aristotle asks what are, after all, the things that make life worth the living. In general, he concludes, if you collect together all the things that a person does and suffers because of luck, rather than voluntarily, no combination of these, even prolonged to an infinite term, would suffice to make a person choose living rather than not living (1215b27~31). Life is made worth living for a human being only by voluntary action; and not simply the low-level voluntary action of a child (i2i$b22-4), but action shaped overall by adult excellence and its efforts. Then if the luck theorist were right in denying to those efforts any important role in living well, we would all be living lives that all of us, including the luck theorist himself, would probably judge to be not worth the living. Such a view indeed 'strikes too false a note' - not just because it clashes with a widely-held belief, but because it clashes with a belief so deep and basic that we hold it to be a condition of our continued willingness to remain in existence. This is a revealing example of Aristotle's method at work, both because it shows us how an ethical thesis is criticized out of deeper appearances and because it shows us how what we want and think good enters into an ethical inquiry at a basic level. It shows us how Aristotle regards the central questions of this book: not as matters of neutral, discoverable fact, but as matters whose answer is of the deepest concern to us and towards settling which we are accordingly permitted to bring these concerns and desires to bear. Of course Aristotle is not saying that in constructing a view about eudaimonia we are free to say anything at all that pleases us; indeed, he is much more cautious than Plato about diverging from the lived 'matter' of our daily lives for the sake of painting a more elegant or beautiful picture. What he is saying is that our most basic beliefs and experiences concerning what is worthwhile constrain what we can discover about the world and about ourselves. Our experience of choice and our beliefs about its value make it unlikely, if not impossible, that we could ever discover that we do not choose or that choice counts for little in this world - just as in Chapter 9 we saw that our deep beliefs about voluntary action made it highly unlikely that we would ever discover that there was no such thing. Certain things are so deep that either to question or to defend them requires us to suspend too much, leaves us no place to stand. If there are any ethical beliefs that approach in this way the status of the Principle of Non-Contradiction, it would be these beliefs concerning eudaimonia, voluntary action, and choice. For these are beliefs that we use whenever we act; whenever we engage in ethical inquiry (for if it's all up to luck such inquiry has no point); whenever we argue about a practical decision; whenever we deliberate and choose (for we engage in these practices on the assumption that they make a difference to our eudaimonia). To deny them - especially inside an ethical inquiry - approaches the sort of self-refuting position of which Aristotle convicted the
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life opponent of the Priniciple of Non-Contradiction.9 Such a position does indeed strike too false a note. Ill We said, however, that Aristode is determined to understand the force and the serious contribution of the luck theorist's proposal. That is, he wants to investigate and in some way to preserve as true the idea that luck is a serious influence in the good life, that the good life is vulnerable and can be disrupted by catastrophe. 4 For many reversals and many types of luck come about in the course of a life', he remarks shortly after his criticisms of the luck theorist (i iooa5~6). This, presumably, is the deeply shared belief which that opponent had exaggerated and overpressed. We must now examine his articulation and defense of that belief, as he criticizes, in turn, its opponents. The opponents of luck assert that the good human life is completely invulnerable to tuche. That which we ourselves control is in every case sufficient to secure it. Aristode clearly sympathizes with their general motivation and wishes to preserve many of the same beliefs. He and the opponents are on common ground when they insist that the good life should be available by effort to the person who has not been ethically4maimed' (1099b 18-19, cf. 1096b34), and when they demand a life that is 'one's own and hard to take away' (i095b2 5~6),4stable and in no way easily subject to change' (uoob2-3). But complete invulnerability is purchased, Aristode will argue, at too high a price: by imagining (as does the Platonist) a life bereft of certain important values; or by doing violence (as does the good-condition theorist) to our beliefs about activity and its worth. 10 The Platonist opponent will concern us in Chapter 12. We turn now to the good-condition opponent and to Aristotle's elaboration, against this opponent, of a view about the value and the vulnerability of excellent activity. The good-condition theorist argues that eudaimonia is invulnerable because it consists simply in having a good ethical state or condition11 and because this condition is itself stable even under the direst circ*mstances. To oppose such an opponent Aristotle can, then, adopt more than one strategy. He can argue that states of character are vulnerable to external influences. Or he can argue that good states are not by themselves sufficient for good living. If he takes the second course he must, in addition, argue that the further element that must be added to good states is itself not invulnerable. Aristotle's argument, as we shall see, is a complex combination of these two lines of attack. We shall start by following him as he pursues the second line, establishing, first, that eudaimonia requires actual activity for its completion, and, second, that good human activity can be disrupted or decisively impeded by various forms of luck. There is, then, a gap between being good and living well. The investigation of this gap will eventually lead Aristotle to the first line as well - since it will turn out that some forms of interfering luck eventually affect the virtuous condition itself.
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 We agree, Aristotle says, that our end is eudaimonia', but we agree on just about nothing concerning it, except the name (1095a!7ff.). One further agreement, however, emerges near the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics: it concerns the connection of eudaimonia with activity. 4 Both the many and the refined... believe that living well and acting well are the same as eudaimonia' (1095a!9-20). Later he repeats, 4Eudaimonia has been said to be good living and good acting.' In the Eudemian Ethics he brings forward a 'belief held by all of us \ the belief that 'acting well and living well are the same thing as eudaimonein: both are forms of use and activity' (12i9a4o-b2). So we can see from the start that the opponent who makes the good life consist in a non-active state or condition, removing it altogether from its realization in activity, is going against beliefs of ours that are as broadly shared as any ever brought forward by Aristotle in the ethical works. This seems to put his thesis in trouble from the start. But Aristotle must also show the depth and importance of these beliefs; for to show that they are widely held is not all that the method of appearances requires. Therefore, instead of contenting himself with this general point, he examines the consequences of the good-condition thesis for concrete types of cases, showing that the thesis has intuitively unacceptable results. We can take, first, the most extreme and therefore clearest case and move towards cases which offer greater potential for controversy. The starkest and clearest test case for the good-condition view would be one in which there was a good virtuous condition but no activity of any kind issuing from this condition. We get such a case if we imagine a person with a well-formed character who, upon becoming an adult (for to imagine this person virtuous we must, in Aristotle's view, imagine him or her as active during the process of formation), goes to sleep and sleeps all through his adult life, doing nothing at all. We could make the case contemporary and plausible by considering a case of irreversible coma - though to match Aristotle's it would have to be one in which the internal structure of goodness was in no way permanently removed or impaired: excellence of character must remain constant. Now our question is, can such a person be said to be living a good life? Can he appropriately be praised and congratulated? According to the good-condition theorist, he can: for the excellent state is the sole appropriate object of these ethical attitudes. Aristotle objects (in both the EN and the EE) that this just is not in harmony with our practices and our beliefs. We simply do not think that a state or condition that never does anything is sufficient for living well. It seems incomplete, frustrated, cut off from its fulfillment. Indeed, we tend to think that having such a condition makes little real difference, if one is never active from it: to sleep through life is like being a vegetable and not a human at all {EE 121633-5, cf. EN 1176334-5). Just as we do not think a fetus, who lives a purely vegetative existence, without awareness, lives a full human life (EE 1216a6-8), so we are not going to be willing to praise and congratulate the life of this hopelessly inactive adult. The EN concludes,' Nobody would say that a person living in such a way was living well,
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life unless he were defending a theoredcal position at all costs' (109631-2). The case shows us, the parallel passage in EN x concludes, that eudaimonia cannot be simply a hexis, a condition or state (1176333-5). Later on in EN 1 Aristotle returns to the same point, insisting that, although 'it is possible for a state to be present and accomplish nothing good, as is true for the sleeper and in some cases of waking people as well', nonetheless, such a person will not receive the ethical attitudes of praise and congratulation that we associate with the judgment that someone is living a good human life (i098b33-9932). He uses an athletic an3logy: in a race we applaud, as runners, only those who actually compete, not the ones who might be thought to be in general the strongest and most fit. Just as we will not say of a well-conditioned non-runner that he or she runs well, so we will not praise the virtuous sleeper for living virtuously (109933-7). It is important to see that Aristotle does not claim here that the good life is a kind of competition, or that only success is praised. His point is that the endowment and condition are not sufficient for praise: the person has to do something, show how he or she can be active. Just as our assessments of people as runners depend upon there being some actu3l running (though of course they depend, too, on our belief that this good running was caused by their good condition, not by some external force), so too our ethical assessments are based on actual effort and activity, as well as upon the presence of a stable character that is the cause of the activity. Character 3lone is not sufficient. Furthermore, the opponent's very account of the case may be incoherent: for we do not know what it means to say of someone in irreversible coma that a virtuous condition is retained. At the very least, there is an insuperable epistemological difficulty; but it may be more than that - it may be a logical difficulty as well, given the strong conceptual connection of hexis with a pattern of activity. Aristotle points to this problem when he says that' the good and the bad are not at all distinct in sleep... for sleep is the idleness of that element of the soul in virtue of which it is said to be fine or base' (1102b5-8). It is not clear, then, that it is even a p p r o p r i 3 t e to say of this totally non-active person that he or she has a virtuous character.12 We can summarize the general point against the good-condition theorist this way. The good condition of 3 virtuous ch3r3cter, like good athletic conditioning, is a kind of preparation for the activity; it finds its natural fulfillment and flourishing in 3ctivity. To deprive the person of th3t natural expression of the condition is to make a difference in the quality of the person's life. It is to make the condition fruitless or pointless, cut off. Just as a runner who gets into good condition and is then prevented from running would be pitied more than praised, so we pity the virtuous person in situations of impediment. Activity, energeia, is the coming-forth of that good condition from its state of concealment or mere potentiality; it is its flourishing or blooming. Without that the good condition is seriously incomplete. Like an actor who is alw3ys waiting in the wings and never gets a ch3nce to 3ppear on the stage, it is not doing its job, and, in consequence, is only in a shadowy way itself.13
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The opponent might grant that total cessation of awareness and activity was a diminution or cessation of good living, and yet still try to salvage some of his position by making a distinction between external, worldly activity and a full internal health, or health of condition, that includes thought and awareness. He might say, then, that so long as cognitive functioning and ethical awareness go on in the good person, it does not matter at all that his or her body is altogether prevented from carrying out such projects as the moral imagination forms. 14 So long as he is able to form virtuous intentions and to think good thoughts, so long he is living well - even if he is in prison, enslaved, or tortured. Aristotle needs to argue in reply that the functioning available to a person in such circ*mstances is not sufficient for acting well and living well. This he does in a passage in EN vn: No activity (energeia) is complete if it is impeded; but eudaimonia is something complete. So the eudaimon person needs the goods of the body and external goods and goods of luck, in addition, so that his activities should not be impeded. Those who claim that the person who is being tortured on the wheel, or the person who has encountered great reversals of fortune, is eudaimon, so long as he is good, are not saying anything - whether that is their intention or not. (1153bi6-2i). 16 Once again, the opponent has specified what eudaimonia is in a way that makes it by definition immune to external changes of circ*mstance: external reversals impede action, not the virtuous state, and the virtuous state (including, presumably, some sort of waking inner life) is sufficient for living well. Once again, Aristotle insists that doing does matter. Being excellent in character is not yet acting according to excellence. But action according to excellence requires certain external conditions: of the body, of social context, of resources. The person on the wheel cannot act justly, generously, moderately; he cannot help his friends or participate in politics. How, then, can he be said to live well? The opponent's case here is more intuitively gripping than the sleeper example was, because we have allowed the person to wake up, restoring at least that awareness of internal goodness that might seem to be a necessary part of goodness itself. But Aristotle argues that, even if we have a richer picture of goodness of character, goodness totally impeded and cut off is not enough to justify our most serious praise and congratulation. Aristotle suggests a further point as well. Insofar as the opponent's case is initially plausible, it is so because we imagine the tortured person as leading some sort of complex inner life. We might imagine him, for example, as imagining, forming intentions, having appropriate feelings and responses, even reflecting philosophically or proving truths of mathematics. If we pack all of this into 'being good' as opposed to 'acting', then being good looks closer to what might satisfy us than it did in the sleeper's case, where ' being good' was something completely inert and inactive. But now we notice that' being good' looks like a kind of being active - and, like any being active, it looks itself vulnerable to impediment. Aristotle's talk of impeded activity makes us ask whether the inner activity of the
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life tortured person cannot itself be impeded by pain and deprivation. Thoughts, emotions and reactions, speculative and scientific thinking, are not impervious to circ*mstance; they can, like projects in the external world, fail to reach completion or perfection. Torture can harm them.16 In short: the distinction 'inner/outer' is not the same as the distinction 'state/activity'. If the opponent makes the latter the salient distinction, ascribing all value to the state, this will perhaps give him something really immune to luck; but it will make the human being into little more than a vegetable. If he makes the salient distinction the former one, ascribing all value to inner activities, then he will have something richer and more interesting - but something that is, after all, just because it is active, open to chance and upset. Aristotle does not, in these discussions, set out precise criteria for something's being activity rather than condition or hexis. His primary point is to show us that whatever is fulfillment or activity is also, therefore, vulnerable: only the lying-in-wait that is hexis can escape disturbance. This is not at all incompatible with the view that some among the activities or energeiai, broadly construed, are much more vulnerable and impediment-prone than others. In particular, we might think in this connection of the Metaphysics Book ix distinction of the broad class of energeiai into two subclasses - the class of kineseis, 'motions', and the (narrow) class of energeiai. Energeiai (narrowly construed) are activities that are complete at any moment: they 'have their form in themselves'. Whenever it is true to say, ' I am E-ing', it is also true to say (using the Greek perfect), ' I have E ' d ' , or ' I am in the state of having E'd.' For example, whenever it is true to say, ' I am seeing', it is also true to say, ' I have seen.' Kineseis, by contrast, are movements that proceed towards an external completion through time: they can be interrupted in their course, they do not have their completion or form in themselves. Thus, when it is true to say, ' I am building a house', it is not at the same time true to say, ' I have built a house.' The process and its completion not only do not imply one another, they are mutually exclusive: only when the building has come to a halt is the house completely built.17 This distinction has obvious relevance for the question of impediment. For kineseis permit of interruption and blockage along their path in a way that energeiai, narrowly construed, do not. But I have ascribed to Aristotle the view that anything flourishing or active enough to count as energeia of either type is vulnerable to impediment. Is this compatible with Aristotle's account of the formal completeness of (narrow) energeiai? I believe that it is. For while one sort of impediment does not threaten energeiai - namely, the sort that would cut it off before it reaches its telos or formal completion - they seem, nonetheless, vulnerable to impediment with regard to the quality of the activity. The fact that seeing is 'complete' in a moment is compatible with the evident truth that some people see better than others; and some cases of bad seeing can certainly result from external impediment. The same would clearly be true of the intellectual contemplation of the person on the wheel. (In EN VII, Aristotle defines pleasure as the
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 unimpeded activity, energeia, of the natural hexis, implying that sicknesses and other reversals can cramp and impede many types of natural activity.)18 We might think of activities as like rivers: one way they can be impeded is to be dammed up and prevented from reaching a destination. Another way would be to be filled up with sludge so that their channel would become cramped and muddy, their continuous flow slower, the purity of their waters defiled. It is, I believe, Aristotle's view that anything that is energeia broadly construed, and not mere hidden inactive hexis, is susceptible to impediment in the second way at least. And, furthermore, there is the obvious and important fact that in the absence of certain external necessary conditions, no energeia can get started at all: there is no seeing if there is no light (if a person has been blinded), no river if the sources have dried up. 19 All of this seems sufficient to give Aristotle reason to say that, no matter what energeiai are the bearers of value in a human life, luck has the power to obstruct them. IV Now, however, Aristotle must describe in more detail the ways in which good activity is vulnerable to circ*mstances; and he must, in particular, ask to what degree calamities that are temporary or partial should be thought to diminish eudaimonia. For while the consideration of extreme cases may suffice to refute the views of the most extreme type of good-condition opponent, they do not go far towards grappling with problems that most of us are likely to face in the course of our lives. The more common practical problems are also, frequently, more subtle and more controversial. Before we approach Aristotle's treatment of 'tragic' reversal and the case of Priam, we need to point out that there are four rather different ways in which uncontrolled circ*mstances may, in these cases, interfere with excellent activity. They may (1) deprive it of some instrumental means or resource. This resource, in turn, may be either (a) absolutely necessary for excellent activity, so that its absence altogether blocks the activity; or (b) its absence may simply constrain or impede the performance of the activity. (2) Circ*mstances may block activity by depriving it, not merely of an external instrument, but of the very object or recipient of the activity. (The death of a friend blocks friendship in this more intimate way.) Here again, the activity may be either (a) completely blocked, if the loss is permanent and complete; or (b) impeded, if the loss is temporary and/or partial. We shall concentrate on (ia) and (ib) here, reserving the loss of an object for the next chapter. But Aristotle does not explicitly draw these distinctions, and his examples are drawn from all groups. 'It is impossible or not easy to do fine things without resources', Aristotle said in the passage with which we began this chapter, as he opened his discussion of the power of luck. He goes on to enumerate various types of necessary ' resources':
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life For many things are done through philoi* and wealth and political capability, as through tools. And deprivation of some things defiles blessedness (to makarion): for example good birth, good children, good looks. For nobody will entirely- live well (be eudaimonikos) if he is entirely disgusting to look at, or basely born, or both solitary and childless; still less, perhaps, if he has terribly bad children or philoi, or has good ones who die. (i099a33-b6)
Some of these are deprivations of instrumental means towards activity; some (the cases of friends and children) involve the loss both of instrumental means towards further activities (for friends are also 'tools') and of an object for one kind of excellent activity itself. In some cases, we can imagine that the absence of the instrumental means or object will altogether block excellent activity. Lifelong enslavement, severe chronic illness, extreme poverty, the death of all one's loved ones - any of these could make one or more of the excellences impossible to exercise. (Even extreme physical ugliness, as Aristotle elsewhere explicitly says,20 can altogether block the formation of deep friendships.) In other cases, we imagine that good activity, while not altogether blocked, will be significantly impeded or cut back. The person disadvantaged in social position may lack opportunities for good political activity that are available to the well-placed; the death of a child can cramp the quality or spirit of many types of activity; sickness can do the same. These are not rare disasters, nor does Aristotle here seem to view them that way. They are regular parts of the course of many human lives. Aristotle's list makes us begin to notice the extent to which an average life is hedged round by dangers of impediment. Unconstrained activity begins to look like the rare or lucky item. Having made these general observations about the power of circ*mstance to disrupt good activity, Aristotle is ready to test our intuitions against a particular case: For many reversals and all sorts of luck come about in the course of a life; and it is possible for the person who was most especially going well to encounter great calamities in old age, as in the stories told about Priam in the Trojan war. But when a person has such misfortunes and ends in a wretched condition, nobody says that he is living well (oudeis
eudaimoniyei). (11 ooa 5 -1 o)
The story of Priam is a good test case for Aristotle's ethical theory here. For it begins with a person who had, presumably, developed and maintained a stably virtuous character through life, had acted well and according to excellence - but who was then deprived by war of family, children, friends, power, resources, freedom. In his final pitiable state Priam's capacity to act well is very much diminished; for he cannot, given the constraints upon him, exercise many of the human excellences for which he was previously known. We deeply pity Priam, * In this chapter and the next,phi!os and philia (usually rendered 4 friend' and ' friendship') will usually remain untranslated; the issues are discussed in Ch. 12. Briefly: philia is extensionally wider than friendship - it takes in family relations, the relation between husband and wife, and erotic relationships, as well as what we would call 'friendship'. It is also, frequently, affectively stronger: it is a requirement of philia that the partners should be linked by affectionate feeling; and, as we see, philia includes the very strongest and most intimate of our affective ties. We can say that two people are 'just friends'; no such thing could be said with philia.
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 feeling that he has lost something of great importance in losing his sphere of activity, something that is deeper than mere contented feeling. On the other hand, even an ethical theorist who rejects the extremes of the good-condition view may wish to maintain here that calamity does not impair the quality of Priam's life, since he has displayed good character in action consistently through the course of a long life. Aristotle's challenge is to sketch a response that will do justice to these competing intuitions. His strategy here, as elsewhere, is two-pronged. Against the opponent of luck he will insist on luck's real importance, exploring our belief that it is possible to be dislodged from living well. At the same time, he shows us that, given a conception of good living that values stable excellences of character and activity according to these, such drastic upsets will be rare. Making excellences and their activities - rather than, say, honor or success - the primary bearers of value (or, better, acknowledging that we really believe that they are the primary bearers of value, for Aristotle argues that those who say something else will change if they think harder about the full range of their beliefs) helps us to avoid seeing ourselves as, and being, mere victims of luck. Aristotle's remarks about Priam and related cases go against a well-established tradition in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern, according to which moral goodness, that which is an appropriate object of ethical praise and blame, cannot be harmed or affected by external circ*mstances. For Plato, the good person could not be harmed by the world: his life is no less good and praiseworthy because of adverse circ*mstances.21 For the good-condition theorist, the same is evidently true, though for slightly different reasons. For Kant, whose influence upon modern Aristotle commentators and their audiences cannot, here again, be overestimated, happiness can be augmented or diminished by fortune; but that which is truly deserving of ethical praise and blame, true moral worth, cannot be.22 This Kantian view has so influenced the tradition of subsequent ethical theory that it has come to seem to many a hallmark of truly moral thinking. It is not surprising, then, that interpreters under the influence of one or more of these traditions and anxious to make Aristotle look morally respectable have read the Priam passage oddly, so that it no longer says what would be most shocking, namely that ethical praiseworthiness of life, not just happy feeling, can be augmented or diminished by chance reversals. The interpretative view that acquits Aristotle of this immoral doctrine is as follows. Aristotle is, in these passages, drawing a distinction between two of his central ethical notions: between eudaimonia and makariotes, living well and being blessed or happy. The former consists in activity according to excellence; the latter in this, plus the blessings of fortune. According to this story, which has been put forward by Kant-influenced commentators such as Sir David Ross and H. H. Joachim,23 the gifts and reversals of fortune can never diminish eudaimonia, i.e., that for which Priam can be praised and blamed; but because they can diminish his enjoyment of his good activity, they do diminish contentment and good feeling. This reading bases itself upon a sentence in the Priam passage that says, 'If things are so, the eudaimon person
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life will never become wretched; nor, however, will he be makarios, if he encounters the luck of Priam' (i ioia6-7). We shall later investigate this sentence in its context and ask whether it is really making the distinction desired by the interpreter. It is a famous distinction; and its closeness to the Kantian distinction between moral worth and happiness makes us suspicious of it right away as a reading of Aristotle, especially given the anti-Kantian force of Aristotle's remarks about the person on the wheel. Nor does it give us confidence to find that Aristotle's first remark about Priam's case is, eAs for someone who has luck like that and dies in a wretched condition, nobody says that he is living well (nobody eudaimoni^ei him)' (i iooa9-io). Priam is from the beginning denied not just contentment, but eudaimonia itself. But perhaps this is an unreflective belief of the many that Aristotle is going to criticize. So we need to look further to see whether the text as a whole supports the interpreters' distinction. In fact it does not. Aristotle makes no significant distinction, in these passages, between eudaimonia and makariotes\ and he clearly claims that both can be damaged or disrupted by certain kinds of luck, though not by all the kinds that some of his contemporaries supposed. The textual evidence can be succinctly set out: first, passages claiming that eudaimonia is vulnerable to catastrophe; second, passages indicating that Aristotle here treats 'eudaimon' and 'makarion* as interchangeable; those then allow us to draw upon his remarks about the makarion for our picture of eudaimonia. (1) As we have already seen, the passage about the person on the wheel from EN vn = EE vi clearly asserts that external circ*mstances are required for eudaimonia; the same was obviously true of the passage from Magna Moralia n.8 that we quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Eudemian Ethics vin.2 argues at length that 'practical wisdom is not the only thing that makes acting well according to excellence (eupragian kaf areten, the definiens of eudaimonia), but we say that the fortunate, too, do well (eu prattein), implying that good fortune is a cause of good activity just as knowledge is' (1246b3 7-4232). The friendship books will argue that philoi, as 4 external goods', are necessary for full eudaimonia (cf. Ch. 12, and esp. n69b2ff.). But we do not need to look so far afield. For the very disputed passages in EN 1 tell the same story. Nobody calls Priam eudaimon (nooa7-8). Because it is difficult or impossible to do fine things (ta kala prattein) without resources, it is obvious that eudaimonia stands in need of the external goods (1099329-31). And at the conclusion of the Priam passage, Aristotle summarizes, 4 What, then, prevents us from saying that a person is eudaimon if and only if that person is active according to complete excellence and is sufficiently equipped with the external goods not for some chance period of time, but for a complete life?' (1101314-15). Here the presence of 'sufficient' external goods is introduced, in a passage as formally definitional as any in the EN, as a separate necessary condition for eudaimonia itself. (2) If we now attend to passages in which 'makarion' and ' eudaimon' occur together, we find that these passages confirm and do not disrupt this general picture. For the words are, in fact, treated as interchangeable. This is generally true
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 in the ethical works. To take just a single salient example outside of our present context: in EN ix.9, Aristotle reports a debate about the value ofphilia\ There is a debate as to whether the eudaimon needs philoi or not. For they say that makarioi and self-sufficient people have no need of philoi, since they have all good things already... But it seems peculiar to give all good things to the eudaimon and to leave out philoi, which seem to be the greatest of the external goods... And surely it is peculiar to make the makarios a solitary: for nobody would choose to have all the good things in the world all by himself. For the human being is a political creature and naturally disposed to living-with. And this is true of the eudaimon as well... Therefore the eudaimon needs philoi. a (n69b3~io, 16-19, 2 2 > detailed discussion of the argument of the passage, see Ch.
Nobody could reasonably doubt that the two words are used here with no salient distinction, more or less as stylistic variants. Both in the paraphrase of the opponent's position and in Aristotle's own remarks, this is so. Nor could anyone doubt that the external good of philia is held here to be necessary for eudaimonia, not just for makariotes. The same is in fact true of our present context, as we can see if we reexamine its opening passage, part of which we have quoted previously: Nonetheless, eudaimonia evidently needs the external goods as well, as we said. For many things are done through philoi and wealth and political capability, as through tools. And deprivation of some things defiles the condition of being makarion\ for example good birth, good children, good looks. For nobody will entirely be eudaimonikos if he is entirely disgusting to look at, or basely born, or both solitary and childless; still less, perhaps, if he has terribly bad children or philoi, or has good ones who die. As we said, then, it seems to require this sort of fortunate climate in addition. This is why some have identified eudaimonia with good fortune, and others with excellence. (1099333-^8)
This passage shows very clearly that Aristotle draws no distinction of an important kind between makariotes and eudaimonia, and that he is fully prepared to assert that eudaimonia itself is disrupted by absence of certain external goods. The entire passage concerns the need of eudaimonia for external goods. (The subject of the first quoted sentence is not explicit in the Greek, but must be supplied from the previous sentence, whose last word is 4eudaimonia'; there is no other candidate subject.) The general point is now further explained (NB 'for') by a passage that speaks of the defilement of the makarion; this, in turn, is further explained (another 'for') by a passage that once again speaks in terms of eudaimonia. The 'it' in the final conclusion plainly refers to eudaimonia: it is this which requires a fortunate climate, as the final sentence of our citation makes clear. The absence of certain necessary conditions for good living impairs good living itself, presumably by impeding the doing of fine actions in which good living consists. So far, 'makarion' and 'eudaimon' do not come apart. Now we must look closely at the context of the passage that forms the basis for the opposing interpretation, the passage in which Aristotle delivers his verdict about the case of Priam. He asks how secure our judgments of eudaimonia are
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life during the course of a person's life, given the vulnerability of human good living to reversals in fortune. He then once again reasserts his position that human good living does 'need in addition' (prosdeitai, i ioob8) the external goods of luck. But, he goes on, this does not make eudaimonia entirely at the mercy of luck, or the eudaimon 'a chameleon and resting on a rotten basis' (i ioob6~7). For these goods are not the most important factors in living well:' the well or badly does not reside in these' (8).24 They are not the actual constituents of good living: 'activities according to excellence, or their opposites, are what are in charge of 2 5 eudaimonia or its opposite' (noob8-io). Such activity, though to some degree vulnerable, is just about the most stable and enduring thing in human life, one of the hardest things to lose hold of or forget or have taken away (i ioobi2ff.). The person who is living and acting well (Aristotle first calls this person the makarios, then switches in the next sentence to the eudaimon - 16, 18) will go on doing so throughout his or her entire life. 'For he will always or more than anything else do and consider the things according to excellence; and he will bear luck most nobly and in every way harmoniously, if he is really good and "four-square without blame"' (i 100^9-22). So much is fairly clear. Now the complexities begin, as Aristotle begins to ask in what ways this stable good life, based upon steady character and consisting in activity according to the excellences of character and intellect, is vulnerable. Small pieces of either good or bad fortune, he now tells us, will not produce a 'decisive change of life' (rhope tes %oes, 22-5). But big and numerous contingencies can, if they happen well, make life more makarion because the opportunities they afford will be used nobly and well; on the other hand, correspondingly great misfortunes will ' crush and pollute the (condition of being) makarion - for they bring pain and get in the way of many activities' (1 ioob2 3-3o). So far, then, only the word ' makarion' has been used, in the immediate context, of that which can be augmented by great good fortune and diminished by great misfortune. But, in addition to our other evidence, the reasons given here, which all have to do with the way fortune augments or impedes excellent activity, show us that the makarion cannot be some merely supervenient pleasure or feeling of contentment. Aristotle is maintaining, as elsewhere, that some of the component activities in which good living consists can be increased or blocked by external happenings. We are probably supposed to think of both instrumental and more direct effects of fortune. An inheritance gives, instrumentally, scope for fine and generous action; sudden illness impedes good acting in every area by taking away one's energy. Political reversals and deaths of loved ones more directly remove other sorts of good activity, by removing their objects; conversely, the birth of a child or the acquisition of adult political rights makes a direct contribution to excellent action by providing it with an object. All of this seems to be about eudaimonia itself and its constituents, not some supervenient good. Aristotle shortly makes this explicit: The eudaimon person is not variable and easily changed. For he will not be easily dislodged from his eudaimonia, nor by just any misfortune that happens his way, but only by big and
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 numerous misfortunes; and out of these he will not become eudaimon again in a short time, but, if ever, in a long and complete time, if, in that time, he gets hold of big and fine things. (1 ioia8-i4)
(There follows the definitional passage that we have already discussed on p. 330.) Aristode here very clearly asserts that misfortunes of a severe kind, prolonged over a period of time, impair good living itself. He uses 4 eudaimon' where above he had used 'makarion\ making no distinction. (Several lines later, at 1 ioiai9~2o, he paraphrases his concluding definition, now substituting 4 makarion' for 4 eudaimon9.) Such disruptions are rare, he says, since human excellence, once developed, is something stable; but if they are big or deep or frequent enough, catastrophes will 'pollute' good activity, and therefore the good life, so severely that only time and much good luck, if anything, will bring eudaimonia back. Aristotle inserts an important qualification in the intervening section. Since this passage includes the sentence from which we began our criticism of the Kantian interpretation, we should now study its context in full: If activities are the main thing in life, as we said, nobody who is makarios will ever become basely wretched (athlios). For he will never engage in hateful and base actions. We think that the really good and reasonable person will bear his luck with dignity and always do the finest thing possible given the circ*mstances, just as the good general will make the most warlike use of the army he has and the good shoemaker will make the best shoe he can out of the hides he is given - and so on for all craftsmen. If this is right, then the eudaimon person would never become basely wretched; nonetheless, he will still not be makarios, if he encounters the luck of Priam. Nor indeed is he variable and easily changed, for he will not be easily dislodged from his eudaimonia.. .etc. (noob33-i ioiaio)
Now that we can examine the entire passage some of whose bits we have seen separately, we can understand Aristotle's final judgment concerning Priam. He does concede that such extreme bad luck could dislodge a good person from full eudaimonia. But he reminds us that a person of good character and practical wisdom will often be able to resist this damage, finding a way to act nobly even in circ*mstances of adversity. Like a general who does the best he can with the troops he has, or the shoemaker who makes the best shoes he can with the available materials, even so the wise and virtuous person will use life's 4materials' as well as possible, finding for excellence some expression in action. Indeed, part of the 4 art' of Aristotelian practical wisdom, as we saw in Chapter 1 o, seems to consist in being keenly responsive to the limits of one's 4 material' and figuring out what is best given the possibilities, rather than rigidly aiming at some inflexible set of norms. Aristotelian practical excellence is prepared for the contingencies of the world and is not easily diminished by them. But none of this will suffice to prevent the loss of eudaimonia in a very extreme case such as Priam's. Finally, Aristotle feels it important to stress that a person of good and stable character will not act diametrically against character just because of continued misfortune; the stability of character will stand between him and really bad action. But only bad action makes a person truly atblios, if actions are the main thing in
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life life. If eudaimonia were constituted by wealth or power, a person could go from the top to the very bottom, from the most praiseworthy condition to the condition most worthy of scorn, as a result of luck. Activity according to excellence may be squeeze or blocked; but the person to whom that happens does not, just on account of this, go to the very bottom of the scale of ethical assessment. Even if we do not wish to grant that the good person on the wheel is living a flourishing and fully praiseworthy life, we can also acknowledge that his life is not evil, despicable, or blameworthy. In short, an Aristotelian conception of eudaimonia, which bases excellent activity on stable goodness of character, makes the good life tolerably stable in the face of the world. But this stability is not limitless. There is a real gap between being good and living well; uncontrolled happening can step into this gap, impeding the good state of character from finding its proper fulfillment in action. We have already mentioned four types of impediment-situations: either complete blockage or constraining of activity through deprivation of an instrumental resource; blockage or constraint through the absence of an object for the activity. Because of our interest in linking these ethical issues with Aristotle's regard for tragedy, we should now, however, add two more situations to this list - situations implicitly recognized by this general account and explicitly recognized by Aristode in EN in and elsewhere. Recalling our discussions in Chapters z and 9, we can call these the situation of Oedipus and the situation of Agamemnon. Oedipus had a good character; but he did a terrible thing that impeded (presumably) his eudaimonia. The ' gap' created by luck in his case was not in any simple way one between good character and activity: for he did act and was not in any literal sense impeded. There was, however, a gap, created by circ*mstances of excusable ignorance, between the act he intended or voluntarily did - the killing of an old man at the crossroads — and the bad act that he involuntarily did, the parricide that dislodged him, if it did, from eudaimonia. I now want to suggest that we can see this gap as a variety of the gap between being good and living well. For the intended act was the natural expression of what Oedipus was in character. The luck of circ*mstances caused that intentional description not to be the morally salient description of what took place; indeed, on some interpretations of Aristode's views about the individuation of actions, that act was not really performed, and only the other one was.28 So in this sense circ*mstances impeded and thwarted Oedipus's blameless and appropriate activation of his character, stepping in, so to speak, between the intention and the act and causing the intended act to have at best a merely shadowy existence. Agamemnon's case is more complex: for here, as we have seen, each of the conflicting alternatives is in one way the natural expression of his goodness of character; yet each has a distressing other face. Pious service to Zeus is inseparable from the murder of his child; protection of that child would have been inseparable from impiety and from cruelty to his suffering soldiers. Unlike Oedipus, Agamemnon chooses and intends the action under both its good and its bad descriptions: no ignorance excuses him.27 But we might say, in his case as well,
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 that the world, by causing this tragic conflict to arise, has created for him a gap between his good character and its natural unconstrained expression in action. For it is an impediment to his pious activity that piety should be in this case inseparable from murder; the quality of his act, the natural expression of his character, is tarnished by the horror of the crime that is inextricable from it. Aristotle's criticisms of the good-condition theorist and his remarks about impeded activity can, then, accommodate these two further types of case, so central to the appreciation of tragedy. It appears, furthermore, that Aristode's text really does give recognition to the existence of Agamemnon-like conflicts. His remark that luck cannot cause a good person to do really bad actions might cast doubt on this. And in the Magna Moralia he insists that the excellences, unlike the vices, are in general mutually reinforcing, giving rise to no conflicts.28 (For example: political justice fits well with moderation and with courage, theoretical pursuits with moderation. The vicious person will not find this harmony: for immoderate appetites pull against crafty injustice, cowardice against excessive power-seeking, and so on.) But in the books on philia he allows that obligations to one philos may conflict with legitimate obligations to another, in such a way that it is impossible to fulfill both.29 And in EN hi. 1, Aristode acknowledges that in certain cases of circ*mstantial constraint the good person may act in a deficient or even a ' shameful' way, doing things that he or she would never have done but for the conflict situation. He will act as well as he can; and yet he will be doing something bad, something that he would not have chosen. The so-called 'mixed actions' are such cases. Aristotle's examples are, first, a person who throws something overboard in a storm; we discussed this case in Chapter 2. Second, and more central for us, is a case in which a tyrant tells the agent to do something shameful, threatening to kill him and his entire family if he does not. Here we have a case where misfortune will in fact force the sensible agent to do what is shameful and base. But Aristotle argues that the base action is not altogether the agent's own. It is his own in the sense that it is chosen at the time when it is done and the origin, of the movement is in him: his beliefs and desires explain it. But our assessment takes into account the element of constraint: the fact that the action, taken by itself, was not one that he voluntarily would have done (11 ioai 8ff.). It is not the action of a shameful or base character. Sometimes, he adds, we admire and praise those who face such conflicts well, making a hard choice for the sake of a valuable end (11 ioa2o-2); Aristotle is no sympathizer with those who, in politics or in private affairs, would so shrink from blame and from unacceptable action that they would be unable to take a necessary decision for the best. But in other cases we simply suspend praise and blame, and pity the agent for having to endure a conflict 'that overstrains human nature and that nobody would be able to withstand' (1110324-6). Such, we suspect, would be his response to a case like Agamemnon's - had Agamemnon, in it, behaved more like a good character, with more sense of the tension and constraint that was forcing him to go against what he would sanely choose.30
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life Aristotle adds to these remarks about conflict a further observation. This is, that certain valued excellences, particularly courage, political commitment, and love of friends, will take the good agent, far more often than the defective agent, into situations in which the requirements of character conflict with the preservation of life itself- therefore with the continued possibility of all excellent activity. This is a special type of value conflict. The good Aristotelian agent will see it as a choice in which something of real value is forgone - though not, admittedly, one in which evil action is forced. In his discussion of sacrifices for the sake of friendship or love, Aristotle stresses the fact that the person of excellence will think little of comfort or safety or money compared to the chance to do something noble; but he goes on to say that love of friends or country will sometimes call for a sacrifice more intimately connected to good living: a sacrifice of the opportunity to act well, or even of life itself (i 169a!8-b2). The good-condition theorist, and other defenders of the view that the good life cannot be diminished by such chance collisions, might try to say that there is no real loss here - for the person's goodness is intact, and the nobility of his choice guarantees that he will suffer no diminution in eudaimonia. Aristotle, as we might expect, does not agree. The loss of activity and of life, he argues elsewhere, is even a greater loss to the excellent person than to the base. The more excellent he is, the richer his life is in value - and, therefore, the more painful the choice to risk losing it: By so much as the courageous person has all of excellence and the more eudaimon he is, so much more will he be pained at the prospect of death. For such a person, above others, has a value worthy of living, and he will be aware that he is being deprived of the greatest goods. That is a painful thing. But he will nonetheless be courageous, and perhaps even more so because he chooses what is fine in war over these other things. In fact we don't have pleasant activity in the case of all the excellences - except insofar as they reach their end. ( n i 7 b i o - i 6 )
Excellence, in this case and others like it, diminishes self-sufficiency and increases vulnerability: it gives you something of high value and it enjoins that in certain situations of luck you be ready to give it up. But that excellence should bring risk and pain is no surprise, says Aristotle — unless you are in the grip of the false notion that excellence is necessarily linked with having a good time. There is pleasure when the noble activity reaches its end; but if the world should prevent this fulfillment, the good person still chooses to act nobly (cf. also Ch. 10, p. 295). V So far, Aristotle's reply to the good-condition theorist has spoken only of impeded activity. It has not spoken of chance-caused damage to the good condition or state of character itself. But Aristotle plainly does believe that our worldly circ*mstances affect, for better or for worse, adult good character itself, not just its expression. It is obvious that the world, in his view, affects decisively the character-formation
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 of children;31 the case for adult vulnerability is not as obvious, but it can still be convincingly made out. We can sketch the case by pointing to four pieces of evidence: (1) the Priam passage itself; (2) evidence concerning philia and the political context; (3) the Rhetoric9 s discussion of the relationship between character and time and/or experience of life; (4) the account of the so-called 'goods of fortune' in both Rhetoric and EN. The good person, Aristotle said, could not easily be dislodged from eudaimonia, but only by 'big and numerous misfortunes\ Once so dislodged, however, 'he will not become eudaimon again in a short time, but, if ever, in a long and complete time, if, in that time, he gets hold of big and fine things'. We must now look more closely into the nature of the damage that dislodges the good person. For misfortunes can 'pollute' good activity in two ways: by disrupting the expression of good dispositions in action, or by affecting the internal springs of action themselves. The former possibility is prominent in the context; but the latter seems important, as well, for the explication of this particular passage. A purely external impediment to good action could be set right immediately by the restoration of good fortune. A person who has been enslaved in wartime can be set free in a moment. A sick person can as quickly be cured. A childless person can suddenly conceive or beget a child. What does take time and repeated good fortune to heal is the corruption of desire, expectation, and thought that can be inflicted by crushing and prolonged misfortune. Aristotle's repeated use of words suggesting spoilage or pollution,32 and his assertion that the damages of luck are reversed, if at all, only over a long period of time, suggest that he is thinking also of this deeper, more internal sort of damage. It takes a long time to restore to the slave a free person's sense of dignity and self-esteem, for the chronic invalid to learn again the desires and projects characteristic of the healthy person, for the bereaved person to form new and fruitful attachments. This possibility is made more concrete in the books concerning philia. For there Aristotle both shows love to be a vulnerable good and ascribes to it an important role in the development and maintenance of adult good character. The same can be said of his discussions of the function of a supporting political context. Since we shall discuss these arguments in detail in our next chapter, we can now turn to the litde-known and highly interesting material from the Rhetoric.33 In Rhetoric 11.12-14, Aristode makes a series of observations about the relationship between character and time of life; these show us clearly to what extent the experience of reversal and misfortune can wound character itself. Young people, he tells us, have certain virtues of character of which the elderly are frequently no longer capable. They are of a noble simplicity: they are euetheisy open or guileless, rather than kakoetheis, guileful or malignant,' because they have not yet seen much wickedness' (13 89a! 7-18). 34 They are capable of trust because they have not yet been often deceived (1389a! 8-19). They are courageous because they are capable of high hope, and this makes for confidence (1389326-7). They are capable of the central Aristotelian virtue of megalopsuchia, greatness of soul, 'because they have not yet been humbled by life, but they lack experience of
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life necessities * (1389331-2). (The EN, too, stresses the importance of good luck for this ' crown of the virtues' - 1124a2off.) They lack excessive concern for money because they have little experience of need (1389314-15). They form friendships easily because they take pleasure in the company of others and do not calculate everything with an eye to advantage (a3 5~b2). They are easily moved to pity, since they have a good opinion of others and so easily believe that they are suffering unjusdy (b8-^, cf. Interlude 2). They are fond of laughter, so they have the social excellence of eutrapelia, charm or ready wit (bio-i 1). They have certain tendencies to excess as well, Aristotle tells us, which are the outgrowth of their inexperience and their keenness of passion. But what most interests us, in this remarkable set of observations, is that they are capable of certain good and high things just on account of their lack of certain bad experiences. We see more clearly what this claim means when we turn to the account of the character of the elderly, whose deficiencies result from just that experience of life that the trusting and hopeful young have not yet had. This littie known but very important passage deserves to be quoted at length: Because they have lived many years and have been deceived many times and made many mistakes, and because their experience is that most things go badly, they do not insist upon anything with confidence, but always less forcefully than is appropriate. They think, but never know; they have views on both sides of a question and are always adding in 4 perhaps' and 'probably'; they say everything this way, and nothing unequivocally. And they are malignant (kakoetheis): for it is malignant to interpret everything in the worst light. Furthermore, they are excessively suspicious because of their lack of trust (apistia), and lacking in trust because of their experience. And they neither love nor hate intensely for these reasons, but, as in the saying of Bias, they love as if they were going to hate tomorrow, and hate as if they were going to love tomorrow. And they are small of soul (mikropsuchoi) because they have been humbled by life: for they desire nothing great or excellent, but only what is commensurate with life. And they are ungenerous. For property is one of the necessary things; and in, and through, their experience they know how hard it is to get it and how easy to lose it. And they are cowardly and fear everything beforehand for they have, in this respect, the opposite character from the young. For they are chilly, and the young are warm; so old age prepares the way for cowardice, since fear, too, is a kind of chilling... And they are self-loving more than is appropriate; for this, too, is a kind of smallness of soul. And they live for advantage and not for the noble, more than is appropriate, because they are self-loving. For the advantageous is good for oneself; the noble is good simpliciter... And the elderly, too, feel pity, but not for the same reason as the young: for the young feel it through love of humanity, the old through weakness for they think every suffering is waiting for them, and this inspires pity. For this reason they are given to grieving, and are neither charming nor fond of laughter. (13 89b 13—13 9oa24)
These remarkable observations show us clearly to what extent Aristode is willing to acknowledge that circ*mstances of life can impede character itself, making even acquired virtues difficult to retain. Especially at risk are those virtues that require openness or guilelessness rather than self-defensiveness, trust in other people and in the world rather than self-protecting suspiciousness. And it seems to be
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 Aristotle's view that quite a few of the virtues require this element. Love and friendship require trust in the loved person; generosity is incompatible with continual suspicion that the world is about to take one's necessary goods away; greatness of soul requires high hope and expectation; even courage requires confidence that some good can come of fine action. (In Chapter 13 we shall see the importance of this idea for Aristotle's connection with Euripidean tragedy.) The virtues require a stance of openness towards the world and its possibilities: as the Antigone also suggested, a yielding and receptive character of soul that is not compatible with an undue emphasis on self-protection. This openness is both itself vulnerable and a source of vulnerability for the person's eudaimonia: for the trusting person is more easily betrayed than the self-enclosed person, and it is the experience of betrayal that slowly erodes the foundation of the virtues. Virtue contains in this way (in a world where most people's experience is that ' things go badly') the seeds of its own disaster. This is a treatise for orators who will address a mixed group of ordinary people; it therefore aims to say what is so for the average mediocre type, and it does not stress the abilities of the person of superior character.* We can assume, with EN 1, that such a person would not be corroded by a few bad experiences and that in a wide range of circ*mstances he or she would be able to act well with the ' materials' at hand, preserving character intact. And yet this passage tells us clearly that character itself can be affected; the mechanisms of its decline are, clearly, present in the good as well as the mediocre life. (Most of the circ*mstances mentioned are common; some even appear natural and inevitable.) Indeed, we might say that the good are in certain ways more at risk than the bad: for it is the good euethes person who trusts in uncertain things and therefore risks the pain of disillusionment. We shall see in Euripides' portrait of Hecuba both how difficult it is to sway the character of a really good person and how horrible is the spectacle of such a decline, once trust is no longer available. There follow in the Rhetoric three brief chapters concerning the' goods of luck' and their contribution to character.35 These chapters flesh out this general story of the vulnerability of virtue, adding the disturbing thought that success can be as corrupting as misfortune. Aristotle considers, in turn, three sorts of advantages that might accrue to an agent by luck: good birth, wealth, and power. He asks of each, what effect does it have upon character? Briefly summarized, his conclusion is that good birth conduces to ambitiousness and disdainfulness; wealth to insolence, arrogance, and a mercenary attitude towards value; power to a somewhat better group of traits - to seriousness and a sober sense of responsibility - but also to some of the same vices as wealth. All the types of good fortune are said to conduce to one virtue: to love of the divine, to whom the * It might he objected, too, that these sections of the Rhetoric deal with endoxa, prevalent ordinary beliefs not yet sifted and scrutinized. But Aristotle is telling the orator what young and old people are like in part so that he will know how best to persuade them. The success of his teaching here depends on its being right about the way their characters in fact are, not just about how they are seen.
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life fortunate ascribe the origin of their good fortune (139^4). The opposite situations of bad fortune conduce to opposite states of character in ways that can easily be imagined ( 1 3 9 1 ^ - 7 ) . Aristotle's position here is not that these pieces of luck are sufficient conditions for the states of character named, or that all recipients of such luck will develop these traits. (Indeed, in the EN he stresses that the good person will deal with good fortune much more appropriately than the bad or mediocre: 1 i24a3off.) He speaks of the luck as a contributory cause, as something that 'pulls towards' these character traits 'along with' other causes (sunteinousin, 139^31). The claim that good fortune 'has' the types of character described (echei ta ethe, 1391330-1) is probably not to be read more strongly. The luck is one causal factor that has some real effect. The wealthy ' are affected in some way (paschontes ti) by the possession of wealth' (i39ob33-4); and it is even 'plausible that they should be affected in this way' (139^7). These causal forces are, then, of the sort that might be resisted by a person of outstandingly firm character in relatively balanced circ*mstances; but they are real forces, and an ethical account must recognize their power. We can now summarize Aristotle's argument against the opponent of luck. First of all, he has argued that the good condition of a virtuous person is not, by itself, sufficient for full goodness of living. Our deepest beliefs about value, when scrutinized, show us that we require more. We require that the good condition find its completion or full expression in activity; and this activity takes the agent to the world, in such a way that he or she becomes vulnerable to reversals. Any conception of good living that we will consider rich enough to be worth going for will contain this element of risk. The vulnerability of the good person is not unlimited. For frequently, even in diminished circ*mstances, the flexible responsiveness of his practical wisdom will show him a way to act well. But the vulnerability is real: and if deprivation and diminution are severe or prolonged enough, this person can be' dislodged' from eudaimonia itself. Aristotle's final point against the good-condition opponent is that even then virtuous condition is not, itself, something hard and invulnerable. Its yielding and open posture towards the world gives it the fragility, as well as the beauty, of a plant. VI So far we have spoken of the necessary vulnerability of human eudaimonia, given the worldly contingencies of specifically human life. We can see how closely risk and richness of value are connected: for the very same evaluative choices that enhance the quality and completeness of a human life - the choice to value activities rather than just intellectual keenness - open the agent to certain risks of disaster. Our investigation of social values in the next chapter will show this sort of connection even more clearly. But so far it is not evident that one could not imagine these same virtues and this same eudaimonia turning up in a risk-free life. The conditions of risk appear to be accidentally, rather than essentially,
Vulnerability of the good life: activity and disaster 3 2 5 connected to the structure of virtue itself, however permanent and unavoidable these contingent conditions are. We know from Chapter 10 that the search for the good life must be a search for a human good life — that the notion of a Good abstracted from the nature and the conditions of a certain sort of being is an empty one. But we do not yet know in what way the specifically needy and risky elements of our ' human condition * are going to shape or constitute the virtues that make up our eudaimonia. It is, however, Aristotle's view that certain central human values are available and valuable only within a context of risk and material limitation. A divine or unlimited life could not have those same values, those good things, in it. In the first book of the Politics (i2 5 3a8ff.), he tells us that certain central ethical notions - including the advantageous and disadvantageous, the just and unjust, the good and bad - are notions that belong to the human being alone among the animals, and that the polis is the association of living beings who have these conceptions. He then goes on to point out that the beast and the god are both, in their different ways, non-political creatures, lacking a share in the association that takes its shape from the ethical conceptions - the one because of its savagery and lack of rational capability, the other because of its solitary self-sufficiency (125 3a2yff.). It is, then, strongly suggested that a solitary self-sufficient being will not partake, as we humans do, in the understanding and communication of certain basic ethical values. And we can see why this should be so: for the notion of advantage seems to have a close conceptual connectedness with need; and the notion of justice, as Aristotle understands it, is a notion of the equitable distribution of finite and limited resources. Both the meaningfulness of these values and their value or goodness seem to depend upon, be relative to, our human context of limitation.36 This point is reaffirmed in EN vn, where the excellences, whose activities have been held to be ends in themselves for a human being, are denied both to beasts and to gods (ii45a25ff.). Aristotle returns to this point in Book x of the EN, making his claim about divine or unlimited beings more explicit.37 If we really imagine the life of a needless and divine being, he says there, we find that most of the central human ethical values will not be valuable or even comprehensible in such a life. Will we ascribe to them just actions ? Or isn't it evidently ridiculous to imagine them making contracts and returning deposits and so on? Or courageous actions, enduring fearful things and taking risks because it is noble? Or generous actions? To whom will they give? It will be inappropriate for them to have money or anything of that kind. Or moderate actions - what would those be? Isn't that commendation vulgar, since they have no base appetites? (ii78bio-i6)
It is plain that these central human values - which are, in the bulk of Aristotle's ethical writings, treated as ends in themselves, important constituents of human eudaimonia38 - cannot be found in a life without shortage, risk, need, and limitation. Their nature and their goodness are constituted by the fragile nature of human life. (We shall shortly see that the same is true of the value of friendship and of political
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life activity.) What we find valuable depends essentially on what we need and how we are limited. The goodness and beauty of human value cannot be comprehended or seen apart from that context. And the point is not merely epistemological: the persons and actions we now call just and generous simply would not he valuable in an animal or a divine context. Plato had recognized that this was true of very many human values: they were not kattf hauto, in and of themselves, but pros ti, relative to something, specifically, to the conditions of merely human life. He had argued that the true or superior values would be the few that were not context-dependent or need-relative. He equated the truly valuable with that which a perfect non-limited needless being would still have reason to pursue. But Aristotle points out that the perspective of an unlimited being is not necessarily an unlimited perspective: for from this viewpoint many values cannot be seen. Plato suggested that there is available in the universe a pure transparent standpoint, from which the whole truth of value in the universe is evident. Aristotle (in most of his writing on virtue - see Appendix) replies that this does not look to be the case. Lack of limit is itself a limit. There may be no single nature to which all of genuine value discloses itself. As Heracl*tus wrote,' Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal, living with respect to one another's death, dead with respect to one another's life.' 39 Immortality closes the god off from the intensity of mortal courage, the beauty of just or generous action. The gods of tradition, we recall, find their own lack of limit constricting: they long after the riskier loves and aspirations of mortals. Even though they are unable to assume the mortal perspective or to understand such lives from the inside, they are drawn to the virtue of the limited being, the quick tense splendor of human excellence aimed against opposition at a difficult goal. Aristode returns to some of the very deepest ' appearances' of his culture when he insists that the good makes its appearance only within the confines of what some creature is, and that need can be constitutive of beauty.40
12
The vulnerability of the good human life: relational goods
Each of the human excellences requires some external resources and necessary conditions. Each also requires, more intimately, external objects that will receive the excellent activity.1 Generosity involves giving to others, who must be there to receive; moderation involves the appropriate relation, in action, to objects (food, drink, sexual partners) who can fail to be present, either altogether or in the appropriate way. Even intellectual contemplation requires the presence of suitable objects for thought. But this condition, as Plato saw, would rarely, if ever, fail to be met on account of contingencies of circ*mstance. For something can be an object of thought whether it is physically present or not; 2 as long as there is a universe there will be many things to contemplate everywhere; and, finally, as Aristotle adds, thought can be its own object.3 We can see, then, that although all human activities and therefore all candidates for inclusion in a plan for the good human life are in some way relational, some are very much more self-sufficient than others. Aristotle, like Plato, judges that contemplative activity is, among the activities available to us, the most stable and individually self-sufficient (EN 1 1 7 7 3 2 5 - 1 1 7 7 ^ , 1178323-5). 4 Even though he rejects the extremes of the good-condition view, he might, then, like Plato, try to shore up the self-sufficiency of the good life by making those most secure activities its primary, or even its only, components.5 There are, however, other important human values that lie at the opposite end of the self-sufficiency spectrum: above all, the good activities connected with citizenship and political attachment, and those involved in personal love and friendship. For these require, and are in their nature relations with, a particular human context that is highly vulnerable and can easily fail to be present. Love requires another loving person. And 'the just person needs those towards whom he will act justly and those with whom' (1177330-1). (The 'those* must bear the appropriate political relation to the agent: they must be fellow citizens, not fellow slaves.) Furthermore, love and friendship, and the part of political excellence that is a type of friendship or love6 (if not, indeed, the entirety of political excellence), are in their nature relations, rather than virtuous states (^xm)-plus-activities. The central excellences of character reside, so to speak, in the person; they are states of the person. Activity in the world is their perfection or completion; but if activity is cut off there is still something stably there, an underlying core of good character whose natural expression is in the excellent activity. This core is not invulnerable; but it is relatively stable, even in the absence of activity. Love and friendship, by contrast, are in their very nature contingent relationships between separate 343
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life elements in the world. Each rests upon and is in complex ways connected with other traits of the person, such as generosity, justice, and kindliness; but there is no trait of being loving or being friendly that stands to love exacdy as being courageous stands to courageous action, viz. as its mainspring and, impediments absent, its sufficient condition. To say this would, in Aristotle's view, misrepresent the importance of mutuality and mutual awareness in human love. Love is not simply a loving state of character plus a suitable context for its activation. The object's specific nature and activity enters more deeply into making it itself. Mutual activity, feeling, and awareness are such a deep part of what love and friendship are that Aristode is unwilling to say that there is anything worthy of the name of love or friendship left, when the shared activities and the forms of communication that express it are taken away. The other person enters in not just as an object who receives the good activity, but as an intrinsic part of love itself. But if this is so (and we shall pursue the claim further below), then these components of the good life are going to be minimally self-sufficient. And they will be vulnerable in an especially deep and dangerous way. For luck from the world will be required not just for their adequate expression but for their very existence. And a reversal of fortune will not simply impede their expression; it will strike directly at their root. This special character explains why, in both the ethical works and the Rhetoric, Aristotle, in enumerating reversals or pitiable and fearful events, lays particular stress on disasters connected with philia. These 'relational goods' have another distinctive feature: they seem to be dispensable. Many of the other human excellences are identified by focusing on a sphere of activity in which human beings necessarily and more or less inevitably make choices: excellent activity is then defined as appropriate activity within this necessary sphere. Moderation, for example, is appropriate activity with respect to bodily pleasure and pain, especially where food, drink, and sex are concerned. Courage is appropriate activity with respect to situations of risk. To ask, ' Should moderation be included in the good human life?' is not, cannot be, to ask whether the sphere of choice in which moderation figures should be included. Such a question could mean only, 'Should appropriate, rather than inappropriate behavior in this sphere be cultivated?' (We could, of course, go on from this question to ask whether moderation is to be valued as an end in itself or just as a means to other ends.) With friendship, love, and politics, our options and questions are more numerous. For human beings7 apparently can, and do, live without these relations. Aristotle recognizes as a prominent part of the philosophical tradition the view that the pursuit of self-sufficiency requires us to cultivate a solitary life, one that neither relies upon nor ascribes value to these fragile things. Aristotle rejects that view, arguing that both social/political relations and philia are essential and valuable parts of the good human life. Indeed, he announces quite clearly, towards the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, that the sort of self-sufficiency that characterizes the best human life is a communal and not a solitary self-sufficiency. 'The complete (teleion) good seems to be self-sufficient (autarkes). But by self-sufficient we mean not a life for the individual alone, living
Vulnerability of the good life: relational goods 3 5 3 a solitary life, but for parents as well and children and wife and in general philoi and fellow citizens, since the human being is by nature political'* (io97b7-n). This cryptic remark, which seems to stipulate without argument that a solitary life is insufficient for eudaimonia, corresponds, in fact, to a complex series of arguments defending that position. We can appropriately conclude our study of Aristotle's views about 'external goods' by examining these arguments. Their strategy, as we might expect, is complex. Against the defender of solitary self-sufficiency Aristotle argues that these vulnerable relationships and their associated activities have both instrumental value as necessary means to, and intrinsic value as component parts of, the best human life. But, he argues, this does not put the best life intolerably at the mercy of fortune. For it is possible to realize each of these values, properly understood, within a life that is not intolerably unstable, one that possesses an appropriately human kind of self-sufficiency. I Among the cherished human goods, membership and good activity in a political community are outstandingly vulnerable to chance reversal. This hardly needs to be mentioned. The tragedies on which Aristotle and his audience were raised, and on which he wishes to raise young citizens, focus on themes of defeat in war, enslavement, the loss of political exercise and political freedom. Aristotle's times were times of alarming political instability. His own life exemplified these uncertainties. Forced to leave Athens twice under political pressure, barred because of his resident alien status from owning property or taking an active role in civic, political, and religious affairs, linked by a problematic and uneven relationship to the Macedonian court whose threat to democratic freedoms he probably deplored, he knew all too well that to attach value to the city and one's role in it was to care about something highly unstable.8 In these unreliable times other philosophers were beginning to urge withdrawal from active engagement in politics. The life of Pyrrho (c. 365-275) - or the stories of that life - exemplified for later skeptics a state of freedom from disturbance attained by refusal of commitment to the sources of disturbance.9 Pyrrho allegedly illustrated the proper state of the human being in the midst of upheavals by pointing to a pig on the deck of a storm-tossed ship: caring nothing for the well-being of the ship and its passengers, it continues to eat contentedly at its trough. 10 Epicurus (341-270) would soon begin to teach a life of contemplative aloofness, in which the philosopher maintains a distance both psychic and physical from civic turmoil. His statues, erected in public places, would give the prospective pupil the message * I shall translatepolitikon as 'political'; but it is important to notice that it is both more concrete and more inclusive than the English word. More concrete, in that it refers above all to our aptness or suitability for life in a city or polis - not in other forms or levels of political organization. More inclusive, because it takes in the entire life of the polis, including informal social relations, and is not limited to the sphere of laws and institutions. In this respect, * social' would be more appropriate; but it would, even more than 'political' lack the concreteness of the Greek word.
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life that godlike dignity and calm could be his - or hers 11 - with a retreat to the extrapolitical society of the garden. 12 Aristotle, knowing the fragility of the political, and aware of philosophical defenses of the solitary good life, 13 refuses to take this course. First of all, as he repeatedly stresses, membership and good activity in a political community has a necessary instrumental role in the development of good character generally. Habituation, accomplished both within the family and in the context of a program of public education, is the most decisive factor in becoming good: 4 It makes no small difference whether one is brought up in these or those habits from childhood, but a very great difference; or, rather, all the difference' (EN ii03b2 3-4). Teaching and instruction, he argues in Nicomachean Ethics x.9, are of no avail unless the soul of the listener has been prepared beforehand by good training in the direction of loving the right things - just as earth must be prepared beforehand if it is to receive seed (ii79b23~6). 14 But this preparation can only take place through some orderly system of education; and in this same chapter Aristotle argues that the training that a child receives within the immediate family is not enough. 4 To get correct guidance towards excellence from childhood is difficult for someone who is not brought up under such laws' (ii79b3i-2), for only laws can supply the element of compulsion that is necessary in order to check a young human being's natural hedonism and lack of discipline (1179b34ff.). 4 The paternal command possesses neither the forceful nor the necessary; nor indeed does any command from a single person, unless that person is a king or something of the sort. But law has a necessitating power, being a rule (logos) from some sort of practical wisdom and insight' (1180319-22). Aristotle gives three further arguments for the importance of completing private education with a civic scheme. First, only the civic plan promises the consistency and uniformity that is highly important for the regulation of daily life. Whereas each set of parents might instill a different conception of the good, a common scheme will ensure that people who need to deal with one another throughout life will share values and ends. 4 Since the end of the city is one, it is obvious that education as well must be one and the same for all, and that the direction of this should be in common and not private, the way that each person now privately takes charge of his own children, and with a private education, teaching what seems best to him' (Politics 1337321-5). Second, a public scheme has a better chance of getting things right 3bout human V3lue, since it will be worked out by 3 legislator who is 3 reflective person of practical wisdom and has, let us hope, seriously considered all the alternatives (EN 1180318-22, 29).15 This m3y be too much to expect of the 3verage parent (who possesses however, other complementary abilities, in particular the detailed knowledge of the character of the particular child, that make his personal engagement an equally necessary part of the educational process: n8ob7ff., cf. below). Finally, assuming that social excellence is a valuable part of human life, this fact will best be taught by the fostering of a common and not a private scheme: * It is not good that each one of the citizens should consider himself to be his own: all should believe themselves
Vulnerability of the good life: relational goods 3 5 3 to belong to the city - for each one is a part of the city* (Pol. 1337327-9). Of these arguments, the third and probably the first depend on the antecedent acceptance of Aristotle's other arguments for the human value of the political: for if it were not otherwise valuable we could choose a life in which we did not have to deal with one another socially and hence would not require a uniform conception of the good; and, again, if it is not valuable it will be bad rather than good for a scheme of education to teach children that it is. But Aristotle shows that our acceptance of this value generates further reasons to value it: only it can best promote its own continuity. To value a public scheme of education is to value something both vulnerable and difficult to realize. Aristotle's arguments against prevailing custom in Politics V I I I make it clear that anything approaching adequate general practice is rare. And even if it is possible to become good in less ideal surroundings, cultural instability of a sort familiar in his time will frequently bring practice below the threshold of acceptability. Furthermore, even in a good and stable culture, because of economic necessity there will always be those who, living the life of manual laborers, will be debarred by the exigencies of their daily work from having the education that is requisite for full human excellence. 4 If one is living the life of a craftsman or hired servant, it is not possible to practice the things belonging to excellence' (PoL 1278320-1; cf. 1329339-41). Even the life of a farmer is not compatible with full excellence,' for leisure is required both for the coming-to-be of excellence and for political activities '(13 2931-2). But craftsmen, hired servants, and farmers will always be needed for the sake of survival and prosperity. The conclusion that we must draw from these facts is th3t even in 3 good city the best hum3n life cannot be open to all, since it requires conditions that cannot at any one time be distributed to all.16 Aristotle, looking upon these difficult facts, does not conclude that these social conditions cannot, after all, be genuine necess3ry conditions for excellence. He concludes instead that, even though excellence should be avaihble, as he h3s said, to all who are not naturslly unsble to 3tt3in it, th3t is not, for all people, the way the world is. Some injustice is required by the exigencies of social life itself under contingent existing economic conditions. To put things this way is, in his view, better than to define the good in terms of the possible: first, because it provides an incentive to the legislator to work ag3inst these limit3tions 3S much as possible; second, because to aim only at what is, for everyone,4commensurate with life' is to aim at a lower and impoverished mark. Suppose now that we have a person who has been well brought up under good l3ws. His chsrscter is well developed, he hss generally good att3chments. How import3nt is p3rticip3tion in the politic3l community for the continu3tion of excellence? Here, once again, Aristotle gives the polis and our activities in and for it an import3nt role. First of all, moral growth does not come to an abrupt stop when 3 young person re3ches 3 cert3in chronologic3l 3ge, or even 3 cert3in high developmental stage. In his discussions both of politics and of philia, Aristotle depicts growth 3s 3n ongoing process th3t requires continued support from without. This is most urgently true for 3dults who retmin morally immature;
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life but it appears to be to some extent true even for the very best. 'It is probably not sufficient for people to have correct nurture and attention when they are young, but even when they are grown up they need to practice these things and to go on forming habits. And for this we would need laws - and in general for the entire course of life' (EN n8oai-4). Good character, once well started, is something relatively stable; but we have seen that reversals can corrupt it. The books on philia will bear this out in their talk of the character changes, both good and bad, brought about by the influence of associates. These are ways in which civic activity and the presence of good political surroundings prove instrumentally necessary for the development and maintenance of good character. We may now add that even if we grant the agent a stable good adult character, favorable political conditions are required instrumentally for him or her to act well according to excellence. A slave, however good in character, is deprived of choice, therefore of something essential for living well. A slave is a human being who does not live according to his own choice (Pol. 131^3, 13; 1280332-4). 'Although he is a human being, he is someone else's, not his own' (1254314-15). For these reasons, Aristotle denies that slaves can share in eudaimonia, which requires that excellent activities be chosen by the agent's own practic3l re3son, 3nd chosen for their own S3ke (128033 3).17 Nor C3n they sh3re in the highest sort of philia, which is based on mutual respect for choice and character.18 For these reasons, Aristotle argues that no person who has the natural capacity for practical reason should be held in slavery (1252332, 1255325). Although he recognizes th3t there 3re some more or less hum3n creatures who might be called 'natural slaves', and might appropriately be held in slavery because they 'do not have the deliberative faculty at all' ( 1 2 6 0 3 1 2 , i254b2o), nonetheless he, in effect, condemns as unjust most of the actual practice of slavery in his culture, since that in fact consisted in holding in bondage perfectly reasonsble 3nd ressoning people who simply h3ppened to be C3ptured in w3r.* Even less extreme soci3l impediments can diminish eudaimonia. Aristotle's remarks about manual labor and leisure probably imply that a well-trained adult who is suddenly thrust into this monotonous and degrading life will not only suffer an impairment of good activity (as is obvious), but will also risk, as time goes on, suffering a decisive impairment of character itself. For a while such a person might ' make the best of' these conditions, in the way that Nicomachean Ethics 1 suggests (cf. Ch. 11). In such a case, the impairment of activity need not dislodge the person from eudaimonia, bringing about a 'decisive change of life'. But if the restrictions are severe and prolonged enough, eudaimonia will be impeded: either through impairment of activity alone, or through the defilement of excellence itself. All these are ways in which full participation in a well-functioning polis is a * It is not too likely that Aristotle believes most actual slaves to be capable of practical reason, hence unjustly enslaved. He sets very stringent criteria for slave-holding, criteria which in fact imply that most actual Greek practice is unjust. But his application of his own criteria may be marred by prejudice and xenophobia.
Vulnerability of the good life: relational goods 3 5 3 necessary condition for the development and exercise of the individual's other excellences. But we must now add that Aristotle believes the political participation of the citizen to be itself an intrinsic good or end, without which a human life, though flourishing with respect to other excellences, will be incomplete. To some extent we see this in the emphasis he places upon justice and equity in his account of the excellences of character. These excellences are clearly of central importance; and, as with all excellences, their activities must be chosen 4 for their own sake', not merely instrumentally. Most of Aristotle's examples of these activities are political in nature. But private life provides at least some scope for the exercise of these virtues; and we might easily imagine that a non-citizen, for example a resident alien like Aristotle himself, could live a perfectly full and good human life, so long as his private choices were not unduly constrained. Aristotle's own private autonomy and excellence of life seems to have been little impaired by his failure to participate as a citizen in Athenian public life. Aristotle does not agree with this suggestion. He apparently does not regard the actual holding of political office as necessary for full adult good living: for he says in the Magna Moralia that the good person will frequently yield his opportunity for office-holding to another who might make better use of it (i2i2a34ff.). But he plainly imagines this man as having a claim to office: he actively yields this claim to the other. (His name is in the lottery, though he may give away the prize when his name is drawn.) Aristotle does, plainly believe that to be deprived of the chance for office is a diminution of good living. He speaks of the resident alien (using an Homeric quotation) as an 'alien without honor (time)9y a wanderer in his own country, on the grounds that he 'does not have a share in political office (time)9 (Pol. 1278334-8). 19 We must recall at this point that the Greek polis was both more pervasive and more immediate than a modern democratic regime. Its values organized and permeated the entire lives of its citizens, including their moral education; and it could truthfully be said that the average individual citizen did have a real share in shaping and controlling these. To be deprived of this chance is, then, not to be deprived of something peripheral to good living, but to be alienated from the ground and basis for good living itself. And this is, Aristotle reasonably concludes, to lack an intrinsic value. He therefore sets himself to plan a city in which citizenship will be available to all those who are not deprived of natural abilities essential for living well, and in which all citizens will have, as single individuals, an active role in the shaping of the institutions that govern them.20 Aristode's defense of the intrinsic value of the political emerges in another context as well. This is in his articulation of the claim that to be political is a part of human nature. It is worth examining these famous passages, asking exacdy what they are establishing and by what sort of argument. For it has sometimes been thought that here Aristotle turns aside from the scrutiny of shared human beliefs about ethical value and grounds a normative account of ethical value on a bedrock of value-neutral scientific fact concerning our nature as humans.21 If this were so it would require some revision in our account of Aristotle's ethical procedures;
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so it is worth getting clear about just how an appeal to our nature really works in the context of an ethical argument. The force and point of the arguments in the Politics and the EN that appeal to the political nature of the human being is to defend the intrinsic value of the political against an opponent who has conceded it only instrumental value. The opponent says that a solitary or apolitical life is entirely sufficient for human eudaimonia if one has no need for the good things that the political supplies. Aristotle replies that the political is itself one of the good things, something without which a human life would be incomplete. The claim that the political is a part of our nature appears to be equivalent to the claim that a life without it is lacking in an important good, is seriously frustrated or incomplete. It is a conspicuous feature of the style of these passages that they appeal as explicitly and emphatically as any in the corpus to shared belief: 'it appears', 'it seems', 'they say' are used repeatedly, casting doubt at once on the suggestion that we are appealing to a neutral or detached expert. Second, the features of ordinary belief to which appeal is made are in large measure ethical and evaluative in their content. They are beliefs about what is worthwhile, what is praiseworthy, what impoverished. Two passages in the EN defend the naturalness of interpersonal association against the claim that the self-sufficient solitary is fully eudaimon. Of these, the first speaks only of the naturalness of philia (1155316-23). The second speaks of the naturalness of the politikon, but in the context of defending the importance of personal philia. We shall therefore examine it in more detail later on. But we can now examine the sentence in which the political claim is made: And surely it is peculiar to make the makarios a solitary: for nobody would choose to have all the good things in the world all by himself. For the human being is a political creature and naturally disposed to living-with ( 1 1 6 9 ^ 6 - 1 9 ) .
Aristotle appeals here, clearly, not to some separate realm of natural fact, but to our deepest judgments of value: the solitary life is insufficient for eudaimonia because we would not find such a life choiceworthy or sufficient for us. The solitary view of eudaimonia is at odds with the choices we make and the beliefs that we share. If eudaimonia is to include every value without which a life would be judged incomplete, it must include the political as an end in its own right. The sentence about our political nature indicates to us, furthermore, that political choices and concerns lie so deep that they are a part of what we are. The solitary life would not only be less than perfect; it would also-be lacking in something so fundamental that we could hardly call it a human life at all. The appeal to nature thus underlines the depth and importance of the element in question. Without it we are not even ourselves. To choose a life without it is to depart so much from ourselves that we could hardly say that we still go on in such a life. To find out about our nature seems to be one and the same with finding out what we believe to be the most important and indispensable elements of our lives.22 The appeal to the political nature of the human being in Politics 1 seems to tell the same story. Again, the claim that the polis exists by nature works to defend
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the intrinsic value of this constituent of human life. Aristotle states the general principle that if X is part of the nature of creature C9 then no account of the ends of C's life would be complete without mention of X , and no account of the sort of self-sufficiency appropriate for Cs could omit X (i252b3i~i25 3ai). An argument that the political is a part of our nature would, then, rule out (as in the EN) the view that the solitary life can be sufficient for eudaimonia, provided that this life has no further instrumental needs. Aristotle next advances some reasons for thinking that to be politikon is a part of our nature: ... It is evident that... the human being is by nature a political animal, and that the person who is citiless through nature (apolis dia phusin) and not through luck is either an inferior creature or greater than a human being: just like the person denounced by Homer as 'clanless, without customs, without a hearth' - for this person is in his very nature (hama phusei) of such a sort and a lover of war, being 'unyoked' like a piece in the dice-game.
(i253ai-7)
Shortly before this, Aristotle had made reference to Homer's Cyclopes, whose specific difference from us is constituted by their lack of social and political concern alone (i25 2b20~4; cf. EN 1180328-9). He thus reminded his audience of the depth of a tradition of thought about the human being according to which an anthropomorphic being who lacked social concerns would not be classified as human.23 Now he goes a step further, considering a Homeric line that in fact refers to a being whom any modern scientist would classify as, technically, a member of the species hom*o sapiens - not, then, a mythical creature like the Cyclops - and reminds his audience of the way in which their greatest sage Nestor (and their most authoritative poet Homer) denounces this being and relegates him to a distant place of inferiority. If it is really his nature to be a solitary and to love war for its own sake, not just as a means, then, Aristotle says, he is either below or above our kind, but he is not of it. If we encountered such a being, asocial not through accident or frustration but in his natural inclinations, we would not count him as one of us, accord to him the treatment we accord our fellow humans. And if all this is so, then it seems likely that to act politically is an end in itself for human beings and a constituent of human eudaimonia. Deprived of this, we are leading a life that does not suit us; we are frustrated and cut off from a part of what we are. All of this is drawn, clearly, from deep and prevalent ordinary beliefs, the beliefs that are reflected and further explored in our most cherished myths and stories.24 In EN v (1 i29b26ff.), Aristotle goes one step further. Investigating the nature of justice, dikaiosune, he tells us that in one sense it is the ' most authoritative' of the excellences and is the same as ' complete excellence' itself, in that all excellence has an other-related or social aspect. Qua other-related, all excellence deserves the name of justice. Aristotle seems to be claiming that with only solitary concerns, without the excellence that consists in having an appropriate regard for the good of others, a human being will lack not just one important human end, he will lack all of the excellences - for each is, as he says, a thing ' in relation to others'
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{pros heteron) as well as 'in relation to oneself' {pros hauton). Aristotle here uses Platonic terminology in a deliberately anti-Platonic way: where Plato had insisted that no true value is a relational {pros heteron) item, Aristotle now insists that all true excellence of character has a relational nature: without making political and other-related concerns ends in themselves, one will lack not only justice but also true courage, true moderation, true generosity, greatness of soul, conviviality, and so forth. For a creature whose conception of the ultimate good made mention only of his own good would not be able to possess any of these items in the true sense (as the Rhetoric discussion of trust and excellence has indicated already). The idea seems to be something like this. True courage (as opposed to mere brashness) requires an appropriate, which is to say more than merely instrumental, concern for the well-being of one's country and fellow citizens; true moderation (as opposed to crafty pleasure-seeking) requires the proper (and this is noninstrumental) respect for standing norms of convivial and sexual interaction; true generosity a non-crafty concern for the good of the recipient; and so forth. In each case, one cannot choose these excellent activities as ends in themselves (as the definition of excellence requires), without also choosing the good of others as an end. Deprived of this end, then, we lack not a part of our good, we lack the whole, Aristotle has, then, argued that an investigation of the 'appearances' reveals that social and other-related activity possesses both instrumental and intrinsic value for human beings. He does not regard the evident riskiness and instability of these values in the world as a reason to rule them out of the best life by fiat, or to conclude, against the evidence of intuitive beliefs and poetic stories, that the person who loses them has lost nothing of serious value. Instead he views these facts about politics and society as giving a reason for competent and serious people to turn their attentions to legislation and political planning. Instead of reducing our demands on the world so that they will more consistendy be met, we ought, he believes, to increase our activity in and towards the world so that it will more regularly meet our high demands. Instead of decreeing in advance that the only important things are the ones that are already under human control, we try to increase our human control over the important things. This would be the proper way for a human being to pursue self-sufficiency.25 We should notice, however, that Aristotle's interest in stability in political life is tempered by his concern for other social values, such as the autonomy of individual choice and civic vitality. Among the available conceptions of the polis he does not opt for one that would seek to maximize stability and unity by turning over all choice-making to a single person or a small group. Against Platonic efforts to eliminate conflict and instability through minimizing the legislative engagement of separate wills, Aristotle defends a conception of the city as a 'plurality', an association of 'free and equal' citizens who rule and are ruled by turns.26 He defends this conception on grounds of justice, pointing to the fundamental role played by separateness and personal choice in any good human life; and he also claims that such an association will possess a superior vitality and richness, since
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human beings are more profoundly motivated to attend to and care about things by the thought that the object of care is in some important way theirs (Pol. I262b22ff., I26ibi6ff.). Finally, he does not urge cities to cultivate stability at the expense of a commitment to excellence, avoiding noble endeavors or large projects because of the risks these entail. His evident admiration for the policies of Periclean Athens reveals a preference for ambitious endeavor over conservative safety. As in the private sphere, where he defends the nobility of self-sacrifice for an excellent end, so, too, in the public he is willing to put achievement over safety. In one further way, Aristotle's city refuses to eliminate risk. We have spoken so far here of his defense of the fragility of individual components of the good life. We should now add that in his good city the possibility of contingent conflict of values is preserved as a condition of the richness and vigor of civic life itself. Plato attempted to eliminate the risk of conflict between family and city by making the only family the city. Aristotle defends the importance of the intimate bonds of family love, as we shall shortly see, arguing that interpersonal bonds in a city that lacked this possibility for conflict would be simply£ watery' (1262b! 5 ff.). Plato attempted to eliminate, as grounds of conflict, both private property and the exclusiveness of sexual relations (cf. Ch. 5 §v, pp. 158-60). Aristotle, here again, argues that to do this is to deprive civic life of sources of motivation and concern that could be found in no other way. Plato he aptly says, tried to make the city a unity in the way that a single organic body is a unity: with a single good, a single conception of'one's own', a single pleasure and pain (126iai6ff.). Aristotle argues at length that this sort of conflict-free unity is not the sort of unity appropriate to the polis, since it destroys personal separateness, an essential ingredient of human social goodness. A city is by nature a plurality of separate parts (i26iai8-22). To make it one in the Platonic way is to eliminate the bases of political justice and of philia, two of its central goods. For there is no justice between the elements of a single organic whole. The idea of justice as distribution presupposes the separateness of the parties and of their interests (cf. MM 1 1 9 ^ 5 - 2 3 , EN ii34biff.). Therefore, even if it were possible to eliminate the bases of conflict, making all citizens say 'mine' and 'not-mine' as a single body, we should not do this: it would mean the destruction of the values proper to the city (i26ib2 5-6, 31-2, 1332336-7). We find, then, in Aristotle's thought about the civilized city, an idea we first encountered in the Antigone: the idea that the value of certain constituents of the good human life is inseparable from a risk of opposition, therefore of conflict. To have them adequately is to have them plural and separate (cf. Ch. 10 §11); to have them in this way is to risk strife. But to unify and harmonize, removing the bases of conflict, is to remove value as well. The singleness of Creon's simplification or even Hegel's synthesis - even if successful - impoverishes the world.
25oAristotle: the fragility of the good human life II
Philoi, says Aristotle, are 'the greatest of the external goods' (EN n69bio). To the topic of philia he devotes one-fifth of each of his two major ethical works more space than is devoted to any other single topic.27 We need to begin our study of this external good with two verbal points. We have indicated (cf. Ch. n , p. 328) that we are not going to follow the usual practice of translating philia as 'friendship\ philos as 'friend'. We now need to give more fully the reasons for this. The first reason is extensional: philia includes many relationships that would not be classified as friendships. The love of mother and child is a paradigmatic case ofphilia\ all close family relations, including the relation of husband and wife, are so characterized. Furthermore, our' friendship' can suggest a relationship that is weak in affect relative to some other relationship, as in the expression 'just friends'. Aristotle deals with relationships of varying degrees of intimacy and depth; a few of them may be weak in affect. But philia includes the very strongest affective relationships that human beings form; it includes, furthermore, relationships that have a passionate sexual component. For both of these reasons, English 'love' seems more appropriately wide-ranging. So where we translate, we shall speak of love. But we must notice from the start that Aristotle's choice of a central word reveals something about what he values in human relationships. For the emphasis of philia is less on intensely passionate longing than on disinterested benefit, sharing, and mutuality; less on madness than on a rare kind of balance and harmony. A second translation problem is more intractable. In English, partners to a love relationship are linguistically divided into the active and the passive: we have 'lover' or 'person who loves', and we have 'loved one'. 28 Greek philos makes no active/passive distinction. And mutuality will in fact be an important part of Aristotle's conception of philia and the philos. (In this respect, English 'friend' is better off.) I shall, therefore, frequently use transliteration, in order to preserve the unity of active and passive elements. Love is, in its very nature, a relationship with something separate and external.29 This externality, which Aristotle sees as essential to the benefits and value of love, is also, plainly, a source of great vulnerability. And yet it is to this external-dependent and risky part of human life that Aristotle devotes more sustained attention than to any other of the human excellences. He devotes to love, furthermore, not only space, but tremendous emphasis. He insists that philia is 'most necessary for life' (EN 115534). And not only necessary but also intrinsically good and fine - for 'we praise those who love their philoi, and having many philoi seems to be one of the intrinsically fine things. Indeed, we think the very same people are good people and good philoi' (1155328-32). We need to characterize the relationship that is the subject of these large claims, and then to examine each of the claims in more detail. Not every case in which a person likes or even intensely loves something or someone is, Aristotle insists, a genuine case of philia. For example, the lover of wine may really love the wine; but he or she is not a philos of the wine, for two
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reasons: ' There is no return of love, and there is no wishing the good for the other's own sake. For it is surely ridiculous to wish the good for the wine - or if one does, what one wants is for it to be preserved so that one can have it. But they say that the philos must wish the good for the other's own sake '(1155 b27~31). We find in this passage two requirements for philia. The first is mutuality: philia is a relation, not a one-way street; its benefits are inseparable from sharing and the return of benefit and affection. The second is independence: the object of philia must be seen as a being with a separate good, not as simply a possession or extension of the philos; and the real philos will wish the other well for the sake of that separate good. The connoisseur loves the wine as his own possession, as a part of his good. Philoi, by contrast, should be separate and independent; they ought to be, and to see one another as, separate centers of choice and action. Elsewhere Aristode tells us that for these reasons there is no genuine philia between master and slave: the slave is like' something o f the master, an extension of the master's own good. He or she is not regarded as a separate seat of choice, whose eudaimonia it is the business of the relation to promote. Philia requires, then, mutuality in affection; it requires separateness and a mutual respect for separateness; it requires mutual well-wishing for the other's own sake and, as the Rhetoric definition tells us, mutual benefiting in action, insofar as this is possible (Rhet. 1380b3 5-1381a!). 3 0 Aristode completes his general sketch of philia by adding that there must be mutual awareness of these good feelings and good wishes: philia must be distinguished from the sort of mutual admiration that could obtain between people who had no knowledge at all of one another.31 These people know each other, feel emotion for one another, wish and act well towards one another, and know that these relationships of thought, emotion, and action obtain between them (115 5b28-i 156aj). A number of different types of love meet, after a fashion, these conditions.32 For the persons involved may wish one another well on the basis of various different specifications or conceptions of one another. They may each, for example, think of the other simply, or primarily, as someone who is pleasant or fun to be with; in this case they will take no further or deeper interests in one another's character and aspirations. Or they may think of one another as useful to their other projects (as might be the case between business partners), and still have, again, no deeper mutual knowledge or attachment. Such relationships will not be merely exploitative: for we recall that without mutuality of genuine well-wishing for the other person's own sake the relationship will not deserve the title ofphilia at all.* * Here it is important to distinguish three things: the basis or ground of the relationship (the thing 'through (did) which' they love); its object \ and its goal or end. Pleasure, advantage, and good character are three different bases or original grounds of philia \ they are not the goal or final (intentional) end of the relationship. In other words, the two people are friends 'through' or 'on the basis o f ' these, but the goal they try to achieve in action will still be some sort of mutual benefit. Pleasure and advantage-friendships, while not perfect, are importantly distinct from exploitative relationships, in which the parties aim each at their own pleasure, and not at all at the other's good. The object of the relation in all cases is the other person; but the person will be conceived of and known in a way bounded by the basis: as someone who is pleasant to be with, as a person well-placed for useful dealings, as a person of good character. Thus the two inferior types aim at benefit for the other only under a thin and superficial description of the other.
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There can be genuinely disinterested mutual benefit in cases where the basis of attachment is shallow and partial. Business partners may give one another gifts and entertain one another; young lovers, knowing only one another's pleasantness, may still genuinely contribute, unselfishly, to one another's good. But then, Aristotle says, the relationship will be connected only incidentally to the central aims and aspirations of each member. It will lack depth, since it is not directed at what that other person really is 'in himself', at the goals, values, and characteristics with which he primarily identifies himself. It will also be unstable, since its basis is one that the person could easily cease to have while remaining in deeper ways unchanged (cf. EN H57a8ff.). Business partners frequently care for one another not only as means to profit; but take away the profit context, and the friendship, unless it has deepened into another sort, will falter. Lovers who know only the surface features of one another's pleasantness will, similarly, be easily derailed by a change in looks or by circ*mstances that put a strain on enjoyment. The central and best case of love between persons is that of love based upon character and conception of the good. Here each partner loves the other for what that other most deeply is in him or herself (kath* hauto), for those dispositions and those patterns of thought and feeling that are so intrinsic to his being himself that a change in them would raise questions of identity and persistence.33 And of course such a relationship will be richer in goodness if the characteristics that are its basis are themselves good. Such a relationship, Aristotle makes clear, will involve strong feeling. In many cases it will also involve mutual pleasure and advantage. But since its basis is deeper than these transient and incidental features, we can expect it to be stable, enduring, and to have an intimate connection with each person's plans for living well. Aristotle has by now quite calmly described and praised a relationship whose very existence was called into question by Plato's Symposium. For there (most explicitly in Socrates' speeches, but to some extent in the others as well) the desire to possess and control was held to be an intrinsic part of all love, both personal and philosophical. Jealousy and the fear of loss were, in consequence, endemic to even the best loves; they could be controlled only by turning love towards objects stabler and less willful than persons. Aristotle reminds us that there is a kind of human love that really does care for and foster the separate good of another, that desires the independent continued motion, rather than the immobility, of its object. (This kind of love, linking activity with passivity, aspiration with receptivity to the actions of the other, looks close to the love described in the Phaedrus - though it lacks, as we shall later observe, that dialogue's emphasis on mad passion.) It is the love of someone who is content to live in a world in which other beings move themselves - who desires to continue to be a part of such a complex world, not controlling the whole, but acting towards and being acted on by its separately moving pieces. In the existence of such moving external pieces, it discovers much of the value and richness of life. It does not aspire to be the only motion there is.
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Nor does the Aristotelian lover aspire to the condition of stone, of freedom from affect. He or she is not erotic in the sense given that word by the Symposium; for he does not desire not to desire, and not to be in the world of happening. His desire is to remain moving and desiring in the world, and to continue to receive the desiring activity of the other. It is a relationship that expresses, in the structure of its desires, a love for the world of change and motion, for orexis itself, and therefore for the needy and non-self-sufficient elements of our condition.34 As Aristotle movingly reminds us, a philos does not wish either himself or his philos transformed into a needless god ( i ^ a j f f . , n66ai9ff.). First, if only one were transformed, this would put too much distance between them. Second, and more important, the transformation would make the philos into a different sort of creature. * If it was well said that the philos wishes the philos good things for his own sake, he would have to remain the sort of being he is; so it is as a human being that he will wish him the greatest of goods ' ( 1 1 5 9a8-i 2). To be non-godlike, needy, orectic, is seen as a necessary part of what it is to be oneself and a philos. Philia, loving the whole of another person for that person's own sake, loves humanity and mutability as well as excellence. Platonic eros seeks wholeness; philia embraces the half. The best philos does seek repeatable traits of character in the object. But this search is different in several ways from the search enjoined by Diotima. First, he or she seeks out many traits that could have no part in a divine or perfect life: above all, perhaps, virtues which, like justice and generosity, are specifically and only human, and are bound up with our condition of neediness. He knows that to wish away human need would also be to wish away those virtues. Second, he sees and attends to those repeatable traits differently: not as pieces of something hom*ogeneous that turns up in many places in the universe, but as forming the essential core of what that concrete person is. He attends to virtues and aspirations because those are the deepest things that go to make another individual the individual he is. He searches not for isolable bits of a form, but for the combination of traits and aspirations that make the wholeness of a person's character. And he does this because his desire is not to stop with the superficial, but to know that person through and through. Finally, as we shall shortly see, he cares as well about features of the person that do not appear to be repeatable: the pleasure of sharing that person's company; and, above all, the specialness of their shared history of mutual pleasure and mutual activity. Aristotle, then, reminds us that deep love, to be deep, must embrace character and value; that the real individuality of another person is not just something ineffable and indescribable; among its most important constituents are excellences that can be shared by others. Aristotle stresses these shared elements, then, not in order to bypass the individuality in love, but in order to give a richer account of what that individuality comes to. To these requirements for the best type of love, Aristotle adds one more. To love one another in the best way, the way most relevant to a good human life overall, these philoi must 'live together', sharing activities both intellectual and social, sharing the enjoyment, and the mutual recognition of enjoyment, that
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comes of spending time with someone whom they find both wonderful and delightful. This, he says, is 'the most chosen thing* among philoi: For love is a sharing... And whatever each of them takes to be living or that for the sake of which they choose living, in this they wish to live with their philos. This is why some drink together, some play dice together, some exercise and go hunting together, or do philosophy together - each spending time in that which each particularly loves in life. For they want to live with their philoi, and they do these things and share in them with those with whom they want to live. (EN 117^32-117238) What does Aristotle mean by 'living together'? Little has been written about this requirement, so crucial to our understanding of this love's vulnerability. It is sometimes assumed that Aristotle is speaking o f ' friendship' as we know it in our fast-moving society - in which little more is frequently required than regular visiting, socializing, discussing. Part of the reason for this reading is that Aristotle's highest philoi are, each of them, imagined (by Aristotle himself) as two males, each of whom has a wife and children (who, on account of alleged inequalities, cannot be philoi with him in the highest sense); and each clearly lives with, in the literal sense, these lower-order philoi. But we should notice that Aristotle speaks emphatically of the best philoi 'spending their days together' (sunemereuein, 115839, 117135), of 'going through time together' (sundiagein, ii57b22); he speaks of the importance of thorough experience of the other's character and habits (smetheia), developed by regular and familiar association (ibomilia). He also insists that it is the sort of day-to-day associ3tion th3t will be hard to maint3in if you do not find the person ple3sant and attr3Ctive (115 7b22~3). In one important passage he contrasts philoi with more casual associates: ' Those who receive each other but do not live together are more like well-wishers than like philoi. For there is nothing so characteristic of love as living together' (1157bi7~19).
This contrast is intelligible only on the understanding that Aristotle means by 'living together' something more than regular social visiting: if not residence in the same household, then at least a regular, even daily association in work and conversation. This would prominently include assodation in the usually intense political activity of the polis. If he had not had his views about female inferiority, he would very likely have preferred this sharing to extend into the sphere of the household as well: thus an even more perfect philia would be a good marriage, in which the full range of the aspirations and concerns that make up a human life might be accommodated. The relationships that Aristotle describes may or may not include sexual involvement. Aristotle says little on this point; and, unlike Plato, he does not appe3r to believe th3t intense sexu3l desire or excitement plays any essential role in the values and benefits of love. But he insists that this love does and must include taking pleasure in the physical presence of the other in whatever way one enjoys or values so doing.35 The ideal is a thoroughgoing and unconstrained sharing in all activities that people judge to be pertinent to their human good living. This should, then, include all activities according to the recognized excellences of character; and this would include appropriate eating,
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drinking, and choosing of sexual pleasures; appropriate distribution of money; appropriate party-giving (megaloprepeia); appropriate joke-telling (eutrapelia) - as well as appropriate reflecting, legislating, meeting danger. It is one of the distinctions of Aristotle's thought to see in the everyday and the apparently trivial a scene for the expression of human excellence; then humans who love another for their excellence will want to share even in the humble and mundane. It seems, then, that the best way to live with a philos is one that allows sharing in all of these activities. All this makes it abundantly clear that the best sort of love between persons is highly vulnerable to happenings in the world. Indeed, we wonder how often the world has ever allowed such thoroughgoing intimacy to flourish. It is worth pausing to enumerate the sources of that vulnerability. First, there is the luck of finding, in the first place, a loved one to value. Since the most fulfilling loves occur between two people of similar character and aspirations who also find each other physically, socially, and morally attractive and who are able to live in the same place for an extended period of time, this is no small matter. Aristotle calmly points out that people who are physically ugly will have a hard time at this.36 Nor does he think that good characters are easily found. 'It is probable', he writes, 'that such relationships [sc. between two people of good character] will be rare: for people of that sort are few' (ii56b24~5). Next, the two must find themselves able to trust one another. That is, they must be able to receive one another's expressions of love without suspicion, jealousy, or fearful self-protectiveness. The suspicion of hypocrisy and falsity undermines love (Rhet. 138^28-9); and 'nobody loves the person whom he fears' (138^33) - presumably because philia requires a kind of openness and receptivity that is incompatible with fear. Aristotle repeatedly stresses this requirement of trust as essential to true philia. He stresses that it takes time and experience of the other person (EN ii56b29, EE 1237b!2); and it also requires the presence of really good characters on both sides - for bad character does not generally inspire confidence (MM 12o8b29). We can add, in the spirit of the Rhetoric discussion of the young and old, that it appears to require, in addition, generally fortunate circ*mstances of life, which are not universally available. For a repeatedly betrayed or disappointed person will be fearful and suspicious of everything. Circ*mstances for which the person is not to blame can, then, inhibit or distort the openness of response that is basic to this valuable relationship.37 We shall see again in the next chapter how important this fact is, as a source of philia's vulnerability. Then the basis of the love, and trust in this basis, must remain constant, or the love will be undermined. This is a reasonable hope in love based on knowledge of character - as it would not be in a more superficial sort of love. But even adult character is not altogether fixed and immutable, as Aristotle acknowledges when he speaks of changes for the better and for the worse, of divisions, quarrels, and reproaches - all this within the account of character-love. He speaks of deceptions, of the painful discovery that the two have seriously misinterpreted one another's
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life motives and intentions (n62b5ff., 11653361?.). He speaks of the danger that similarity of aspiration may lead to competitiveness and rivalry, undermining the basis of love (Rhet. 1381b 15). Even if all goes well internally, he continues, two of the people you love may quarrel with one another, forcing you to make painful choices (117134-6). Finally, there are limits set by contingency to the number of people you can adequ3tely love 3nd to the amount of time and care you can lavish on each. Given our human finitude, our shortness of time, loves compete with one another. 4 It is obvious that it is not possible to live with a number of people and parcel oneself out', Aristotle concludes with characteristic simplicity (117132-3). 3 8 Even 3 st3ble ongoing 3tt3chment is almost certain to be affected by fortune in one way or another. There are, he tells us, necessary absences, which, at first, 'dissolve not the love simpliciter, but its activity' (1157bio-i 1). This impediment to a valued activity may alre3dy diminish eudaimonia. Furthermore, 'if the absence is of long duration, it appe3rs to bring 3bout forgetfulness of the love itself'. Aristoteli3n love is not like romantic infatuation; for it is based on enduring elements of the person. But it has a strong affective element, which is central to its continuity; and it is focused upon the aim to live and act together throughout a shared history. For these two reasons, unlike a Kanti3n ' practic3l love' that is based upon the sense of duty, it can be disrupted by departures. Even if two people who love one another manage to live together all their lives, the damages of old age, which can neither be avoided nor even be precisely foreseen, happening to the two of them either at the sametimeor at different times, bring about a loss in sensitivity and in enjoyment that can lead to the dissolution or at least the diminution of love. We have seen to what extent the accumulation of worldly experiences can, in elderly people, impair the trust that is philia's necessary basis, and impair, too, the virtues that are at the heart of its conception of its object. Now we can add that, even where this does not h3ppen, 3ge damages the relation. Aristotle has insisted on distinguishing philia from the less intimate relationship of mutual well-wishing and mutual helping: the former, requiring living-together, also requires a mutuality in pleasure. He now advsnces this difference as a reason for believing that elderly people, though they may still wish each other well, will not be likely to form or to maintain the closer relationship of love. 'For their capability for enjoyment is short, and nobody can spend his days with someone who is annoying or not pleas3nt to be with' ( 1 1 5 7 ^ 4 - 1 6 ) . Later he repeats the point. 'Among elderly people and people of an austere disposition, love does not very often happen, insofar as they are bad-tempered and take rather little pleasure in society... For people do not come to love those whose company they do not enjoy... Such people can be well-disposed to one another, for they wish one another good things and help one another in time of need. But they are not likely to love one another, since they do not spend their days together or take pleasure in one another' (1158aifF.). 39 Aristotle's insistence on the import3nce of the n o n - r 3 t i o n 3 l 3nd ' pathological' element in intimate love (both in keeping it going and constituting, itself, a part of its value) leads him
Vulnerability of the good life: relational goods 3 5 3 to the conclusion that this relationship, which is of the highest ethical importance and value, can be blighted by bodily changes that we cannot control. We can all look forward to the loss of a high value, if we live long enough. And even if love should survive life's changes, there is always death, which generally comes to some before others, diminishing the goodness of the survivor's life. 'Nobody will entirely live well (be eudaimonikos)\ Aristotle had said in EN 1, 'if he is.. .both solitary and childless; still less, perhaps, if he has terribly bad children or philoi, or has good ones who die' (109^2-4, cf. Rhet. 138639-11). Such a loss, he now implies, can be so deep that it will make life itself seem not worth living, even if one has all the other goods (115535-6). A Kantisn or a (middle-period) Platonist would 3gree with this as an unfortunate psychological fact about many people. Aristotle puts it forward as a rational and appropriate reaction, one that correctly responds to the V3lue of personal affection in a good human life. We consider it a virtue in people, he observes, if they love their philoi equally both present and absent, both living and dead (Rhet. 138^24-6). Grief, then, becomes 3 n3tur3l p3rt of the best human life.40 By ascribing value to philia in 3 conception of the good life, we m3ke ourselves more vulnerable to loss. And we can add one further point: we also, through our attachments, make ourselves susceptible to losses that 3re not, properly spe3king, our own. A person with no strong 3tt3chments h3s only his or her own he3lth, virtue, 3nd success to worry about. A person who loves another will be grieved or made anxious by a double number of events 3nd becomes doubly susceptible to luck, ' being pleased together by good things and grieved together by painful things, for no other reason than on account of the philos himself' (Rhet. 13 8 ia4-6). ' To say that the fortunes of one's descendants and philoi do not have any imp3ct seems excessively unloving (aphilon) and contrary to what we think' (EN IIOia22). The middle-period Platonist (and the modern Kantian) might reply to this that the relationship described and praised by Aristode cannot, then, be 3 central p3rt of 3 morally good life, and cannot, therefore, be a source of high value and praiseworthiness in life. Any relationship in which emotional and physical response figures so prominendy, any relationship that attends so thoroughly to the unique characteristics and histories of single persons, above all any relationship in which 3nd bec3use of which we are so thoroughly at the mercy o f ' step-motherly nature' c3nnot be the sort of love on which we wish to build the good hum3n life. The K3nti3n distinction between p3thologic3l 3nd pr3ctic3l love 41 is intended to develop 3 conception of person3l relations in which the mor3l good will reign supreme: to show us 3 love between persons that is still recognizably love, and yet is free of the elements that make Aristotelian love so fragile. Aristotle is, plainly, aw3re of 3ttempts by Plato 3nd others to replace deeply person3l love by a more will-governed or reason-governed relationship, or by the solitary pursuit of goodness. If we cannot expect to find in his text answers to all of Kant's questions, at least we can expect of him some response to those questions that were already raised by his own contemporaries: What is the value of a close and
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life intimate relationship between particular human beings? Why should we cultivate such relationships and give them a place in our conception of eudaimonia? What human value is it that only this fragile sort of love can provide? Here again, we may divide Aristode's arguments into two categories: those that defend the instrumental benefit of philia and those that defend its intrinsic value. We take the instrumental arguments first. First of all, close personal love plays a central instrumental role in the development of good character and appropriate aspiration. We have spoken already of the importance of a nurturing political context; but we can now add that Aristotle believes this context to be motivationally ineffective without the closer bonds of love that link members of a family with one another. The two strongest sources of human motivation, he tells us in Book n of the Politics, in criticism of Plato, are the idea that something is your own and the idea that it is the only one you have (iz6zb22ff., cf. EN 1 i$oa$fi.). The intensity of concern that binds parents and children in the enterprise of moral education cannot simply be replaced by a communal system, though it must work, as we said, within one: for it is the thought that it is jour own child, not someone else's, together with the thought that you are unique and irreplaceable for that child and that child for you, that most keenly spurs the parent to work and care for the education of the child, the child to work and care for the parent.42 Love, furthermore, eases the difficult task of the educator: for gratitude and affection enhance the forcefulness of the parental command. 'Just as in cities customs and ways have force, so too in households do parental arguments and habits, and even more so because of relatedness and beneficence. For there is present beforehand a context of grateful love and a natural openness to persuasion' (EN 1180b 3-7). Take intimacy and felt love away and you have, Aristode concludes, only a 'watery' sort of concern all round, without the power to mold or transform a soul. The intimacy of philia will be so dispersed in a political scheme that does away with the nuclear family that its flavor will hardly be noticeable, and the resulting mixture will not have the character belonging with that flavor (Pol. 1262b 15 ff.). EN x.9 adds to these considerations a further argument. Parental training has a superior ability to respond to the individuality of the child, achieving in this way a superior 'accuracy' (n8ob7ff.): 'Each in this way will be more likely to receive what is beneficial.' This accuracy looks inseparable not only from closeness, but also from affective involvement: for it is surely through felt love that the parent is able to hit on what is appropriate for the particular child, not through a detached scientific scrutiny. This special importance of the unique and irreplaceably close figures, as well, in adult love. Aristotle insists that people who love one another's character have a strong influence over one another's moral development, in several ways: The love of base people is harmful: for, being unstable, they share in base activities, and they become bad through assimilation to one another. But the love of good people is good and increases with their association. And they seem to become better by their activity and their correction of one another. For they model their tastes and values on one another's — from which we get the proverbial expression4 excellence from e x c e l l e n c e ( E N 117238-14)
Vulnerability of the good life: relational goods 3 5 3 This compressed passage suggests at least three mechanisms of mutual influence; and it is important to notice that all of them depend on the affective character of the relationship. The first and most direct mechanism is that of advice and correction. Aristode's point here is that the advice of those we closely love has a special power for good or bad; this power is clearly bound up with the pleasure of the association, its shared feelings of concern and affection. The second mechanism is the levelling or assimilating influence of shared activity: if the person you love loves and values a certain pursuit, you will be inclined to try to spend time sharing in that. This is a good thing if the pursuit is a good one, a bad thing if it is bad. Again, this mechanism operates as described only in an affectionate personal love, not in a Kantian duty-based relationship: for the mechanism requires the unique closeness of 'living-together' and the motivating feelings associated with that. Aristotle's point is that out of the many valuable and not-so-valuable pursuits in the world, we will often fall into certain ones and devote to them our time and concern just because a person whom we love likes to do it and cares about it. Since we love that person and want to share his or her time and activity, we have a strong motivation to cultivate our tastes and abilities in that direction. So if we make good selections of people to love, our own lives will be enriched; if we love impoverished people, they will be impoverished. The third and final mechanism is one of emulation and imitation. The strong emotions of respect and esteem that are part of Aristotelian philia generate a desire to be more like the other person. This principle works powerfully in society, where shared public models of excellence play an important motivating role. But Aristotle clearly believes that the intimacy of personal philia, with its strong feelings and its history of shared living, has a motivational power through emulation that could not be replaced by a more general social modelling. His point is similar to one made by Phaedrus in the Symposium'sfirstspeech, when he argued that an army composed of pairs of lovers would excel all others in excellence because of the strength of emulation and aspiration that can be generated by the presence of a uniquely loved person. Other contexts contribute several more arguments for philia's instrumental value. Associations of personal philia, Aristotle observes, give you a powerful resource towards anything you may wish to do. A loved friend, unlike a stranger, is someone to whom you can turn for help in adversity, care in old age, assistance in any project (ii5 5a9ff.). Then too, sharing makes any valued activity more enjoyable and therefore more continuous. Human beings are not easily able to sustain interest and engagement in solitude: 'with others and towards others it is easier' (117035-7). Aristotle seems to be thinking here of the added pleasure and sustaining enjoyment that come from working along 'with others', side by side; he is thinking also of the way in which a kind of conversation, a sharing of the parts of the work, make it a work 'towards others', one in which the mutuality and pleasure of the personal relationship enter deeply into the work itself. The first would be the sort of encouragement you get just from, say, writing philosophy in the same department with a fellow philosopher who is also a
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life personal friend; the second would be the deeper encouragement of philosophical discourse and collaboration with such a friend.43 Aristotle mentions one further benefit of friendly love, one that clearly could not be derived without the closeness of 'living together'. This is the increase in self-knowledge and self-perception that comes of seeing and intuitively responding to a person about whom you care. The Magna Moralia, which offers the clearest version of this part of Aristotle's argument,44 says this: Now if someone, looking to his philos, should see what he is and of what sort of character, the philos - if we imagine a philia of the most intense sort - would seem to him to be like a second himself, as in the saying, 'This is my second Heracles.' Since, then, it is both a most difficult thing, as some of the sages have also said, to know oneself, and also a most pleasant thing (for to know oneself is pleasant) - moreover, we cannot ourselves study ourselves from ourselves, as is clear from the reproaches we bring against others without being aware that we do the same things ourselves - and this happens because of bias or passion, which in many of us obscure the accuracy of judgments; as, then, when we ourselves wish to see our own face we see it by looking into a mirror, similarly too, when we ourselves wish to know ourselves, we would know ourselves by looking to the philos. For the philos, as we say, is another oneself. If, then, it is pleasant to know oneself, and if it is not possible to know this without having someone else as a philos, the self-sufficient person would need philia in order to know himself. (1213310-26) Aristotle's argument begins from a fact of human psychology: it is difficult for each of us to see our own life clearly and without bias, assessing its patterns of action and commitment. Often we lack awareness of our own faults, because we are blinded by partiality and by involvement in our own feelings and concerns. It is therefore valuable to study the pattern of good character embodied in another good life: 'It is easier for us to look at someone else than at ourselves' (EN 1 1 6 ^ 3 3 - 4 ) . This reflective look at models of goodness enhances our understanding of our own character and aspirations, improving self-criticism and sharpening judgment. For this to be so, the model in question must be a person similar to ourselves in character and aspiration, someone whom we can identify to ourselves as 4 another oneself' for the purposes of this scrutiny.45 But what is the significance of Aristotle's claim that this model self must be a philos? That is, a person to whom the knowledge-seeker is connected by shared life, and by affective, as well as cognitive, ties ? To answer this question we must remind ourselves again of what Aristotelian ethical knowledge is and what sort of experience it requires. This knowledge, we have said, consists, above all, in the intuitive perception of complex particulars. Universals are never more than guides to and summaries of these concrete perceptions; and 'the decision rests with perception'. Perception, furthermore, is both cognitive and affective at the same time: it consists in the ability to single out the ethically salient features of the particular matter at hand; and frequently this recognition is accomplished by and in appropriate emotional response as much as through intellectual judgment. Aristotle repeatedly emphasizes that correct perception cannot be learned by precept, but only through and in one's own experience. If we now think what
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it would be to understand another person in this Aristotelian way, we begin to see that this understanding could not possibly be acquired through a general description, through reading an encomium or a character-portrait, or, indeed, by any distant and non-engaged relationship. It requires the experience of shared activity and the cultivation, over time and through the trust that comes only with time, of an intimate responsiveness to that person in feeling, thought, and action. This responsiveness is not and could not be purely intellectual. If we imagine a solely intellectual knowledge of another, we see that it would not be able to contain everything that is available to the intimacy of philia. Philia's knowledge is guided by the pleasure discovered in that person's company, by the feelings of care and tenderness built up through the association and its shared history. Frequently feeling guides attention and discloses to vision what would otherwise have remained concealed. Only with this ability to perceive and to respond to the nuances of the other person's character and ways will the seeing of character that is at the heart of this knowledge come about. This is the knowledge of persons exemplified in the speech of Alcibiades and praised in the Phaedrus. It now seems quite reasonable of Aristotle to insist that it can exist, at its finest, only in the intimacy of long-lasting mutual love; its benefits could not be delivered by a more remote or 'watery' association. Aristode says much more about the instrumental than about the intrinsic value of love. For the instrumental arguments might convince even someone who was otherwise inclined to banish philia from the good life — whereas it is difficult to commend an intrinsic value to someone who does not already respond to its claim. He says, simply, that we do in fact love the ones we love for their own sake, not just for the sake of some further benefit to ourselves. (It would be not philia, but something else, if it were altogether instrumental.) He says that we consider philia to be not simply 'most necessary to life' (ii5 5a4), but also something beautiful and valuable on its own: ' It is not only necessary, but fine as well, for we praise those who love their philoi, and having many philoi seems to be one of the fine things; and, furthermore, we think the very same people are good people and good philoi' (115 5a29~31). In fact, 'Without philoi nobody would choose to live, even if he had all the other goods' (1155a}). The Eudemian Ethics, similarly, observes that 'We think the philos one of the greatest goods, and lack of philia and solitude a very terrible (deinotaton) thing, because our entire course of life and our voluntary association is with philoi' (i2 34b32ff.). Later in the Nicomachean discussion, Aristotle turns explicitly to an opponent who claims that the value ofphilia is merely instrumental: the person who is living well in other respects has no need of philoi. Once again, Aristotle's answer insists that the benefits of philia are intrinsic as well. There is a debate as to whether the eudaimon person needs philoi or not. For they say that makarioi and self-sufficient people have no need of philoi, since they have all good things already. If then they are self-sufficient, they need nothing further; but the philos, being another oneself, provides what he cannot provide by himself. Whence the saying, 4 When the daimon gives well, what need is there of philoiV But it seems peculiar to give all
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life good things to the eudaimon and to leave out philoi, which seem to be the greatest of the external goods.. .And surely it is peculiar to make the makarios person a solitary; for nobody would choose to have all the good things in the world all by himself. For the human being is a political creature and naturally disposed to living-with. And this is true of the eudaimon as well.. .Therefore the eudaimon needs philoi. (i ^ b j f f . ) 4 6
Aristotle says that the opponent has a point only if we think ofphiloi as mere means to other solitary goods, and the solitary life which has these goods as a complete life. But in fact we do not think this way. We think that a life without them, even with all other goods, is so seriously incomplete that it is not worth living. So, according to the original agreement, established in Book i, that the self-sufficiency of eudaimonia must be such that all by itself the life described will be' choiceworthy and lacking in nothing* (1097b!4-15), philoi and philia will be parts of human eudaimonia and constitutive of, rather than just instrumental to, its self-sufficiency. Here, finally, we have the argument promised in EN 1, when Aristotle cryptically insisted that the self-sufficiency we were after was communal and not solitary, apparently reserving the exploration of that claim for another time. What sort of argument is it? Indeed, what sort of argument has been presented in any of these passages for philia9s intrinsic value? It is conspicuous that in this case, as in the political case (and in fact the two arguments are very closely linked, as the last citation shows), Aristode refers throughout the argument to prevalent ordinary beliefs.4 We think', 'we praise', 'nobody would choose' - these phrases remind us that we are dealing with the recording of deeply and broadly shared phainomena, not with any 'harder' or more external sort of argument.47 And the phainomena reported are not any sort of value-neutral fact about human life; they are not a knock-down argument against the opponent. For perhaps he can reply showing that the solitary conception of self-sufficiency rests upon and answers to even deeper and more pervasive beliefs. Perhaps he can show, as Plato tries to, that from the point of view of these other beliefs, the reported beliefs about philia are primitive or mistaken. (In fact, Aristotle goes on in this passage to ask about the origins of the opponent's position, and about the deep beliefs that motivated it in the first place (1 i69b22ff.).) But the argument reminds the opponent of the depth and power of beliefs that his conception of eudaimonia bypasses: it thus places on him the burden of showing why and for the sake of what these beliefs are to be given up. It does something more concrete than this. For in appealing to a conception of our nature, it locates the depth of these beliefs more precisely. It shows them to be beliefs that are so firmly a part of our conception of ourselves that they will affect our assessment of questions of identity and persistence. The opponent has asked us to choose a solitary life; we point out that this goes against our nature, implying in this way that no being identical to us would survive in such a life. To wish the good for oneself or for another, Aristotle has insisted, requires wishing a life in which that sort of person will still exist: not a life which, however admirable or godlike, could not be lived by someone identical with me [EN 115 9a, 1166a, cf. above, d. 350). In asking whether this solitary life can be the object
Vulnerability of the good life: relational goods 3 5 3 of our highest wish, the first thing to ask is, whether it can be the object of my wish at all. If it is my nature to be a social being, the happy solitary will not be identical with me; so to wish for a life lacking in the value of philia is to wish not for the Protagorean 'saving* of one's own life, but for a (Socratic) transformation to a different life. This point about nature or identity is not a separate point from the point about intrinsic worth or value. (This our readings of the Protagoras and the Phaedrus have already prepared us to see.) It is introduced and defended by remarks about what we think and deeply believe about matters of value. It is just another way of putting the point that a life without philia is radically lacking in essential human values. Not all reasons for non-survival will be reasons of value, of course; but here we are stipulating that a being goes on living who has at least a prima facie claim to be identical with me, and we are asking whether this being's life contains enough of what I consider central to myself to really be me. As in the political case, this question is not and cannot be answered by independent scientific discovery. It is a deep part of evaluative argument itself. There is no neutral fact of the matter concerning whether this purported continuant is or is not me; we can only answer it by looking at our commitments and values. The opponent could reply by insisting that the solitary eudaimon is living a fully human life - that I could imagine myself as myself, continuing on in that life. But what Aristotle's challenge requires, here as in the Politics, is that he then go on to describe this life in a coherent and non-evasive way, showing us how it can satisfy our demands. Aristotle has reminded us, in the Politics, of myths and stories that express our commitment to regarding anthropomorphic rational solitaries as not properly human; in discussing philia he has reminded us of how 'one might see in travels, too, how closely bound (oikeion) every human being is to every other, and how dear' (115 5321-2) suggesting that even distant foreigners share our commitment to this value. The opponent would now (as in the Protagoras) have to reply with his own story, showing how we could, in fact, see ourselves in a solitary life. This argument for an intrinsic value, like any argument within the appearances, may seem to stop short of what the opponent requires. For it is crucial to Plato's talk of intrinsic value that species-centered value is not sufficient for real intrinsic value. For a pursuit to have real value, it must be seen to have this from the point of view of a creature who has no needs at all. It is indeed fortunate for us that we are able, by patient work, to assume the standpoint of such creatures, making it our own. But the fact that we can make it our own is no part of what makes the value valuable. A fortiori, the fact that the person of practical wisdom (a being who has not done this patient Platonic work, but has set himself to live a complex life in the midst of human value) cannot see himself in a solitary life should not count against the claim of that life to be best. Aristotle's argument will seem to such an opponent to stop short of the real true good, establishing only a species-centered value through the use of a much-too-human measure. But the method of appearances reminds us that a good deal of such talk of the real or true good is just talk. The fact that it has the air of going beyond our talk of
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life human goodness does not guarantee that it does this; it may be so weakly rooted in the experience that sets the bounds of discourse that it will be 'mere words, with no understanding of anything*. The use of an anthropocentric standard of judgment and of a humanly experienced judge have been defended as necessary to give the results of ethical inquiry the right sort of connectedness to ourselves and our lives. And even if the opponent should answer this general challenge, the discussion of goodness that we reported in Chapters 10 and n has argued that there is no single thing, The True Good (or The Valuable) in relation to which all the goodness and value in all the species can be ranked and ordered. The good of a god is not hom*ogeneous with our good, above it, and normative for it; it is simply a different kind of good, for a different being in a different context. Ours is not lower or lesser on the same scale; it is just ours, with a special tone and quality that would not be present elsewhere. To love people in the ways and with the emphasis that we do seems to be an essential part of that tone and quality. Aristotle has, then, defended the inclusion in our conception of the good life of a relationship that is highly vulnerable to reversal. But it has sometimes been charged against him that his conception of what love is does not make it vulnerable enoughFirst, that the relationship described is cozy and insular: that by concentrating on the love of people similar in character it removes the element of risk and surprise that can be a high value in an encounter with another soul. Second, that Aristotle's emphasis on the superior stability of character-love over other relationships renders his account of love ' bizarre in its determination to reconcile the need for friendship with the aim of self-sufficiency'.49 To the first charge we can answer by asking the questioner to consider examples of personal love based on a deeply shared conception of human value, and to ask himself whether such a love would be likely to be devoid of discovery. We could ask him to imagine the delight and surprise of finding, in another separate body and soul, your own aspirations: the joy of realizing that you and this other person inhabit the same world of value, in a larger world in which most people are strangers to one another's highest hopes. Aristotle insists, plausibly, that it is in such a love that the best and deepest discoveries about oneself and the other can be made. The lovers depicted in Plato's Phaedrus show us that such a love need not be devoid of surprise, passion, exploration, or risk. We are tempted to say that the much vaunted benefits of diversity can be real benefits in love only if this diversity is rooted in a similarity: that you learn from, and learn to love, a foreigner, a member of another race or sex or religion, a person far from you in age or temperament, on the basis of at least some shared human perceptions, values, aspirations, and the mutual acknowledgment of these. It is on such a basis that the learning can mean something to you, be something for you. Otherwise, your curiosity will lead not to loving perception, but to ethnography or natural history. To the second charge we must concede that Aristotle does stress the superior stability of a love that is based on character. And in other ways, too, he urges the person in search of love not to court disaster - by forming too many close relationships, for example, so that he will be forced to 'parcel himself out', or
Vulnerability of the good life: relational goods 3 5 3 by choosing to love someone extremely far from him in age, so that the relationship will be vexed more than is necessary by the changes of age. But there is nothing very 'bizarre' in this acknowledgment that we do seek stability and constancy in our lives with one another, that the rich benefits of love themselves require a kind of trustfulness and an accumulation of shared history that could not be found without these. When we consider the full requirements of Aristotelian living-together and the requirements it imposes, the vulnerabilities it creates, we cannot think that Aristotle has courted self-sufficiency to the neglect of richness of value. Indeed we are more likely to be awed and alarmed at the risk such a person runs in valuing so difficult and unlikely a goal. How many people really manage to live through their lives like that, sharing in deep love and excellent activity ? How many who live together really live together,' sharing in speech and reason'? (For 'that's what it means for human beings to live together, not just to pasture in the same place like cattle' (EN 1 1 7 0 ^ 1 - 1 4 ) . ) It is, in fact, an extraordinary demand to make on the world; those who make it are likely to be unhappy. But since the goal of the Aristotelian is not so much happiness in the sense of contentment as it is fullness of life and richness of value, it is no solution to omit a value for happiness's sake, to reduce your demands on the world in order to get more pleasing answers from the world. The Aristotelian will simply take on the world and see what can be done with it. This account of the value of love develops many of the arguments that we have found in the Phaedrus (including its connections between value and personal identity): with, however, some crucial differences. The first difference is additive: by his account of the benefits of 'living together' and of the special motivation towards goodness that comes from the thought that something is uniquely your own, Aristode has gone further than the Phaedrus towards explaining why a close lifelong bond is so important, why love is not transferable without loss of value to other similar characters. Both the Phaedrus and the EN tell us that love has its highest value when the object of love is a good person of similar character and aspirations; both stipulate that the two should, where possible, share a lifetime of activity that also includes pleasure and delight in the association. Aristotle has now added a more detailed account of the importance of this intimacy. But the second major difference is subtractive. Sexuality and sexual attraction do not play a major role in Aristotle's account of love. Nor does he speak of the benefits of mania, of the powerfully erotic transformation of thought and vision that plays a central role in the life of the Phaedrus lovers. All elements of an Aristotelian lover's soul will be active and responsive, as they always are in the Aristotelian person of practical wisdom; and Aristotle does insist that love requires taking pleasure in the other person's physical presence. But the specifically erotic pleasure and insight of Platonic lovers is mentioned only as a case of especially intense and exclusive philia ( i i 7 i a i 1); it is not even clear that the reference is approving.50 The rhythm ofphilia in its best or highest cases seems to be steadier and less violent than that of Platonic eros; we do not find the element of sudden illumination and dangerous openness that is central to the Phaedrus
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life lovers. I have tried to emphasize, as I believe is appropriate, the elements of Aristotelian philia that make it real personal love, something more vulnerable, more rooted in time and change, than a Kantian 'practical love\ But now it is time to admit that we do not find here, or do not, at least, find emphasized, the structure of tension and release, longing and repletion, that is so important in the Phaedrus's view of true insight. Aristode says nothing against this sort of eros; but by his silence he indicates that he does not find it of central importance. It seems altogether wrong to charge Aristotle with having a complacent moral personality, insensitive to the goods that come with risk attached to them. What can we then say about his avoidance of eros? We must, first of all, recall certain historical and cultural facts. Aristotle is a heterosexual male in a culture in which women were more or less uneducated, deprived of the development that would be necessary if they were to become worthy partners in any shared activity connected with most of the major human values. He is, furthermore, a political thinker who has laid great stress upon the family and the household as necessary to the development of any human excellence whatever. It would, then, have been difficult for him to imagine a structure of life that would have maintained the benefits of the family while making available to women an equal measure of education and of opportunity for excellent activity. Plato had denied the ethical value of the household; he was therefore free to accord to women a more equal intellectual place. Aristotle has serious arguments against this loss of intimacy; his possibilities are therefore more constrained. Since this is one of the major unsolved problems of our own way of life, we can perhaps understand how difficult it would have been for a fourth-century Greek to imagine any way around it. But if women remained confined to the household, they could not become philoi in the highest sense; and the aspiring male would have to seek for such philoi within his own sex. At this point, if he were himself heterosexually inclined, he might well judge that sexuality and aspiration must come apart, that aspiration must be pursued in a different domain, in the context of different relationships. We could say, then, that we find in Aristode a deep partial agreement with the Phaedrus concerning the importance of an intimate personal love that combines strong feeling and shared aspiration; combined with a different set of beliefs about where such relationships are to be sought and about the likelihood that these relationships will be sexual in nature. These beliefs reflect differences in the two philosophers' personal experience of sexuality in its social setting, and also differences in normative political belief about the importance of the family. Isn't this exacdy the sort of cozy defense of the status quo for which the Aristotelian method of appearances has so frequently been maligned? We are at once tempted to say that Aristotle's patient attention to the actual has prevented the bold leap of imagination that would be required in order to imagine a social structure in which the potential of women for excellence could be fully realized. Platonism, because it is less respectful of actual beliefs, is freer to take such leaps. We have argued, however, that it is an injustice to the appearances method to claim that it makes bold or radical conclusions impossible. Chapter 8 suggested
Vulnerability of the good life: relational goods 3 5 3 that the method might in fact make use of deep beliefs about the importance of choice to criticize the actual social institutions concerning women. That Aristotle does not do this says less about the possibilities of his approach than about his own defects as a collector of appearances. And if we examine the case before us we will see, I believe, that it is not the method that is at fault, so much as is Aristotle's application of it. For there are at least two areas relevant to this problem in which Aristotle's scrutiny of beliefs is woefully deficient. His investigation of the potential of women for excellence is notoriously crude and hasty. He is able to bypass the problem of developing their capabilities and he is able to deny them a share in the highest philia, as a result .of bare assertions about their incapacity for full adult moral choice51 that show no sign of either sensitivity or close attention. Had he devoted to the psychology of women, or even to their physiology (about which he makes many ludicrous and easily corrigible errors) even a fraction of the sustained care that he devoted to the lives and bodies of shellfish, the method would have been better served. Then too, we find in his writings an almost complete lack of attention to the erotic relationships that Plato defended. The eroticism of male (and female) hom*osexuality is of so little interest to him, apparently, that he does not even see fit to include these practices and beliefs within the review of opinions concerning philia.™ This avoidance is extremely odd, given the prominence of hom*osexuality in his culture and in the philosophical tradition of writing about human goodness. And this is not only an injustice to his own method. It is a failure in philia as well. For Aristotle's manifest love for Plato and his years of shared activity with him should have made him look to the life of his friend as a source of information concerning the good life. But if he had looked, he would have noticed the ethical importance in that life of the combination of sensuousness and4 mad' passion with respect, awe, and excellent philosophizing. And then, if he did not himself opt for this life through awareness of his difference in sexual inclination, he might at least have set it down among the appearances and given it its due as one human way of aiming at the good. That none of these things happened, even in this judicious fair-minded man who had, in general, such admirable views about self-correction and self-scrutiny, who laid such stress upon responsiveness of particular perception, shows us the tremendous power of sexual convention and sexual prejudice in shaping a view of the world. It was the one area of life in which he was so deeply immersed that he could not compensate for bias or partiality, he could not even follow his own method, on the way to becoming a person of practical wisdom. The Aristotelian method does not doggedly defend the status quo. It asks for the cultivation of imagination and responsiveness concerning all human alternatives. Aristotle's failure to apply his own method in these cases makes us, as defenders of the method, wish to lay even greater stress upon these elements of practical wisdom than Aristotle himself did, and to defend vigorously the role of reading, and of philia itself, in aiding these perceptions.
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life Aristotle has attempted, then, by setting our various beliefs before us, to show us that they contain a conception of human good living that makes it something relatively stable, but still vulnerable, in its search for richness of value, to many sorts of accidents. We pursue and value both stability and the richness that opens us to risk. In a certain sense we value risk itself, as partially constitutive of some kinds of value. In our deliberations we must balance these competing claims. This balance will never be a tension-free harmony. It remains, at best, a tension-laden holding-in-focus, a Heracl*tean ' backward-stretching harmony, as of a bow or a lyre'; and its particular judgments frequently have the look of uneasy compromise. We recognize the enormous loss of value that would come with the adoption of an internal-condition conception of the good life; so we decide to stay with the riskier view that the good life requires activity and that even the good condition, in such a life, is not altogether immune from harm. But we do not want to say, either, that every deprivation of activity is a loss in goodness; for this would leave us too much, intolerably, open to loss. So we find an uneasy balance; and it is never entirely clear that risk does not threaten too much, or that some genuine value does not escape us. Then again, we want the good life to include, for fullness of value, some relational components that are particularly vulnerable to chance; but, not wanting to be unbearably at the mercy of luck, we opt for a conception of each of these that secures to them a relatively high degree of stability. Again (although we do have independent arguments for the goodness of these conceptions), we can never be certain that we have not made human life too vulnerable, or that in going for stability we have not omitted something. Aristotle shows us by these complex maneuvers the delicate balancing act in which good human deliberation consists: delicate, and never concluded, if the agent is determined, as long as he or she lives, to keep all the recognized human values in play. To some this picture of deliberation will seem mundane, messy, and lacking in elegance. Aristotle would answer (speaking, he will be happy to admit, from the thoroughly anthropocentric standpoint of the person of practical wisdom) that we do well not to aim at a conception that is more elegant, or simpler, than human life is. The person who elevates simplicity to a supreme value is like the architect who uses a straight-edge against a fluted column: 53 his calculations won't build a sound building, and he will leave out much of the beauty and value of what is there before him.54
Appendix to Part III: human and divine
Some philosophers (or whatever you like to call them) suffer from what may be called 'loss of problems'. Then everything seems quite simple to them, no deep problems seem to exist any more, the world becomes broad andflatand loses all depth, and what they write becomes immeasurably shallow and trivial... .. .quia plus loquitur inquisitio quam inventio...(Augustinus). Wittgenstein, Zettel, 456-7
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Up until this point, we have presented a picture of Aristotle that sets him in strong contrast to the Plato of the middle dialogues. This is an Aristotle whom one can find almost throughout the corpus, speaking in a consistent and recognizable voice. But we have stressed throughout this book the depth and complexity of these ethical problems, the likelihood that any thinker of depth will not only feel their depth but will also feel the force of both the Platonic and the Aristotelian positions. We have also stressed Aristode's fundamental commitment to investigate the major accounts of a problem presented him by his philosophical tradition, assessing them sympathetically and responding to their depth. It therefore seems appropriate to pause here and assess the evidence that Aristotle himself was drawn to Platonic intellectualism in ethics. We cannot by any means give a full account of all the passages in question or deal with all the arguments that have been advanced on all sides of these questions. This would be a book in itself. But we will be fairer to our question, and to Aristotle, if we schematically set out the main lines of the issue and sketch a position towards it. We shall deal first with some evidence that lies outside the ethical works, then turn to the notorious problems of EN x.6-8. First, then, there are a number of passages scattered through the corpus that do not, like EN x.7, prescribe as best for human beings a Platonic quasi-divine intellect-centered life; but insofar as they rank the available lives in the universe in terms of their value or goodness, placing the divine life at the top, they are at odds with the general anthropocentrism of Aristode's ethical method (cf. Ch. 10). (1) In De Caelo 11.12, Aristotle ranks lives in the cosmos, showing how the placement of beings in this cosmic hierarchy explains the types of movements they perform. The best being (the unmoved mover) 'has the good without action'; the next best (the heavenly bodies) get it through a simple and single motion (circular motion); and so on, motion becoming more complex and varied the
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life further the creature is from the true good. (2) In Parts of Animals 1.5, Aristotle again, even while defending the study of animals, concedes that the heavenly bodies are higher or superior forms of life, and therefore more lovable to students of nature. (3) In EN vi, speaking of the virtue of sophia, contemplative wisdom, Aristotle ranks it higher than practical wisdom, defending this ranking by appeal to a ranking of lives or of beings: 4 It is odd if one thinks that political excellence and practical wisdom are the best things, if the human being is not the best being in the universe' (1141320-2). (I translate literally the indicatives, in order to emphasize the ambiguity of the sentence. Ross translates the second ' i f ' as' since': this is possible, but by no means necessary.) Aristotle goes on to contrast the context-relativity of practical wisdom unfavorably with sophia's lack of contextrelativity. (4) The praises of intellect and its divinity in Metaphysics xn and De Anima in. 5 are surely part of the same picture. The treatment of the unmoved mover as object of love and worship surely implies a comparative judgment about the value of lives. (By contrast, the use of the unmoved mover in Physics VIII, as necessary first principle of physical explanation, seems to imply no such ranking.) (5) In Politics 1, the description of the 'despotic rule' of soul over body and its 'political and kingly rule' over (oddly) orexis seems to form part of the same Platonic picture. Surely it is difficult to reconcile with the hylomorphic account of soul and body in De Anima, with the account of orexis in De Anima, De Motu, and EN, with the EN's account of the relationship between intellect and bodily desire. These passages (and others like them) do not necessarily imply a view of the human good that is incompatible with the one that we have sketched, in which intellectual activity is one of many intrinsic goods. For one might consistently hold that there are many intrinsic goods without which life is less complete, and which, therefore, by the criteria of EN 1 will be parts of, not just means to, eudaimonia, while holding at the same time that some of these goods are higher than others. This is plainly the position of EN vi, where in one and the same chapter Aristotle claims that sophia is one part of eudaimonia (cf. below) and also that it is in some way the best part. It is, as it were, the biggest and brightest jewel in a crown full of valuable jewels, in which each jewel has intrinsic value in itself, and the whole composition (made by practical wisdom) also adds to the value of each. The passages are, however, plainly at odds with the numerous arguments in all the ethical works to the effect that ethics and politics must confine themselves to the question, 'What is the good for a human being?', refusing to attempt a general over-arching account of good, or to produce a universal ranking of lives in terms of their goodness (cf. Ch. 10). The position of these passages seems, then, to be compatible with the position of the Phaedrus'. the account of the best life for a human being makes room for other areas of intrinsic value; and yet this life can still be compared unfavorably with another life that is exemplified somewhere in the universe. It is not altogether clear to me that this is a coherent position. Once it is granted that there are some general speciesindependent criteria for ranking across lives, then it becomes very natural to
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conclude that a life that maximizes these highest elements or activities will also be best for any being who is capable of it. Once one allows the external perspective, it seems hard to see why it should not affect the assessment of the various lives open to members of each species that can be assessed from that perspective. It is not surprising, then, that this further step towards Platonism is in fact taken somewhere by Aristotle. It is taken, I believe, only once, in a passage that does not fit with its context and that is in flat contradiction with several important positions and arguments of the EN taken as a whole. But it cannot be dismissed either: and the best we can do is to set forth its arguments and show clearly how and where they are in contradiction with the EN's overall enterprise. There is a large and helpful literature on this problem. 1 1 shall therefore set out briefly the issues that seem to me to be most important. In EN x.6-8, then, Aristode defends the view that eudaimonia is identical with the activity of the best part of a human being, viz., the theoretical intellect. This activity is held to excel all others in continuity (1177321-2), purity (26), stability (26), and also in self-sufficiency, in that one can contemplate without relying on the contingent satisfaction of external necessary conditions (1177327-1177b!). Contemplation is explicidy held to be the only activity that is worthy of love or choice for its own sake ( 1 1 7 7 ^ - 4 ) . Since the divine intellect is the best part in us, we are urged to identify ourselves with this element and to choose for ourselves the life of this one element.4 We must not follow those who urge us, being human, to reason and choose humanly, and, being mortal, in a mortal way; but insofar as it is possible we must immortalize and do everything in order to live in accord3nce with the best part of ourselves' (1177b31-4). A life 3CCording to 'the rest of excellence' is held to be second-best. (Neither of these two lives, presum3bly, is the life defended up until this point in the EN, since that life will contsin both contemplative and non-contemplative components.) It will be obvious to the reader of this book that this pass3ge hss strong affinities with the Platonism of the middle dialogues, and that it is oddly out of step with the view of value that we have been finding in the ethical works. We can now summarize the most important reasons for judging that there is incompatibility here, not just difference of emphasis. (1) In the EE and the MM, Aristotle explicidy argues that eudaimonia is a composite of several parts and that activities according to the excellences of character are ' parts' or constituents of eudaimonia, along with philia and contemplative activity. (2) This claim is underlined in EN vi ( = EE iv): sophia is a 'part of excellence as a whole', and, as such a part, it contributes to eudaimonia through its activities (1144335".). The point underlined here is t h 3 t sophia is not merely a productive means towards eudaimonia, but an actu3l p3rt of it; but Aristotle also makes it clear that it is a part 3nd not the whole. (3) In the other books of the EN, 3ctivities 3ccording to the excellences of character 3re explicitly said to be valuable or choiceworthy for their own sake. It is part of the definition of excellent activity, indeed, that it be chosen for its own sake (1105331-2). Philia, too, is held to be an intrinsic good (cf. Ch. 12).
2 5 o Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life What is most surprising, even EN x.6 cites activity according to excellence of character as an example of something that is good and choiceworthy in and of itself (ii76b7—9). Book ix (cf. Ch. 12) expressly rules out a solitary eudaimonia as lacking in an important intrinsic value; the conclusion is that, lacking philia, it is not really eudaimonia at all, since it is not complete. Book 1 has already made it clear that eudaimonia must be inclusive of everything that has intrinsic value (1097b 14ff.). So any evidence that some other item has intrinsic value not only clashes directly with the claim of x.7 that only contemplation does, it also clashes indirectly with the claims there identifying eudaimonia with contemplation alone. (4) Nothing in Book r implies that eudaimonia is a single activity; the sufficiency criterion, as we have said, implies that it will be a composite, unless there is only one thing with intrinsic value. The claim of 1.5, that 'the good for a human being is activity of soul in accordance with excellence, and if the excellences are more than one, according to the best and most complete' does not undermine this: for, given what has already been said about 'completeness', this will require the inclusion of everything with intrinsic value; and it is plainly compatible with the finding that there are many such things. Book x, by contrast, stresses the idea that what we want is the single best activity, the activity of the single best part. (5) The initial statement of the self-sufficiency (autarkeia) criterion in Book 1 is oddly out of step with x's claim that contemplation is autarkestaton\ for Aristotle there immediately said that we are not looking for a solitary self-sufficiency, but for a life that is self-sufficient along with friends and family and community (cf. Ch. 12). The life of x.7 would, like the solitary life attacked in ix.12, fail to meet the criterion, thus stated. (6) The proper reading of the 'human function' argument in 1.5 is compatible with a non-intellectualistic conclusion. For what it says, properly understood, is that eudaimonia is good activity according to, shaped by, the work of reason, in which the shared elements are not excluded, but included in a way infused by and organized by practical reason.2 In the rest of the work, especially in Book vi, Aristotle shows us how practical reason shapes and arranges a life that includes both contemplative and ethical elements. (7) Book x defended the selection of contemplation by saying that each of us should identify ourselves with our theoretical intellect; similar material in ix spoke of practical reason instead (u66ai6-i7). (8) Book ix twice indicates that it is actually incoherent to aspire to the good life of the god: for this involves wishing for a life that cannot be lived by a being of the same sort as we are, therefore not by someone identical with us. Wishing for the good, both for ourselves and for another, must remain within the confines of our species identity (1159310-11, 1166318-23). The insistence throughout the EN that our subject matter is not the good life simpliciter, but the good human life (cf. Ch. 10), makes the same point. To these considerations we may add one more that has not, to my knowledge, been sufficiently underlined. This is that the text of EN x seems to be oddly composed, giving rise to suspicion that Chapters 6-8 are not originally parts of the same whole. Chapter 9, which begins Aristotle's transition from ethics to politics by a discussion of moral education, begins with a summary of what has preceded. This summary makes no mention of the chapters on contemplation,
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but gives an orderly summary of the EN up to x. 5, mentioning excellences, philia, and pleasure; having discussed all these things, the summary says, we might think that we have finished our job; but in fact we must go on to consider the practical application of what we have done. (The only possible reference to x.6-8 is in the touton 'these things' of ii79a33; but that would be a thin allusion indeed to the climax of the whole work.) The beginning of x.6 is peculiar as well: 'Now that we have spoken about the excellences and philia and pleasure, it remains to give a sketch of eudaimonia.' But a 'sketch' of eudaimonia is what 1.7 already claimed to give; and according to the views of I-IX, we have been talking about eudaimonia all along, filling in the sketch by talking in detail of its constituents. What are we to make of all this ? There is no strong reason to believe that these chapters were not composed by Aristotle - though questions of authenticity are very difficult to settle and there is also no reason to rule out forgery. What we can say with confidence is that these chapters do not fit into the argument of the EN; indeed, that they represent a line of ethical thought that Aristotle elsewhere vigorously attacks. With only slightly less confidence, we can also assert that they do not fit well in their context, and were probably composed separately, perhaps in the context of a different project. We cannot rule out the possibility that Aristotle himself inserted them here, in preparing a course of lectures; but the clashes are more numerous and blatant than in other parallel cases, and a more likely explanation seems to be that they were inserted in their present position by someone else (a not unusual phenomenon in the corpus). But the passages discussed previously do give evidence, from a wide variety of authentic contexts, that ethical Platonism of some sort exercised a hold over Aristotle's imagination in one or more periods of his career. We should, then, view the fragment x.6-8 as a serious working-out of elements of a position to which Aristotle is in some ways deeply attracted, though he rejects it in the bulk of his mature ethical and political writing. Surely this is not disappointing. Frequently Aristotle is rather quick and dismissive with Platonist positions. It seems far more worthy of him, and of his method, that he should seriously feel the force of this position and try to articulate the arguments for it. Perhaps we can say that, like anyone who has been seriously devoted to the scholarly or contemplative life, Aristotle wonders whether, thoroughly and properly followed, its demands are not such as to eclipse all other pursuits. Although for the most part he articulates a conception of a life complexly devoted to politics, love, and reflection, he also feels (whether at different periods or in different moods at the same period) that really fine reflection may not be able to stand side by side with anything else; we cannot have a harmonious fusion of the human and the divine. So he articulates the Platonist view, not attempting to harmonize it with the other view, but setting it side by side with that one, as the Symposium stands side by side with the Phaedrus. In a sense there is a decision for the mixed view; but the other view remains, not fully dismissed, exerting its claim as a possibility. This seems to me to be a worthy way for a great philosopher to think about these hard questions; and therefore worthy of Aristotle.3
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions
Aristotle has a high regard for tragedy. Both in the Poetics itself and in the Politics discussion of the education of young citizens, he gives it a place of honor, attributing to it both motivational and cognitive value. 1 Our discussion of his ethical views has brought us into contact with several features of his thought that help to explain this. The general anthropocentrism of his ethics and his rejection of the Platonic external4 god's eye' standpoint (Ch. 8) leads him to turn, for moral improvement, not to representations of divine non-limited beings (cf. Ch. 5), but to stories of good human activity. The value he attributes to emotions and feelings, both as parts of a virtuous character and as sources of information about right actions (Chs. 9, 10), naturally leads him to give another hearing to texts that Plato had banished on account of their representation of and appeal to the emotions. Then, too, since, in our aspiration to grasp ethical truth, the perception of concrete particulars is, for Aristotle, prior in authority to the general rules and definitions that summarize those particulars, since a detailed account of a complex particular case will have more of ethical truth in it than a general formula (Ch. 10), it will be natural for him to suppose that the concrete and complex stories that are the material of tragic drama could play a valuable role in refining our perceptions of the complex ' material' of human life. In all of these ways Aristotle's ethical writing further develops lines of thought that led to Plato's (partial) rehabilitation of poetry (Ch. 7). Each of these points deserves elaboration. But here, before concluding this book with a return to tragedy, I want to focus on two specific pieces of Aristotle's account of tragedy. These pieces can be clarified by connecting them with the views about the ethical importance of luck that we set out in Chapters 11 and 12. They are: the relationship between tragic action and tragic character, and the nature and value of the tragic emotions. We can begin with a famous and controversial passage in the Poetics, which both points towards the ethical issues we have discussed and is illuminated by them. There are several promising ways of resolving its troublesome textual problems; I translate the version which I consider most defensible, and which seems to bring out most adequately the sequence of Aristotle's thought: 2 The most important element is the arrangement of the events. For tragedy is a representation not of human beings but of action and a course of life.3 And eudaimonia and its opposite consist in action, and the end is a certain sort of action, not a characteristic (poiotes). According to their characters (ta ethe) people are of such and such characteristics {poioi tines). But it is according to their actions that they live well (are eudaimones) or the reverse. (1450315-20) 378
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Aristotle here defends the central importance of tragic action, claiming that a work that merely displayed characters of a certain sort, without showing them in action, would be deficient in the values proper to tragedy. He defends his claim by indicating that action has an intimate connection with human eudaimonia that merely being a certain sort of person, all by itself, does not. A work that simply displayed the characteristics of the figures involved, without showing them engaged in some sort of significant activity, would fail, therefore, to show us something about eudaimonia that is shown us in the plots of the great tragedies. What is this something? The point of these remarks about eudaimonia in a discussion of tragic action has been difficult for interpreters to see. D. W. Lucas, for example, excises them as irrelevant to the issue at hand: Aristotle's particular views on the end of action are not very relevant to the importance of action in drama, but they are the sort of thing that a commentator might be tempted to explain. The desire for happiness might well be the cause which led to the initiation of the action which was the subject of a play, but this action is just as much an action whether the happiness which is its end is regarded as an action or a state.4 John Jones5 is more sympathetic to Aristode's remarks; but he takes them in a strange and, ultimately, an unilluminating way. The remark indicates, he says, that Aristotle, unlike modern thinkers, has a preference for exuberant and outgoing characters who are only fully themselves when they are acting, not just reflecting. Even if this were correct as a description of Aristotle's ethical preferences, which it is not, it would seem dubious that this could be the point of the remark in question. For Aristotle's contrast here is not between one type of character and another, but between a state of character, of whatever kind, and activity, of whatever kind - including, presumably, contemplative activity. His point is that no state of character is by itself sufficient for eudaimonia. Before we can begin to assess these criticisms and develop our own account of the passage, we had better be clear about what Aristotle is and is not saying. He is not expressing indifference to the element of character in drama: indeed, he goes on to say that the depiction of action reveals character at the same time (1450321—2) — just as, in the ethical works, he repeatedly insists that our best evidence of character is the actual choices a person makes.6 Nor does he seem to be expressing a preference for works with lots of action over works with well-developed characters. He says that there might be a tragedy without full character-development; but this is clearly not what he himself prefers. What he does say is that plot and action are centrally important and that there could not be a tragedy without them. Tragedy cannot simply represent character types, it must show its characters in action. The implicit contrast, then, is not a contrast between active drama and a more reflective drama; it is a contrast between tragic drama and another literary genre known to Aristotle, the character portrait. The Characters of Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus, for example, represent people of a certain sort, without showing them involved in action. Plato's Republic recommends
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions385 speeches describing and praising the goodness of good people. Tragedy, by contrast, 'includes character along with' the representation of action: we see the characters by seeing them choosing and doing. Aristotle's remarks, I shall now argue, are neither irrelevant nor obscure. As a result of our work in the last two chapters, we are in a position to see in them a serious point about the connection between our ethical values (our conception of eudaimonia) and our poetic values, our assessment of whether tragedy is important and what is important about it. His point, as we shall see, is that the value of tragic action is a practical value: it shows us certain things about human life. And these will be things worth learning only on a certain conception of eudaimonia, namely one according to which having a good character or being in a good condition is not sufficient for the fullness of good living. We can focus the issue by pointing out that the puzzling sentences make a claim about the human good that was denied by a number of Aristotle's philosophical contemporaries. In Chapter 11 we saw Aristotle arguing against an opponent who did maintain that being a person of a certain sort (being in a certain good condition) was sufficient for living well. Plato's related view identified eudaimonia with the most invulnerable activities of the rational soul. Aristotle replied to both of these opponents by pointing to several ways in which a good person could fall short of full eudaimonia because of events not under that person's control. First, the person could be impeded from acting well - either altogether, or during a portion of his or her life. Aristotle showed a special interest in reversals that lead to impeded activity in a part of a life that was previously going well; his central example was the case of Priam. In this case the eudaimonia of the person of good character is diminished through the frustration of good acdvity; and Aristotle suggests that in the extreme case the frustration may even eat into or defile the goodness of character itself. We saw next, that his views about impediment could be extended to accommodate two other cases with which tragedy prominently deals: we called them the case of Oedipus and the case of Agamemnon. In Oedipus's case, the world creates an impediment to the blameless or just activity that he intentionally did, by making it the case that, unknown to him and through no fault of his own, the real or most ethically pertinent description of his action made it a hideous rather than a blameless one.7 There is, as in Priam's case, a gap between being good and living well. Only here there is the added complication that there is also on the scene an action which is the natural expression of the intentions of good character; and as we witness the gap it is a gap between character so expressed and the action that is actually performed (under its truest or most relevant description). In Agamemnon's case, again, there is a gap between what appears to be an antecedently good character and the fullness of good activity. The impediment here is produced by the situation of conflict, which prevents blameless response, making it inevitable that the choices that naturally express his commitment to piety or to filial love should coincide with (intentional) acts of murder or impiety. The world makes it the case that a person who was good, who was 'sailing straight', falls short of eudaimonia - indeed, in this case, falls into the commission of a bad action that we find horrible, even while we
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pity. Finally, in Chapter 12, we saw Aristotle argue that through the important relational values of political activity and personal love, our aspiration to live well becomes especially vulnerable to uncontrolled happenings. For in these cases the world does not simply provide the agent with instrumental means to an activity that can be identified and specified apart from the external; it provides a constituent part of the good activity itself. There is no loving action without someone to receive and return it; there is no being a good citizen without a city that accepts your claims to membership. In these cases hexis and praxis, character and activity, are so intimately connected that it would not even be possible to represent the appropriate character-states without representing action and communication - and, therefore, vulnerability. This means that interference from the world leaves no self-sufficient kernel of the person safely intact. It strikes directly at the root of goodness itself. The Poetics remark is, then, a summary of some important Aristotelian ethical views about the ways in which goodness of character or soul can prove insufficient for full eudaimonia. What we can now observe is that these views are indeed highly relevant to the valuation of tragedy and tragic action. Consider Aristotle's good-condition opponent. This person says that action, depending as it does for its completion on happenings in the world, is strictly irrelevant to the eudaimonia of the agent - therefore, presumably, to all serious questions about praise and blame, about how valuable a life he is having. Such a thinker would have to say that if we want texts that will show us what is supremely valuable about human life (and all ancient literary theory assumes that this is what we are looking for when we turn to tragedy), these texts will not need to show their good characters engaged in any actual action. They will only need to show them as being of a certain sort. To show this is to show everything of serious practical importance. And texts that indicated that anything else was important would be misleading. Or consider Aristotie's primary opponent in the Poetics, Plato. Plato's middledialogue defense of a certain type of rational self-sufficiency is intimately bound up with his repudiation of poetic action as a source of practical insight, his restriction of the poetic task to the construction of praises of the goodness of character of good people. For if the good person is, as Republic 111 (388) insists, altogether self-sufficient,8 that is, in need of nothing from without to complete the value and goodness of his life (cf. Ch. 7 §iv, Ch. 5 §iv), then, first of all, tragic action becomes irrelevant to our search for human good living. If internal goodness of character or soul, or the performance of altogether self-sufficient contemplative activities, is sufficient for full goodness of life, then a praise of that goodness, of those activities, will show an audience all that is ethically important about a good person.* And, second, many of the most common patterns of tragic action will be ethically inappropriate and corrupting: for these plots display their heroic * T o bring out the contrast with Plato (unlike the good-condition opponent) we do need to suppose that Aristotle's demand for action in drama would not be satisfied by the performance of the most self-sufficient theoretical activities, such as the contemplation of truths of mathematics - except, perhaps, insofar as these interact (as for Aristotle they do) with contingent worldly conditions. Thus far Jones has a point; but inward-looking and reflective agents are in no way ruled out. And I know of no drama that simply represents mathematical reasoning as its central action.
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions385 figures attaching to chance events, for example the death of a loved one or a reversal in fortunes, an importance vis-a-vis human eudaimonia that they do not, in fact, possess. Plato informs us in no uncertain terms that the poets 'speak wrongly about human beings in matters of the greatest importance' when they show the lives of good and just people being seriously affected by adverse circ*mstances (Republic 3 9 2 A - B ) . Poets are to be forbidden to tell this sort of story and. commanded to tell the opposite. The great tragic plots explore the gap between our goodness and our good living, between what we are (our character, intentions, aspirations, values) and how humanly well we manage to live. They show us reversals happening to good-charactered but not divine or invulnerable people, exploring the many ways in which being of a certain good human character falls short of sufficiency for eudaimonia. (In the extreme case, some of these ways may include damage or corruption to the originally good character itself. In such cases, however, it is important that the change should come not from deliberate wickedness, but from the pressure of external circ*mstances over which they have no control. Thus the damage will still display the gap between being good in deliberately formed intentions or values, and managing to live out a fully good life.) If you think that there is no such gap or that it is trivial, you will naturally judge that tragedy is either false or trivial; and you will not want to give it a place of honor in a scheme of public instruction. Aristode's belief that the gap is both real and important illuminates his anti-Platonic claim that tragic action is important and a source of genuine learning. There are many areas in which we could use these insights to press Poetics interpretation further. They can provide the basis for a more ethically sensitive account of Aristotle's notions ofperipeteia and anagnorisis, reversal and recognition, showing us why these notions are of such central importance in Aristode's estimation of tragedies and helping us to classify the different varieties of reversal in an ethically perspicuous way. They can also be used to increase our understanding of tragic hamartia, or missing-the-mark. For despite the thousands of pages that have been written on this notion, we still need an account that is fully responsive to the ways in which, for Aristotle, practical error can come about through some causes other than viciousness of character and still matter to the value of a life. Tragedy concerns good people who come to grief'not through defect of character and wickedness, but through some hamartia '(1453 a^-1 o). Hamartia and hamartoma* are sharply distinguished from flaw or defect of character, both here and elsewhere (EN v.8, 1137b! iff., cf. Rhet. i374b6ff.). They are also distinguished from atuchemay or a mischance that has a purely arbitrary and external origin. (An example of the latter is probably Aristode's case in which someone is killed when a statue happens to fall down on him.) To come to grief through hamartia is, then, * Attempts to find a significant systematic distinction between these two words have not been successful. If there is one, the analogy with phantasia/pbantasma indicates that hamartia would be the activity, the making of the mistake, bamartima the mistake that gets made. But the similar pair atttcbia/atucbema do not seem to be systematically distinguished.
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions385 to fall through some sort of mistake in action that is causally intelligible, not simply fortuitous, done in some sense by oneself; and yet not the outgrowth of a settled defective disposition of character. Further examination indicates that hamartia can include both blameworthy and non-blameworthy missings-of-the-mark: the innocent ignorance of Oedipus, the intentional but highly constrained act of Agamemnon, the passionate deviations of akratic persons inspired to act against settled character by eros or anger. It can, presumably, even include the more deliberate mistakes that result from a momentary or temporary departure from character - for example, the simplifications of Creon (who later regrets his errors, showing that they did not really express his underlying settled character - cf. below, pp. 387-8), the lies of Neoptolemus (who says explicitly that he has departed from his ongoing phusis or character). In short, the notion of hamartia takes in a variety of important goings-wrong that do not result from settled badness; and thus it is a concept well fitted to discourse about the gap between being good and living well. For what we notice in each of these cases in which good character is not effective in action is an element of constraint or tuche: circ*mstantial in some cases; working through the agent's system of beliefs in others; in still others through the internal ungoverned tuche of the passions. To pursue these leads in more detail, with reference to all the relevant texts, would be an important clarificatory task.9 But now, instead, I want to pursue in detail the connection between Aristotle's ethical views about the gap and his views of the role of the two tragic emotions, pity and fear. Aristotle, like Plato, believes that emotions are individuated not simply by the way they feel, but, more importandy, by the kinds of judgments or beliefs that are internal to each.10 A typical Aristotelian emotion is defined as a composite of a feeling of either pleasure or pain and a particular type of belief about the world. Anger, for example, is a composite of painful feeling with the belief that one has been wronged. 11 The feeling and the belief are not just incidentally linked: the belief is the ground of the feeling. If it were found by the agent to be false, the feeling would not persist; or, if it did, it would no longer persist as a constituent in that emotion. If I discover that an imagined slight did not really take place, I can expect my painful angry feelings to go away; if some irritation remains, I will think of it as residual irrational irritation or excitation, not as anger. It is part of this same view that emotions may be assessed as either rational or irrational, 'true' or 'false', depending upon the nature of their grounding beliefs. If my anger is based upon a hastily adopted false belief concerning a wrong done me, it may be criticized as both irrational and 'false'. 12 What I now want to do is to establish that the belief-structure internal to both pity and fear stands or falls with views about the importance of luck in human life that would be accepted by Aristotle and by most ordinary people, but rejected by his philosophical opponents, including Plato. Pity, Aristotle tells us in the Rhetoric, is a painful emotion directed towards another person's pain or suffering (1385b!3fF.). It requires, then, the belief that the other person is really suffering, and, furthermore, that this suffering is not
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions385 trivial, but something of real importance. (He stresses that it must have 'size' (,megethos, 138636-7).) These sufferings he then divides into two groups: painful and injurious things, and substantial damages caused by luck. Representative examples of the former include: death, bodily assault, bodily ill-treatment, old age, illness, lack of food. Examples of the latter include: lack of philoi; having few philoi\being separated from your philoi; ugliness, weakness, being crippled, having your good expectations disppointed, having good things come too late, having no good things happen to you, or having them but being unable to enjoy them (138637-13). The rationale for the division into two groups is not 3ltogether cle3r, since the first 3re caused by tuche as much as the second, and the second contains examples of bodily harm that seem to belong with the first. It probably is not intended as an important theoretical distinction. In any case, both groups fall under the inclusive notion of injuries caused by luck that we have been working with so far in this book - though the second group contains the examples that have been of the greatest interest to us. In the EN examples from the two groups were brought together in the discussion of tuche and external goods. We can see that there is a close connection between the listed occasions for pity and Aristotle's reflections about our vulnerability to the external in the ethical works; these happenings are prominent among the ways in which a good person can fall short of full eudaimonia. Aristotle adds a further condition for pity, which he repeats and stresses in the Poetics. Pity, as response, is distinct from moral censure or blame: it requires the belief that the person did not deserve the suffering (Po. 145333-5, Rhet. 1385313 ff.). He claims, and I think correctly, that where we judge that the suffering is brought on by the agent's own bad choices, we (logically) do not pity: the structure of that emotion requires the opposing belief. In the Rhetoric he makes the interesting observation that the person who is too pessimistic about human nature will not feel pity at all - for he will believe that everyone deserves the bad things that happen to them (a remark pregnant with implications for the question of Christian tragedy). A dramatic story of such a deserved reversal, he tells us in the Poetics, will be benevolent and uplifting (philanthropon), but not tragic (145 3aiff.). Finally, he points out that pity is closely connected with the belief that you yourself are vulnerable in similar ways. If you believe that you are so badly off that nothing further could happen to you to make things worse, you will not be likely to be capable of pity for others because you will be looking at their plight from the very bottom, from the point of view of one whose sufferings are complete. On the other hand, if you believe yourself self-sufficient vis-a-vis eudaimonia, secure in your possession of the good life, you will suppose that what happens to others cannot possibly happen to you. This will put you in a state of bold assertiveness (hubristike diathesis), in which the sufferings of others do not arouse pity (1385b!9-24, 31-2). Pity then, evidently requires fellow feeling, the judgment that your possibilities are similar to those of the suffering object. It is evident that this central tragic emotion depends on some controversial beliefs about the situation of human goodness in the world: that luck is seriously
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powerful, that it is possible for a good person to suffer serious and undeserved harm, that this possibility extends to human beings generally. Aristotle's philosophical opponents, however, insist that if a person's character is good, the person cannot be harmed in any serious way. So there is within their view no room, conceptually, for pity. It must be considered a thoroughly irrational and useless emotion, based upon false beliefs that ought to be rejected. We rationally must choose between the response of blame, if we judge that what has happened is the fault of the agent, and equanimity or dismissiveness about what has happened, if we judge that it is the fault of the world. Accordingly, Plato does, in fact, repudiate pity in the strongest terms. In the Phaedo, which is a clear case of Platonic anti-tragedy, there is repeated stress on the fact that Socrates' predicament is not an occasion for pity (cf. Int. 1). The bad things are trivial, because they are happening only to his body; his soul is secure and self-sufficient. Accordingly, the dialogue's end replaces tragic pity with a praise of this good man's goodness. In Republic x, pity is again singled out for special abuse, in connection with the attack upon tragedy. Tragic poetry, Socrates says, does harm to practical rationality, in that 'after feeding fat the emotion of pity there, it is not easy to restrain it in our own experiences' (6O6B). 13 But if we should believe, with Aristotle, that being good is not sufficient for eudaimonia, for good and praiseworthy living, then pity will be an important and valuable human response. Through pity we recognize and acknowledge the importance of what has been inflicted on another human being similar to us, through no fault of his own. We pity Philoctetes, abandoned friendless and in pain on a desert island. We pity Oedipus, because the appropriate action to which his character led him was not the terrible crime that he, out of ignorance, committed. We pity Agamemnon because circ*mstances forced him to kill his own child, something deeply repugnant to his own and our ethical commitments. We pity Hecuba because circ*mstances deprived her of all the human relationships that had given meaning and value to her life. Through attending to our responses of pity, we can hope to learn more about our own implicit view of what matters in human life, about the vulnerability of our own deepest commitments. We can say something similar about fear. The belief structure of fear is intimately connected with that of pity. Aristotle stresses repeatedly that what we pity when it happens to another we fear in case it might happen to ourselves (Po. 145 334-5, Rhet. 1386a22-8). And since pity already, in his view, requires the perception of one's own vulnerability, one's similarity to the sufferer, then pity and fear will almost always occur together. Fear is defined as a painful emotion connected with the expectation of future harm or pain (138232 iff.). Aristotle adds that fear implies that these bad things are big or serious (1382328-30), and that it is not in our power to prevent them. Thus we do not, he observes, in general fear that we will become unjust or slow-moving, presumably because we believe that that sort of change usually lies with us to control. Fear is above all connected with a sense of our passivity before events in the world - with £ the expectation of passively-suffering (peisesthai) some destructive affect' (phthartikon pathos,
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions385 1382b30-2); thus, those who believe they cannot passively-suffer anything will have no fears (i382b32-3). For Aristotle's philosophical opponents, there will be little to fear. The good-condition theorist need not tremble in the face of the power of nature, for the only thing that is of serious importance is within him, as secure as can be. The Republic, for similar reasons, spends a long time criticizing and rejecting literary works that inspire fear. Plato's argument, repeatedly, is that correct beliefs about what is and is not important in human life remove our reasons for fear, The good person attaches no importance to any external loss, to any loss, that is, in a sphere of life that is beyond the control of the rational soul. But this means that he or she is in no way passive before nature, has nothing at all to fear. (We can see that the same would be true for Kant.) When we watch a tragic hero's downfall in the spirit of these philosophers, we will feel no fear for ourselves. For either our character and the hero's character are both good, in which case his difficulties give us nothing, really, to fear; or both characters need more work, in which case we had better get to work perfecting ours; or the hero's character is, after all, not similar to ours, in which case we will not be deeply moved in any way by his downfall. Nowhere is there the sense of vulnerability and passivity that gives rise to true fear. But in Aristotle's ethical universe there are serious things to fear, things of importance to eudaimonia itself. If, as Aristotle urges, we acknowledge the tragic characters as similar to us in their general goodness and their human possibilities, the tragedy as showing 'the sort of thing that might happen' to an aspiring person in human life generally, we will, with and in our fear, acknowledge their tragedy as a possibility for ourselves. And such a response will itself be a piece of learning concerning our human situation and our values. Aristotle stresses, then, that central to our response to tragedy is a kind of identification with the suffering figure or figures depicted. They must, clearly, be good people, or we will not pity them. But the importance of identification imposes conditions on the ways in which they can be good. First of all, they must be good in a representative and not an idiosyncratic way. We can connect his demand for similarity between ourselves and the hero with his ranking of poetry above history as a source of wisdom. History, he points out, tells us what in fact happened; poetry 'the sort of thing that might happen' (145 ^ 4 - 5 ) . History tells us ' the particular, such as what Alcibiades did or suffered'; poetry ' the general, the sort of thing that happens to certain sorts of people' (i45ib8-i 1). What he means here, I believe, is that often the events narrated by history are so idiosyncratic that they prevent identification. Because Alcibiades is such a unique and unusual figure, we do not regard what happens to him as showing a possibility for ourselves. (The difference between historical narration concerning Alcibiades and Plato's use of Alcibiades as a (representative) character would correspond to Aristotle's distinction between history and poetry.)* The tragic hero is not * This denigration of history strikes us as odd, given that the greatest Greek historians, especially Thucydides, are plainly philosophical in Aristotle's sense. It is not evident, however, that Aristotle is familiar with Thucydides' work. If we think of Xenophon as the historian he has in mind, the remarks are more intelligible.
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions385 similarly idiosyncratic. He or she is seen by us to be a certain sort of good person, roughly similar to ourselves; for this reason we experience both pity and fear at his or her downfall. Then again, if we are to see the hero as similar, he cannot be too perfectly good. Aristode^tresses that the tragic character, while he must indeed be good and while he must fall not through badness of character, must still not be 4 one surpassing [perfect]14 in excellence and justice' (1453a8ff.). 15 He must be 'better rather than worse', and even 'better than us' (1453b!6-17, I454b8~9); but he must not be perfect. There are several points that Aristotle could be making here. First, he could be ruling out the portrayal of the sort of invulnerably secure person mentioned in the Rhetoric chapters on pity - for with such a hero no tragic plot will make sense; and if we identify ourselves with the possibilities of such a person, neither pity nor fear will be possible. It seems likely, however, that Aristotle does not believe there are any really invulnerable people; and the person who believes he is invulnerable would not be an especially good person, as the mention of hubris in the Rhetoric strongly suggests. So it is unlikely that his ' good, but not perfectly good' is meant to rule out this person. Second, with 'surpassing in excellence' he could be ruling out a degree of perfection with respect to practical wisdom and intellectual excellence that would make mistakes like the ignorant mistake of Oedipus impossible. This is more promising, and is no doubt partly right; but it does not explain the presence of'justice'. I believe, therefore, that he is making a third and more general point. This is that imperfections in a hero enhance our identification. There is a kind of excellence that is so far beyond our grasp that we regard its possessor as being above and beyond our kind, not among us. This sort of excellence is discussed at the opening of Nicomachean Ethics vn under the name 'heroic' or 'divine' excellence, or 'the excellence that is above us' (1145319-20). It is exemplified by a Homeric quotation telling us that a certain hero is 'not like the child of a mortal man but like the child of a god'. Aristotle is even inclined to say of such a divine figure that he is 'more honorable than human excellence' - i.e., he is not the kind of being to whom it makes sense to ascribe the ordinary virtues at all, his goodness is in an altogether different category from ours. I think that Aristotle's point in the Poetics is that if tragedy shows us heroes who are in this way divine, lacking the limitations of patience, vision, reflection, and courage that characterize even the best of human subjects, the sense of similarity that is crucial to tragic response will not develop. The tragic hero should not fall through wickedness; but his being less than perfectly good is important to our pity and fear. Thus Oedipus's shortness of temper is not the cause of his decline; but it is one thing about Oedipus that makes him a character with whom we can identify. It is not a 'tragic flaw'; but it is instrumental to the tragic response. So, indeed, are Philoctetes' self-pity, Creon's self-ignorance and his mistaken ambition, Antigone's relentless denial of the civic, Agamemnon's excessive boldness. So, above all, might be the attempts of so many tragic good characters to deny their own vulnerability to chance happenings, those avoidances of their own condition which we, so much of the time, share with them. Aristotle's claim is that none of these defects is sufficient to make the person a
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions385 wicked person in underlying character: even Creon preserves, beneath his (blameworthy) ambition, a rich and basically balanced set of values and attachments, and the fact is extremely important in determining our response to him. He can claim with some justice that he is a victim of his self-ignorance, not a deliberate perpetrator of evil deeds (cf. ouch hekon, 1340). Such people fall, therefore, not from wickedness, but from something more like a mistake or error, blameworthy or not. But the presence of imperfections (some, perhaps, somehow involved in the decline and some not) means that we will see and acknowledge them as like us in kind, though good and, perhaps, better. We find, then, that for Aristotle the viewing of pitiable and fearful things, and our responses of pity and fear themselves, can serve to show us something of importance about the human good. For the Platonist or the good-condition theorist, they cannot. For Aristotle, pity and fear will be sources of illumination or clarification, as the agent, responding and attending to his or her responses, develops a richer self-understanding concerning the attachments and values that support the responses. For Aristotle's opponents, pity and fear can never be better than sources of delusion and obfuscation. It has been observed by Leon Golden in his excellent articles on the Poetics that every element in the Poetics definition of tragedy refers back to and summarizes the results of a discussion earlier in the work. 16 Aristotle explicitly announces that this is his plan, prefacing the definition with the remark, 'Let us speak about tragedy, taking up from what has been said the definition of its nature that has come into being' (144^22-4). It is evident how every element of the definition offered fulfills this aim - with a single exception. The famous claim that the function of tragedy is 'through pity and fear to accomplish the katharsis of experiences of that kind' does not appear to pick up on anything that has gone before. It does not if, that is, we interpret katharsis in either of the two most common ways, as either moral purification or medical purgation. It is a strong primafacie advantage for an interpretation of katharsis if we can show that it, unlike the others, offers the desired retrospective link. Aristotle argued in Chapter 4 that our interest in mimesis is a cognitive interest, an interest in learning (1448b! 3): human beings take pleasure in seeing representations ' because it happens that as they contemplate these they learn, and draw conclusions about what each thing is, for example, that this is that' (1448b! 5-17; cf. Khet. ^ i b j f f . ) . (If this account of our learning sounds too flat to support any sophisticated account of tragic pleasure, it should be remembered that Aristotle is here speaking very generally of human delight, at all ages, in works of art of many types. Some conclusions may be very simple: ' That's a horse'. Others will be much more complex: 'That's a cowardly action'; 'That's a case in which deprivation of loved ones has dislodged someone from eudaimonia\) Golden points out that if we look to Plato's epistemological vocabulary (a reasonable place to look in interpreting this consciously anti-Platonic text), we find, in fact, that katharsis and related words, especially in the middle dialogues, have a strong connection with learning: namely, they occur in connection with the unimpeded or ' clear' rational state of the soul
Interlude 2: luck and the tragic emotions385 when it is freed from the troubling influences of sense and emotion. The intellect achieves 'purification' - or, better, 'clarification', since the word obviously has a cognitive force - only when it goes off 'itself by itself'. We can, however, press this point much harder than Golden did if we look briefly atohe whole history of katbarsis and related words (kathairo, katharos, etc.). These facts are straightforward and easily accessible; they need to be stated, however, since they have been too often forgotten in discussions of this topic. When we examine the whole range of use and the development of this word-family, it becomes quite evident that the primary, ongoing, central meaning is roughly one of'clearing up' or 'clarification', i.e. of the removal of some obstacle (dirt, or blot, or obscurity, or admixture) that makes the item in question less clear than it is in its proper state. In pre-Platonic texts these words are frequendy used of water that is clear and open, free of mud or weeds; of a space cleared of objects; of grain that is winnowed, and so clear of chaff; of the part of an army that is not functionally disabled or impeded; and, significantly and often, of speech that is not marred by some obscurity or ambiguity (e.g. Aristoph. Wasps 631, 1046, ?Eur. Rbes. 35). The medical use to designate purgation is a special application of this general sense: purgation rids the body of internal impediments and obstacles, clearing it up. And the connection with spiritual purification and ritual purity appears to be another specialized development, given the strong link between such purity and physical freedom from blemish or dirt. If we now return to Plato's usage, we find that he preserves this general picture. The central sense is that of freedom from admixture, clarity, absence of impediment. In the case of the soul and its cognition, the application of the word-group is mediated by the dominant metaphors of mud and clean light: the eye of the soul can be sunk in mud (Rep. 5 3 3 D 1 , Pbd. 69c), or it can be seeing cleanly and clearly. Katharos cognition is what we have when the soul is not impeded by bodily obstacles (esp. Rep. 508c, Pbd. 69c). Katbarsis is the clearing up of the vision of the soul by the removal of these obstacles; thus the katharon becomes associated with the true or truly knowable, the being who has achieved katbarsis with the truly or correcdy knowing (esp. Pbd. 65ff., 1 ioff.). Thus we even find expressions such as katharos apodeixai, meaning 'demonstrate clearly' ( but cannot do both, we seem, Williams argues, to have two alternatives if we wish to avoid making this look like
Notes to pp. jo- 2 direct logical contradiction: (i) We can deny that ought implies can; (2) We can deny that from 4 1 ought to do a' and 'I ought to do b* it follows that 'I ought to do a and by: in other words, 'ought' is not ' agglomerati ve'. Williams defends the second alternative; the first is chosen by Lemmon, 'Moral dilemmas'. In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), Williams explicitly abandons the moral/non-moral distinction as a basis for ethical inquiry, arguing that the moral (understood as centered around notions of duty and obligation) should be regarded as a deviant and mistaken sub-class of the ethical, which he treats as a broad, inclusive, and not rigidly demarcated category. He argues that the Greek question,' How should one live?' is the most promising starting-point for ethical inquiry, and that good pursuit of this question does not lead to a rigid separation of moral requirements from other concerns that arise in response to that question, or to a ranking of these requirements above other concerns. I am grateful to Williams for allowing me to read and refer to this important discussion, which satisfies the criticisms I have made here. 3. Searle's article (op. cit.) shows the power of this view in contemporary deontic logic, arguing that strategies for eliminating conflict here rest upon a weakly described intuitive basis and some serious conceptual confusions. He shows that once these confusions are removed there is no obstacle to a perfectly consistent formalization of the conflict situation. See n. 20 below. 4. It is not clear, in fact, that there would be general agreement that Euthyphro has an obligation to prosecute his father because of the servant's death; but the situation does seem to call for a prosecution, and one of the serious gaps in Greek homicide law is that no specific provision is made for a case in which the deceased is a foreigner and therefore has no relations present to assume the duty. Euthyphro could appropriately feel that if someone ought to prosecute, the obligation fell naturally to him as the citizen most closely associated with the interests of the deceased.
5. J.-P. Sartre, 'UExistentialisms est un humanisme' (Paris 1946). The view of L'£tre et le
Neant may be more complex; but the same simple view is found again in Les Mouches. 6. The point is that even though the obligations of patriotism and the duty to care for his mother have coexisted harmoniously until this time, their contingent conflict at this time should show the agent that they were bad guides all along. On this view see further this ch. pp. 47-8. 7. Hare, Language of Morals, 5 off. 8. In his new Moral Thinking, Hare has a more complicated position. He contrasts the intuitive perception of moral conflict with a 'higher' type of critical thinking that removes the conflict; the former he associates with a thinker whom he calls ' the prole', the latter with a more exemplary figure whom he calls 'the archangel'. He admits, then, how major a revision in ordinary ways of thinking it would require to make the conflict go away. 9. I. Kant, Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Akad. p. 223. For the most part I am following the translation of J. Ladd, in The Metaphysical Elements of Justice (Indianapolis 1965). But in the last sentence I adopt the version proposed by A. Donagan, in 'Consistency in rationalist moral systems', JP 81 (1984) 291-309, on p. 294. Donagan points out that the German makes a distinction between merely winning out ('die Oberhand behalte') and holding the field ('behalt den Platz'): the point being that, in Kant's view, the losing ' ground' is not merely defeated, it ceases altogether to be on the scene, it vacates the field. o. Some philosophers, following the lead of W. D. Ross (The Right and the Good, i9ff.),
Notes to pp. 32—j modify the Kantian picture by importing a distinction between prima facie duties and absolute duties. Like Kant, Ross insists that the conflicting duties cannot both be genuine binding duties; one, at least, is merely a prima facie duty which, when the real duty is discovered, ceases to bind. But, unlike Kant, Ross insists that the losing duty may still bring with it an obligation to make reparations and perhaps even the need to feel 'not indeed shame or repentance, but certainly compunction'. Searle correctly points out that the notion of prima facie duty, in Ross and his followers, has had a bad influence on the description and assessment of cases. A technical non-ordinary notion, it has served to conflate several ordinary distinctions that ought to be kept clearly apart: (1) The distinction between merely apparent obligation and real or genuine obligation (2) The distinction between a lower-grade obligation and a higher-grade obligation (3) The distinction between what one ought to do all things considered and what one has an obligation to do. Only the first distinction really entails that the losing alternative ceases to exert any claim. But this distinction does not capture what is going on in many conflict situations. The second distinction is more promising, showing us how the second obligation might lose out and still exert its claim; but it seems to be false that in all conflict situations one of the obligations is going to be of a lower grade or type. Only the third distinction, Searle argues, allows us to describe the cases in which one obligation is clearly the one that ought to be fulfilled all things considered, and yet both are serious high-grade obligations that continue to exert a claim. Our cases of tragic conflict will support his criticism: for they show two real and extremely serious high-grade obligations conflicting in a situation in which one course is definitely the one that ought to be pursued all things considered; nonetheless, there is no temptation to suppose that this makes the other obligation unreal or non-serious. This is particularly clear in Les Mouches and in Hare's Moral Thinking (see n. 18 above). The literature on the Agamemnon is far too vast for me to aim at anything like completeness of reference. The works that I have most centrally consulted, and to which I shall refer below, are: J. D. Denniston and D. Page, eds., Aeschylus, Agamemnon (Oxford 1957); E. R. Dodds,' Morals and politics in the Oresteia\ PCPS 186 N S 6 (i960) i9ff.; K. J. Dover,' Some neglected aspects of Agamemnon's dilemma', JHS 93 (1973) 58-69; M. Edwards, 'Agamemnon's decision: freedom and folly in Aeschylus', California Studies in Classical Antiquity 10 (1977) 17 38; E. Fraenkel, ed., Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 3 vols. (Oxford 1950); Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama; N. G. L. Hammond, 'Personal freedom and its limitations in the Oresteia\ JHS 85 (1965) 42-5 5; J. Jones, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London 1962); R. Kuhns, The House, the City, and the Judge: the Growth of Moral Awareness in the Oresteia (Indianapolis 1962); A. Lebeck, The Oresteia (Cambridge, MA 1971); A. Lesky, 'Decision and responsibility'; Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt' 187-99, a n d Colin MacLeod, 'Politics and the Oresteia\ JHS 10z (1982) 4 124-44; J- J - Peradotto, The omen of the eagles and the ethos of Agamemnon', Phoenix 23 (1968) 237-63; W. Whallon, 'Why is Artemis angry', AJP 82 (1961) 78-88. On the strangeness of this interpretation, see also Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt' 189, Fraenkel, Agamemnon, Peradotto, 'The omen'. Lloyd-Jones, finding Calchas's explanation, as
43 o
Notes to pp. 33-4
usually rendered, 4incredible', argues that we should understand 'the abundant herds of the people' to mean 'the abundant herds that are the people'. Though I am happy to see this as one reading of the ambiguous language, keeping the more natural translation also in view gives us, I would argue, a richer understanding of Agamemnon's crime. 24. See the shrewd observations on this passage, and on the motif of sacrifice in this play generally, in W. Burkert,' Greek tragedy and sacrificial ritual', GRBS 7 (1966) 87-121,
at nzff. 2 5. Denniston and Page, Agamemnon (xxvii-xxviii) correctly stress the necessity of obedience to Zeus and the fact that no background guilt of Agamemnon's led to his being in the tragic situation. But they are moved for this reason to exonerate Agamemnon altogether. E. Fraenkel (Vol. n ad loc.) stresses the element of choice, but then distorts the picture by explaining away the evidence of constraint. Dodds,' Morals and politics' 27-8 stresses the clear evidence that Agamemnon's act is a crime. Lesky, 'Decision and responsibility' says that the action is determined by divine necessity and also chosen by Agamemnon; he believes that this is a primitive pattern of explanation and does not try to make it reasonable. He assumes, further, that the necessity and the blame attach to the same aspects of Agamemnon's situation. Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt' seems virtually alone in insisting, correctly, that the necessity and the blame are both there: Zeus has forced Agamemnon to choose between two crimes (191). 26. See Denniston and Page, Agamemnon 2i4ff., Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt' 188-91. 27. On Calchas's interpretation, compare Dover,' Some neglected aspects' 6iff., Peradotto, 'The omen' 247-8, Fraenkel, Agamemnon ad loc. On Artemis's role as protector of the young, see Peradotto, 'The omen' 242-5, A. Henrichs, 'Human sacrifice in Greek religion: three case studies', in Le Sacrifice dans Vantiquite, Fondation Hardt Entretiens z-f (1981) 195-235. 28. The omission of the reasons for Artemis's anger, and the differences between this and other known versions of the story, are discussed by Fraenkel, Agamemnon II, 99, Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt' 189, Peradotto, 'The omen' 242, Hammond, 'Personal freedom' 48, Whallon,' Why ?'. Fraenkel's claim that the suppression of these well-known stories of a personal offense by Agamemnon against the goddess enhances 'the element of voluntary choice' is unconvincing. Instead, it acquits Agamemnon of guilt with respect to the genesis of his predicament, forcing us to see that the necessity to choose to commit a crime is one that comes upon him from without. As for the real reasons for the anger, Lloyd-Jones alleges her general pro-Trojan sympathies; others the future offenses against the innocents at Troy. Page's suggestion that it is simply the killing of the hare that enrages her is unconvincing in its conflation of omen and the thing symbolized (see Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt' 189). See also Lloyd-Jones's recent 'Artemis and Iphigeneia', JHS 103 (1983) 87-102, a penetrating study of Artemis's double nature as both protector and destroyer of young things. 29. See Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt' 191-2. Several critics of Lloyd-Jones's article have not understood this point. Hammond, for example, says that Lloyd-J ones has made Agamemnon a mere ' puppet' with ' no freedom of choice or action' (op. cit. 44). This is plainly not the case. 30. On the strongly pejorative connotations of this word, see Fraenkel, who compares lipotaxis, a current term for deserter. 31. Here I am in agreement with Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt' 191, Whallon, ' W h y ? ' 51,
Notes to pp.
13-2J
431
Hammond,4 Personal freedom' 47; FraenkePs concluding remark at Agamemnon in, 276 seems to express a similar view; Lesky, 'Decision and responsibility', persistently conflates the question, 'Was there a better choice available?' with the question 'Was there a guilt-free choice available ?' - in much the same way that Agamemnon himself later does. Dover, 'Some neglected aspects' similarly, suggests that the difficulty is one of uncertainty and of the limits of knowledge. See also the admirable discussion of related issues in P. M. Smith, On the Hymn to Zeus in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, American Classical Studies 5 (Ann Arbor 1980). 32. Compare Hammond, op. cit. 47, 55. This is the interaction of choice and necessity that is articulated in the structure of the Aristotelian practical syllogism - cf. Ch. 10, and
Nussbaum, De Motu Essay 4. 33. On the two questions, see Denniston and Page ad loc., Hammond, op. cit. Hammond gives a good account of the speech, arguing that it shows a deep insight into the problems of war and command. 34. On this parallel, see Henrichs, 'Human sacrifice' 206. 35. This change is also noted by Hammond, 'Personal freedom' 47. 36. I translate the text of the MSS, convincingly defended by Fraenkel, whose sense of Aeschylean language is, here as elsewhere, unsurpassed. He finds the most convincing defense of the phrase to lie in its excellence as an example of Aeschylean poetic expression. I agree. Objections to the phrase are weakly based. Some critics call it a 'tautology'; but Fraenkel rightly says that the repetition (literally: 'in passion most passionately') gives emphasis to the unnatural character of Agamemnon's desire. He produces numerous examples of intensification produced by the juxtaposition of two related words, both in Aeschylus and in other related authors. Although none is precisely parallel to this one in having two adverbial elements (one being the noun used adverbially), that is not the point {pace Denniston and Page): nobody has ever alleged that the phrase is actually ungrammatical. The parallels suffice to show that intensification by redoubling is a feature of archaic poetic practice in general, and a characteristic Aeschylean device in particular. Attempted emendations are well criticized by Fraenkel. Some scholars substitute audai ('he says'), a marginal variant in one MS and in Triclinius, for orgai, and then introduce Calchas as the subject, making the whole utterance a report of what the prophet says. This is highly implausible; Calchas is nowhere mentioned in the context, nor did he say any such thing. The emendation orgai periorgoi sph' epithumein themis (preferred by Denniston and Page) allows the soldiers and not Agamemnon to do the desiring:' it is right that they should desire...' This solution accords well with their interpretation, according to which Agamemnon is simply a guiltless victim of necessity. But there is ample evidence in the context that Agamemnon takes the situational constraint to license eager and even callous performance of the sacrifice; whereas there is no other reference to a complaint from the soldiers. Sph' might also be construed as singular and taken to refer to Artemis. This attempt is brusquely (and appropriately) dismissed by Fraenkel, who notes that it came into the picture only as a result of Casaubon's ill-fated attempt to emend themis to Artemis. We may add that it would be most odd for a mortal in such a situation to say, it is themis for a god to desire thus and so. Once one knows that a god has commanded, one certainly may ask whether the command is just; it is not clear that one can ask whether it is according to themis; if this is true of the command, it is even more true of the desires accompanying or motivating the command. But the
432
Notes to pp.1j1-8
single biggest defense of the traditional reading is that it is there, excellent and appropriately difficult (though in no way ungrammatical or unmetrical), afineexample of Aeschylean poetry and thought. 37. On the force of transitive edu, see Peradotto, 'The omen' 253, who correctly argues that it must mean' put on ', and cannot support a weaker meaning like' fell into'. Dover, ' Some neglected aspects' attempts to argue that dunai can be used of both deliberate and involuntary movement; the alleged parallel of Ag. 1011 is not helpful, since dunai there is intransitive. 38. Lesky, 'Decision and responsibility' (82) finds this simply unintelligible: for blame surely cannot concern 'the irrational sphere only, which has nothing to do with the will that springs from rational considerations \ This is as clear an example as any of the bad influence of Kant on the understanding of Greek tragedy. Contrast Dover, op. cit. 66: 'They react in this way because the cutting of a girl's throat as if she were a sheep constitutes a pitiable and repulsive event; whether it is necessary or unnecessary, commanded by a god or the product of human malice and perversity.' 39. Burkert, 'Greek tragedy' (cf. also his hom*o Necans (Berlin 1972)). 40. This name is taken over by Burkert from Karl Meuli, 'Griechische Opferbrauche', in Phyllobolia, Festschrift P. von der Miihll (Basel i960). Meuli stresses, as does Burkert, the way in which the sacrificer's ritual act expresses (in Burkert's words)' a deep-rooted human respect for life as such, which prevents man from utterly destroying other beings in an autocratic way' (106). 41. Burkert,' Greek tragedy' 1 1 1 . 42. On these substitutions (and other related cases), see Burkert, 'Greek tragedy' 1 1 2 - 1 3 and n. 5 8; also Freud, Totem and Taboo (1912-13), trans. J. Strachey (New York 1950), on the psychological impulses underlying sacrifice. 43. On these aspects of the Seven, and especially its ending, see: S. G. Bernardete, ' T w o notes on Aeschylus' Septem\ Wiener Studien 1 (1967) 29ff., 2 (1968) 5 - 1 7 ; R. D. Dawe, 'The end of the Seven Against Thebes \ CQ N S 17 (1967) 16-28; H. Erbse, 'Zur Exodos der Sieben\ Serta Turyniana (Urbana 1974) 169-98; E. Fraenkel, 'Schluss des Sieben gegen Theben \ MusHelv 21 (1964) 58—64; H. Lloyd-Jones, 'The end of the Seven Against Thebes', CQ N S 9 (1959) 8 0 - 1 1 5 ; A. A. Long, 'Pro and contra fratricide: Aeschylus' Septem 653-719', in volume in honor of T. B. L. Webster, ed. J. H. Betts (Bristol, forthcoming); C. Orwin, 'Feminine justice: the end of the Seven Against Thebes\ CP 75 (1980) 187-96; A. J. Podlecki, 'The character of Eteocles in Aeschylus' Septem\ TAP A 95 (1964); F. Solmsen, 'The Erinys in Aischylos' Septem\ TAP A 68 (1937) 1 9 7 - 2 1 1 ; R. P. Winnington-Ingram, 'Septem Contra Thebas\ YCS 25 (1977) 1 - 4 5 ; F. Zeitlin, Under the Sign of the Shield: Semiotics and Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes (Rome 1982). 44. See also Orwin, op. cit. 188; Benardete, op. cit. Long's article provides a subtle and thorough analysis of Eteocles' arguments and reactions in the speech as a whole. 45. In fact this is not clearly established within the play, since we have no independent evidence that Eteocles is the only champion who could have saved the city. 46. Lesky,' Decision and responsibility' 83, notices this point and also stresses the parallel with Agamemnon's response; see also Solmsen,'' The Erinys'. Long, 'Pro and contra', stresses Eteocles' reply: the desire itself is blamed on the workings of his father's 'dark curse', which 'sits on my dry unclosed eyes' (695-6). The Chorus, however, do not accept this as exonerating Eteocles himself from responsibility for the desire. For they immediately reply, 'But still, don't you stir yourself up' (697). Long portrays Eteocles
Notes to pp.
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as admirably lucid concerning all the unfortunate aspects of his tragic predicament; I would point to this use of divine causality as putative excuse as a sign that he is not altogether lucid. 47. This remains unclear, since it is never altogether clear whose claim to rule is to be regarded as just. The presence of Dike on Polynices' shield does not seem to be the decisive 'theophany* claimed by Orwin, 'Feminine justice' (191-3), following Benardete,' Two notes' (16). Long, op. cit. correctly emphasizes the arguments in which Eteocles rebuts that claim (lines 667-71). 48. Cf. Orwin, op. cit. i9off.; and for a somewhat different account of Eteocles' misogyny,
see Zeitlin, Under the Sign. 49. An excellent analysis of this mythology and its civic function is provided in N. Loraux,
Les Enfants d9 Athena: idees atheniennes sur la citoyennete et la division des sexes (Paris 1981).
For Creon's attitude towards the female, see Ch. 3; and on Plato's use of the mythology of autochthony and the denial of the family, see Ch. 5. 50. For the debate, see the articles mentioned above n. 43. The philological issues are not decisive, and the decision rests with our appraisal of the content: does it have the requisite thematic unity with what has preceded? Orwin, 'Feminine justice' argues persuasively that it does, if we have all along been sufficiently attentive to questions about the character of Eteocles and his view of justice. 51. This point has been appropriately stressed by a number of recent writers on Aeschylus, especially by Lloyd-Jones, 'Guilt', JZ. See also n. 3. 52. Eum. 517-25. 53. I have taken no stand on the larger question of Agamemnon's character. Peradotto, 'The omen', for example, argues that his response is intelligible only as the outgrowth of an antecedently bad and murderous ethos. I believe that the initial accuracy of his response tells against this; his shift may be inspired by horror at the situation confronting him, which he can endure in no other way than to deny that it exists. 54. With Fraenkel, I have changed thrasos, which does not scan, to tharsos. But Fraenkel has shown convincingly that the distinction between the two is secondary and probably did not exist in the time of Aeschylus. There seems to be no obstacle to understanding tharsos in a derogatory sense (n, 364). 5 5. On hekousion and akousion, see further in Ch. 9; and for related uses, see ?Aes. Prom. 19, 266, 671, 771, 854; cf. also Soph. Oed. Col. 827, 935, 965, 985-7. 5 6. For this objection, see Fraenkel, Denniston, and Page ad loc. Another line of objection to the text involves assuming that komi^p must mean' restore' and that the entire phrase should be translated ' restoring confidence to dying men'. G. Hermann, Euripidis Opera (Leipzig, 1 st ed. 1800; 2nd ed. 1831) has objected that komi^o cannot, like phero, be used to mean restoring something with the result that the thing restored is put into the person; rather it must mean that the thing is set by the person. To this we might fairly object that the passions in Aeschylus are often described as taking up their stance beside the person (e.g., Ag. 13, 14, 976, 982-3). If we reject this objection and keep tharsos. ..komi^on, but still object to hekousion, we might then accept Ahrens's ek tbusion, 'from sacrifices'. But this expedient seems unnecessary. 57. E. G. Weil: 'feminae audaciam voluntariam, h.e. feminam perfidam, virorum morte recuperare conans'. Or Verrall, 'that thou for a willing wanton wouldst spend the lives of men'. (Cf. Peradotto, 'The omen' 255, Hammond, 'Personal freedom' 46.) 58. It offers an odd reading of andrasi thneiskousi\ the context, which all has to do with Aulis, makes it natural to think of men who were dying there, rather than of the war's future
434
Notes to pp.1j1-8 cost in human lives. Furthermore, the dative of disadvantage is harsh. Third, the present participles nomon and komivpn should be read as parallel; but it is at Aulis that Agamemnon is not wielding the helm of sense; and it is only in the future that he will restore Helen at such a cost. Finally the periphrasis seems difficult to understand - for it is far more difficult to see how a person could be 4 voluntary' than to see how the passions of that person could be. As for komi^p in the sense 'protect', 'nourish', 'cherish', this is a very common meaning in Homer, and appears elsewhere in Aes., e.g., Cbo. 2 6 2 , possibly 3 4 4 . (Cf. Stephanus, Thesaurus, 1 7 7 8 D - 1 7 7 9 A . )
59. See Nussbaum, 'Consequences'. 60. Cf. Chs. 9, 1 0 . 61. On the cultivation of appropriate feeling, see further remarks in Interlude 1 and Chs. 7, 9, and 10, with references. On this and other issues discussed in this section, see I. Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London 1 9 7 0 ) . 6 2 . See H. Putnam, 'Literature, science, and reflection', in Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London 1 9 7 9 ) 8 3 - 9 6 . 63. I am thoroughly in agreement, on this point, with Foot (above n. 6), who argues that the existence and indefeasibility of these dilemmas does not in any way tend to undermine moral realism. We shall see in Chs. 8 - 1 2 how a certain form of realism can in fact be built around the recognition of an irreducible plurality of values, and therefore around the permanent possibility of conflict. 64. Kant would in fact have a way of defusing this particular conflict: for alleged divine
orders to commit immoral acts are not binding (Religion Within the Limits of Reason
Alone i v . 4 ) . This, however, in no way affects the general point; for he cannot extricate himself from all conflicts this way; and yet he has an antecedent commitment to acknowledge at most one claim as binding. We might even argue that by refusing to God the recognition of human conflict situations he adopts a conception of divinity that is less rich than the Greek conception in just the way that his moral conception is less rich than theirs. One further remark on the religious dimensions of these conflicts. Donagan observes (p. 298) that St Gregory the Great recognized the existence of genuine moral dilemmas, but ascribed them to the work of the devil, who could trap human beings into situations in which they were forced to violate some divine commandment. The difference between this view and the Greek view is that the causal role played by the devil in the one is played in the other by the world; and furthermore, as we shall see in Ch. 3, the Greeks connect the ongoing possibility of such conflicts with good and even divine things, such as richness of life and recognition of the diversity of value that is there to be seen. 65. Something like this seems to be the view towards moral dilemma expressed by Wittgenstein in a 1947 conversation with Rush Rhees, reported in 'Wittgenstein's lecture on ethics', PR 7 4 ( 1 9 6 5 ) 3 - 2 6 . After insisting that in order to talk about the problem it is necessary to have a case described in detail, so that we can really imagine and feel what it comes to (here he makes some disparaging remarks about textbooks in ethics), Wittgenstein goes to work on a sample case of dilemma that is very similar in structure to ours. After describing the tragic choice faced by the agent, in which there is no guilt-free way out and we feel we can only say,' God help him', Wittgenstein surprises Rhees by remarking, ' I want to say that this is the solution to an ethical problem.' He indicates then, our point: that the perspicuous description of the case, the unswerving recognition of the values it contains and of the way in which, for the
Notes to pp.
107-10
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agent, there is no way out, is all there is by way of solution here; so-called philosophical solutions only succeed in being misdescriptions of the problem. 66. I have read drafts of this chapter at Brandeis University, Vassar College, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the University of Maryland, the University of Pittsburgh, and Stanford University. I am grateful to those present, and also to A. Lowell Edmunds, A. A. Long, and Nick Pappas, for their helpful comments. 3
Sophocles' Antigone: conflict, vision, and simplification 1. I have chosen to discuss the emergence of this view by discussing one example in depth. But it is generally admitted that the strategies I ascribe to Creon link him with certain aspects of sophistic rationalism - see n. io below. I discuss a closely related view in 4 Consequences' 15-5 3; on connections between this play and the sophists, see P. Rose, 'Sophocles' Philoctetes and the teachings of the Sophists', HSCP 80 (1976) 49-105. Relevant background material can also be found in M. O'Brien, The Socratic Paradoxes and the Greek Mind (Chapel Hill 1967), and in Guthrie, History in. Ch. 4 contains a full discussion of some aspects of these issues, as they provide a background for Plato's idea of techne - and many more references. 2. Naturally thinkers who take an 'anti-tragic' view of the individual case (cf. Ch. 2) will hold the related view about the larger picture. But some defenders of the tragic view for individual cases have endorsed the elimination of conflict as an end, or even a criterion, of political rationality. Consider, for example, R. B. Marcus,4 Moral dilemmas and consistency\ JP 77 (1980) 121-35, and M. Gibson, 'Rationality', PPA 6 (1977) 193-225. Although these views are probably not indebted to Hegel, they are distinctly Hegelian in spirit. The opposing view is most vividly defended, in recent philosophical writing, by Sir Isaiah Berlin (see Concepts and Categories (New York 1978) passim), and Bernard Williams (see references in Ch. 2). 3. For its effect on Aeschylus criticism, see Ch. 2; for its influence on discussion of the
Antigone, see below n. 7 and 8. 4. Compare Aristotle's claim that tragedy presents a bios, a whole course or pattern of life and choice - see Interlude 2 for references and discussion. 5. The literature on the Antigone is vast; I have not attempted anything like full coverage. The main works which I have consulted are: S. Benardete, 'A reading of Sophocles' Antigone', Interpretation 4 (1975) 148-96, 5 (1975) 1—5 5, 148-84; R. F. Goheen, The Imagery of Sophocles' Antigone (Princeton 1951); R. Bultmann, ' Polis und Hades in der Antigone des Sophokles', in H. Diller, ed., Sophokies (Darmstadt 1967) 3 1 1 - 2 4 ; R. C. Jebb, Sophocles: the Antigone (Cambridge 1900); J. C. Kamerbeek, Sophocles' Antigone (Leiden 1945); Bernard Knox, The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley 1964);!. M. Linforth, 'Antigone and CreonUniversity ofCalifornia Publications in Classical Philology 15 (1961) 183-260; Lloyd- Jones, JZ; G. Miiller, Sophokles, Antigone (Heidelberg 1967); G. Perrotta, S of ode (Messina-Florence 1935); G. Ronnet, Sophocle: poete tragique (Paris 1969); M. Santirocco, 'Justice in Sophocles' AntigonePhil Lit 4 (1980) 180-98; W. Schmid, 'Probleme aus der sophokleischen Antigone', Philologus 62 (1903) 1 - 3 4 ; C. Segal, 'Sophocles' praise of man and the conflicts of the Antigone\ Arion 3 (1964) 46-66, repr. in T. Woodard, ed., Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N J 1966) 62-85; C.Segal, Tragedy and Civilisation: an Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, MA 1981); J. P. Vemant,' Le moment historique
436
Notes to pp.1j 1-8 de la tragedie', 'Tensions et ambiguites dans la tragedie grecque', in Vernant and Vidal-Naquet, MT 1 3 - 1 7 , 21-40; J. P. Vernant, 'Greek Tragedy: Problems and Interpretation', in E. Donato and R. Macksey, eds., The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man (Baltimore 1970) 273-89; C. Whitman, Sophocles: a Study of Heroic Humanism (Cambridge, M A 19 51); R. P. Winnington-lngram, Sophocles: an Interpretation (Cambridge 1980). Except where otherwise indicated, I am using the Oxford Classical Text of A. C. Pearson (Oxford 1924).
6. Eleven words connected with practical deliberation, occurring a total of 180 times in the seven plays of Sophocles, occur a total of 50 times in the Antigone. (The words in question are: boule, bouleuma, bouleuo, euboulos, euboulia, dusboulia, phronema, phroneit phreny dusphron, dusnous; my count is based upon Ellendt's Lexicon Sophocleum, and does not include the fragments.) The word phronema occurs six times in the Antigone and in no other play; dusboulia and euboulia occur twice each in the Antigone and nowhere else; phren has 17 of its 58 occurrences in the Antigone. 7. We must avoid from the beginning a confusion between the assessment of the decision and the assessment of the deliberations that led to the decision. It is perfectly possible for a person to have reached the better overall decision through a deliberative process that neglects certain valid claims; the decision will still, then, be correct - but not for the right reasons, and almost, as it were, by accident. The view of conflict criticized in Ch. 2 has influenced a number of critics to hold that if Antigone's decision is better she cannot be criticized for her neglect of the conflicting claims of the city: all we have to ask is, who is right. Thus Jebb, Bultmann, 'Polis', and Perrotta, S of ode; Perrotta holds that if Antigone's decision is correct overall, the Chorus's blame of her must be 'senza logica e senza coerenza' (85). The relevant distinction is well grasped by Knox, Heroic Temper (114-16), Segal, Tragedy (170), Benardete, 'A reading' {passim, esp. 1 . 1 , 2.4, 4.1), Vernant, 'Tensions et ambiguites' (see n. 8 below), Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon ' ( 1 9 1 , 2 5 7-8), Santirocco, 'Justice' (passim), Winnington-lngram, Sophocles (128). 8. This idea is endorsed by a number of critics who view the conflicting claims as both valid and ineliminable, within the play's terms. Thus, for example, Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' 257: 'For all Athenians, the play offers a powerful warning to see to it that the laws they enact are not in conflict with the laws of the gods.' Cf. also Santirocco, 'Justice' 182, 194. Segal's concluding remarks may suggest a similar view: ' Through its choral song, the polis arrives at self-awareness of the tensions between which it exists. Embodying these tensions in art, it can confront them and work towards their mediation, even though mediation is not permitted to the tragic heroes within the spectacle itself. The play in its social and ritual contexts achieves for society what it refuses to the actors within its fiction. Its context affirms what its content denies' (Tragedy 205). It is, however, not altogether clear to me to what extent Segal and I really disagree here; this would depend on what, more precisely, is involved in 'mediation', and how this is related to the picture of practical wisdom that I shall develop below. Vernant's position is, once again (see Ch 2 n. 3-4) complex. Although he gives a most vivid characterization of the irreconcilable nature of the tension that tragedy depicts (cf. esp. 'Tensions et ambiguites' 30-1, 35), he tends to suggest three further things that do not appear to follow from this observation: first, that the tragic conception of justice is therefore ambiguous; second, that it is continually moving around, transforming itself into its contrary (cf. ' L e moment historique' 15); third, that these
Notes to pp.
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conflicts would disappear with the development of a clear conception of the will and of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary action ('Greek tragedy' 288). The first and second are criticisms that Plato will certainly make against the tragic view; however, it seems important for us not to think of the contingent conflict of two valid requirements as a confusion or ambiguity in the conception of justice, a problem to be solved by intellectual clarification (cf. Ch. 2). To the third (where his position is strikingly similar to that of Lesky - cf. Ch. 2, n. 5) one can only point out that these situations seem to arise every day, and the concept of the will - unless we combine it with a particular set of controversial views about consistency - does nothing to make them go away. 9. For Creon, see n. 12 below; for Antigone, lines 2, 18, 448. 10. For general discussion of this speech and its cultural background, its connections with sophistic rationalism, see esp. Schmid,' Probleme', Knox, Heroic Temper 84, WinningtonIngram, Sophocles 123, Goheen, Imagery 152 and n. 28. 11. For an excellent discussion of the play's imagery of health and disease, see Goheen, op. cit. 41-4. 12. At 176-7, Creon tells u s : ' It is impossible to get a thorough understanding (ekmathein) of the soul, the reasoning, and the judgment of any man, until he shows himself in experience of government or law' (176-7). Accordingly he claims knowledge of other people only in connection with their relation to civic safety (cf. 293-4). He claims to know only three general truths, all closely connected with the primacy of the civic good: the ease with which a rigid opponent can be subdued (477-8), the unpleasantness of living with a woman who is not city-centered in spirit (649-51), and the fundamental role of the city itself in preserving human lives and goods (i88ff.). 13. Cf. Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' 191. 14. These issues receive full and illuminating discussion especially in Perrotta, Sof ode 60-1, Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' i9iff., 25 5ff.; see also Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles 120, Segal, Tragedy §11. The ancient evidence is gathered in D. A. Hester, 'Sophocles the unphilosophical: a study in the Antigone', Mnemosyne 4th ser. 24 (1971) 54-5, Appendix c. The tremendous importance of the obligation to bury is conceded by all interpreters; see also H. Bolkestein, Wohltdtigkeitund Armenpflege (Utrecht 1939) 69-71, who reconstructs the arat bou^ugioi, the famous list of traditional duties held to have been given by the founder of civilization, the one who first put oxen before the plow. This list includes, Bolkestein argues, the injunction, ' D o not allow a corpse to remain unburied', ataphon soma miperioran. In Aeschines 1.14 (cf. Benardete, ' A reading' 4.3, n. 11), it is clear that even a son who was sold into prostitution by his father still has a legal and moral obligation to bury him. On the other hand, it is important to realize the extent to which a traitor was an exception to the general rule. Critics of Creon frequently allude to customs concerning the return of the corpse of an enemy, not recognizing the great difference between a mere enemy and a traitor under Athenian law (so, oddly, Jebb, xx ff.). WinningtonIngram, referring to O.Taplin, CR 26 (1976) 119 and W.R.Connor, The New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens (Princeton 1971) 51, argues that Creon's action would be perfectly acceptable, did it not show a neglect of Polynices' status as his own kin. Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' and Perrotta, Sofocle carefully distinguish between enemy and traitor, referring to Thuc. 1.138 (where Themistocles is not allowed burial in Attica), Xen. Hell. 1.7.22, Eur. Phoen. 1629. Perrotta points out that Athenian traitors, though forbidden burial in Attic territory, were frequently buried by their
458
Notes to pp.1j 1-8 kin in Megara. Even the harshest treatment mentioned, the casting of the corpse into a pit or barathron, still does not permit the corpse to be devoured by dogs. We can conclude that Creon is within custom and justified (ignoring for the moment his family tie) insofar as he shows dishonor to the corpse and forbids it burial in or near the city; he is outside of custom in his attempt to obstruct all efforts at burial (though the issues are blurred here, since the attempt he obstructs involved burial near the city and would thus be illegal under Athenian law). He is, of course, outside custom in his complete neglect, as kinsman, of his own family duties.
15. Cf. also 299, 313, 731. 16. On Creon's view of justice, see Segal, Tragedy 1 6 9 - 7 0 , Santirocco, 'Justice' 1 8 5 - 6 , Bultmann, 'Polis' 312. 17. In one startling passage, 'justly' is even used of the submissive obedience of citizens to civic power: ' They were not keeping their necks justly under the yoke and obeying my authority' ( 2 9 1 - 2 ) .
18. By this I mean to include both eros or (primarily sexual) passion and philia, which includes family ties (with or without felt affection) and the love of friends (cf. Ch. 12). It is worth noticing that in the terms of the play (as in the historical context) philia imposes valid obligations even in the absence of felt affection. 19. On the oddness of Creon's view ofphilia, see Schmid,' Probleme', Knox, Heroic Temper 80, 8 7 , Segal, Tragedy 1 8 8 , Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles 123, 129,98ff., 1 4 8 , Benardete, ' A reading' 1 2 . 6 . The 'brother' decree is stressed by Segal, Tragedy 1 8 8 and Knox,
Heroic Temper 87; the making of philoi by Winnington-Ingram, op. cit. 123, Knox, op. cit. 87, Benardete, op. cit. 12.6. 20. On Creon's denial of eros, see Schmid, 'Probleme' ioff., Vernant, 'Tensions' 34-5, Segal, Tragedy 1 6 6 , 1 9 8 , Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles y j f f . 2 1 . Compare the
Euthyphro, on which cf. Ch.
2, pp. 2 5 ,
30. On Creon's religious
conception, see Schmid, op. cit. Segal, op. cit. 174-5, 164, Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' 80, 101, Knox, Heroic Temper 216, Benardete, ' A reading' 19.3, and especially Vernant, 'Tensions' 34: 'Des deux attitudes religieuses que 1yAntigone met en conflit, aucune ne saurait en elle-meme etre la bonne sans faire a l'autre sa place, sans reconnaitre cela meme qui la borne et la conteste.' It should be noted once again (cf. Ch. 2, p. 34 and n. 29) that none of this requires us to neglect the importance of the curse upon the house, stressed by Lloyd-Jones, JZ, Perrotta, Sofocle, and also Segal, Tragedy ( 1 9 0 ) . For, as Lloyd-Jones correctly argues 'Guilt' (cf. Ch. 2 n. 29), the curse works itself out through humanly assessible actions. Segal makes the interesting observation (166) that one of Creon's failings is his neglect of the past: ' life centers upon a static gnomically comprehensible present or a future rationally calculable in terms of gain (kerdos)'. 22. On eyes and seeing, cf. this Ch. pp. 7 0 - 7 2 , and 7 6 - 7 , 7 9 ; cf. also Chs. 7, 13.
23. Cf. Segal, Tragedy 1 7 9 and n. 85 p. 4 4 7 . 24. Cf. Segal, Tragedy 1 4 5 , 1 6 6 , Goheen, Imagery 14-19. For Creon's use of money imagery, see lines 175—7> 220-2, 2 9 5 - 3 0 3 , 3 1 0 - 1 2 , 3 2 2 , 325-6, 1 0 3 3 - 9 , 1045—7, 105 5, 1 0 6 1 , 1 0 6 3 . Cf. Goheen, op. cit. 14-19. 2 5 . For use of the image prior to the date of this play ( 4 4 1 B . C . ) , see Alcaeus 6, Theognis 6 7 0 - 8 5 , Aes. Septem iff., 62, 1 0 9 , 1 9 2 , 7 8 0 , 1 0 6 8 ; Eum. 16. For subsequent uses, see for example Aristoph. Peace 699, Plato, Rep. 389D, 4 8 8 A - 8 9 A , Euthyd. 2 9 I D , Sts. 302Aff., 299B, L a w s 6 4 1 A , 7 5 8 A - B , 8 3 I D , 945c. There are many others. See discussion in Jebb and Kamerbeek ad loc., Goheen, op. cit. 4 4 - 5 1 , P. Shorey,' Note on Plato Republic 4 8 8 D ' ,
Notes to pp.
26. 27.
28.
29.
13-2J
439
CR 20 (1906) 247-8, and Tucker's commentary on Aes. Septem. The scholiast to Aristoph. Wasps 29 remarks that the image is a poetic commonplace. For the general argument, compare Thuc. 11.60 (cf. orthoumenon), Democritus fr. 252. De Falsa Legatione 246—50. It is worth noting that Aeschines was apparently the tritagonistes; this implies that the view that Creon is the 'hero' of the tragedy was not supported by ancient performance practice. So too Thuc. 11.60, where the ends of the 'city as a whole' (polin xumpasan) are contrasted implicitly with the individual ends of private citizens (kattf bekaston ton politon). Demosthenes' account of how Aeschines opposed to kath' heauton to the good of the whole brings out the possibilities of conflict that were always latent in the image. Cf. Ar. De An. 413a9, where to ask whether the soul is the actuality of the body the way the sailor is of a ship is, apparently, to ask a question about separability; compare also 4©6a6, where the sailor in the ship is used as an example of something that is transported as in a conveyance.
30. The idea of so^ein, of life-saving, and the idea of shutting out external dangers, are present in the image from the beginning. See the good discussion in Jebb ad loc., and the passage cited in n. 25. 31. On male and female in the play, see esp. Segal, Tragedy §x. 32. Creon is probably assimilating Polynices to an animal at 201-2; at 775-6, he speaks of leaving fodder for Antigone. On his assimilations of the human to the animal, see Segal, Tragedy § n, and Goheen, Imagery z6fi.y who points out that Creon is almost alone in the play in using animal imagery for human things. 33. Cf. also Creon's implicit comparison of Haemon to a domestic animal: Paidos me sainei pbthoggos, 'My son's voice fawningly-barks me greeting' (1214). See Goheen's perceptive comments on this line, 34-5. (Note that this line, although quoted late in the play, is a report from a time prior to the changes in Creon that we shall describe below.) 34. At 1175 the Messenger says, 'Haemon is dead; he is bloodied (haimassetai) with his own hand.' Cf. also 794; and Knox, Heroic Temper 88 and n. 54, Santirocco, 'Justice' 184. 3 5. For phrenes in Sophocles as connected primarily with judgment and practical reason, see Ellendt, Lexicon Sophocleum, s.v. For only a few examples, see At. 445, PhiL 1113, 1281, Oed. T. 528; this play 298, 492, 603, 792, esp. 1015. 36. On the reversal of the imagery of animal-taming in this passage, see Goheen, Imagery 3 1 - 2 , Segal, Tragedy 159. On Eurydice, see Santirocco, 'Justice' 194. 37. Cf. n. 7 above. 38. Cf. Benardete,' A reading '1.1, Knox, Heroic Temper 79. The emphatic word autadelphon, 'own-sibling', is used twice again in the play, both times of Polynices: once by Antigone (502-4), once by Haemon, reporting her argument (694-9). 39. Cf. Benardete, ' A reading' 2.4. 40. See lines 10, 11, 73, 99, 847, 882, 893, 898-9. Cf. Benardete, op. cit. 8.6, 9.5, Segal, Tragedy 189, Winning ton-Ing ram, Sophocles i29ff., Knox, Heroic Temper 79-80. 41. A number of scholars have claimed that Antigone is motivated by deep personal love for Polynices: for example, Santirocco, 'Justice' 188, Knox, Heroic Temper i07ff., Winnington-Ingram, op. cit. 130. Contrast the effective negative arguments of Perrotta, Sofocle 1 1 2 - 1 4 , Lloyd-Jones, JZ 116, Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' 250. Perrotta correctly observes that she loves Polynices not qua Polynices, but qua falling under a family duty. She is exclusively animated by her passion for the duties of family religion,
440
42.
43.
44.
45. 46.
47. 48.
Notes to pp.1j1-8 and she has no tenderness for individuals: 'Questa terribile eroina non e la donna d'amore che molti hanno voluto vedere in lei/ With her abstract and cold remarks of mourning we might contrast, for example, the agonized mourning of Hecuba (in Euripides' Trojan Women, cf. Ch. 10, pp. 313 ff.) over the corpse of her grandchild, where each part of the loved body conjures up a new memory of shared affection. There are many similar cases. Cf. Perrotta, op. cit. 112. We must ascribe ' O dearest Haemon, how your father dishonors you', to Ismene as in all the manuscripts. Pearson and other editors have assigned it to Antigone, out of their desire to have Antigone say something affectionate about Haemon. Butphiltate, 'dearest', is not unusually strong inside a close family relationship, and it is perfectly appropriate to the affectionate Ismene; it need not, in fact, even designate close affection. Creon's reply that the speaker's continued harping on marriage 'irritates' him is appropriate to his relationship with Ismene (who is, in any case, the one who has been 'harping' on marriage), but is far too mild to express his deep hatred for and anger against Antigone. See the arguments of Linforth, op. cit. 209, Benardete ad loc. On Antigone's refusal of erosy see Vernant, 'Tensions' 34-5, Benardete, ' A reading' 8.6; compare Segal, Tragedy § V I I I . Vernant correctly writes, 'Mais les deux divinites [sc. Eros and Dionysos] se retournent aussi contre Antigone, enfermee dans sa philia familiale, vouee volontairement a Hades, car jusque dans leur lien avec la mort, Dionysos et Eros expriment les puissances de vie et de renouveau. Antigone n'a pas su entendre l'appel a se detacher des " siens" et de la philia familiale pour s'ouvrir a l'autre, accueillir Eros, et dans l'union avec un etranger, transmettre a son tour la vie.' This speech is notoriously controversial. It would surely have been branded spurious had it not been quoted as genuine by Aristotle in the Rhetoric; this dates it so early that, if spurious, it could only be an actor's interpolation. And it is difficult to imagine an actor giving himself such an oddly legalistic and unemotional speech at a climactic moment in the dramatic action. It is, then, (despite the wishes expressed by Goethe) almost certainly genuine; and it is very difficult to explain as a confused and incoherent outpouring of passionate love - though this approach has indeed been tried (e.g. by Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles 14 5 ff., Knox, Heroic Temper i44ff.). The best explanation for this coldly determined priority-ordering of duties is that Antigone is not animated by personal love at all, but by a stern determination to have a fixed set of ordered requirements that will dictate her actions without engendering conflict; her refusal of the erotic (cf. n. 43 above) is then sufficient to explain her choice of the brother. For review of the controversy about authenticity and about the relation of the passage to Herodotus in. 119, see Hester,' Sophocles the unphilosophical' 5 5-80, Jebb, Appendix, 258-63, Miiller, Sophokles, Antigone i98ff., io6ff., Knox, op. cit. 103-6, WinningtonIngram, op. cit. i4jff. See also D. Page, Actors' Interpolations in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1934). See Benardete, 'A reading' 9.3. See Knox, Heroic Temper 94ff., Segal, Tragedy §vin. Winnington-Ingram calls the way in which she denies the hatred of brothers for one another after death a 'heroic fiat', 'a supreme effort to impose heroic will upon a recalcitrant world' (Sophocles 132). On Antigone's conception of dike and its novelty, see R. Hirzel, Themis, Dike, und Verwandtes (Leipzig 1907) i47ff.; also Santirocco, 'Justice' 186, Segal, op. cit. 170. Segal, op. cit. provides an excellent discussion of this aspect of Antigone in several places - esp. i56ff., § V I I I , §iv, 196.
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49. 50. 51. 5 2.
See esp. 810-16, 867, 876-80, 891, 916-18. Cf. 842-9, 876-7, 881-2. Cf. above pp. 54-5 and n. 14. The importance of this link with the yielding world of nature is seen by Segal, Tragedy i54ff., who compares 423-5, 433. 53. Cf. A. C. Bradley, 'Hegel's Theory of Tragedy', Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London 1950) 69-95, reprinted in Hegel on Tragedy, ed. A. and H. Paolucci (New York 1975)
567ft 54. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, tr. P. B. Osmaston (London 1920) Vol. iv, reprinted in Hegel on Tragedy (above n. 53) pp. 68, 71. 55. Cf. above n. 8. 5 6. For a related development of this same idea, see Nussbaum, ' Crystals'. 57. What I shall say about the lyrics is closely related to observations in Goheen, Linforth, and Segal. A related study from which I have learned is A. Lebeck, The Oresteia (Cambridge, MA 1971). 5 8. This illuminating comparison wasfirstmade by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), trans. W. Kaufmann (New York 1976). (It should be remembered that ancient dreams are taken to be prospective as well as retrospective.) 59. The terms 'density' and 'resonance' are discussed and further developed in the excellent analysis of the style of Heracl*tus that forms part of C. Kahn's The Art and Thought of Heracl*tus (Cambridge 1979), esp. pp. 87-95. 60. Fr. D K 1367a. See the interpretation of this fragment and the defense of its authenticity in my 'Psuche in Heracl*tus, 1', Phronesis 17 (1972) 1 - 1 7 . 61. Cf. Ch. 12 and Interlude 2. 62. On the Parodos see especially Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' 188, Benardete, 'A reading' 11.4, Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles ii2ff., Segal, Tragedy §xiv. On the text, see H. Lloyd-Jones, 'Notes on Sophocles' Antigone', CQ N S 7 (1957) 1 2 - 2 7 ; be defends the oxutoroi of the MSS at 108 and interprets the bit metaphorically, as the bit of necessity, or Zeus. 63. This idea is further developed in Ch. 6, where we examine Diotima's claim that the 'sight of the body' and the 'sight of the soul' are mutually exclusive; in Ch. 13, where we discuss connections between vision and philia; and in Ch. 10, where we examine Aristotle's claim that 'the decision rests with perception'. On symbolic associations of eyes and vision in Greek and related cultures, see W. Deonna, Le Symholisme de Voeil (Paris 1965); for other ancient references, Ch. 13 n. 27. 64. Cf. also 215, 314, 325, 406, 562, 581. 65. My reading of this ode owes a considerable debt to Segal, 'Sophocles' praise', which contributed to the early formation of these thoughts - though I shall be emphasizing somewhat different aspects of the ode's self-undercutting. More recently I have profited from the discussion of its imagery that pervades Segal's longer discussion, and I have also learned from Goheen's sensitive account. See also Ronnet, Sophocle 15 iff., Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' 196-9, Benardete ad loc. 66. On progress through arts or technai, and on other related stories of the discovery of arts, see Ch. 4. 67. The ode on eras is well discussed by Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles 92-8; cf. also Benardete, 'A reading' 44.6, Santirocco, 'Justice' 191, Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' 221. 68. Contrast the orgas eumeneis of the gods at 1260, when Creon performs the burial.
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Notes to pp. 1 j1-8
69. On anger and revenge, see further in Ch. 13. 70. See Winnington-lngram, Sophocles 98-109, Linforth, op. cit. 231-3, Goheen, Imagery 64-74, and especially Segal, Tragedy i82ff., who remarks that the cave could be seen to symbolize the sort of lonely mystery that Creon has refused. On the second antistrophe, see Lloyd-Jones, CQ NS 7 (1957) 24-771. A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E. J. Payne (New York 1969) Vol. 1, pp. 252-3. 72. Cf. Segal, Tragedy i54ff. 73. Cf. Ch. 10. 74. Compare Segal, Tragedy 201. 75. Cf. Segal, op. cit. passim. 76. Cf. Ch. 13 on nomos (with references). 77. On this ode see esp. Segal, Tragedy zoifi., to a number of whose observations I am indebted; also Linforth, 'Antigone and Creon' 238, Santirocco, 'Justice' 192. 78. In my work on this chapter I am indebted to several generations of students and teaching assistants: especially to Janet Hook, Nick Pappas, Gail Rickert, and Nancy Sherman. I am also grateful to Stanley Cavell, with whom I taught this material, and to Barry Mazur, who first listened to some of the ideas that became its concluding section. I am also grateful to Mary Whitlock Blundell and to Lowell Edmunds for their comments. 4
The Protagoras: a science of practical reason
1. For relevant general accounts of the intellectual life of Athens in this period, see G. Grote, A History of Greece, vol. VII (London 1888); W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists (— History in, Pt 1) (Cambridge 1971); G. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge 1981); see also N. Loraux's stimulating UInvention d'Athenes (Paris 1981). On progress, see L. Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore 1967), with many references to the literature on particular texts; Dodds, ACP 1-25. 2. On the techne-tuche antithesis, see especially A. L. Edmunds, Chance and Intelligence in Thucydides (Cambridge, MA 1975). On techne and related notions, the most comprehensive review of the evidence is in R. Schaerer, Episteme et Techne: etudes sur les notions de connaissance et d*art d'Homere a Platon (Lausanne 1930); an excellent related study is D. Kurz, Akribeia: Das Ideal der Exaktbeit bei den Griechen bis Aristoteles (Goppingen 1970); see also L. Camerer, Praktische Klugheit bei Herodot: Untersuchungen den Begriffen Mechane, Techne, Sophie (Tubingen 1965) and M. Isnardi Parente, Techne (Florence 1966), which covers the period Plato-Epicurus. Two related studies of scientific and practical intelligence of considerable interest are: M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les Ruses de 1'intelligence: la Metis des grecs (Paris 1974) and G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, reason, and experience (Cambridge 1981); see also Vernant's Les Origines de la pensee grecque (Paris 1981) and his briefer papers, 'Le travail et la pensee technique' and 'Remarques sur les formes et les limites de la pensee technique chez les Grecs', in My the et pensee che% les Grecs, n (Paris 1965) 5—15, 44-64. For general studies of tuche, see A. A. Buriks, Peri Tuches: De ontwikkeling van het begrip tyche tot aan de Romeinse tijd, hoofd^akelijk in de philosophie (Leiden 1955); H. Meuss, Tuche bei den attischen Tragikern (Hirschberg 1899); H. Strohm, Tyche: %ur Scbicksalsauffassung bei Pindar und den friihgriechischen Dicbtern (Stuttgart 1944). See also Lloyd-Jones, JZ, esp. 142, 162.
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3. For an account of the most important elements of continuity and discontinuity, see Interlude 2. 4. My version of the story is largely taken from Prometheus's speech in the Prometheus Bound (whose disputed authorship makes no difference to our reflections here). See Edelstein, Idea of Progress and Guthrie, History (above, n. 1) for a full account of other related texts. The once widespread view that the anthropology reported in Diodorus Siculus ( 6 0 - 3 0 B . C . ) derives from Democritus (see, for example, T. Cole, Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology (New Haven 1 9 6 7 ) ) is rejected by Dodds, who argues that it derives from a much later doxographic tradition. For other influential versions of the story, see Solon 13 (West), 43ff.; Gorgias, Apology of Palamedes\ and of course the chorus on the human being in the Antigone - cf. Ch. 3. The PV story does not include mastery of internal passions. 5. On the problem of the dramatic date, see A. E. Taylor, Plato (London 1926) 236, Guthrie, History, iv 2 1 4 , C. C. W. Taylor, Plato: Protagoras (Oxford 1 9 7 6 ) 64, all of whom concur on a date of approximately 43 3. The reference at 32 7D to a play produced in 420 is an anachronism. As for the date of composition, this dialogue has sometimes been taken to be among the very earliest; but a majority of recent scholars have argued that it is a transitional work, later than the briefer aporetic dialogues and earlier than
Meno and Gorgias. 6. It is worthy of note that the four dialogues that we shall consider in this section form a chronological continuum in dramatic dates as well as in dates of composition. This does not hold true in general; but it may be significant that dialogues which I have singled out for their thematic continuity (all deal in some way with the relationship between philosophical expertise and our problems of tuche, all are centrally concerned with 'madness* or control by the passions, all are concerned with the commensurability or harmony of different values) should also illustrate a dramatic development in the character of Socrates, in his relationship to these issues. The significance of the changing dramatic portrait is discussed in each of the four chapters of Part n, most extensively in Chs. 6-7. We also notice that in three of the four dialogues Alcibiades plays a central role (for the relationship between Phaedrus and Alcibiades, cf. Ch. 7, pp. 212-13); in the Republic, the tyrannical soul plays a similar role. 7. On the metaphor of hunting as expression of a pervasive picture of practical intelligence setting itself against contingency, see Detienne and Vernant, JLes Ruses; cf. Ch. 1, where I criticize their sharp opposition between the 'hunter' and the philosopher and examine some related aspects of Plato's imagery. In this dialogue the continuity between ordinary eros and the philosophical ascent is forcefully stressed, as Socrates the hunter of Alcibiades becomes Socrates the wily new Odysseus, saving lives through the philosophical art. For a related discussion of hunting as an ethical image, see Nussbaum, 'Consequences' 25-53. On Socrates as erastes, later eromenos, see Ch. 6; on this erotic relationship in general, see Dover, GH 8. The Charmides is probably close in date of composition as well, coming late in the group of 'aporetic' early dialogues. For a fuller discussion of the history of the analogy between philosophy and medicine, see Nussbaum,' Therapeutic arguments; Epicurus and Aristotle \ in The Norms of Nature, ed. M. Schofield and G. Striker (Cambridge 1985) 3 1 - 7 4 .
For Protagoras's claim, see 3 1 6 D , and esp. 3 1 8 E - 3 1 9 A . 10. See for example Isnardi Parente, Techne 1, Schaerer, Episteme passim (who notes, 9.
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Notes to pp.1j1-8 however, that 'episteme' is used more often than ' techne' to designate the cognitive condition of the agent. Dodds concludes that the concept of techne, in the late fifth century, is the concept of 'the systematic application of intelligence to any field of human activity' (11); cf. Guthrie, History in, Pt 1, 115 n, 3: 'It [sc. techne] includes every branch of human or divine skill, or applied intelligence, as opposed to the unaided work of nature.' These informal results are confirmed and supplemented by the rigorous and extensive linguistic analysis of the entire semantic field of the Greek verbs epistasthai, gignoskein, eidenai, and their related nouns episteme, techne, and gnosis in J. Lyons, Structural Semantics: an Analysis of Part of the Vocabulary of Plato (Oxford 1963). Lyons shows that techne and names of specific technai function semantically as the most common direct object of the verb epistasthai; he observes that ' episteme and techne are very frequently, if not always, synonymous in the contexts in which they occur in colligation with adjectives of class A t ' , that is to say, with -ike adjectives naming some art or science (187). He shows how productive this class is, how easily a Greek writer could thus give the name techne to any sort of organized know-how, anything which might be the object of epistasthai. His examples show the breadth and the heterogeneity of this class. He does observe that episteme is broader than techne in one way: it can sometimes be used interchangeably with gnosis, where techne cannot. Lyons's argument concerning gignoskein and gnosis is that they cover the area of personal acquaintance and familiarity, an area in which we do not find the verb epistasthai. So the point is that techne goes everywhere epistasthai does; it stops short of the area of personal familiarity, an area into which the noun episteme can enter. Although Lyons's analysis deals only with the Platonic corpus, it seems to me likely that his results in this respect would also describe the use of techne and episteme in the late fifth century and in other writers contemporary with Plato.
11. The passage of Metaph. 1 with which we shall be concerned is a salient case of this. In one passage (EN 1 i4ob2ff.), Aristotle does explicitly distinguish episteme and techne, associating the latter entirely with productive art. (Cf. also n i 2 b 7 . ) The same distinction is made in Magna Moralia 119733 3, which may not be genuine; this passage, however, says explicitly that in some of the arts that we shall see Plato calling technai, e.g., lyre-playing, the activity itself is the end. Aristotle's verbal distinctions are not dogmatically or even consistently maintained in this area: the distinction between praxis and poiesis is one clear example of this. It is also not uncommon for him to use a word in both a wide and a narrow sense - both for the genus and for one of its sub-species: he does this explicitly with'phronesis' and' dikaiosune\ implicitly, as I argue, with 'aisthesis' (cf. Nussbaum, De Motu Essay 5). It is clearly impossible to make the narrow EN sense of ' techne''fitthe rest of his usage, above all in Metaphysics 1; the fact that this book is devoted to the views of predecessors helps to explain why his usage here remains close to the traditional usage. 12. Cf. esp. 3 j 6 D f f . , where there are repeated verbal shifts back and forth between the two, so that it is frequently difficult to tell to which noun the adjective ' metretike' refers. In an earlier passage, Protagoras refers to his techne and to a mathema, apparently interchangeably ( 3 1 6 D , 3 I 8E, 3 1 9 A ) . 13. For the background, cf. esp. Schaerer, Episteme, Edmunds, Chance (with refs.).
14. For the antithesis in Hippocrates' epitaph, see G. Pfohl, ed., Greek Poems on Stone 1 (Epitaphs) (Leiden 1967) 144 ( = Anth. Pal. vn.135); cf. Edmunds, op. cit. 2 and n. 3. The dating of the various Hippocratic treatises is controversial. I concentrate on those that are generally dated to the fifth century. G. E. R. Lloyd has questioned this
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received view for Vet. Med.: see his ' Who is attacked in On Ancient Medicine ?\ Phronesis 8 (1963) 108-26; but he does not date it after Plato. 15. Xen. Mem. in. 10; for other examples, see Schaerer, op. cit., Kurz, Akribeia. The Gorgias denies the title of techne to anything that cannot give a general logos of its procedures; its distinction between empeiria (experience, an empirical knack) and techne corresponds closely to the distinction of Metaph. 1. The question of how we make the transition from an accumulation of experience to a general account remained a central problem in Greek medical theory. Galen's On Medical Experience records a debate that uses a form of the Sorites paradox: if n medical observations are not sufficient for techne, surely ff+i will not be sufficient; one observation is clearly not sufficient. From these premises we can show that no number, however large, will be sufficient, and so medicine, so grounded, cannot be a techne. The empirical doctor replies in an interesting way: he points to the success of his practice and of his empirically based generalizations in curing disease. The point seems to be that if it works well against tuche, it is techne enough. 16. On some early passages, see Schaerer, Episteme 2ff.; he, however, seems to me to make some unwarranted inferences from them. The related sections of Kurz's discussion (op. cit.) of akribeia are helpful. 17. Cf. also Eur. El. 367ff., where the absence of akribeia in human judgment is associated with the absence of a sure standard of judgment; and this, in turn, is traced to inner upheavals caused by elements of human nature. 18. Irwin, PMTpassim, esp. 111.9-11. Section in.9 contains a good discussion of some of the Platonic associations between craft and knowledge, and between both of these and the ability to give accounts. The crucial claim about techne is made on pp. 73-4: every person of techne ' produces a product which can be identified without reference to his particular movements'. Here Irwin must clearly be talking about the ordinary conception rather than about some divergent Socratic use, since he uses this account as a basis to interpret the force of analogies to the technai in the dialogues, even when Socrates is not using the word 'techne'. His point is that any craft analogy will evoke in the mind of the reader a certain picture. 19. It is very important that Irwin be correct about what is implied by the word itechne'' and by the presence of techne examples. His explicit evidence for an instrumental conception of excellence in the early dialogues is slight: one premise from an argument in the Lysis, a dialogue of a highly aporetic character: and then, as we shall see, the evidence of the latter half of the Protagoras - which, however, does not provide, by itself, any evidence for an instrumental reading of other early dialogues. Forceful objections to this reading have been brought forward by G. Vlastos, both in a review of Irwin, PMT in the Times Literary Supplement ('The virtuous and the happy', TLS 24 Feb. 1978, pp. 230-1) and in 'Happiness and virtue in Socrates' moral theory', PCPS 210, NS 30 (1984) 181-213. 20. See n. 10 above and refs. in n. 2. 21. Xen. Oec. 1; cf. Schaerer, Episteme on Xenophon's use of'techne' and 'episteme'. 22. EE 12i9ai 2ff., MM 121 ib28, 1 i97a9-i 1 (on which see above n. 11). For the Hellenistic view, see esp. Cicero, Fin. 111.24; and Striker, ' Antipater', in The Norms. 23. At EE I2i9ai2ff., Aristotle contrasts medical science with mathematical science: in the former there is an end, health, that is not identical to the activity of healing; in the latter the activity of theoria is an end in itself. But in Metaph. vn.7 he clearly states that the activity of the doctor involves producing a further specification of the ' parts' or elements of the end itself.
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24. Irwin is troubled by the prominence of these examples in Plato. He never disputes that they are, for Plato, central cases of techne. He produces an odd solution: the flute-player ' still produces a product which can be identified without reference to his particular movements. When we can recognize a tuneful sound in music . . . we can decide if certain movements are good flute-playing . . . ; a tuneful sound is not a good product because it is the result of good production, but the production is good because of the product' ( 7 3 - 4 ) . This seems to be a desperate stratagem; even if this position has occasionally been defended in aesthetics, it seems plainly false. (Is Horowitz a great artist because he is efficient at fulfilling the instrumental conditions to the production of a ' tuneful sound' that we would desire and value as much if it were made by a machine? Could we adequately characterize the ends of piano-playing without mentioning hands, fingers, feet, imagination, and the piano?) Furthermore, such a position is completely unparalleled in this historical period: Aristotle regards it as entirely uncontroversial and self-evident that in the musical arts the performer's activities are ends in themselves. Irwin makes no attempt to argue that his conception is one that could have been held by a Greek thinker at this time; nor does he defend it as a plausible one for ours. 25. This element of music and other technai is explored in the Philebus. 26. Taylor, Plato: Protagoras (83) ascribes to Protagoras the assumption that an art that is not productive, i.e. one in which the ends of the art are up for debate within the art, cannot avoid collapsing into subjectivism. Though I do not believe, as Taylor does, that we need to attribute this assumption to Protagoras, and though as a claim it seems false, it is illustrative of the sort of worry that motivates the push towards an external-end techne, in modern as well as in ancient moral philosophy. 27. Discussion of Protagoras's speech can be found in: A. W. H. Adkins, ' Arete, Techne, democracy and Sophists: Protagoras 3 1 6 B - 3 2 8 D ' , JHS 9 3 ( 1 9 7 3 ) 3 - 1 2 ; A. T. Cole, 'The relativism of Protagoras', YCS 2 2 ( 1 9 7 2 ) 1 9 - 4 6 ; Dodds, ACP 1 - 2 5 ; Guthrie, History H I , 6 3 - 8 , 25 5 ff.; E. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (London 1957) 4 0 7 - 9 ; F. Heinimann, Nomos und Phusis (Basel 1945) 1 1 5 - 1 6 ; G. B. Kerferd, 'Plato's account of the relativism of Protagoras', Durham University Journal 4 2 , N S I I ( 1 9 4 9 - 5 0 ) 2 0 - 6 , and ' Protagoras' doctrine of justice and virtue in the Protagoras of Plato', JHS 73 (1953) 4 2 - 5 ; A. Levi, 'The ethical and social thought of Protagoras', Mind 4 9 ( 1 9 4 0 ) 2 8 4 - 3 0 2 ; D. Loenen, Protagoras and the Greek Community (Amsterdam 1 9 4 0 ) ; S. Moser and G. Kustas, ' A comment on the 'relativism' of Protagoras', Phoenix ( 1 9 6 6 ) m - 1 5 ; A. E. Taylor, Plato, 2 4 1 - 7 ; C. C. W. Taylor, Plato: Protagoras, ad loc.\ G . Vlastos, ed., Plato s Protagoras (Indianapolis 1 9 5 6 ) . M u c h of the literature focuses on the question of Protagoras's alleged relativism (cf. below n. 39) and on the evidence here for views of the historical Protagoras; none of it focuses directly on the issue that will most concern me. 28. Protagoras divides his speech into the 'story' (muthos) and the 'argument' or 'account' (logos)\ but it is by no means clear how he understands this division. The logos begins only at 3 2 4 D - and yet the immediately preceding section ( 3 2 3 A - 3 2 4 D ) seems to belong, stylistically, with what follows rather than with the preceding story. Kerferd, 'Protagoras' doctrine' concludes that 3 23Aff. is a summary of the muthos. We might also suspect that Protagoras does not have a firm or careful grasp of the categories of his own discourse It was at one time customary to read this speech as derived from the historical Protagoras's 'On the way things were in the beginning'. It is even printed in
Notes to pp. 107-10
447
Diels-Kranz, though under the section 4 Imitation \ I shall here treat the speech simply as the speech of a Platonic character; though we should not ignore the possibility that Plato is showing us how the issues of the dialogue grow out of the intellectual currents of his own day. 29. I use scare quotes because these powers are clearly not technai in the sense specified above; nor are they called this by Protagoras. They have in common with techne that they are resources with which a living creature is enabled to make its way in the world, defending itself against its dangers. 30. It is hardly necessary to mention that the 4 What is it?' question is a, if not the, central question of the early tradition of Greek natural science. Asked about a changing thing, this question is often phrased as a question about its phusis: what is the thing's essential nature, as this is revealed in its characteristic mode of life and growth? Cf. y E. Benveniste, Noms d' agent et noms d action en indo-europeen (Paris, i948)78;D. Holwerda, Commentatio de vocis quae est 5. 30. My discussion here closely follows Essay 4, pp. 2ioff., though there are many changes and corrections. 31. Cf. Ch. 6. 32. Again, compare the account of techne in Ch. 4; Aristotle's view is compared to the view of Protagoras, as interpreted in that chapter. 33. For the connection between particulars and aisthesis, see 111331, 11 < ^ 2 3 , ii26b4,
1147326. 34. It is very difficult to translate 4logos' in these contexts; frequently I have rendered it 4 statement'; but in other cases, as here, it must refer to the ethical principle that would be formulated in a general statement. It is unfortunate that English forces a choice between the linguistic entity and its expressed content. 3 5. 4 Krisis 4 krinesthai*, and related words, frequently translated as4 judgment' and4 judge', actually need not have this implication. They imply only the making of discriminations and selections. See Nussbaum, De Motu 334, with reference to an unpublished paper of J. M. Cooper. 36. The importance of harmony between general statements and the kattf hekasta is stressed by Aristotle in the sciences as well: for example, M A 698311, H A 49137—14, G C 316a 5-14, GA 7 5 7b 3 5 ff., 76ob28ff., 788bi9ff., DC 3o6a5ff. In ethics, however, the nature of the 'matter of the practical* (cf. this ch., p. 302) makes the problem much more acute, the general statement much more potentially misleading. 37. See the excellent discussion of this passage in Wiggins, 'Deliberation'. 38. Autoschedia^ein ta deonta, Thuc. 1.138 (on Themistocles). 39. On stochayesthai, cf. also 1109330, 1 io6bi 5, 28, 1109323; and see the discussion of this word in Detienne and Vernant, Metis 38, 297-300. 40. See also Essay 4, pp. 212-13. 41. See Wiggins's excellent account of this passage in ' DeliberationI follow his translation-cum-paraphr3se to some extent here. 42. On nous, cf. Ch. 8, with references and bibliography. 43. Again, see Wiggins's discussion in 'Deliberation'. 44. See the exchange between Hilary Putnam and me on this point, in NLH 15 (1983). 45. See Ch. 12, with references. 46. See Ch. 12, and Ch. 7 n. 32. 47. On the mechanisms of this developmental process, see N. Sherman, Aristotle's Theory
of Moral Education, Ph.D. dissertation, Harv3rd 1982.
48. EN 111339, 1139323, b4—5, MA 70cb23 (which s3ys that prohairesis is koinon dianoias kai orexeos, ' sharing in both reason and desire'). 49. EN 1106b 16ff. On this and related issues, see L. A. Kosman,' Being properly affected', in Rorty, Essays 103-16.
Notes to pp.
ij8-62
493
50. DA 43ib2ff. For valuable discussions of this passage, I am indebted to conversation with Christine Korsgaard and to an unpublished manuscript of hers on Aristotelian perception. 51. See my Essay 4 for a full account of these passages and a discussion of what the syllogistic vocabulary does and does not imply. 52. On this point see especially M. F. Burnyeat, 'Aristotle on learning to be good', in Rorty, Essays 69-92. 53. Cf. for example EN uo9b7-i2. 54. Detienne and Vernant, Metis 29 5 ff". 55. Cf. Ch. 5, pp. 155-6. 56. J. Rawls, 'Outline of a decision procedure for ethics', PR 60 (1951) 177-97. 57. In that the view of language and reference that supports it is itself selected from the appearances, as the result of Aristotelian procedures. 58. I develop the connection between James and Aristotle in Nussbaum,' Crystals'. Henry Richardson, in an unpublished paper, has developed an example from The Ambassadors to illustrate the nature of Aristotelian perception. 59. Trans. R. Lattimore, in Greek Tragedies, ed. D. Grene and R. Lattimore (Chicago 1956). 60. Sometimes, however, the constraint will be too severe to permit of action according to excellence: see the discussion of this issue in Ch. 11. 61. In my work on these issues, I am indebted above all to David Wiggins, with whom I have discussed them for years. I am also grateful for conversations with Larry Blum, Christine Korsgaard, Hilary Putnam, Henry Richardson, and Nancy Sherman. 11
The vulnerability of the good human life: activity and disaster
1. In discussing these issues I shall frequently make use of the Magna Moralia, which I believe to be an authentic work of Aristotle. My argument will not, however, rely on this material. The authenticity of the work is defended by F. Dirlmeier in his commentary, Aristoteles ~ Magna Moralia (Berlin 1958) and also by J. M. Cooper,' The Magna Moralia and Aristotle's moral philosophy', AJP 94 (1973) 327-49; Cooper argues that the style is not Aristotle's own, but that the work is an accurate transcription of some early lectures of Aristotle's on moral subjects. For the opposing view, see D. J. Allan, 'Magna Moralia and Nicomachean Ethics*, JHS 77 (1957) 7-11; C. J. Rowe, 'A reply to John Cooper on the Magna Moralia', AJP 96 (1975) 160-72. 2. Although most of my discussion here will focus on the Nicomachean Ethics, since it contains the most extensive treatment of the issues, I shall supplement my discussion with material from the Eudemian Ethics wherever there is no serious problem of incompatibility of position. On the chronology of Aristotle's ethical thought, see A. Kenny's controversial The Aristotelian Ethics (Oxford 1978), and Aristotle's Theory of the Will (London 1979); also the fine review of the former by J. M. Cooper, Nous 15: 1 (1981) 381-92; and cf. also C. J. Rowe, The Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge 1971). 3. The connection between eudaimonia and the praiseworthy is denied by those who think of eudaimonia as a psychological state of pleasure or contentment; but once we see that it consists in excellent activity we can understand why Aristotle stresses the connection as he does. See Ch. xo n. 20. 4. I do not mean to claim that Plato is Aristotle's only opponent in passages in which he attacks this strategy; but our account of Plato's middle-period views should have
494
Notes to pp. 1j1-8
made it clear that he does argue this way. It is important to notice a salient difference between Plato and the character whom I have called the 'good-condition theorist': Plato always insists that the bearers of value are activities, not states; he pursues self-sufficiency not by denying the need for activity, but by picking out the activities that are maximally invulnerable. 5. It is not clear who these opponents are. They bear an obvious resemblance to Stoic thinkers who followed Aristotle. As in the case of Hellenistic skepticism, whose antecedents seem to be strikingly present in Aristotle's criticisms (see Ch. 8 and Long's article referred to there), so here we see evidence that a well-known Hellenistic view was around, in some form, in this earlier period. 6. This view is defended in certain poetic writers: especially by certain characters in dramas of Euripides (see for example the end of Hecuba's speech from the Trojan Women, discussed in Ch. 10). See also Ch. 4 n. 2 for works that discuss other examples of this view. 7. For a contemporary parallel, see Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA 1981) 1-3. 8. Aristotle is going to conclude that the things under our control are kurios over eudaimonia, 'authoritative' or 'in charge'. On this important word and its function, see Ch. 9 nn. 44,5 6. Hence (and cf. p. 3 3 2 and n. 25) it seems to mean' the most important causal element in'. 9. For further discussion of ancient Greek views of self-refutation - especially of cases in which the very practice of engaging in argument refutes the view being argued for, see G. E. L. Owen, 'Plato and Parmenides on the timeless present', The Monist 50 (1966) 317-40, repr. in A. P. D. Mourelatos, ed., The Presocratics (Garden City, NY 1974); M. F. Burnyeat,' Can the skeptic live his skepticism?', in M. Schofield et al., eds., Doubt and Dogmatism (Oxford 1980) 20-53, an d 'Protagoras and self-refutation in Plato's Theaetetus', PR 85 (1976) 172-95, 'Protagoras and self-refutation in later Greek philosophy', PR 85 (1976) 44-69. 10. I am making Aristotle's argument sound more systematic than it really is: in fact, the two groups of opponents are considered separately in different books of the EN; but there seems no reason not to bring them together in this way. 11. Aristotle's word (presumably the opponent's also) is hexis, frequently translated 'disposition'. I use' state' or' condition' to indicate that it is supposed to be something with psychological reality, that can be there in the person whether or not any action is going on. To call it a disposition would make the opponent's position seem even more paradoxical than it is; on the other hand, as we shall see, Aristotle believes that the criteria for ascription of a hexis are not present in the case of the totally inactive person. 12. It is not entirely clear whether Aristotle is saying (1) that the hexis might still be intact, but that we have an insuperable epistemological problem about telling whether it is; (2) that the notion of hexis is logically connected with activity, in such a way that it does not make sense to ascribe it apart from the presence of activity; (3) that hexis and action are causally interdependent, in such a way that an inactive person would be likely to lose her hexis. He certainly believes both (1) and (3); and (3) is, for him, not incompatible with (2), as we have seen in Ch. 9. But we know that he does not believe that a hexis goes away the minute no actual activity is being performed; it is a stable (or relatively stable) condition of the person. So whatever logical connection there is between hexis and activity, it cannot be this strong a connection.
Notes to pp. 324-41
49 5
13. See the excellent account of these matters in L. A. Kosman, 'Substance, being, and
Energeia \ OSAP
2 (1984)
121-49.
14. At this point, the good-condition theorist comes very close to the Platonist: for if what this person calls 4 being * includes this sort of mental functioning, it will be energeia, as Plato's arguments understand it. 15. Although I have used 'his or her* in my own discussion, it seems inappropriate to translate Aristotle this way. 16. Contemplative activity is, of course, less vulnerable to reversal by the external than other activities; but, in Aristotle's view, it too has some external necessary conditions - cf. Ch. 12. 17. On this distinction, see Kosman,4 Substance, being'; J. L. Ackrill, 'Aristotle's distinction between energeia and kinesis\ in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. R. Bambrough (London 1965) 121-41; T. Penner, "Verbs and the identity of actions', in Kyle, ed. G. Pitcher and O. Wood (New York 1970) 393-453. It is important to notice that Aristotle also uses 4energeia' as a generic term to cover both species. 1 8 . Cf. Ch. 1 0 n. 12. 19. Compare Metaph. io9ibi5ff., io22b22ff. 20. See the remarks on old age and philia in Ch. 12. 2 1 . Rep. 3 8 8 A - B (cf. Ch. 7), Apol. 4 1 C - D , etc.; cf. Ch. 5. Here again, we need to point out that Plato differs from the good-condition theorist by requiring actual activity for eudaimonia; he will insist, however, that contemplative activity is altogether self-sufficient, requiring no special worldly conditions for its attainment beyond life itself. 22. Cf. for example, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Berlin 1785), trans. H. J. Paton (New York i 9 6 0 ) , Akad. p. 3 9 4 , cf. Int. 2 n. 13. 23. H. H. Joachim, The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford 1 9 5 1 ) ^ loc.; W. D. Ross, The Works of Aristotle (London 1923) 192. 24. For Aristotle's use of en ('in') in the sense of 'causally dependent on, see esp. Ph. 2 i o b 2 i - 2 ; also Metaph. 102338-11, 2 3 - 5 ; EN no9b23; and see my discussion in Nussbaum, De Motu Essay 3, p. 153. 25. The word used is kurios - see n. 8. 26. On the difficulties of interpretation on this issue, see Ch. 9, pp. 2 8 2 - 3 , w i t h references. 2 7 . Cf. Ch. 2. 28. This seems to be the point of the difficult passage at ii99b36ff.; but 1 1 8 8 b i 5ff- does allow for circ*mstantial compulsion that will cause a person to forgo something of importance. 29. Cf. esp. EN ix. 2; and also the remarks on number of friends and quarrels among one's friends - cf. Ch. 12. 30. For related remarks on conflict, cf. Nussbaum, De Motu Essay 4. 31. On development and its external conditions, cf. Chs. 9, 12. 32. Compare the use of these words by Euripides and Thucydides - cf. Ch. 13; Aristotle may be using a traditional metaphor. 33. For the Rhetoric, the only edition to use is that of R. Kassel (Berlin 1976); see my review i n AGP
63 ( 1 9 8 1 ) 3 4 6 - 5 0 .
34. On to euethes and its traditional association with excellence, cf. Ch. 13. 35. There is related material in the ethical works themselves: esp. EN ii24a2off., on the contribution of goods of fortune to megalopsuchia\ cf. also MM i2ooai2ff. 36. On the Politics passage, cf. also Ch. 8. Related arguments about the context-relativity
496
Notes to pp.
1j1-8
of value are found in both Xenophanes and Heracl*tus; see my ' Psucbe in Heracl*tus,
n ' , Pbronesis 17 (1972), iJ3ff. 37. There is a difficulty about using this passage, in that it comes from the problematic passage in EN x whose incompatibility with the rest of the EN I discuss in the Appendix to Part in. Aristotle goes on there to develop a non-anthropocentric and quite Platonic view of the good life that identifies eudaimonia with intellectual contemplation and relegates the moral virtues to second place, partly on account of their absence in the divine life of intellect. I argue in the Appendix that this passage is not in any sense the culmination of the argument of the EN, but isflatlyincompatible with it in a number of important ways. I include the passage here only because the remarks about the context-relativity of the virtues are consistent elaborations of Aristotle's views of the virtues or excellences elsewhere (in the Politics, the other ethical works, and the EN itself); they forcefully and explicitly summarize views about the connection of the ethical excellences with a context of material limitation that can be found in the discussions of the specific excellences; and EN VII, as we have seen, also explicitly denies ethical arete to divine beings. Throughout the EN, except in these three chapters (x.6-8), he defends activities according to these excellences, so understood, as valuable ends in themselves. In this context it is only what happens after the quoted passage - when these values are adversely contrasted to contemplation on grounds of their context-relativity - that poses a problem for a consistent overall interpretation of the EN. We can therefore draw on them cautiously in drawing a picture of the nature of ethical virtue that Aristotle consistently preserves even when he changes his account of the ranking of ethical excellence against other goods. It is worth stressing that in this sense even EN x is not Platonic: Plato, having decided to prefer activities that are non-context-relative (cf. Ch. 5), defends a picture of justice and the other traditional excellences that makes them like this as well, tying them tightly to contemplative activity. Aristotle cannot be convinced, even at his most Platonic, that there is a meaningful conception of the ethical outside of the practices and limits of human life. 38. For further discussion of this issue, see Appendix to Part in, with references. 39. Heracl*tus fr. DK B62; see Nussbaum, 'Psucbe in Heracl*tus, 11' (above n. 36). 40. This chapter was given as the first of the Eunice Belgum Lectures at St Olaf College (see Acknowledgements); in combination with material from Interlude 2, it was also read at the Institute for Classical Studies, London; at the Philosophy of Education Colloquia, Harvard University; at Brown University, Connecticut College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, and at conferences on Greek literary theory at Florida State University and Vassar College. I would like to thank those present, and especially Myles Burnyeat, Aryeh Kosman, Ruth Padel, and Charles Segal, for helpful comments. 12
The vulnerability of the good human life: relational goods
1. Cf. EN ii77a27ff., where this is said to be true of all of the excellences of character. 2. Aristotle's account of phantasia emphasizes this possibility - cf. DA in. 3, and Essay 5 in Nussbaum, De Motu. 3. Metaphysics xu.7; it is far from clear, however, just what 'thought of thought' would be, and whether such thought does or does not have objects for its content. 4. In these passages, Aristotle appears to use 'autarkes' in the Platonic way he has ruled
Notes to pp. ij8-62
497
out at I097b7-u (cf. this ch., pp. 344-5). This is just one of the many problems involved in reconciling x.6-8 with the rest of the EN. 5. On the signs of such a project in x.6-8, see Ch. 11 n. 37. 6. The important topic of civic philia (which, in Aristotle's view, 'holds cities together' even more than justice does - 1 1 5 5322-7) has received little comment in the literature. The best general treatment is J. Hook, Friendship and Politics in Aristotle's Ethical and Political Thought, B.A. thesis sum ma cum laude, Harvard 1977. 7. As we shall see later, Aristotle will raise the Protagorean question whether such beings are in fact human. 8. On Aristotle's departure from Athens, see I. During, Aristoteles (Heidelberg 1966); G. E. L. Owen, 'Philosophical invective', OSAP 1 (1983) iff. For discussion of some of the passages in the Politics that bear on his relationship to the Macedonian court, see my 'Shame, separateness, and political unity', in Rorty, Essays 395-435. On Aristotle's status as metoikos, see During, Aristoteles 213ff., 232-6, 459ff., and D. Whitehead, 'Aristotle the metic', PCPS 21 (1975) 94-9 and The Ideology of the Athenian Metic, PCPS Suppl. Vol. 4 (1977). Whitehead and During argue persuasively that there is no good evidence that Aristotle was given any special privileges, such as were sometimes granted to metoikoi (Cephalus, for example, was allowed to hold property); thus he could not participate in the assembly, hold office, serve on a jury, own land, or build a house; he had to register and pay a tax, and to be supervised closely by a citizen prostates. Despite the evidence of Pol. 1278a (se.e this ch., p. 349), Whitehead argues from EE 1233328-30 that Aristotle's attitude to this condition was 'phlegmatic'. The passage only says, however, that a lack of participation in civic affairs that would be blamed in a citizen can hardly be blamed in the C3se of the metic; this does not seem to me to show resignstion. 9. See Diogenes Laertius ix. The conventional and legendary character of these reports is discussed in M. Frede, 'Des Skeptikers Meinungen', Neue Hefte fur Philosophie 15/16 (1979) 102-29. 10. D. L. ix.68. 1. Epicurus was the first known philosopher to teach women; his school was notorious for its admission of women and slaves; and some women held positions of high respect, 2. See B. Frischer, The Sculpted Word (Berkeley 1982). Insofar as they make our encounter with the saving philosophy depend on circ*mstances not fully under our control, these opponents grant a part of Aristotle's point about the luck of development. 3. This becomes especially clear in EN ix - cf. this ch., pp. 350, 365-8. 4. On this passage, and on Aristotelian habituation generally, see; M. F. Burnyeat, 'Aristotle on learning to be good', in Rorty, Essays 69-92; N. Sherman, Aristotle's Theory of Moral Education, PhJD. dissertation H3rv3rd 1982; and Nussbaum, 'Aristophanes'. 5. 118oai 8 and 29 refer to the superior correctness of such a scheme; 118oa21-2 to its origin in practicsl wisdom {phronesis) 3nd insight (nous). 6. On the craftsmen, see Nussbaum, 'Shame, separateness'. My argument that this is Aristotle's view of their situation depends upon combining his account of them with his general remarks about the importance of prohairesis for good living, the obligation of the polis to secure it to all those who are not naturally deprived. 17. See the more extensive discussion of these passages and issues in Nussbaum, ' Shame, sep3r3teness \
498
Notes to pp.1j1-8
18. See Nussbaum, 'Shame, separateness* n. 54; the most significant passages are EN 1161334, EE 1242328, Pol. 1255312. 19. On the issues raised here, see Nussbaum, 'Shame, separateness' 419; cf. n. 8 above. 20. See MM ii94b5~23, Pol. i25 5b2o, 1261339, njjbj, 1 2 7 9 3 2 0 , I 2 8 8 a i 2 , 1274322^"., 1275^8,
I276b38ff.,
i277b7ff., 1 3 ^ 2 - 3 ,
i 3 3 2 b 3 2 f f . , EN
H34bi5.
Pol.
1328318,
however, says that metics are economically necessary for the city. 21. For discussion of various versions of this view, and criticism, see my 'Aristotle on human nature and the foundations of ethics', forthcoming. 22. On the connection between beliefs about essential nature and beliefs about value, see Chs. 4, 6, 7; my 'Aristotle on human nature' discusses related material from the Philebus. 23. On the Cyclopes and their importance for a tradition of thought on this issue, see Ch. 8; also Geoffrey Kirk, Myth: its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Cambridge 1970), and especially P. Vidal-Naquet, 'Valeurs religieuses et mythiques de la terre et du sacrifice dans l'Odyssee', in Le Chasseur noir (Paris 1981) 39-68. 24. The argument is discussed at greater length in my 'Aristotle on human nature'; the argument that follows this one, concerning the role of langusge in our W3ys of life, seems to me to tell the ssme story - it is discussed in detsil in the S3me paper. 25. One part of this investigation is carried out through the comparative study of the stability and self-sufficiency of different types of political communities, in the Politics and in the various politeiai that were the results of a concerted research project in the Lyceum. 26. Cf. above n. 20. 27. On Aristotle's view ofphilia, see esp. J. M. Cooper, 'Aristotle on friendship', in Rorty, Essays 301-40; also W. F. R. Hardie, Aristotle's Ethical Theory (Oxford 1981, 2nd ed.). 28. On issues of translation, see also Cooper, 'Aristotle' n. 4. Cooper opposes translating philein as 'love', though he uses 'love' and 'friendship' for philia - on the grounds that there will be confusion when one comes to translate eran and stergein. For eran he recommends 'be in love' - compare our practice in Ch. 7 - and, for stergein, 'love'. For philein he chooses 'like'. This seems, however, much too affectively weak; and there seems to be no good reason to be worried about confusion with stergein, which is quite a rare word in Aristotle anyway. If 'love' is used for philia, it can only cause confusion to refuse to use 'love' for the verb. 29. Cf. however 1166aiff. on self-love. A helpful treatment of this and related issues is J. Annas, 'Plato and Aristotle on friendship and altruism', Mind 86 (1977) 5 3 2 - 5 4 . 30. The Rhetoric definition: 'Philein is to wish for someone what one thinks to be good, for that person's own sake and not for one's own, and, insofar as one is able, to take action towards these things.' 31. We naturally wonder what happens to the case of blood relatives who are not personally acquainted; but this would be rare enough in the Greek polis not to be remarked on in an account such as this. 32. Cooper's ('Aristotle') discussion is especially persuasive on these points, and I am indebted to it. 33. It is not clear whether Aristotle really wants to accord to character the status of an essential property; his discussions of character-change certainly permit some change without a change of identity, and he never discusses sudden and sweeping changes. Elsewhere he certainly insists that the only essential characteristics are those that a being shares with all other members of its kind. 34. Cf. Ch. 9 on orexis and the lack of self-sufficiency.
Notes to pp. 3JJ-J1
499
35. Cf. Rhet. I38ia29ff. 36. EN I099b3~4, Rhet. 1381b!. 37. Cf. also -EN ii57a2off., where Aristotle discusses the connection between trust and the resistance of philia to damage by slander. 38. Cf. 1158a 10-ii, and H7ia8-i3, where Aristotle observes that the intensity of philia (ito sphodra) is undercut by having too many philoi. Notice that intensity is an important element in philia. 39. Cf. Ribet. i38ia3off. 40. On grief cf. Ch. 7, and Interlude 2 on related emotions. 41. Cf. I.Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (Berlin 1788), trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis 1956), Akad. pp. 83ff.; I.Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue (Part in of The Metaphysics of Morals, Berlin 1797), trans. M. J. Gregor (Philadelphia 1969), Akad. pp. 500-1, 447ff. 42. Cf. Sherman, Aristotle's Theory. 43. See Cooper's good account of this argument ("Aristotle'). 44. See Cooper's defense of the importance of this passage and his convincing interpretation, to which I am indebted. He does not, however, as I do, stress the cognitive role of the affective tie. 45. Here again (cf. n. 3 3 above) we notice that not just any member of one's own species will count as ' another oneself' for these purposes, although one would suppose that, according to the criteria of the Metaphysics and the biological works, any two normal species members would share all essential characteristics. 46. On the equivalence of eudaimonia and makariotes, see Ch. 11, which discusses this passage. 47. See my "Aristotle on human nature'. 48. Both of the charges that follow are made by Bernard Williams in 'Philosophy', The Legacy of Greece, ed. M. I. Finley (Oxford 1981) 202-5 5 ~~ cf- Ch. 1. 49. Williams op. cit. 254. 50. The word huperbole is used; this is the usual word for ethical excess in the books on the virtues. Cf. also EN 115 7a6-io, where the relationship between erastes and eromenos is treated simply as an example of pleasure-love. 51. Pol. 1260313, where he remarks cryptically that women have the deliberative faculty, but it is akuros, "lacking in authority'. It is likely that he means "lacking in authority over their irrational elements'; but some scholars have argued that it means ' lacking in authority over males in their social setting - in which case the argument against giving them political rights becomes hard to understand. G. E. R. Lloyd, in his excellent study of these issues (Science and Speculation (Cambridge 1983) 128-64) has shown to what extent Aristotle, in his work on women, is indeed echoing and supporting the pervasive ideology of his culture. His study makes clear, however, that there were other conflicting" appearances' around, both from medicine and from social commentary, that might fruitfully have been explored and brought to bear on the issue. The near-unanimous cultural ideology of female inferiority might lead the method of appearances to incline prima facie in that direction; but there are other cases (cf. Ch. 8) in which beliefs just as prevalent are criticized through a patient scrutiny that is nowhere in evidence in Aristotle's work on this issue. Where physiology is concerned, it is even more obvious that the appearances required to correct his errors were well within reach: for he might have counted a few women's teeth, to see whether they in fact have a smaller number; he might have tested his claim that a menstruating woman who looks into a mirror turns it red; and so forth.
500
Notes to pp.
1j1-8
52. As we have seen, he does briefly mention the pair erastes/eromenos (above n. 50); but with no attempt to give a careful account of the relationship mentioned. 53. EN ii37b29ff., on which see the detailed discussion in Ch. 10. 54. This chapter was the second Eunice Belgum Lecture at St Olaf College. For discussion of the issues, I am also indebted to Nancy Sherman and Henry Richardson. Appendix to Part III
Human and divine
1. See especially J. M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge, MA 1975); J. L. Ackrill, 'Aristotle on eudaimonia', PBA 60 (1974) 339-59. Repr. in Rorty, Essays 15-34; and David Keyt, ' Intellectualism in Aristotle', Paideia special Aristotle issue, 1980, ed. G. C. Simmons. 2. The arguments on this topic are set out in detail in my 'Aristotle on human nature and the foundations of ethics', forthcoming. Some are contextual, some philological (the meaning of expressions such as the -ike %oe); put together, they are decisive in favor of an inclusive interpretation of human function. 3. I am grateful to Myles Burnyeat, whose criticisms prompted me to add this Appendix, and to Nancy Sherman and Miriam Woodruff for helpful discussion of the issues of EN x.6—8. Interlude 2
Luck and the tragic emotions
1. On some of these points about Aristotle's Poetics, there is further discussion in my 'Aristotle', in Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome, ed. T. J. Luce (New York 1982) 377-416, with full bibliography. On the role of poetry in Aristotle's views about education, see N. Sherman, Aristotle on Moral Education, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard, 1982. The best account of poetic 'imitation' I know, which sets Aristotle's views against the background of Greek discourse about mimesis in an intelligent and fascinating way, is G. Sorbom, Mimesis and Art (Uppsala 1966). 2. The text I translate is: f| y&p TpocycpSia n i n t h s k r n v OUK &v6pcbmov &AA& Trp6^ecos Kai fMou 'ixal FJ eu5ainovia KOC! T 6 fcvavnov kv Trpd^ei icrriv, KCCI TO TEAOS t r p a ^ s T I S krriv, oO -rroidTps e!alv 5£ KOCT6C JJIEV TOC T^GT) TTOIOI TIVES, KOCTCX 5e TOCS Trp&^sis eOSaijjioves
f| Touvccvxiov. The following points require comment. (1) I have preferred the praxeos of the Riccardianus to the praxeon of most of the other manuscripts; however, nothing in my interpretation hangs on this. (2) Where the manuscripts read eudaimonia (or: -as) kai he kakodaimonia, I have written kai to enantion. It has long been a major complaint against this passage that kakodaimonia is not an Aristotelian word (see, for example, Else, Lucas, ad loc.): neither it nor kakodaimon is found elsewhere in the corpus. What has not been mentioned is that Aristotle's practice, in the absence of this word, is to indicate the opposite of eudaimonia by simply saying 'the opposite' - e.g. EN noob9-n, and immediately after this passage, Poetics 1450319-20. Now this is just the sort of thing that is highly likely to produce a gloss in the Aristotelian manuscript tradition, in which manuscripts are heavily annotated and used as school texts. It could then easily have been incorporated into the text, displacing Aristotle's original locution. I suggest, then, that to write to enantion both removes the objectionable word and plausibly explains its presence. An alternative possibility is that the whole thing is a gloss: the sentence should read simply, kai he eudaimonia en praxei estin.
Notes to pp. 378-83
501
(3) Most manuscripts read: bioukaieudaimoniaskaihe kakodaimonia. The Riccardianus - and, apparently, the Arabic versions - show biou kai eudaimonia - which is probably to be preferred as better fitting the syntax of kakodaimonia (or whatever originally stood in its place). Some editors have supposed a lacuna. A popular solution of this type has been Vahlen's: eudaimonias (kai kakodaimonias • he de eudaimonia> kai he kakodaimonia, etc. This solution is accepted by Bywater and numerous others. I find it an attractive proposal; and I could happily accept it consistendy with my interpretation. It seems, however, unnecessary. The sequence of Aristotle's argument is: the plot is the most important - for what tragedy is is a representation of action and life, not just of character states; the reason why a whole course of life requires plot and not just character description for its adequate representation is to be found in the consideration that eudaimonia consists not in a characteristic but in praxis. The text of the Riccardianus requires, then, only a minimal further change: the addition of the article before eudaimonia. I am not disturbed, as Else is, by the fact that the second half of the last of the disputed sentences (kai to telos.. .poiotes) seems to say much the same as the first. Such repetitions are not uncommon; and it in fact clarifies the first half, both by introducing the contrast with poiotes and by replacing 'is in [i.e. consists in] action' with the less ambiguous 'is a kind of action': Aristotle shows that 'is in' meant 'consists in', not 'is causally dependent on' (as it sometimes elsewhere does). 3. Bios in Aristotle always means a total way or mode of life. See J. M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge, MA 1975)15 9-61, and my 'Aristotle on human nature and the foundations of ethics', forthcoming. See also G. Else, Aristotle's Poetics: the Argument (Cambridge, MA 1967) 256—7. 4. D. W. Lucas, Aristotle's Poetics (Oxford 1968) 102. Others who exclude the passage as irrelevant include R. Kassel (Oxford Classical Text) and Else, op. cit. 253-5. Else comments, ' The superiority of activities over states - e.g. virtue - is a commonplace in Aristotle's philosophy and so widely attested that we hardly need to document it. The question is how that superiority is exploited for his immediate purpose here, which is to prove the supremacy of the plot, i.e. the poetic action.' 5. J. Jones, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London 1962) 30. 6. EN n u b 4 - 6 ; cf. EE 122833 ek tesproaireseds krinomenpoios tis. 7. On this case and the problems it raises for Aristotle's views about action, see Chapter 98. On this passage, see Ch. 7. 9. On hamartia, see especially T. C. W. Stinton, 'Hamartia in Aristotle and Greek Tragedy', CQ NS 25 (1975) 221-54; a l s o J- M. Bremer, Hamartia (Amsterdam 1969); R. D. Dawe, 'Some reflections on ate and hamartia', HSCP jz (1967) 89-123; E. R. Dodds, 'On misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex\ GR 13 (1966) 37-49, repr. in Dodds, ACP 64-77; P. W. Harsh, 'Hamartia again', TAP A 76 (1945) 47-5 8.1 discuss these issues further in 'Aristotle' (above n. 1) pp. 407-8. 10. For Plato's view of emotions, see Chs. 5 and 7 with references and bibliography. For related discussion of Aristotle, see Sherman, Aristotle and S. Leighton, 'Aristotle and the emotions', Phronesis 27 (1982). 11. Rhet. 1378331. Aristotle actually complic3tes matters further by adding reference to the orexis for revenge. 12. On the transferrsl of 'false' from the grounding belief to the emotion or feeling,
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13.
14. 15.
16. 17.
Notes to pp.1j 1-8 compare the account of false pleasure in Plato's Philebus, 37Aff., on which see B. A. O. Williams, 'Pleasure and belief, PASS 33 (1959). Something similar seems to be true for Kant - compare Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Akad. p. 394 with Doctrine of Virtue §34. But the variety of terms used in his text for pity and related attitudes makes detailed comparison impossible in a brief discussion. ' Outstanding' is too weak a translation for diapheron here; the correct force is captured in Golden's translation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1968). At I45 2b3 5 Aristotle says that tragedy should not show epieikeis andres falling from good to bad fortune. This is odd, since epieikes is usually more or less synonymous with spoudaios. Lucas ad loc. reviews the literature on the problem. The alternatives for reading the passage so that it will be consistent with those that follow seem to be: (1) to take epieikes here to have not its usual sense, but, instead, the sense ' surpassing in justice' (i.e. close to diapheron)\ (2) to argue that what Aristotle objects to here is not the fall of the good man per se, but his unexplained fall. Hamartia, later introduced, would provide the requisite explanation. Since no indication in the text supports the latter reading, and since 145 337, ho metaxu touton loipos, appears to support the former, we should probably choose it, charging Aristotle with inconsistency in vocabulary. L. Golden, 'Catharsis', TAP A 93 (1962) 51-60; and 'Mimesis and catharsis', CP 64 (1969) 45-53. On the word-group, see LSJ s.v., Chantraine, Diet. Etym., s.v., Brandwood, Lex. Plat. s.v. (I have found the study of the function of the words in the Phaedo, esp. 65ff. and in the myth, of special interest); on the Hellenistic situation, the edition of Menander Rhetor by D. A. Russell and N.Wilson (Oxford 1981). For references to other interpretations of katbarsis, and further critical discussion, see my 'Aristotle' (above n. 1); the classic defense of the purgation view is in J. Bernays, Grundvyige der verlorenen Abhandlung des Aristoteles uber Wirkung der Tragodie (Breslau 1875, repr. Hildesheim 1970). The theory of humors in question appears in no genuine Aristotelian work, but only in the spurious and late Problemata. Aristotle's genuine work on psychological processes announces its opposition to physiological reductionism in no uncertain terms. (See Nussbaum, De Motu Essays 1 and 3; Ch. 9 above; also Nussbaum, 'Aristotelian dualism: a reply to Howard Robinson', OSAP 2 (1984) 198-207.) Aristotle would surely be strongly opposed to Lucas's conclusion that the psychological function of tragedy could be replaced by a dose of medicine, if only Greek physicians had not 'lacked confidence in their power to control black bile'. A close English parallel is in the history of the word 'defecate' and its relatives. Here too, even a cursory study will show that the primary and continuous meaning is one o f ' clearing up' or ' clarifying'; frequently it has an epistemological application (cf. Oxford English Dictionary s.v.). Its specific application to the voiding of feces is relatively late, and (until very recently) just one application of the general meaning. We could say that to read katbarsis as medical purgation everywhere would be as inappropriate as to read every use of ' defecate' and ' defecation' in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers as having the meaning ' to void the feces' and to interpret any thinker who has a theoretical account of something called ' defecation' as talking about this particular type of clearing out or up. Consider what would become of the following, under such an interpretative principle: 1649 Jer. Taylor,' a defecation of his faculties and an opportunity of prayer' 1751 Johnson, Rambler no. 177, 'to defecate and clear my mind'
Notes to pp. jpo~4 1862 Gouiburn, Pers. Relig., "to defecate the dregs of the mind' 1866 Lowell, "a growing tendency to curtail language... and to defecate it of all emotion' 1867 F. Hall, Hindu Philos., "his judgment daily becomes more defecated' 1870 W. M. Rossetti, 4to defecate life of its misery' If a student of ours made the interpretative move in question, we would patiently point out that the word simply means 'clarification', and that the application to feces is one special case of this, only to be discovered where the immediate context gives clear evidence that it is that sort of clarification, and no other, that is in question. (I am very grateful to E. D. Hirsch for bringing this parallel to my attention.) 18. Golden has informed me orally that he has modified this part of his view. Golden does not discuss Pol. I34ib32ff., which has sometimes been used to support the purgation view; nor shall I, in great detail. The discussion of musical education in Pol. V I I I is at odds at a number of important points with the later mature doctrine of the Poetics; and this passage explicitly refers the reader to the later work (as to a work still unwritten) for a full and clearer discussion. The brief remarks are indeed unclear. Katharsis is linked in some way with medical treatment; but it is also linked to education. And the comparison of philosophical instruction to medical treatment was already common, too frequent to connote anything precise all by itself. (On this see my "Therapeutic arguments: Epicurus and Aristotle', in The Norms of Nature, ed. M. Schofield and G. Striker (Cambridge 198$).) There is no obstacle to the translation 'clarification', and no reason to suppose that at this time Aristotle had any very precise view of what clarification, in this case, was. 19. For related discussion, see Nussbaum, 'Fictions'. 20. See Nussbaum, 'Consequences' 25-53. 21. Cic. Acad. 11. 119; David the Armenian is the author of the second description (Aphrodites ennomougemon). For other ancient encomia of Aristotle's style, see G. Grote, Aristotle (London 1872) 1.43. Salient examples (most noted by Grote) are Cic. Top. 1.3 (incredibili copia, turn suavitate), De Or. 1.49, Brutus 121, Fin. 1.14, De Nat. Deor. 11.37; Dionysius Hal. De Vet. Scr. Censura (to hedu kai polumathes), Quintilian, Inst. Or. x.i (eloquendi suavitas). 22. Bernard Williams, for example, has frequently expressed this view to me in conversation. 23. For further discussion of these two alternatives, see Nussbaum, 'Crystals'; see also the comments by R. Wollheim, H. Putnam, and C. Diamond in the same (1983) issue of NLH. 24. On this motion, see M. F. Burnyeat, 'Aristotle on learning to be good', in Rorty, Essays 65^-92. 25. A draft of this section was delivered at the Institute of Classical Studies in London; at Brown University; at a conference on Aristotle's Literary Theory at Florida State University; as a Eunice Belgum Memorial Lecture at St Olaf College; and at Connecticut College, Vassar College, Swarthmore College, and Smith College. I would like to thank those present for comments, and especially Julia Annas, Myles Burnyeat, Leon Golden, E. D. Hirsch, Jr, Eugene Kaelin, Ruth Padel, Charles Segal, and Richard Sorabji.
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Notes to pp. j97~9 The betrayal of convention: a reading of Euripides' Hecuba
1. I have used the Teubner edition of S. G. Daitz (Leipzig 1973) and the Oxford Classical Text of Gilbert Murray (Oxford 1902). The critical discussions of the play that I have consulted include: Ernst L. Abrahamson, 'Euripides' tragedy of Hecuba', TAP A 83 (1952) 120-9; A. W. H. Adkins, 'Basic Greek values in Euripides' Hecuba and Hercules Furens\ CQ N S 16 (1966) 1 9 3 - 2 1 9 ; W. Arrowsmith, introduction to translation in Greek Tragedies vi, ed. D. Grene and R. Lattimore (New York 1958) 84-9; D. J. Conacher, Euripidean Drama (Toronto 1967) 146-65; S. G. Daitz, 'Concepts of freedom and slavery in Euripides' Hecuba\ Hermes 99 (1971) 217-26; G. M. A. Grube, The Drama of Euripides (London 1941) 93-7, 214-28; F. Heinimann, Nomos and Phusis (Basel 1945) 121-2; G. M. Kirkwood, 'Hecuba zndnomos', TAPA 78 (1947) 61-8; H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy (London 1939) 216-23; A. Lesky, 'Psychologie bei Euripides', in Fondation Hardt, Entretiens sur PAntiquite Classique vi (Geneva 1958) 123-50, esp. 151-68; L. Matthaei, Studies in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1918) 118-57; G. Meautis, Mytbes inconnus de la Grece antique (Paris 1944) 95-130; G. Norwood, Greek Tragedy (London 1929) 215-19; L. Pearson, Popular Ethics in Ancient Greece (Stanford 1962) i44ff.; M. Pohlenz, Die Griechische Tragodie (Gottingen 1954) 277-84; K. Reckford, ' Concepts of demoralization in Euripides' Hecuba', forthcoming; F. Solmsen, Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment (Princeton 1975); W. Ziircher, Die Darstellung des Menschen im Drama des Euripides (Basel 1947) 73-84.1 have considerable admiration for William Arrowsmith's translation of the play. I present my own more flat-footed rendering here for the sake of greater literalness, and also because in certain key passages Arrowsmith's renderings do not seem to me to catch the precise ethical emphasis of the text. (E.g. 799ff., where Arrowsmith informs me in conversation that he now would support a version similar to mine.) 2. It is clear that the shade, unlike the mangled corpse of which it tells us, retains the appearance of the living child, without decay or wound. Its aerial entrance, a privilege usually reserved for divinities, would not make us think, initially, of a dead human. (Polydorus explains his suspension by the fact that absence of burial forces the shade to hover, blown by the wind, about the scene of its death.) On the aerial entrance, see O. Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (Berkeley 1978) 12, 186 n. 20; W. Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytus (Oxford 1964) at line 1283. 3. Cf. Inferno xxx. 16-18: Ecuba trista, misera e cattiva poscia che vide Polissena morta e del suo Polidoro in su la riva del mar si fu la dolorosa accorta, forsennata latro si come cane; tanto il dolor le fe la mente torta. Hecuba sad, wretched, captive, after she saw Polyxena dead and recognized with anguish her Polydorus on the beach, deranged, barked like a dog; so had grief twisted her mind. It is significant that all modern English translations but one blunt the force o f ' fe la mente torta', rendering it with some more innocuous phrase like 'wrung her heart'. (The exception is Allan Mandelbaum's new version.)
Notes to pp. 399-400
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4. Influential, and characteristic, is Hermann's Preface to his 1831 (Berlin) edition. (I have only been able to locate his first edition (Leipzig 1806), which lacks this preface, so I cite these remarks from Matthaei's article.) The events of this play, he writes, are not 'tragica', they are 'nihil aliud quam detestabilia'. They would inspire tragic emotion only in the basest spectator: ' Non movent misericordiam nisi infimae plebis, turn maxime solitae et horrore et dolore perfundi cum oculis adspiciat atrocia.' Matthaei also notes that the Hecuba is one of three Greek tragedies that Racine did not annotate in the margins of his edition. For a twentieth-century rejection, see, for example, Norwood: 'The whole piece in its tone and method is far below the best of Eurpides' work... This pathos has no subtlety... We fall short of genuine tragedy and touch only melodrama.' After a review of such dismissals, Ernst Abrahamson, writing in 1952, makes an arresting historical judgment: 'It is possible that the horrible experiences of the last two decades were necessary to open our eyes again to the significance of this great and powerful tragedy. We have seen in our own day innumerable men and women dragged away from their devastated and burning homes, thrown into captivity and subjected to the most atrocious and infamous cruelty; we have seen them, as soon as their fortunes turned, betrayed by those whom they had called friends, and driven to the limits of abjection and despair.' Grube said something similar in 1941 (Drama 214). 5. Among three recent collections of papers on Euripidean drama, none includes an essay devoted to the Hecuba: E. Segal, ed., Euripides (Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1968); E. Schwinge, ed., Euripides, in the series Wege der Forschung (Darmstadt 1968) - which, however, reprints the Lesky article that contains a brief discussion of this play; Euripide, in the Fondation Hardt Entretiens vi (Geneva i960) (the original home of Lesky's article). The play is similarly ignored by the recent collection Greek Tragedy, ed., T. F. Gould and C. J. Herington, YCS 25 (1977), most of which is devoted to Euripides. Also without discussion of the play are the influential books on Euripides by A.P.Burnett (Catastrophe Survived: Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversal (Oxford 1971)), and Cedric Whitman (Euripides and the Full Circle of Myth (Cambridge, MA 1974)). In general works on tragedy or Greek literature the play is usually treated very briefly. Among the sources mentioned in n. 1, the strongest defenders of the play's importance include Arrowsmith, Matthaei, Abrahamson, Reckford. 6. It thus seems no accident that Hermann is in the first generation of scholars for whom Kant was a major influence; of course we should also recall that Kant was in many ways articulating an already prevalent ethical view. 7. Cf. Ch. 1 and Interlude 2. We can now add to our remarks about Kantianism in the interpretation of Greek literature the observation that Adkins's Kantian belief that circ*mstances beyond the agent's control cannot bring about ethical damage plays a regulative role in his decision about what a Greek text might and might not mean: see esp. his Appendix on the Scopas fragment of Simonides, Merit 357—8. 8. Although Hecuba's word for character is 1 phusis', which sometimes is connected with an idea of hereditary nature, Hecuba makes it clear that she is thinking primarily of the 'nature' that is formed by habituation and teaching. 'Phusis' was still the only general word available for this notion, and it is used this way in other contemporary texts - cf. for example Sophocles' Philoctetes, 78, 88, 874, 902. Her position thus appears close to that of Protagoras's speech: cf. Ch. 4. On 'phusis1 and 'gennaios' (Hecuba's word for 'noble', which implies fidelity to a stable nature or character), see Nussbaum, ' Consequences' 25-53; for further bibliography on 'phusis', see Ch. 4, n. 30, among
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Notes to pp. 1 j 1-8
which see esp. Heinimann, Nomos und Pbusts (Basel 1945, repr. 1965) 89-109. The word 4 charakterwhose original meaning is'distinctive mark' or4 seal', makes its first known appearance in this play, in connection with Polyxena's nobility (379). 9. Cf. Reckford, 'Concepts'. A similar view of the gods is ascribed to Hecuba in the Troades (415): Zeus may be' the intellect of mortals', while Aphrodite is a name mortals invoke to justify their excesses (886, 989). 10. For much of this background, see Lloyd-Jones, JZ, who stresses the continuous importance, in early Greek thought about morality, of the idea that there is a stable world order that will eventually bring the offense to justice. Lloyd-J ones correctly observes that these early beliefs about cosmic justice are held in such a form that the transition to the anthropocentric conceptions of Protagoras and Democritus is 'easy and natural', and that such a transition is in many respects easier than the transition to a Platonic theory (pp. 162-3), since Zeus's justice, if not anthropocentric, is at least anthropomorphic, structurally similar to the judgments of a human judge. Without denying any of this, we can observe that the removal of the stable divine backing opens the agent to moral possibilities of a new kind. Reacting to these possibilities, which could not be guarded against by a simple return to the older theology, Plato felt that it was necessary to search for a new form of life-saving techne. (We can also agree with Lloyd-J ones in stressing the extent to which even the older conception itself left the agent fragile in the face of contingency, in ways that Plato found intolerable; see, for example, his remarks about conflict on p. 160, and further discussion of these in Ch. 2.) 11. Cf. esp. G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore 1981) i82ff., with references. On the anthropocentricity of this conception, see Nagy, passim, and also the Introduction by J. Redfield, p. xii. Other references are in Ch. 1, notes. For related discussion of water imagery in connection with human excellence and human kleos, see G. Nagy, Comparative Studies in Greek and Indie Meter (Cambridge, MA 1974) Ch. 3, and also my (Psuche in Heracl*tus, n', Phronesis 17 (1972) 153-70, at i6off., where I argue that Heracl*tus has an anthropocentric, or, rather, in general a species-centered ethical view, according to which value, for each kind of being, can be seen and judged only within the context of the ongoing needs and ways of life of that species. 12. On the role of relational excellence in earlier moral views, see the excellent arguments of A. A. Long, 'Morals and values in Homer', JHS 90 (1970) 121-39. 13. Cf. Ch. 5, pp. 148—9, for a related point about stability. 14. On the nomos-phusis debate in fifth-century ethical talk, cf. esp. F. Heinimann, Nomos and Phusis; Guthrie, The Sophists ( = History in, Pt 1) 5 5-134; M. Pohlenz, ' Nomos und Phusis', Hermes 81 (1953) 418-83; A. W. H. Adkins, From the Many to the One (London 1970) 110-26; Dover, GPM, 74-95, 2 5 6fF.; and my 'Eleatic conventionalism and Philolaus on the conditions of thought', HSCP 83 (1979) 63-108 and 'Aristophanes', with textual references and bibliography. On phusis see references in Ch. 4, n. 30. On nomos, see also P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire e'tymologique de la langue grecque in (Paris 1974) s.v., who argues that the earliest meaning of the word is ' ce qui est conforme a la regie, l'usage, les lois generates'. Cf. also the more detailed study in E. Laroche, Histoire de la racine *nem- en grec ancien (Paris 1949). Heinimann has an excellent detailed discussion (esp. pp. 59-85) of the evolution in the sense of 'nomos' as it comes to be set over against'phusis' rather than used in close connection with it. Pp. 12iff. discuss the Hecuba as a salient example of this evolution. 15. The terminology of the debate is not altogether consistent. 'Phusis', formerly associated
Notes to pp. 402-4
16. 17. 18. 19.
20.
21.
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with the plant image and the emphasis on the growing, communal nature of anthropocentric value, becomes, gradually, opposed to 'nomos' and associated with the view that stresses the extra-human permanence of value; so it is not altogether clear from the presence of these words alone what contrast is intended. It is interesting that Aristotle retains the more traditional usage of 4phusis', associating the claim that excellence exists phusei with the idea that it is human and "all mutable', but not, on the other hand, arbitrary or superficial; he sometimes uses 4 nomos' for the superficially conventional, or initially arbitrary (EN 1134^8-33). I discuss criticisms of this inference in my "Eleatic conventionalism'. Cf. Critias D K 88 B25; Anon. Iambi. D K 89. See Laroche, Histoire, passim. Cf. esp. Heracl*tus 102, 23; Aristotle, EN x.8 (which in many ways reflects motifs of the earlier literary tradition, especially with regard to its portrayals of the gods). See my 'Psuche in Heracl*tus, 11', and Nagy, The Best, passim. For related philosophical discussion of the relationship between human values and human ways of life, see esp. S. Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (New York 1980), esp. Ch. 5, and H. Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge 1980). Other references are in my "Eleatic conventionalism'. Trusting interpersonal relationships are essential to the functioning of Homeric society; it is not an exaggeration to say that the plot of the Iliad centers around the central ethical value of the pistos hetairos,4 trustworthy friend' (cf. xvni.23 5,460, xvn. 5 5 7 of Patroclus; for other occurrences, see xv.437, 331, xvii.500, 589; Od. xv.539). Even enemies receive oaths and offers of hospitality without suspicious precaution, as the relationship of Achilles and Priam shows with especial clarity; this makes such violations of these bonds as the epics do depict particularly shocking. Aristotle emphasizes the importance of trust in beliefs about friendship and love at EN 115 6b29,
EE I2 37bi2, MM i2o8b24, Pol. i3i3b2. 22. This is now generally agreed. W. Schmid's conjecture of 417 (Gesch. d. gr. Lit. 1 Teil, 3. Band, 1. Halfte (Munich 1949)) has long since been rejected. 23. Related Thucydidean issues are discussed in A. L. Edmunds, Chance and Intelligence in Thucydides (see Ch. 4). Meautis, Mythes links the play with Thucydides' observation of Thracian brutalities at Mycalessos in 415. Besides being anachronistic, this connection reflects Meautis's view that the Hecuba is a condemnation of barbarian brutality only, and a vindication of the distinction between Greek and barbarian; we shall criticize that view below. Further material on connections between Euripides and contemporary political thought can be found, for example, in Solmsen, Intellectual Experiments Ch. 2, esp. pp. 56fF., and J. H. Finley, Jr, "Euripides and Thucydides', Three Studies on Thucydides (Cambridge, MA 1967); cf. also Daitz, "Concepts' 219, Abrahamson, 'Euripides' tragedy' 12iff. 24. Thuc. 111.82-3.1 have for the most part followed the translation of this extraordinarily difficult passage given by Gomme in his Historical Commentary on Thucydides n (Oxford 1956). All changes but two are minor stylistic variations. (1) In the second sentence I accept the cogent argument of J. Wilson,"'" The customary meanings of words were changed" - or were they? A note on Thucydides 3 . 8 2 . 4 ' , CQ N S 3 2 (1982) 18-20. It is not the meanings of the ethical terms that are changed, but their applications to types of actions. (2) I diverge from Gomme (and agree with Hobbes) in the important sentence beginning "Openness...' There is no agreement about the force of the construction with metechei. The sentence literally reads, "The open [guileless], in which
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26.
27.
28. 29.
Notes to pp.407-7 above all the noble participates (metecbei)..Some translators understand the sense to be, 'Openness, of which noble character is the greatest part...' If, however, we compare the corresponding construction at 1.84.3, where the point must be to explain how Spartans came by their courage by saying that the greatest part of courage is a sense of shame, and the greatest part of the sense of shame is that moderation and orderliness which have just been said to be the products of Spartan law (rather than to explain the genesis of orderliness by tracing it to courage), we have strong reason to follow Hobbes. This clearly makes better sense in any case: it is very bizarre to speak of noble character as a part of trustfulness, whereas it is perfectly reasonable, and a sense bome out by the rest of the passage, to speak of trustfulness as a chief part of noble character. This accords, as well, with Plato' use of constructions with metechei. The thing participated in (viz. the form) is what explains the character of the things that participate. 'Justice, in which above all Socrates participates *, would mean not that Socrates is the greatest part of what Justice is, but, obviously, that Justice is a big part of what Socrates is. Cf. also Symp. 211 A, where ' face or hands or any other of those things in which body metechei' means not that body is a part of face and hands, but that these are parts of body. Plato's Thrasymachus, asked whether justice is, in his view, a vice, replies that it is 'a very noble simplicity' (panugennaia euetheia, 348c 12): it is the way your character is when you are still trusting in communal agreements, before you discover that they are made by selfish people to secure power for themselves. I have not found this point in the literature. The importance of the contrast between Polyxena and Hecuba is emphasized by Conacher, Euripidean Drama (Toronto 1967) 13, who, however, makes the contrast a contrast only of characters or personalities: it is because Hecuba has a less noble character than her daughter that she is corrupted. This approach, which ignores both Polyxena's own fears of corruption and the play's emphasis on the cumulative weight of Hecuba's discoveries, is well criticized by Abrahamson, 128-9. Cf. also Reckford, 'Concepts' n. 6 with further references. On the connection between eyes and trust, see (for only a few among many examples) Pindar, Nem. vm.40-4 (cf. Ch. 1), Aes. Ag. 79jff., Cho. 671, Soph. Phil, no, Eur. Ion. For a full discussion of the eye and its symbolism in Greek and related cultures, see W. Deonna, Le symbolisme de Poeil (Paris 1965). See also Ch. 3, pp. 70-2, 76-9 and n. 63. Cf. Talthybius's wish to die before he encounters something shameful (497-8); see Abrahamson, 'Euripides' tragedy' 129. The debate on this issue is comprehensively reviewed by Reckford, 'Concepts' n. 1. Outspoken critics of the play's structure in recent times include Kitto, Greek Tragedy (215, 268-9), Norwood, Greek Tragedy; some critics believe that the only substantial connection between the parts is that both present sufferings of Hecuba that contribute to her decline (see Grube, The Drama, Pohlenz, Die Griechische Tragodie). Matthaei, Studies, argues that this would not be unity enough; but her view of the connection - that there is a contrast between the requirements of a communal justice based on nomos and the demands of personal, private justice - seems unable to explain the decline itself.
3 0 . Lines 7 , 19, 2 6 , 8 2 , 7 1 0 , 7 1 5 , 7 7 4 , 7 8 1 , 79°» 7 9 4 , 8 5 2 , 8 9 0 , 1 2 1 6 , 1 2 3 5 , 1 2 4 7 . 3 1 . Lines 1 2 2 7 , 7 9 4 .
32.
xenia as a fundamental relational value, see for example Iliad Od. ix. 3 70 (where the Cyclopes' violation of xenia is the sign of their complete
F o r the importance of v i . 1 i9ff.,
moral obtuseness and their distance from the human - compare Ch. 8). T h e entire issue
Notes to pp.
ij8-62
509
is well discussed in H. Bolkestein, Wohltatigkeit und Armenpflege im vorcbristlichen Altertum (Utrecht 1939) 79-94, H I , 118-32, 2 1 4 - 3 1 . Cf. also M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (London 1 9 5 6 ) , M. Nilsson, Gescb. der gr. Relig., Erster Bd. (Munich 1 9 5 5 ) 4 1 7 - 2 3 ; E. Benveniste, La Vocabulaire des institutions indo-europeennes (Paris 1 9 6 9 ) 1, 87ff., 341 ff. On the Cyclopes, see G. Kirk, Myth: its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Cambridge 1 9 7 0 ) i62ff. 33. The other male-female pair that figures prominently in the Hecuba is Helen and Paris. The crime of Paris, which also involves a violation of xenia and is responsible for destroying the city can be confronted, nonetheless, without moral disorientation, partly because the erotic motivation (cf. 6 3 5 - 7 ) makes it so predictable, and almost inevitable. 34. For discussion of Homeric and related views of the importance of according proper treatment to the corpse, see Nussbaum, lPsuche\ with references. 35. Kirkwood, 'Hecuba and nomos' argues that Hecuba's moral change occurs only later, when Agamemnon refuses her his aid. He needs, however, to distinguish two moral changes: (1) the change from trust in binding conventions to suspicious, solitary revenge-seeking; and (2) the change from the belief that other people can be used as instrumental means in this revenge to the belief that it is best to work alone. The second is the change that takes place in the scene with Agamemnon; and it seems far less important than the one that takes place here. Here she realizes that everything is 'untrustworthy'; here she decides that she must take up a new nomos in place of the old; here she announces her intention of being ruled by the revenge spirit. Conacher, Euripidean Drama (20), Pohlenz, Die Griechische Tragodie ( 2 9 1 ) , and Grube, The Drama (222) all locate the crucial transition at the discovery of the murder; Meautis, Mythes agrees ( 1 1 6 ) , adding that the'derniers liens' are broken in the scene with Agamemnon. 36. It is impossible to convey in translation all the ambiguities of this answer. ' Apiston' can mean either' untrusted',' un-looked-for',' incredible', or ' untrustworthy',' unreliable'. So Hecuba expresses in one word both her surprise and her sense of betrayal. 37. The play contains an unusually large number of references to tuche through various connected words; see esp. 488-91, where Talthybius's response to the disorder he sees is to wonder whether the world of mortal beings is not governed by tuche alone. See Reckford, 'Concepts' n. 9. 38. Notice that the word 'deinon' is used here to signal Hecuba's shift: instead of the remarkable (deinon)firmnessof good character, we have a new and more terrible wonder: the remarkable wrong done to this woman (694). 39. The importance of this pun as a sign of Hecuba's moral change is also emphasized by Reckford, 'Concepts' (n. 7, with bibliography). On the etymology, see Laroche, Histoire; Chantraine, Dictionnaire in s.v. nomos. 40. See n. 27 above. 4 1 . This idea receives a remarkable development in Plato's Alcibiades 1 1 3 2 C - 1 3 3 B , where it is claimed that just as self-seeing requires seeing one's own image in the kore of the beholder, so self-knowledge concerning things of the soul requires knowing oneself in another's soul. 4 2 . Cf. the discussion of Aes. Eum., this ch., pp. 4 1 6 - 1 7 . 43. Euripides was notorious in antiquity for this interest, which is parodied by Aristophanes both in Frogs and in Thesmophoria^usae, where Eurpides masquerades as a woman in order to gain entree into restricted religious observances. 44. Lines 886ff. The first is the story that forms the basis for Aeschylus's Suppliants: the daughters of Danaus, outraged by the enforced marriage with the sons of Aegyptus,
510
Notes to pp. 1j1-8
kill their husbands on the wedding night. In the second, the women of Lemnos, having somehow offended Aphrodite, are afflicted by a disgusting odor that makes their husbands neglect them for foreign concubines. Enraged at this, they slaughter all the males. Both myths seem to express in opposed ways a woman's desire for bodily self-sufficiency, which expresses itself in vindictive violations of a situation of trust. 45. Although the women seem to act in concert, careful examination of their dialogue and of the choral lyrics reveals that there is no genuine cooperation or mutuality here, but only parallel projects of revenge. The choral lyrics, sometimes criticized for their dissociation from the action (cf. Kitto, Greek Tragedy 217), reveal, in their completely personal and solipsistic quality, the degree to which each woman, as an 41', is obsessed with private dreams of revenge. Just following the inauguration of the revenge scheme is the most solipsistic lyric of all (905-52), in which each woman remembers herself "gazing at the endless light deep in the golden mirror'. A mirror now substitutes for the eyes of another (cf. Aes. Ag. 839). Although they sing and act in unison, the vision of each is private. 46. See H. Scholz, Der Hund in der griechisch-rdmiscben Magie und Religion (Berlin 1937) esp. 7ff.; Meautis, Mytbes; Nagy, The Best 312-13; J. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago 1975) 193-202; and now, R. Parker, Miasma (Oxford 1983). 47. On this speech, see Conacher, Euripidean Drama 22; Grube, The Drama 223-4; Meautis, op. cit. 127-8. 48. See Conacher, op. cit. 23-4 (who compares Aes. Ag. 385); Solmsen, Intellectual Experiments 5 6-7 - who strangely speaks of a 4 Utopian idea', an4 experiment of reason'. 49. Cf. Cho. 924, 1054; Eum. 132, 246, 253-4; also 106, 111, ii7ff., 130, 326, 412; though they also have traits of other animals (cf. 48, where they are compared to Gorgons). 50. Recall the importance of good-will and well-wishing in Aristotelian philia. 51. Compare the discussion of Cyclopes and other solitary beings in Chs. 8 and 12. 52. Oedipus's blinding is self-inflicted and an act of insight and acknowledgment; he recognizes by and in pain the true significance of his act, therefore the extent to which horrible acts can become ours without our voluntary collaboration. Polymestor, too, is a victim of the world; but the victimization cuts, in his case as in Hecuba's, deeper; there is no dignity and no recognition, on either side. 5 3. Compare the excellent account of the meaning of bodily violence in Seneca in C. Segal, 4Boundary violation and the landscape of the self in Senecan tragedy', Antike und Ahendland 29 (1983) 172-87. 54. I am thinking here primarily of the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche's position in Zarathustra is more complex. It appears there that all human beings are in need of being delivered from revenge; and this can be accomplished only by the acceptance of the idea of eternal return, therefore of the worldliness, temporality, and untrustworthiness of human existence. 55. Abrahamson, 'Euripides' tragedy' correctly emphasizes (128-9) ^ ^ Hecuba's decline is not the fault of an especially weak character; indeed, even her choices can be defended as right within these terrible circ*mstances. 56. 'Perhaps it is easier, where you live, to kill guest-friends. For us Greeks, at any rate, this is a shameful thing.' Compare Odysseus's claims about barbarians at 328-31; his remarks about barbarian honor to their dead would be rejected by an audience whose central poetic text is the story of a ' barbarian' people's commitment to honor their dead. Nor does the play support his charges: it ends with the departure of Hecuba to bury her dead children. As for Agamemnon, the difference he alleges is nowhere
Notes to p. 421
511
supported in literature or myth: only non-human Cyclopes lightly violate xenia. On Agamemnon, see also Matthaei, Studies 150, and Grube, The Drama 222, who oddly calls this behavior 'delightfully human*. 57. It is old, clearly, in relation to its own poetic tradition: compare the ending of Sophocles' Philoctetes, where the returning warriors will be escorted from the island in a ship conveyed by ' great destiny, and the judgment of friends, and the all-subduing daimon, who brought this to fulfillment'. (See Nussbaum, 4Consequences'.) 5 8. In my work on this chapter, I am grateful to Kenneth Reckford, who first urged me to include a discussion of the Hecuba in this book; to audiences at Harvard University and the University of Iowa for a most helpful discussion; to Ruth Padel and to Harvey Yunis for extremely helpful comments.
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General index
Abraham, 35 Account (logos), ability to provide an, 130, 1 3 1 ,
153, 134, 163, 185-6, 191, 204, 218, 227, 249, 292, 298-9, 300, 302, 312, see also Techne Episteme
Acheron, 66 Achilles, 98, 598, 414 Activity: akousion and hekousion, 43, 282-6; animal, in Aristotelian thought, 237-8, 245, 264-89, 292; common explanation of
(aitia\ 139, 265-8, 269, 273, 283, 285;
contemplation, 13 8-41,146,147-8,150,15 8, 2 2 159, 181-3, I 9°» ZOI > 3 » 2 42, 37 6 , 381; criteria for ranking of, 121, 145-6, 147-51, 458; energeia, 324, 326-7; human, in Aristotelian thought, 238, 253-4, 257, 259, 265-89, 318; imagination, 186, 260,
270, 276, 278, 279, 308, 311, 325, 370;
intellectual, 20, 138, 139, I 4 1 , 145, M 0 " 1 ,
152, 161, 162, 177, 182, 188-91, 197, 201, 204, 205, 216, 217, 222, 226, 246, 251, 259, 264, 270-2, 307-9, 314-16, 319, 357, 374, 496; kinesis, 326-7; learning and teaching, 69, 79, 126-9, 134, 150, 176-7, 180, 186, 215, 223, 225, 226, 285, 319, 346-7, 362, 388, 390; need-relative/vulnerability of, see Vulnerability; as an ordering, 20, 72, 78,
138-40, 142, 247, 251, 259-62, 393;
psychological explanation of, 265-9; physiological explanation of, 265-9, 270-3, 275, 278, 279-81, 390; role in good life (1eudaimonia), 318-42, 343-5, 358, 375-6, 379-83; tripartite classification of, 144-5; see also Intellect, Materialism, Noesis, Orexis, Passions, Passivity, Philosophy, Political activity, Praise and blame, Purity, Rationality, practical, Sexual desire and activity, Stability, Vulnerability Adeimantus, 136 Admetus, 45 Aegospotami, 169 Aeschines, 59 Aeschylus, 9, 32, 34, 40, 44, 45, 49, 89, 108,
122, 124, 170, 186 Agamemnon, 32-8, 41, 42-50, 70, 129; choral odes in, 3 3 - 7
Eumenides, 37, 4 1 6 ; and logical consistency,
26, 33, 46
Oresteia, 41, 416 Prometheus Bound, 89, 107, 108 Seven against Thebes, 38-40, 41, 42-50; choral
odes in, 38-40 Agamemnon, 3 3 - 9 , 42, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51,
3 3 4 - 5 , 380, 3 » 3 , 3 ® 7 , 598» 409, 4 1 0 , 4 I 3 ,
414, 418-19
Agathon, 168, 171, 177-8, 184, 194 Agathon and hakon, 55, 56, 178, 185 Akrasia, 111, 113-17, 119, 240, 245, 247 Alcaeus, 59 Alcestis, 45
91-4, 117, 129, 130, 134, 165-8, 169-71, 1 7 7 - 8 1 , 184-99, 201 > 2°3» 2°4» 218, 232, 311, 313, 365, 386, 420
Alcibiades,
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 253 Ambitioso, 395 Anglo-American philosophy, 15, 32, 187, 394 Animal sacrifice, 37 Anthropocentrism, 154-6, 228, 232, 238, 242-3,
282, 291-4, 304, 309, 367, 368, 372, 373,
378, 400, 403, 496, see also Aristotle, Plato, Protagoras, Standpoint Antigone, 14, 40, 53, 55, 57, 60, 61, 6 3 - 7 , 70,
71, 75, 77, 82, 118, 131, 387
Aphrodite, 25, 74, 176, 194 Apollo, 79, n 8 , 313 Apollodorus, 131, 167, 168, 170, 183
Appearances, see Phainomena
Appetites and desires, see Passions
Arche, 276, 282
Archilochus, 123 Ares, 76, 77, 176 Argos, 71 Aristodemus, 168, 183, 184 Aristophanes, 105, 108-9, 110,
113, 171-6, 181,
183, 184, 186, 194, 197, 216; Clouds, 173; Frogs, 108, 124, 169, 170; Wasps, 389
Aristotle, 9 - 1 0 , i i , 14, 18, 19, 27, 44, 46, 80,
87, 94, 100, 104, 122, 130, 149, 156, 160, 191, 220, 222, 418-19, 421; Categories, 280;
De Anima, 238, 265, 266, 270, 275, 276, 277, 281, 283, 308, 374; De Caelo, 243, 247, 257, 373; De Motu Animalium, 238,
265, 276, 277, 278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 287, 527
5
32
General index
(cont.) 288; differences with Plato, 163, 237-9, 240, 242-3, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258-9, 260, 265, 269, 272-3, 275, 290-2, 294, 295, 299, 300, 303, 304, 308, 310, 311-12, 315, 319, 321, 329, 342, 343, 352, 353, 356, 357, 361, 363, 367, 369, 370, 373, 374-7, 378, 379, 381-3, 386, 388, 390-4, 399, 401, 4*i ;
Aristotle
Eudemian Ethics, 241, 262, 286, 288, 318,
321, 323, 359, 365; and explanation of action, 264-89; Generation and Corruption,
247, 252; Magna Moralia, 292, 318,335,
349» 3 5 9» 368; Metaphysics, 95-6, 246, 247,
248, 250, 251-7, 259, 261, 278, 280, 281, 326, 374; methodology of, 10-12, 237-8, 240-58, 259-63, 287, 290, 294, 311-12, 320-2, 323, 367, 370-1, 373, 377;
Nicomachean Ethics, 124, 186, 218, 240,
243, 248, 257, 261, 283, 284, 286, 292, 294, 295, 296, 299, 300-3, 305-6, 310, 314, 318, 319, 320, 322, 323-5, 328, 330-3, 335, 336, 338. 34o, 34i, 343. 345, 346, 348, 35°, 351,
353-67, 369, 373-7, 387; Parts of Animals, 260, 262; Physics, 243, 244, *45» 249, 255, 280, 292, 319, 374; Poetics, 122, 378-82, 384-8, 500-1; Politics, 245, 246, 249, 286, 295, 296, 304, 305, 341, 346-8, 351, 353,
362, 374, 402; Posterior Analytics, 249, 250,
251, 256, 257, 290, 303; and practical
deliberation, 290-317; Prior Analytics, 389; Rhetoric, 337, 338, 340, 355, 359, 360, 361,
382-5, 388, 390; and
'saving the
appearances', see Phainomena; on techne,
95-6, 237, 258, 260, 291-4, 295, 298, 300; on universal principles, 298-301; on vulnerability, 318-42, 343-73, 381-2, 383-5, 386, 418-19; see also Activity,
Akrasia, Dialectic, Episteme, Eudaimonia, excellence, First principles, Noesis, Non-contradiction, principle of, Orexis,
Paideia, Passions, Phainomena, Praise and blame, Skepticism, Style, Tragedy, Women and the feminine Artaxerxes, 169 Artemis, 25, 34, 37 Asceticism, 151-2, 154, 156, 203, 209, 232 Athena, 40, 41, 42, 416 Athens, 40, 51, 54, 57, 58, 74, 75, 89, 91, 136,
137, 154, 167, 171, 177, 180, 193, 207, 212,
232, 248, 279, 303; climate of political state, 127, 136, 165-6, 169, 170, 345; mythology of autochthony, 4 0 ; Periclean attempts to harmonize values in, 6 7 - 8 , 74 Atomists, 269 Atreus, 34 Attica, see Athens Aulis, 37, 44
Bacon, F., 243, 244
Barnes, j., 256 Beauty, 112, 156, 157, 190, 204, 214, 215, 217,
219, 220, 308, 342; as adelphon, 179; of
Alcibiades, 165, 193-4; ascent of, 179-84, 185, 195» i98> 2 1 7 . 230, 2 9 4 ; form of, 182; love of, see Love; personal, 92, 165,
166, 172-6, 177-80, 184, 214-15;
quantification of, 92, 177-81, 196; of souls, 179, 2 2 3 ; therapeutic pursuit of, 177, 179; uniformity of, 179-83; see also Alcibiades, Kalon, Love Bendis, 136 Bentham, J., 89, 112 Bird-netting, imagery of, 20, 75
Blindness, imagery of, 81, 410-12, 417, see also Eyes and seeing, imagery of Boldness of temper, willing (tharsos hekousion), see Passion, Action Bondage and freedom, imagery of, 247, 419 Boreas, 225, 232 Brandt, R. B., 174 Bucephalus, 100 Burkert, W., 37 Burnyeat, M., 251, 252 Bury, R. G., 168, 170
Calchas, 33, 34 Callicles, 124, 142-4, 153, 173 Calypso, 2 Cassandra, 414, 416 Cephalus, 137, 138, 155, 200, 208
Character (hexis), 299, 324, 326, 327, 343, 357,
358, 359, 379. 381;
in drama,
378-83, 386,
390—1, 394—421; see also Character, good
Character, good, 218, 223, 306, 311, 318-42, 343, 3 5 2 . 39°» 3 9 7 - 4 2 i ; and philia, 355, 357. 3*8, 359; stability of, 319, 322, 329, 332> 333. 334, 37*. 398> 399~4o, 403. 405-6, 421; vulnerability of, see Vulnerability; see also Character,
Eudaimonia, Vulnerability Chronology of Platonic dialogues,
470-1
City {polis),
459-60,
105; ideal, 163, 195, 225; in
Protagoras, 101-3; as valuable object of
attachment, 40, 53-63, 66, 67, 73, 74, 207, 313, 341, 3 4 5 - 5 3 ; see also Argos, Athens, Plato, Political activity, Ship imagery, Sparta, Thebes Clytemnestra, 33 Coins, imagery of, 58, 60, 62, see also Commensurability of value Commensurability of value, 5 5 - 8 , 60, 197; in Aristotle, 291, 294-% 307, 309-10, 3 1 2 ; in Bentham and Sidgwick, 1 1 2 - 1 3 ; as mark of true science, 294; in Plato, 92, 94,
107-11, 115, 116, 197, 294; see also Coins,
imagery of, Singleness of value scheme, Techne, Unity of virtues
General index Conflict, contingent, of ethical claims, 7, 8, 2 7 - 8 , 4 6 , 4 8 - 9 , 5 1 ; in Aeschylus, 3 2 5 ;
in Antigone, 52, 54, 56, 57, 5 8, 60, 64,
6 7 - 8 , 74, 8 1 ; in Kant, 3 1 - 2 , 4 8 - 9 ; in Plato, 91, 105, 115, 158-9, 1 8 1 ; Techne as a meatus of resolving, 9 0 - 1 , 9 4 - 6 , 109, i n , 1 1 7 ; as a test of character, 4 1 - 4 ; as a time of learning and development, 4 4 - 6 ; see also Conflict, tragic, Moral/non-moral distinction, standpoint, Techne, Value, Vulnerability Conflict, tragic, 25, 2 7 - 8 , 51, 3 3 5 ; in
Agamemnon, 33-8; in Antigone, 52, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 65-8, 74, 78, 80-1; and blame, 28, 41, 42, 43~4, 335 ; in choral odes, Aeschylean, 4 1 - 2 , 4 3 - 6 ; and logical
consistency, 26, 30, 33; in Seven against Thebes, 38-40; see also Aeschylus, Conflict, contingent, of ethical claims, Praise and blame, Sophocles, Tragedy Consistency, 26, 33, 46, 5 3 - 6 3 , 67-70, 78-82, 83, 1 3 7 , see also Self-sufficiency, Stability Corcyra, 404-5, 410 Creon, 4 0 , 53-63, 65, 6 6 , 67, 7 1 , 72, 73, 75, 78,
79, 80, 81, 82, 108, 118, 127, 128, 130, M3, i59, 174, 216, 383, 387, 388, 390
Critias, 124, 169 Cynossema, 398, 420-1, see
also Dogs, imagery of
Daimonion, 202, 211 Danae Ode, 7 5 - 7 , 8 0 - 1 Dante, 399 Death, 7 2 - 3 , 152, 216, 221, 309, 3 1 3 - 1 5 , 4*3
Deinon, 52-3, 59, 62, 72-3, 76, 78, 79, 399
Deliberation, practical, 3 4 - 5 , 4 8 - 9 , 50, 51, 53, 57, 58, 60, 62, 79, 80, 89, 159, 282; in Aristotle, 290-317, 320, 348; instrumentalist view of, 9 6 - 8 , 102, 109, 119, 296-7, 308; and measurement, 90, 1 0 6 - 1 0 ; particularity and universality in,
69, 291, 298, 306, 307, 309-10, 312, 316-17; prohairesis, 283-j, 286, 307;
proper standpoint for, see Standpoint; in
Protagoras, 89-121
Demeter, 74 Democritus, 95, 124, 269, 270, 271, 273 Detienne, M., 19, 310 Dialectic, 228, 251, 3 9 3 ; method of division, 228 Dialogue, see Style Diogenes of Apollonia, 269, 271 Diogenes Laertius, 84, 269, 389 Dion of Syracuse, 200, 228, 229, 230, 232 Dionysus, 77, 82, 108, 119, 170, 193, 194 Diotima, 92, 167, 168, 176, 177-82, 184, 195,
*97, 199, 206, 211, 216, 221, 294, 298, 311,
357 Dirce, 70 Dodds, E. R., 97 Dogs, imagery of, 398, 4 1 3 , 414, 416, 417, see
5 35
also Cynossema Dover, K . J., 188 Earth, 39, 72, 1 0 0 ; imagery of, 7 2 - 3 , 74 Edelstein, L., 97 Eleatics, 242, 247, 2 5 3> 25 5, 2 56 Elenchos, 128-9, I 3 3 _ 4 , T 7^ Eliot, T . S., 235 Emotions, 143, 155, 157, 186, 190, 201, 202,
204-5, 208, 214, 215, 216, 230, 307-9, 335,
3 6 3 ; as element in soul, see Soul; fear, 1 3 1 , 157, *94, 2 1 5 » 222, 359> 3 8 3 , 385-6, 388, 390-1; grief, 130, 131, 157; love, see Eros, Love, Philia; piety, 57, 64, 65, 66, 74, 103, 3* 5, 3 3 4 - 5 , 380, 4 1 4 ; P " y , 130, 3 2 8» 535> 383-5, 387, 388, 390-1; as either rational or irrational, 3 8 3 ; tragic, 239, 378-94; see also Passions, Soul, Tragedy Empedocles, 124, 125, 126 Epictetus, 181 Epicureans, 162 Epicurus, n o , 345, 389 Epimetheus, 100, 107
Episteme, 120, 186, 191, 250, 251, 258, 259, 298, 304, 443-4; relation to techne, 94, r u , 112, 290, 292, 300, 302, 305; translation of, 94
Er,
131, 223
Erastes and eromenos, 92, 188-9, I 9 2 > I94> 195, 203, 210, 229, 232, see also Eros, Love, Passivity and receptivity, Self-sufficiency, Sexual desire and activity Erichthonius, 4 0 Erinyes, 4 1 6 , see also Eumenides, Furies
Bros, 17, 39, 61, 63, 65, 70, 74, 82, 94, 130, 165,
166, 167, 171-6, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 194-9, 200, 203-6, 209, 211, 213, 217, 219, 221, 222, 225, 226, 230, 232, 357, 369-70, 383, see also Alcibiades, Erastes
and eromenos, Love, Passions Eteocles, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49, jo, 51, 55,
63,65
Ethical particularity, 298-305, see also Commensurability of value, singleness of value scheme, Universal principles Etymological puns, 2 3 1 , 472
Eudaimonia, 284, 297, 374, 375, 377, 379, 45 8,
4 9 6 ; and activity, see Activity; and Greek philosophical tradition, 3; and relational goods, 343-72, 374; and self-sufficiency, 3, 137, 142-3, 3 1 8 ; translation of, 6, 52; and tuche, 318-42, 384, 386; see also Activity, role in good life, Stability, Vulnerability Eudoxus, n o , 180 Eumenides, 416, see also Erinyes, Furies Euripides, 43, 83, 84, 105, 108, 124, 169-70,
274, 339> 393; Cyclops, 252; Hecuba, 397-421; Rhesus, 389; Trojan Women^
313-17; see also Literature, Poetry, Style, Tragedy
532General index Eurydice, 62 Euthyphro, 25, 30, 107 Excellence, human (arete), 84, 103, 124, 296-7,
507, 375-6, 413, 419, 421; and agathon and kakon, 5 5; choral considerations of, 35, 36-9, 40, 4 1 ; and external goods, 6, 292,
296, 298, 300, 302, 329, 336, 343,
349. 5 5 I ,
35 7, 55 8, 359, 362, 37°» 587, 405, 418, as plant-image, 1 - 2 , 20; vulnerability of, see Vulnerability; see also Activity, contemplation, Character, Character, good, Justice, Love, 'Philia, Political activity Experience, 287, 305-6, 318, 321, 365 Explanation, concern with, see Account, ability to provide an, Techne External goods: conflict in choosing among, 7, 7 8 - 8 1 ; role in eudaimon life, 318, 319, 330, 53i, 345-73, 384, 401; relationship to human excellence, 6 Eyes and seeing, imagery of, 63, 71, 75, 78, 79,
81, 83, 120, 138, 408, 410-12, 413, see also Blindness, imagery of
Hedonism, see Pleasure Hegel, 52, 63, 67, 72, 74, 75, 77, 78 Helen, 43, 44, 181, 202, 212, 232, 414 Hephaestus, 175-6 Heracl*tus, xiii, 23, 69, 80, 82, 123, 235, 241,
246, 260, 262, 342, 3^2. Hermae, 166, 1 7 1 , 212, 213 Hermes, 171, 176, 200, 233 Herodotus, 123, 124, 245 Hesiod, 123, 124, 126 Hippasus of Metapontum, 107 Hippocrates, 93, 94, 97, 1 0 1 , 103, 105, 1 1 9 , 120,
127, 130, 131, 307 Hippocratic writers, 89, 94, 95, 96, 108, 1 1 3 ,
124, 126; De Arte, 89, 95; On Sterile Women, 96; De Vetere Medicina, 95, 96 Homer, 92, 94, 98, 107, 108, 123-6, 129, 226,
227, 252, 266-7, 274, 349, 387 Honor and respect (Time and sebein), 56, 64, 65,
Mi, 295 Hubris, 204, 206, 221
Human being4, characteristic functions of, 2 2
2
Family, Platonic conception of, 159 Fear, see Emotions First principles of science, 250-1, 252-4, see also Non-contradiction, principle of Flexibility in ethical choice, 291, 301-5, 306, 309, 310, 312, 316, 421, see also Mutability of practical affairs, Passivity and receptivity, Stability Flute-playing, 165-6, 295 Forms, 195, 256, 292, 304; akin to soul, 138; of Beauty, see Beauty; of Good, 193 ; love of, see Love Fragility, see Vulnerability Furies, 41, see also Erinyes, Eumenides Gagarin, M., 26 Ganymede, 2, 220, 231 Glaucon (Republic), 136, 1 4 1 , 144, 145, 155,
162, 170, 242 Glaucon (Symposium), 168, 170 Golden, L., 388, 389 Gorgias, 132 Gorgon, 77 Guthrie, W. K. C , 97 Hackforth, R., 203, 205, 207, 208, 209, 215 Haemon, 56, 57, 60-5, 68, 70, 7 1 , 75, 79-81,
118, 174, 197 Hamartia, 382-3
Hanslick, E., 157 Hare, R. M., 31, 32, 48 Hecataeus, 123 Hector, 313, 314, 397 Hecuba, 3 1 3 - 1 7 , 539, 385, 597~42i
9 ~~5, 325, 5 57; nature of, 252, 253-4,
5 7, 259> 509, 550-1, 366; as self-moving animal, see Activity Hume, D., 1 0 1 , 102, 103, 214, 275 Identity, personal, 222-3, 246» 2 94, 556, 360-7 Imagery: Alcibiades as an image, 193-4; as means of conveying truth, 122-35, 185-7, 193, 201, 215, 226; see also Bird-netting, Blindness, Bondage and freedom, Coins, Dogs, Earth, Eyes and seeing, Openingup, Plants, Plowing, Ships, Statues, Sun and lightning bolt, Taming, Water and liquid Imagination, see Activity Indeterminacy of practical affairs, see Mutability of practical affairs Intellect: intellectual activity, see Activity; logistikon, see Soul; mathematical reasoning, 133, 147-8, 149, 155, 156, 159,
162, 238, 325; phronema, 72, 75; wholly
intellectual reading of texts, 68—70; see also Passions, Soul, Sun and lightning bolt, imagery of, Rationality, practical
Intentionality, 269—76, see also Orexis Ionic dialect, 129 Iphigenia, 33, 34, 5 6 , 57, 45 Irrationality, see Rationality, practical
Irwin, T., 97, 98, 139-40, 183-6, 287, 462-3 Isaac, 35 Ismene, 61, 63, 65 Isocrates, 390 Itching and scratching, 142-4, M°, M3 James, H., 290, 310, 313 Joachim, H. H., 329
General index Jocasta, 57 Jones, J., 379, 381
Justice {dike, dikaiosune), 102, 103, 214, 219, 246, 297, 301, 302, 304, 549, 3 5 1 - 2 , 414, 418, 420; in Aeschylean tragedy, 26; in
Antigone, 56, 58, 64, 81; as goddess, 65; see also Excellence, human, External goods
Kalon, 136, 178, 180, 181, see also Beauty Kant, I., 32, 48-9, 64, 163, 255, 256, 274, 285, 287, 329-30, 360, 361, 363, 370, 386, 393; and conflict of moral rules, 3 1 - 2 , Kantian ethics, and distinction of moral/non-moral value, 4 - 5 ; Kantian ethics, influence of on Western culture, 4, 6, 15, 329
Katharsis, 388-90 Kosman, A., 251 Lesher, J., 251 Lesky, A., 26 Literature: emotional response to, 15, 224, 227; importance in considerations of ethical problems, 1 3 - 1 5 , 68-9; relation to philosophy, 1 2 - 1 3 , 1 2 2 - 3 5 , i 8 5 - 6 , 199,
201, 214, 224, 319, 421; see also Imagery, Philosophy, Poetry, Style Livingstone, R. W., 131 Love, 57, 1 3 1 , 166-99, 202-5, 22 4> " 6 ; ascent of, 171, 176, 179, 1 8 2 - 3 ; of Beauty, 1 7 6 - 8 1 ; contingency of, 172, 174, 181, 196; of Forms, 182-4; ho eron and ho me eront 205-9, 2 1 x> 2 1 7 > individuals (personal love), 166-7, 173, 179, 185, 187, 190, 191, 194, 195, 201, 202, 2 1 5 - 1 6 , 220, 233, 356-72, 418; lover's understanding vs. Socratic knowledge, 186, 188-99, 2 1 8 > and philia, 3 5 4 - 7 3 ; practical, 64-5, 360, 361, 370; of repeatable set of properties, 166, 194; as valuable end, 297, 337, 339, 343-5, 354-6, 362-3; see also Erastes and
eromenos, Eros, Passions, Philia, Selfsufficiency, Sexual desire and activity, Vulnerability Lucas, D. W., 379 Lycurgus, 77, 78, 82 Lysander, 109 Lysias, 200-3, 205-10, 221, 223, 225, 229, 232
Makarion, 329-33, 365 Mania, 201, 203, 204, 206, 210, 212, 213, 215, 223, 224, 225, 228, 230, 232, 254, 369; definition of, 204-5; and good life, 204, 213, 221, 226; maniacal deliberation, 204, 217, 219; and non-intellectual elements of
the soul, 204, 206, 307; see also Eros, Passions, Philosophy Marsyas, 165
53 5
Martyrdom, 65 Materialism, 259-60, 268, 269, 270, see also Activity, physiological explanation of Mathematical reasoning, see Intellect
Measure, see Techne Mechanism, 259-60, 287 Melanippos, 39 Menander, 290 Menelaus, 181 Method, see Aristotle, Dialectic, Phainomena Middle Dialogues, see Plato Mill, J. S., 122 Milo, 304 Moral/non-moral distinction, 4 - 5 , 28-30, 427-8 Motion, see Activity Motivation, 160-2, 179-80, 182, 253, 286, 289, 315; non-intellectual elements in, 2 1 4 - 1 5 , 2I9>
307, 315
Murdoch, I., 16 Muses, 76, 193, 202, 224, 226, 227, 230, 476 Mutability of practical affairs, 302-5, see also Stability, Vulnerability
Mutuality, see Philia Myth: of Aristophanes (Symposium), 172-6, 186, 197, 216; of autochthony, see Athens; of Boreas, 225; of the cicadas (Phaedrus), 226; in Platonic dialogues, 131, 220, 223, 4 7 3 - 4 ; in Stesichorus, 212 ; of tripartite soul, 212 Neoptolemus, 45, 266, 267, 383 Niceratus, 136 Nicias, 136 Nietzsche, F., 15, 18, 161, 162, 163, 4 1 7 - 1 8 Niobe, 67
Noesis, 276-9
Nomos, 400-4, 408—11, 413, 414, 416, 418 Non-contradiction, principle of, 247, 252-3, 254, 257, 258, 321, see also First pnnciples of science Notium, 109 Nous: as insight, 206, 221, 231, 251, 255, 287, 288, 305, 318; as intellect, 272, 288 Odysseus, 2, 106, 1 3 1 , 398, 405 Oedipus, 38, 40, 63, 282-3, 334, 580, 383, 385,
387 Olympia, 165 Opening-up, imagery of, 166, 188-90 Orestes, 41 Orexis, 273-80, 285-7, 357. 374
Orthos, 58; orthos logos, 299; orthais korais, 411
Ovid, 399 Owen, G. E. L., 241, 243-4, 245
Paideia and apaideusia, 252, 254, 262, 416, 480-1 Pan, 200, 202, 203, 213, 232, 233
5 32
General index
Paris, 2 1 2 Parmenides, 124-6, 241, 242, 243, 245, 253, 255, 261 Passions, 7, 44, 63, 81, 91, 177, 185, 197, 230-2, 383
akousion and hekousion, 43, 65 appetites and desires, 91, 1 3 6 - 7 , 138, 139, 142-4, 146-9, 1 5 1 - 4 , M8, 163, 186, 201, 204-6, 212, 2 1 4 - 1 7 , 221, 264, 267-8, 2 7 3 - 5 , 276-82, 285-6, 307-9, 337, 357, 474-5 cognitive role of the, 185-93, 204-5, 214, 218, 222, 307-9, 364-6, 3 7 1 , 3 9 ° ' P a t h e i
mathos, 45-6; pathonta gnonai, 18 5 corrupting power of, 105, 161, 177, 200, 205-10 role in good life, 81, 151, 152, 202, 2 1 8 - 1 9 , 220, 221 power to distort deliberation, 83, 91, 94, 132, 138, 142-4, 147, 1 5 1 - 2 , 155, 187, 307 role in rational deliberation, 46, 134, 190, 204-6, 2 1 4 - 1 5 , 217, 218, 224, 307-9, 317 as vulnerable component of good life, 6, 91, 1 3 7 - 8 , 140, 142-4, 174-6, 1 8 2 - 3 , 192,
3i7
See also Activity, Emotions, Erastes and eromenos, Eros, Intellect, Love, Orexis, Philia, Rationality, practical, Sexual desire and activity, Soul Passivity and receptivity, 20, 72, 79-80, 143, 15 3, I 7 3 , *99> 2 3 238, 268, 271, 273, 274,
287, 315, 318, 354, 356, 379, see also Erastes and eromenos, Eros, Flexibility in ethical
choice Peloponnesian War, 91, see also Coreyra, Thucydides Perception, 267, 269, 270, 277, 279-80, 301, 305, 306, 309, 312, 314, 315, 364-5, 368, 3 7 0 - 1 , 421 Pericles, 67-8, 74, 194, 267, 288, see also City
(polis)
Persuasion, 416 Phaedrus, 189, 200-4, 2 0 7 - 1 2 , 221, 223, 225-7, 229, 230, 232, 233, 363
Pbainomena, 93, 109, 240, 245-7, 254, 264, 273, 283, 297, 318, 319, 342, 352, 366, 402, 4 1 8 ; role in method, 240-5, 2 4 5 - 5 1 , 258-9, 2 6 1 - 3 , 291, 32^-2, 323, 367, 3 7 0 - 1 ; various translations of, 240-1, 2 4 3 - 5 ; v s the 'true' or 'real*, 2 4 1 - 2 , 257; see also Aristotle, Truth
Phantasia, 277-9
Philia, 20, 57, 71, 173, 213, 297, 406; definition
of, 328, 354; and eudaimonia, 328, 330, 331, 2
335, 337, 343-5, 348, 35O, 353, 354~7 , 375, 377, 384; and family relations, 6 3 - 4 ; and independence, 354—6; and living together, 357-8, 369; and mutuality,
3 5 4 _ 7» 3 5 9-60; and self-assessment, 364-5; and trust, 359, 407; value of, instrumental, 362, 365-6; value of, intrinsic, 354, 362, 365-6, 367-8, 3 7 5 , see
also Character, good, Eros, Eudaimonia,
External goods, Love Philoctetes, 267-8, 385, 387, 391 Philosophy, 141, 161, 184, 201, 2 1 1 , 212, 220, 226, 240-3, 253, 258-9, 260-3, 3io, 363-4; human need for, 90; and literature, 1 2 - 1 3 , 1 2 2 - 3 , 199, 214» 224, 519, 3 9 1 - 4 ; as mania, 201, 217, 224, 226, 227; necessary for good life, 138, 139, 146, 149, 1 5 1 - 2 , 1 5 4 , 181, 237; paradigms in, 2 4 1 - 2 ; see also Activity, contemplation, Activity, intellectual, Aristotle, Literature, Method, Plato, Poetry, Style
Phronema, 72, 75, see also Intellect
Pindar, vi, i, 2, 5, 103, 124, 193, 217, 402, 423 Piraeus, 136 Pity, see Emotions Plant imagery, vi, 1 - 2 , 20, 80, 83, 103, 194, 216, 232, 238, 264, 271, 340, 397, 400, 402,
403, 407, 416, 421, see also Vulnerability
Plato, vi, 8, 9, 1 1 , 12, 13, 17, 18, 44, 56, 57, 69, 80, 84, 229, 230, 2 4 1 - 3 , 248, 253, 255, 256, 258-9, 260, 261, 265, 2 7 1 - 3 , 274, 285, 286, 287, 290-5, 298, 299, 300, 303, 308, 399,
401, 224, 229, 108,
420; 226; 232, 161;
Alcibiades J, vi; Apology, 131, Charmides, 92; Cratylus, 204, 213, 389; Crito, 129, 130; Epinomis, Euthyphro, 25, 30, 106-7, 129;
Gorgias, n o , 1 3 1 , 142-4, 145-6, 176, 227,
231; Ion, 224; Laws, 129, 159, 216, 222, 274, 291; Lysis, 129; Meno, 204, 224; Parmenides, 228; Phaedo, 9, 87, 131, 133, 1
38, I39> '42, I47» 149, M*, M 2 , 154, M7» 192, 198, 201, 205, 209, 210, 216, 217, 221,
222, 271-3, 281, 288, 385, 389; Phaedrus, 17, 87, 88, 127, 1 3 1 , 135, 155, 161, 189, 190, 192, 200-33, 265, 288, 291, 307-9, 356, 365, 368, 369, 370, 374, 377, 391, 392,
393, 420; Philebus, 9, 18, 56, 60, 87, 88,
8 9 - 1 2 1 , 123, 126-34, 139, 156, 158, 177,
180, 181, 216, 294, 317, 367; Protagoras, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 105, 109, n o , i n , 1 1 3 , i i } , 117, u 8 , 120, 124, 128, 241, 242, 290, 295, 310, 367, 401, 402;
Republic, 9, 87, 91, 108, 124, 127, 131, 133, 136-64, 170, 182, 185, 193, 197, 198, 200, 201, 203-7, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218, 222, 223, 224, 230, 231, 242, 243, 272, 273, 290, 307, 317, 379, 38I, 382, 385, 386, 389;
Sophist, 228; Statesman, 218, 228, 291; Symposium, 9, 17, 18, 83, 87, 88, 91, 92, 94, 127, 134, 149, 159, 161, 165-99, 201, 204, 205, 212, 213, 218, 221, 223, 224, 230, 232,
312, 356, 357, 363, 377, 420; Timaeus, 204,
General index 5 3 5 Plato
{cont.)
2 7 2 ; see also Activity, Alcibiades, Aristotle, Beauty, Chronology of Platonic dialogues, Deliberation, practical, Dialectic, Elenchos, Episteme\ Eros, Intellect, Literature, Love, Mania* Passions, Passivity and receptivity, Philosophy, Poetry, Self-sufficiency, Sexual activity and desire, Soul, Standpoint, Style, Techne, Tragedy, Unity of virtues Pleasure: Aristotle's account of, 294-5; as excellent activity, 294-5; hedonism,
110-13, 114, 117, i n , 173, 231, 259, 260,
292, 295, 450, 4 5 8 ; as single standard of value, 294-5; true pleasure, in Plato,
141-3, 146-8, 150-1, 205, 458
Plowing, imagery of, 5 7 - 8 , 61, 72, 74 Plutarch, 161, 162, 165, 169, 199 Poetry, 230, 2 3 9 ; Aristotelian conception of, 378-94; relation to history, 386; relation to philosophy, 185-6, 199, 201-2, 214, 224, 226, 227, 391-4, 421; Platonic conception of, 157-8, 203, 378, 381, 390, 399; see also Literature, Philosophy, Style, Tragedy Polemarchus, 124, 136 Political activity, 165-6, 168-9, 194, 207,
295-6, 344, 358, 359, 382; and
development of good character, 346-9; and education, 285; intrinsic to human nature, 101-2, 341; intrinsically valuable, 158, 343, 349-51, 352, 4 1 8 ; translation of *politikon\ 345 ; vulnerability of, 345~5 3; see also Activity, City, External goods, Stability Polus, 146 Polycl*tus, 280, 281 Polydorus, 397, 398, 40°, 402, 407, 408, 419 Polymestor, 397, 398, 406-8, 411, 412, 413, 417 Polynices, 38, 40, 42, 55, 58, 63, 64 Polytheism, Greek, see Religion, Greek Polyxena, 398, 399, 405-6, 407, 4 1 ° , 4M, 419 Praise and blame, 2, 28, 4 1 - 4 , 58, 124, 284,
286, 323-4, 325, 329, 334, 335, 380, 383,
384, 4 0 2 , see also Activity, Passions, appetites and desires, Orexis
Precision {akribeia), see Techne Praxiteles, 156 Priam, 327-30,
333, 337, 380, 397, 406, 407, 414, 418, 419
Private property, 15 9 Prodicus, 97, 124 Prometheus, 90, 100, 1 1 1 , 130, 131 Protagoras, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102,
105, 109, no, i n , 113, 115, 117, 118, 120, 124, 128, 241, 242, 290, 295, 310, 367, 401, 402
Protarchus, 151 Pseudo-Plato, 204, 274
Psuche, 65, 69 175 Purity, 210, 220; of activity, 147, 148, 150, 206, 2 1 7 ; of objects, 147, 148, 182, 218 Pyrrho, 345 Pythagoras, 107, 108, 118, 180 Pythocles, 207, 232, 389 Rawls, J., 12, 311 Rationality, practical, 2, 6, 8, 9, 30, 3 1 - 2 , 4 8 - 9 ,
51, 52, 60, 61, 97, 108, 114, 144, 157, 158,
172, 174, 176, 190, 197, 2 o 6 » 209, 3 1 8 ; and action, 264-89, 341; and choice of goods, 145; criterion of, 51, distinguishing humans from other animals, 2, 101, 2 4 6 ; limits of, 75, 166, 408-9; normative conception of, 20, 1 1 3 , 160, 2 2 3 ; and passions, 4 6 - 7 , 139, 201, 209, 233, 307; in
Protagoras, 89-121; techne of, 94-7, 100,
105, 106-10, 290, 291-4, 295, 298, 300,
302, 303, 309, 3 1 0 ; see also Deliberation, practical, Intellect, Mania, Passions, Soul,
Techne
Reductionism and over-simplification, 259-60,
269, 270, 390
Relational goods, see Love, Philia, Political activity Religion, Greek: difference from J udaeo-Christian tradition, 425-6; drama as a religious expression, 7 0 ; polytheism, 49, 2 9 7 ; theology in, 30; unwritten laws in, 65-8 Revenge, 409-18 Ross, W. D., 240, 243, 329, 374 Ryle, G., 229 Sarpedon, 267 Sartre, J.-P., 31, 32, 47~8 Schopenhauer, A., 7 8 - 9 Science, see Techne Seeming vs. being, 136, 138, 339, 350 Self-sufficiency, 195, 217, 233, 246, 366, 380-1,
417; of eromenos, 188, 192, 210; and ethics,
8; and good
life, 3, 331, 341, 343, 344~5, 352; and 'irrational* parts of soul, 7; of love, 177, 183, 199, 210, 364, 368; Platonic conception of, 5, 18, 87, 120, 137, 159,
184, 264, 310, 381, 420; see also
Consistency, Eudaimonia, Excellence, human, Plato, Stability Semele, 82 Sextus Empiricus, 395, 414, 415 Sexual desire and activity, 57, 101, 147, 148,
149, 152, 153, l6 3, 172-3, 174-6, 182, 183, 190, 192, 194, 201, 205, 207, 208, 210, 226,
231, 232; activity/passivity in, 143, 173, 3 54, 356; and desire for wisdom, 180, 2 1 6 - 1 7 ; a s element of philia, 354, 358, 359, 369, 3 7 1 ; hom*osexuality, 143-4, M3, l 8 8 ,
5
32
General index
Sexual desire and activity (cont.) 21o, 231, 371; see also Alcibiades, Erastes and eromenos, Eros, Love, Passions, Passivity and receptivity, Plato Shelley, P. B., 85 Ship imagery, 58-9, 72, 73-4, 76, 79, 345 Sidgwick, H., 12, 1 1 2 - 1 3 , 117, 122 Silenus, 166, 185, 189 Simonides, 124 Singleness of value scheme, 30-2, 55, 58, 60, 61, 63-7, 69, 71, 73, 78, 83, 108, 1 1 2 - 1 4 , 120, 294, 295, 296, see also Commensurability of value, Value Skepticism, 246, 2 5 2 - 3 , 254, 2 5 5 , 2 5 7 , 345,
481-2 Socrates, 10, n , 25, 30, 60, 84, 88, 89, 91-4, 97, 106-20, 122, 125, 128-35, 136-44, 146-64, 166, 168-70, 176-99, 200-11, 213, 219, 221, 223, 225-7, 228-33, 240, 242, 243, 247, 259, 261, 271, 356, 367, 385; see also Elenchos, Love, Plato Solon, 193 Sophia, 374-5 Sophocles, 9, 45, 50, 51, 52, 89, j 18, i22 r 137, 138, 186, 241, 269, 391, 393; Antigone, 9, 51-83, 91, n o , 123, 128, 129, 130, 174, 297, 3°9» 3 I0 > 339, 3 5 3, 39°; conception of soul, 69; Oedipus Tjrannus, 129, 401-2, 4 1 7 ; Philoctetes, 45 Sophron, 122 Sophrosune, 204-6, 215, 218, 223, 224, 309 Soul, 173, 175, 216; akin to forms, 138; Alcibiades' explanation of, 192, 198; appetitive element (epithumia) in, 136-7, 139, 1 4 2 - 4 , M5, 204-5, 225, 264, 275, 276, 307-9, 392; beauty of, see Beauty; as cause for bodily movement, 269-70, 275; composition of, 269; development of, 122, 133, 179, 210, 2 1 5 - 1 7 , 219, 225, 307; dialogue's influence on, 127, 133; emotional element (thumos) in, 147, 155, 201, 214, 216, 230, 27z, 275, 276, 307-9, 392; harmony of elements in, 138, 374; intellectual vs. non-intellectual parts of, 204-6, 2 1 4 - 1 5 , 3 0 7 - 9 , 4 7 4 - 5 ; patient/doctor analogy, 9 3; Platonic conception of, 69, 92, 138, 141, 142, 144, 146-8, 192, 193, 204-6, 214, 264; reasoning element {logistikon) in, 13 8-9, 141, 142, 204-6, 209, 214, 224, 275, 474-5; tripartite division of, 141, 214, 222, 275, 475; see also Activity, Emotions, Intellect, Mania, Orexis, Passions, P suebe, Sophrosune Sparta, 169 Stability, 20, 137, 138, 149, 154, 158-60, 184, 196, 197, 198, 201, 291, 305, 319, 421; of activity, 147-50, 182, 217, 232, 242, 343; of good character, see Character, good; of
love, 355-7, 360, 362; of objects, 147, 148, 218, 242, 3 1 2 ; political, 136, 345, 347, 35 2, 353; of souls, 195-6, 310; of techne, 96; see also Activity, Character, Consistency, Mutability of practical affairs, Plato, Self-sufficiency, Vulnerability Standpoint for judgment of true value (god's-eye view), 138-64, 180, 182, 195, 242, 258, 287, 290, 291, 293, 311, 314, 317, 342, 367, 372, 374^5, 378, see also Anthropocentrism, Stability Statue imagery, 166, 171, 176, 185, 188, 195, 196 Stesichorus, 202, 2 1 1 , 212, 215, 225 Stoics, 252 Style: Aristotelian, 391-4; in choral odes, 68, 7 I _ 3> 7 5 - 7 ; dialogic, 87-8, 1 2 2 - 3 5 ; literary, see Literature; philosophical, 87-8, 591-4; Platonic, 87-8, 122-35, 592-4; poetic elements in, 224-7, 393—4; relation to content, 68; see also Aristotle, Literature, Philosophy, Plato, Poetry, Tragedy Suicide, 321 Sun and lightning bolt, imagery of, 20, 7 1 - 2 , 82, 192-3, 198, 216, 258 Swift, J., 395 Syllogism, practical, 308 Taming imagery, 20, 72, 75, 76 Teachability of techne, see Techne Teaching and learning, see Activity Techne; 77, 79, 83, 84, 89, 90, 94, 104, 119, 130, 180, 213, 218, 258, 260, 290, 300, 305; and commensurability, 1 0 8 - 1 1 ; criteria for, 95-6, 258; ethics as a, 89-121, 258, 291-4, 295, 298, 302, 303; example of, 90, 98, 446; imagery of, 72-4, 79; political, 218, 295-6; of practical choice, see Rationality, practical; precision and measuring element in, 89, 91, 92, 96, 99, 105, 106-1 o, 114, 117, 294; relation to tuche, 89, 91, 94-5, 105, 108, 237, 300; as therapeutic, life-saving, 95-4, 100, 101, 106, 112, 117, 260, 291, 294, 295; transformational capability of, 99, 106, 117, 119-20; see also Aristotle, Conflict, contingent, of ethical claims, Episteme, Rationality, practical, Self-sufficiency, Stability Technological resources, human, see Techne Theaetetus, 162 Thebes, 58, 59, 63, 66, 70-2, 74, 76 Theology, Greek, see Religion, Greek Theognis, 59 Theophrastus, 379 Theramenes, 169 Thinking, see Activity Thirty Tyrants, 169, 170
General index Thomson, W. H., 225 Thucydides, 68, 94, 105, 123, 124, 127, 194, 269, 274, 289, 303, 404-6, 4io, 4 1 5 , 4i8, 507—8, see also Coreyra, Peloponnesian War Timandra, 177, 199 Tiresias, 54^56, 62, 68, 79-81, 83, 105 Tourneur, C., 395 Tragedy, 5, 8, 25, 51, 173, 194, 239, 319; activity in, 378-83; Aristotelian conception of, 378-94, 4 1 8 - 1 9 ; tragic hero, 386-7; modern criticisms of ancient, 26, 3 1 - 2 , 51, 429, 4 3 6 - 7 ; and personal goodness, 25, 27, 43, 50, 3 * 7 - 3 ° , 333> 334; Platonic criticisms of, 14, 1 2 2 - 3 5 , 378-82, 386, 388, 399; 4tragic reversal', 3 2 7 - 3 3 ; and vulnerability, 83-4; see also Aeschylus, Conflict, tragic, Emotions, Euripides, Imagery, Katharsis, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry, Sophocles Troy, 33, 34, 202, 212, 230, 232, 313, 3T4, 398 Trust, see Philia Truth, 1 1 2 , 292; Alcibiades* claim to tell the, 165-7, 1 8 J - * ; ^ d 4appearances', 241, 243, 248, 257; constancy of, 1 4 1 ; contemplation of, by philosophers, 138, 140, 141, 147-8, 182, 190, 218; singular conception of, by philosophers, 125; univerals and particulars in, 190 Tuche, 46, 51, 81, 83, 87, 89, 93, 99, 108, 172, 181, 237, 238, 265, 291, 298, 300, 307, 318-43, 372, 383, 384, 408; and ethics, 1 - 2 1 ; and techne, see Techne; three problems of, 3-7, 83, 104-5 > working definition, 3, 89 \ see also Aristode, Character, good, Plato, Stability, Techne, Tragedy, Vulnerability Turner, J. M., 193 Typho, 223 Tyrannical life, 139 Unity of virtues, 56, 105, 1 1 8 1 see also Commensurability of values, Plato, Protagoras Universal principles/rules, 298-305 Universality of techne, see Techne Utilitarianism, 6, 1 1 2 - 1 3 , 1 1 7 , 120 Value: commensurability and incommensurability of, see Commensurability; context-relativity of, 291-4, 342, 352; harmony among, 138, 140, 1 5 1 ; intrinsic value of components of good life, 138-40, 142-3, M i , 201, 2 1 8 - 1 9 , 293, 295, 297, 308, 319, 349-51,
535
35 2 » 354, 362, 3 6 5 - 6 , 367-8, 374, 4 2 1 ; need-relative, 142-4, 145, 147, 148, 1 5 1 , 153, 161, 163, 174, 264, 342; of philia, 354-73, 401; standpoint for proper judgment of, see Standpoint; valuable objects of choice, in Plato, 136-64; see also Commensurability of value, Conflict, contingent, of ethical claims, Philia, Pleasure, Relational goods, Singleness of value scheme Vernant, J.-P., 19, 310 Vlastos, G., 166-7, 1 73» *74» ! 7 8 , *79» *97 Vulnerability, 80, 100, 137, 192, 238, 2 9 0 - 1 ; of activity, 91, 143, 146^8, 197, 273, 318-42, 343-5, 386; of components of good life, 6, 9, 83, 93, 104-5, 137-8, 140, 142-4, 1 4 7 - 8 , 174, 182-3, 194, 230, 239, 290-1, 298-9, 300, 318, 319, 328, 330-2, 336, 337"9» 34o, 343~73; of erastes, 188-9, *94; of good character, 67, 90, 318-42, 360, 381-2, 383-5, 397, 4 2 1 ; see also Aeschylus, Aristotle, Character, good, Euripides, Passivity and receptivity, Plant imagery, Plato, Polydorus, Sophocles, Stability Water and liquid, imagery of, 20, 231, 232 Watson, G., 139 Weltanschauung, 244 Williams, B., 18, 19, 20, 29-30, 427-8 Wisdom, practical, 51, 54, 57, 62, 80, 123, 1 3 1 , 140, 194, 198, 214, 258, 290, 295, 299, 300, 304, 305-6, 307-9, 310, 314, 320, 346, 37 1 Wittgenstein, L., 23, 2 6 1 - 2 , 264, 373 Women and the feminine: and Aristotle's method, 258, 499; in Euripides, 4 1 1 , 4 1 3 ; feminists, 207-9, 2 5 8 i grieving and the female, 200, 230; male and female in Antigone, 67, 72, 78; in normative conception of rationality, 20; political view regarding, 358, 370, 3 7 1 ; and pronouns, gender, 3 - 4 ; as vulnerable to tuche, 67 Xanthippe, 131 Xenarchus, 122 Xenophanes, 123, 176 Xenophon, 95, 97, 3 8 6 , 389 Xenos, 406-7, 410; Zeus Xenios, 401 Zarathustra, 163 Zeus, 33, 34, 46, 5 8 , 63, 65, 71, 72, 76, 77, 101, 102, 103, 106, 112, 117, 119, 177, 220, 228, 231, 334, 4oi, 4 0 3
Index of passages
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon 179-80 182-3 186-8 206^13 214-17 2 39-45 799-804 1018-21
1415-17
Eumenides 794 804 885 911 916 970 987-8 1033
Seven Against Thebes 1 12 16 191 412-14 4M 416
ARISTOTLE 47 46 35 35 35 36-7 43 4i 33 416 416 416 416 416 416 416 416 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 38 38 38
473-4 557 673-6 677-8 686-8 68^-90 692-4 792 1068-71
39 39 40 40
ALCAEUS 6.13-14
59
ALEXANDER of APHRODISIAS 272.36^273.1
253
ARISTOPHANES
Frogs 384-93 1422 1425 1468
169 169 169 170
1046
389 389
Wasps 631
Categories 2b6 De Anima in.5
111.9
III.9—11 hi. 10 406b24-5 De Caelo 11.12 27ob5 28541-4 293327 3o6a5 De Motu Animalium 69834-7 700b 10 700b33 70134-6 70^33 7oia3j-bi 701334-5 7oib7 702a16 702a 17-19 Budemian Ethics 120734-6 I2Mb22-4 1215027-31 121633-5 121636-8 I2i6b26 1217317 1219340-62 I2i9b27 1220311-13 I234b32 I237bi2 Generation and Corruption 316a 5 325313 325318-22 Magna M o r a l i a u 9 4b5~23 i2o6b3o~5 i2o8b29 1212334 1213310-26 Metaphysics 1.1 iv.2 IV.4
ix XII
280 374 275 266 277 270 373 257 257 247 247 265 277 277 277 281 288 277 281 277 277 318 321 321 323 323 241 262 323 286 288 365 359 252 247 247 2 9 2 353 318 359 349 368 95 251 252 278, 326 374
Index of passages 981*5-7
95 96 96
981328-30 98^7-8
982bi2-i9 990b16-17 995a29-33
I004b2 10O6aI 3—IJ ioo8bi4-i9
1009a17-18 1009b2
ioiob3~i4 ioiia3 io74a39
Nicomachean Ethics 1 M
VI IX. 12 x x.6 x.6-8 X.7
1095317 1095319-20 1095^9-20
io95b2j—6
1096a 1-2 1096a! 2 - 1 7 1096a23—4 1096b3-4 1096b 1 6 - 1 9 1096b23—4 1096b34
io97b7~i1 i©97bi4
1097^4-15 1098328-30
io98b33~99a2
I0
99 a 3~7
1099329-31 1099331-3 1099a 3 3-b6
1099333^8 io99b2~4 I099b7~8 1099b!8-19
io99b2o-j 1099b24 1100a 5 ~6
nooaj-io 110037-8 iioob2~3 1 ioob3~i loiaio 1ioob6—7 noob8—10
1100b 12
1ioobi6 noobi6 noobi8
2
59 256 246 261 252 2
54 53 248 248 248 257 2
374 376 374, 376 376 376 377 373, 375-7 373, 37 6 323 323 2 93 322 324 292 261 294, 296 296 295 322 345 376 366 320 324 324 330 318 328 331 361 319 320, 322 320 319 322 328 330 322 333 33 2 332 332 33 2 33 2 33 2
noobi9—22 noob22-j noob23-3o 110138-114 1101314-15 1101319-20 noia22 no2bj-8 no2b29-no3a3 no3b23-4 ii03b34-ii04aio 1105331-2 1105332 1io6b36-ii©7a2 no9bi8-23 inoai8 inoa2o-2 n 10324-6 ni7bio ni7bio~i6 ni9a6-io 1124420 1124230 1124335^2 1124b8~9 ii24bio-n ii28an 1128325 ii29b26 1134b1 ii34bi8-33 1 i37bu ii37bi3 1137^7-19 H37b29 ii37b30-2 1141320—2 1141331-2 H4ib4-i6 1I4ibi3-i4 H4ibi3-i6 ii42ai1 1142812-16 1142223 1143325-^4 1144*3 1145819-20 1145*25 ii45bi H45b8-2o 1i45b2o 1153b!7-21 1 1 5 5*4 iM5*5 1155*5-6 "55*9 115 5ai6-23 1155321-2 115 5328-32
5 37 33 2 33 2 33 2 2 33 -3 330 333 361 324 286 346 302 375 296 299 300 335 335 335 2 95 336 2 57 338 340 338 338 338 261 303 351 353 302 382 301 302 302 301 374 292 304 303 303 299 305 186, 305 305-6 375 387 34i 240 2
43 240
325 354, 365 365 36I 363 35° 367 354
53»
542.Index of passages
1155329-31 U5 5b2 7 -8 1155^27-31 115 5b28-i15 H56b24-5 115738 ii57bio-n 1157^4—16 Ii57b22 ii57b22-3 1158a! 115839 1159a 115935 115938-12
1159310—11
1162b 5
1165336
1166a 1166316-17 1i66ai8-2o
1166319 1i69ai8-b2 1i69b2 n69b3 1 i69b3~io 1 i69bio 1i69bi6—19 1 i69b22 u69b33-4 117035-7 1170b11-14 117132-3
117134-6
117135 1171311 117^32-117238 117238-14 1172336
1173b26 n73b28
117434-8 1176334-5
ii76b7-9
1177321—2 1177325-bi 1177326 1177327-bi 1177330-1
ii77bi-4 1177b 3 4
1178323-5 1i78bio-i6 1179333
1179b2 3~6 u79b26-7
ii79b 3 i-2 1180a1-4
365 348 355 355 359 356
360 360
358 358 360
358 366
357 357 376 360 360 366
376 376 357 336
330 365-6
33i 354
331 366 364
363
369 360 360
358 369
358
362 248 295 295
295 323
376 375 343 375 375 343 375 375 343 34i 377 356 257 346
348
118033 1i8oai8-22 1180319-22 1180328-9 1180329
1i8ob3~7 118ob7
119636—10 Parts of Animals 64537-11 645316 645319-23 645324 645327-31 Physics 11.4-6
VIII
19331
362 346 346
35i
346 362
346, 362
309 260 260 262 262 260 319
374 255
Poetics 1448b 13 1448b!5-17
280 388 388 388
1450315-20 1450321—2
378 379
195^3-4
I449b22~4 M5 it>4~5
145ib8-i1 145331 145333-5 145334-5 145338
I45 3bi6-i7 i454b8-9
Politics 1 1252332
12 5 2b20-4 I252b3i-i2533i
125331-7 125 338 1253327 1253327-9 1254314-15
i2 54b2o 1255325
1260312
1261316 1261318-22
I26ibi6
126^25-6
I26ib31-2 1262b!5
I262b22 I268b22 I268b28
1278320-1 1278334-8 1280332-4 1280333 128339-11
i3i7b3 13I7b8
386 386 384
384 385 387 387 387 374 348
351 351 351 34i 341
246
348 348
348 348
353 353 353 353 353 3 5 3, 362 3 5 3, 362 402 305
347 349 348
348
296 348
348
Index of passages i329ai-2 1 3*9 a 39-4i 1332*36-7 1337*21-5 13 37*27-9 Posterior Analytics 11.1 11.19 7ib 9 83*32-4 93a2i-2 93*22-4 Rhetoric 1340 I3j6b26 I37ibj 1 374^6 i38ob35-i38iai 138134-6
138139-11 138ibi5 138^24-6 138^28-9 1382321 1382328-30 i382b30-2 I382b32~3 1385313 1 3 8 5 bi3 1385^9-24 I 38 5b3i —2 138636-7 138637-13 1386322-8 1389314-15 1389317-18 1389318-19 1389326-7 1389331-2 1389^3—1390324 1390b33-4 139137 1391330-1 1391331 I39ib4 139^5-7
347 347 353 346 347 249 257 250 256 249 249 388 390 388 382 355 361 361 360 361 359 385 385 386 386 384 383 384 384 384 384 385 338 337 337 337 337-8 338 340 340 340 340 338 340
DEMOCRITUS
DKBI97 DKBII9 DIOGENES
DK 68
LAERTIUS
B4
II.33
x.86
95 95 269 84 389
EURIPIDES
Cyclops 493 Hecuba 16-20 90-1 35i
252 397 407 405
367-8 375 668 681-2 684-7 688 689 714 718-20 786 799-805 814-19 825-30 836-43 866 Hecuba 95 3-5 965 974-5 978 IOIO
1016 1017 1035 1044 1058 1071-2 1125-6 1247-8 1282-6 1284 Rhesus 35 Trojan Women 115 8-1207
5 37 406 405 408 408 409 408 408 408 408 408 400 4M 415 416 400 411 411 411 413 413 413 413 411 415 417 417 417 419 419 419 389 313-14
HERAcl*tUS
DK DK DK DK
B40 B42 B51 B123
123 123 80 241
HIPPOCRATIC WRITERS
De Arte 4 De Vetere Medicina 1 1.2 9 20
95 96 95 96 96
HOMER
Hymn 5.18 Iliad 1.225 1.231 iv.68 vi. 344 xn.299-306 xxn.66-70 Odyssey IX.I 12-15
193 414 414 401 414 266 414 252
ISOCRATES
5-4
390
MENANDER
Rhetoric 340 24
390
540
Index of passages
PINDAR
Nemean vm
vi, 1
31D
152
83D
vi
99B2-4
155 273 272
132
1 1 5 C~E
152
99 A 4 _ 5
PLATO
Alcibiades I 129E Apology 17A-C
83C
202
Cbarmides 154B
92
117D
Phaedrus 203 D
131
216
92 204
225A-F
219
227A
2O9
407-8
213
229B
2IO
407E-8B
232
229B1-2
2IO
4 2 6B
389
229c
108
229D4
161
230A
225 225 223
106-7
231A
20J
25 142
231D
20 5
231E
223
232c 233c
216
234B
23I
155D-E
Cratylus 4 0 4 A 4
Epinomis 9 7 7 D 978B
Euthyphro 7B-D 8A
Gorgias 49 2 A 492E
142
493A3 493E1
144 144
494B
142
234c
2IO
494B-C
144
234D
223
143 144
234D2-3
251
234E
2IO
147
235A
225
494E 494E3-4 496C-497D
205
496D
144
236B
229
497C7
144
237B
203
160
237B3
207
204
237B7
205
Mi
237D-238A
206
58E
131
238A
206
59A
131
238D
223
6OA
147
239A-B
218
6OB
151
239C8
64D-E
Mi 151
241A 241A8
206
64E
151
241B7
206
65 65A-D
389
242B-C
21 I
205
242c
202
6JB
IJ2
242D7
202
65c
152
242E
211
6JD
IJ2
242E5
202
6;E
MI, 152
243A
211 211
Laws 7 3 9 C - D Meno 91 c 3 Phaedo 54A
64D
217 206, 209
66A
1
152, 5 5
243 A6
66B
152
243c
219
66C
1 5 2 , 389
24 3E
204, 2 1 1 , 2 1 9
66C-D
M5 147, *5*
244A
204, 2 1 1 , 2 1 3
244B
213
67A
151, 152
245A
213
67B
147
245B
67E
IJ2
245c
213 227
70D
147
246A
214, 226
147
247E
214
147
248B
214
149
147, M*
248D 248E
226
82C-83A
152
249A
220, 226
83B
MI
25 OA
66D
79c 79C-80B 7905-6 8IB
226 l6l
Index of passages 250B
214, 220
5 37
320E-321A
100
250D-E
214
322c
102
250DI-3
214
322D
102
250D5
214
323A
102
25 I A - E
215
324E1
102
25 IB
216
325A
103
2$ IC
216, 231
325D
103
252C
219
326B5
103
2 5 2 C - 2 5 3E
2I9
327A1
102
252D
218
327A4
102
2J2D-E
219
331B
252E
2 1 8 , 229, 23I
336A
120
253A
218, 219
351c
HI
2J3B
219 216
3 5 *C-E 356C-E
105
253C 253E
221
356D-E
254C
216
255A
219
357A 357B-E
255B
2 1 7 , 220
255B-C
23I
93
193 109 111 112
361c
120
36ID
93, H I
Republic 3 2 8A
25 5D
217
256E--257A
221
328C-D
257c
204
329A
258E
221
329B-C
259B-C
226
329c
2620
202
354B-C
262E
216
357*
263 D - E
202
358B
145 206
136
137 M7 137 1 3 7 , 204 206
265E
214
382C8
204
268A-B
227
382E
1
275A-B
I2J
386A-388E
224
275D
125
386c
275E
125
H7
388
381
278C
226
388A
200
279B
230, 233
388B-C
1
279B-C
202, 233
392A-B
382
jikbus 32A — B
57
57
IJO
400B2
204
46A
IJO
40 3 A
226
46C-D
I50
43 IB
206
46D
IJO
442C-D
206 206
50D
IJO
442DI
5 IB
IJO
505E
161
51E
IJO
508c
389
J2A-B
IJO
5I7E
152
J2C
IJO
5I9A
163
52D
IJO, I J 2
5I9B
53D
188
520c
163 148
54E
IJO
533B-C
148
58D5-6
l6l
5 33C-D
59C
M5
I50
138
62D-E
5 33D
MO
533D1
389
62E
IJO
539C6
204
I J I , l6l
540c
216
5 57® 561B
4 140
67B
'otagoras 5 I OA 3IOC8-D2 3IOE 3I3C
309A
93 94 93 93
571c
*37, Mi 205
571D-572B
205
572E
152
54 2.
Index of passages
573A-B
204
192E-193A
57JD 573E 574E 5 75A
152
199E6-7
152
199F
*52
200A2-4
*72
r77
177 177
152
200A5-7
l
140
200B-E
196
581C-D
138
200E
5 8 1 C - 5 83A
141
177
20IA
l
583C-D
146
20IA5
178
583C-584A
146
20 IB
584A
146
20IB6-7
584B
20IC2
584C9-11
147 147 147
177 177
584D
141
20 IE
585A-B
147 147 147
202C 204A
190
205EI-3
178
580C-D
584c
585c 586B-C 591E-592B
77 77
178
2OIC4-5
178
201D
177 176 176
163
207E-208A
196
6 0 4 E — 60 5 A
224
208B
176
605B
224
209E5-2I0A2
6O6B
2IOA5
179
6O6D
385 133
2IOA6-7
607A
224
2 1 OB
607B
224
2IOB6
*79 '79
6O7D~6O8B
203
2IOB6-7
621B-C
223
2IOC5
69 6 A
224
2IOC7
180
696D
224
2IOC7-D5
180
218
2IODI
180
168
2IOE2-3
181
172c
183
2IOE6-2I2A7
182
172E5
168
21
184
173A
168
21IB-2I2A
173A5
168
2 1 ID
182
174D
183
21 IE
182, 189
175E
194
2I2A
186
183
2I2AI
217
atesman 2 94A mposium 1 7 2 A - B
176A-D
IA
!79
180
J79 180
vi
177D
186
2I2A2
177E
194
2I2B
176, 181
182 184, 192
179A
189
2I2C
189A3
172
2I2C4-5
171
189A4-5
172
2I2EI-2
3C 3C2 213C5 213DJ-6
184, 193
21
166, 192
21
171
2I3D6
194, 204
I90D—E
172
I9IA
172
I91A-B
174 !73 *74
19IA6 I9IB 191B-C 19IC
172
174
2I3D7-8
213E
197 171 171 166
172
2I4A
183
I9IDI
172
2I4E
I92B-C
T73
2 1 5B
165 166
172
2 I 5 B-D
166
173 175 175
21
189
2I5D5
>97 197
I9ID
I92B-E I92B6
I92D 192D-E
192E
176
21 J C-E 5D
215D8
204
Index of passages
5 37
*97
167
58
186, 189
169
216A-B
186
216A-C
189
175 177
2I6D
166
181
2I6E
189
182
54 75 7i 55 57
2I7A
189
184
71
2I7AI-2
*97
185
2I7E
166
187
197
190
192
2I5E6 2 1 6A
2I7E-2I8A
171,
192
7i 57 57, 58 57
218B2-3
204, 2 1 7
199
66
2I8B3
197
206
2 1 8E
180
207
2I9A
186
207—10
7i 75 56
2I9B
166, 192
209—10
2I7E6-7
223-6
55 55 53
2I9C-E
171
*43
62
2I9C5
198
280
2I9E
*97
280-90
2 20A
183
281
220B
183
284
220C-D
183, 193
288
22IC—D
,67
307
222A
166
323
222B
186, 195
332-75
75 58 54 55 55 7i 73 73
222C
199
348-52
60
222D
183, 199
353 376 387
82
183
2I9B-D
219c
166, 195, 198
Timaeus 69c
475 204
86B4 PSEUDO-PLATO
Definitions 416 A 2 2
204
212
69 108
403
58
408
62
450
PLUTARCH
Alcibiades 16
165 169
38
That EpicurusMakes a Pleasant L,ife Impossible 019 3 D - 1 0 9 4 B
162
457 459 473 473-9 484-5
65
72 75 60, 75
65,
61 61
63
522
54 58 56 56, 58 55 57
51
548
90
63 72
561-2
9-10
63
73 88
63 90
569 57o 584-93
54 72 57
89
90
613
93
90
613-14
74 75 75
634
62
636
58 54 57 57
492
SEXTUS EMPXRICUS
Outlines of Pyrrhonism
1.66-7
395, 4i4
510
SOLON 11.4
193
2
5-6 6
100-16 108-9 HI 163
5i4 520
SOPHOCLES
Antigone 1-3
494
7i 55 7i 5 8, 74
562
648-9 649 650-1
61
54
2.
Index of passages
655 662-9
7i
1015
54
56
1023-5
669-71
56
1027
79
68;
58
1028
79
690
62,
705
5 8, 7 9
706
58
1052
709
79
1064-5
710 7 " 712 712-14 7i4
79 79 79 79
79 79
1050
79
1050-1
54 79 62
1065 1095-7
72 62
1099
62
1111
58 6 2 , 81
1113-14
79 80
1126-7
82
79
1139
82
79 56
1140-2
82
1147
82
56
1x48
82
54 60
1148-9
82
733
1151
82
739
61
62
744
56 61
"75 1232
7M-I7 718 723 73o 73°-3 732
1261-9
75 62
72
1264
72
75
1270
774 781
7i 90
1317-20
72 62
M44-5
62
781-800
65
58
789-90
65
M45 1347-8
802-6
7°
1350-2
757 763-4 766
821 823
65
54 60
1353
Oedipus Tyrannus Pbiloctetes 161-8
865-72
53, 6 2 402
839
67 66
843
66
852-5
65
872
65
670-85
75
THUCYDIDES
71 90
I.84.3 I.I38
66
11.37
68
75-6
11.41
194
11.42.3-4
267 288
875 882 891 937-43 944-87 950
THEOGNIS
952
65 52
N.43
957
75
111.82-3
975 988
65
v i . 15
989
79
2
99 994 996
79 58 80
998
79
79
266-7
59 508 194
404-5, 507-8 165, 464
XENOPHANES
DK
B25
176
XENOPHON C y r . 8.7.30
389
This book is a study of ancient views about 1 moral luck. It examines the fundamental ethical problem thai many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their live:*. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these question^ yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve This book thus recovers a central dimension of Greek thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its nontechnical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This new edition features an entirely new preface bv Martha Nussbaum Martha Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. 'This is an immensely rich and stimulating book. This is partly because the author combines to a rare degree qualities not often found together: a scholar's understanding of the text with rigour of argument, and these together with an imaginative grasp of moral questions. But it is also because she has chosen to write a very ambitious book, to grapple with some fundamental, perennial issues.. And unlike most philosophy books, it is a delight to read. It should change the tenour of debate in more than one field - Charles Taylor in Canadian Journal
of
Philosophy
' .. intellectually demanding and richly rewarding...required reading for anyone interested in Greek philosophy or literature. -Bernard Knox in The Neiv York Review of Books The Fragility of Goodness is a marvelous book. It is alert to the fabric of human ethical experience in a way that is rare in our contemporary philosophical tradition. It is a gifted reaffirmation of the truth that there is, in our Greek inheritance, a quality of ethical reflection that is unsurpassed, and which is itself richly responsive to sensitive exploration of the kind which Nussbaum provides.. No one with an interest in Greek ethics can afford to miss this book, and no one who pursues moral philosophv will fail to profit from it a powerfully persuasive book. - Derek Browne in Australasian
Journal
of Philosophy
'This is an engrossing account and an important book. Its scope is very wide, in a world where it has become sadly unusual for a scholar to tackle both tragedy and philosophy in a single work." Jasper Griffin in The Times Literary Supplement "There are not many books which leave the reader with the sense of having had his perception of the subject altered. This is one of them "-ChristopherTaylor in Mind
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS www.cambridge.org ISBN
Cover illustration:
J M W. Turner. Regains,
1828 courtesy of
Clore Collection, late Gallery. London/ Art Resource NY
C ver design
by James
F. Brisson
0-521-79472-2
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