This article is for the reader who is facing difficult personal ethical deliberations. Aristotle explained the process of reaching ethical decisions as the process of deliberation. It could only have three possible action outcomes:
- exhortation;
- admonishment;
- rebuke.
The article covers books 1, 2 and 3 of the Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Book I
Aristotle argues that there must be a Supreme Good, or else all desire would be futile and vain, in an ad infinitum process. He proposes that the conduct of life would benefit from knowledge of the Supreme Good, which he states is the science of politics. He argues that, since the master arts are more to be desired than the subordinate arts, the good of a nation is a more divine achievement than the good of one person. Political science studies moral nobility and justice, which because of their uncertain nature, infers only generally valid conclusions, the end of which is action. In this discipline, knowledge is of no use unless desires and actions are guided by principle rather than feelings and appetites.
The highest of all the goods that action can achieve is happiness. In this respect, a thing chosen as an end is more final than a thing chosen as a means, and happiness imports this very aspect of finality. For example: honour is chosen for its own sake and for happiness. Happiness is not chosen for the sake of honour. Therefore, happiness is final and self-sufficient as the object of all actions.
Aristotle distinguishes between arguments that start from first principles and those leading to first principle. He rejects Plato’s theory of forms, and prefers his arguments to proceed only from what is known, rather than from theories and ideas. Aristotle proposes that there can be no common idea corresponding to both the relative good and to the absolute good. This is his basis for teleological argument, and supports his theory of self-sufficiency.
Aristotle defines the Good of Man as the active exercise of the soul’s faculties commensurate with virtue or with the most perfect virtue, over an entire lifetime. Man’s actions and the soul’s active exercise of its functions as living or doing well, is posited as being happiness. Thus, actions conforming to virtue are essentially pleasant. However, happiness requires external goods such as friends, wealth or political power, all facets of external prosperity.
Aristotle adds that activities performed in conformance with virtue possess the greatest degree of permanence, because they most fully occupy the lives of the most happy. Since virtue implies perfect goodness, goodness itself must be examined as excellence of soul rather than as excellence of body, and, happiness being activity of the soul. He proposes a division of the soul into the irrational part and another part capable of reason. The basic level of the irrational part of the soul is the vegetative nature, which causes nutrition and growth. The next level of the soul is the appetitive part, having both a rational principle in itself, and another part subservient to this principle. Virtue is similarly divided, such that a person’s moral; character may be of gentle or temperate disposition, and praiseworthy dispositions are termed as virtuous. Aristotle also describes the deliberative principle as manifesting itself in the actions of admonishment, rebuke and exhortation. Deliberation is the process of separating virtues from vices, and finding balance.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Book II
Aristotle notes that intellectual virtue is produced and increased by instruction, and moral virtue is the outcome of habit, understood as kindred to character. Thus, no moral virtue comes from nature because habit cannot alter a natural property. Nature may only confer a capacity to receive a virtue which matures through habit. Virtues are acquired by practising them, just as we become just by practising just acts. Further, we gain or lose virtue in transactions with other people by learning how to comport ourselves in relation to the passions. Therefore, we must learn to control our activities so as to determine our own dispositions. As moral qualities may be destroyed by either excess or deficiency, they are preserved by observance of what Aristotle calls the mean.
The fact that moral virtue is in acting in the most appropriate way to pleasures and pains, vice being the opposite, raises the issue of the nature of choice. The noble, expedient and the pleasant are motives for choice, and the base, harmful and the painful mitigate towards avoidance of choice. So, an act conforming with virtue must be done with knowledge, be deliberate and chosen for its own sake, and must come from a fixed disposition of character.
Aristotle stated the generic definition of virtue as neither emotions nor capacities, but rather, they are dispositions. Dispositions are defined as formed states of character as to the emotions. However, he set out the three alternate states of the soul as an emotion, a capacity, or a disposition, inferring that virtue is a state of the soul. From this derives the definition of moral virtue as observance of the mean, as determined by the prudent man, to involve neither excess nor deficiency, but to give rise to praise. In this way, virtue defined as observance of the mean is an extreme in itself.
There are three dispositions, the two vices of excess and defect, and one virtue of observing the mean. Each of these is opposed to one another because the extreme state of the one is the opposite of the middle state of the other. For instance, a brave man is rash to the coward, and a coward to the rash man. Aristotle’s first rule of thumb for aiming at the mean is to avoid the extreme which is opposed to the mean. The second rule is to observe our own predisposition to error through the experience of pleasure and pain, and then drag ourselves in the opposite direction. The third rule is that one must guard against pleasure because “when pleasure is on trial we are not impartial judges”.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Book III
Aristotle notes that involuntary actions are condoned and even pitied. Virtue is only of voluntary emotions and actions for which praise or blame might apply. He reports that it is generally held that actions are involuntary when compelled, or through ignorance. An action is under compulsion when the actor is passive and contributes nothing to it. However, when an action is executed through fear, or for a noble goal, it remains open to question as to whether it is voluntary or involuntary. And action approximate to the voluntary is when a person jettisons property in order to save life, because they are willed at their time of execution, and may often be praised. If a person submits to disgrace or pain for a noble object, they may be praised. However such submission without motive brings blame.
An act done through ignorance is always involuntary, but only when the actor experiences pain and regret. The genus of choice belongs to that of voluntary action. The field of deliberation is to discern actions that are within one’s power to perform, in respect of means rather than of ends. Thus, the object of choice and deliberation are the same, only such that the object of choice is a thing within our power which after due deliberation we desire. This must be distinguished from wishes, which are only for ends.
Aristotle defines temperance as observance of the mean with respect to pleasure of the body, rather than of the intellect. However, pleasures of the eye, ear and accidental smell are exceptions because those not observing the mean in these senses are not termed profligate. Thus, temperance and profligacy are concerned with the pleasures man shares with the animals. The profligate person desires all pleasure and feels pain from this desire, as well as when the desire is thwarted. Profligacy appears more voluntary than cowardice because it is caused by pleasure, which is a thing people choose.
Further Reading on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
A practical example of deliberation is the process of parliamentary legislation, which begins after identification of social vices, and concludes in an act of parliament.
For a further practical context in which to practise the art of ethical deliberation, readers will benefit from reading Pros and Cons of Stem Cell Research - Ethical Issues and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics – Books VI, VIII, IX and X.
Source:
Aristotle - The Nicomachean Ethics
Join the Conversation