The Function of the Rational Principle in Aristotle

THE FUNCTION OF THE RATIONAL PRINCIPLE IN ARISTOTLE TO EXAMINE the various uses of reason in Aristotle from a functionalistic point of view brings forward a number of questions directed to central concerns in his speculations. In this essay we are investigating Aristotle's use of reason in such themes as the moral life, the theoretical life, animal motion, and the world-system. Reason put to these various uses seems ambiguous and obscure especially considered from one topic to another. Within Aristotle's teleological framework we find a dysfunctionalism in man as a part of the world in relation to the complete world-system. The nous of theoretical speculation seems described as escaping this limitation and we, therefore, are constrained to ask how it differs from that nous which is a component of human choice, and from n.ous expressing purpose for the human being as a natural entity and a part of a species. The essay comes to no reconstructive conclusions and hazards criticisms, in a tentative spirit, in the process of locating difficulties. Aristotle, understanding man to be a rational animal, suggests a cooperative and synthetic arrangement of rational and irrational aspects in the human soul. He finds these aspects not separable in considering the efficient cause and origin of action. This is most significant; for Aristotle, action is uniquely characteristic of man: True action cannot be ascribed to any inanimate substance, nor to any animate being except man; clearly, therefore, it is man who has this power of originating actions.1 The moral life depends upon the dovetailing of rational and irrational aspects; this is emphasized in Aristotle's employment 1 Magna Moralia, I, xi, I. 686 THE RATIONAL PRINCIPLE IN ARISTOTLE 687 of " proairesis," sometimes translated as " choice " and sometimes as " purpose." The origin of action-its efficient, not its final cause-is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end. This is why choice cannot exist either without reason or intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and character.... Hence choice is either desiderative reason (orektikos nous) or ratiocinative desire (orexis dianoiatika) and such an origin of action is man.2 The presence of a rational aspect in choice secures the moral life from indeterminateness. For moral virtues are not by nature; that is, unlike, say, the determinate motion of a stone falling downward, the moral virtues are acquired through exercise . It is through exercise forming dispositions that man's nature is determined and ought to be determined. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted for receiving them, by nature, and are made perfect by habit.3 Habit expresses the condition of interchange between th~ person and his environment which, if not arbitrary, must express a rule of governance. Without such a governance, an orthos logos, moral life would be arbitrary and indeterminate. A right rule of action relates to pain and pleasure in terms of a" view to an end." Ideally, pain and pleasure monitor the appropriateness of any particular activity. Aristotle takes the mean between excess and deficiency to express appropriate choice in terms of pleasure. He suggests each virtue has its domain (taxis kai kosmos) where pleasure is obtained in a manner maximally beneficial to the organism as a whole, a silstema. His ultimate view of the virtues is synthetic, based on the principle of the well-functioning whole as the criterion for interpreting the proper function of the parts. Choice, then, cannot be identified with mere appetite (epithumia ) or passion (thumos). These "animalistic aspects" 2 Nick. Eth., 1139a3fl fl'. 8 Ibid., 1103al9. 688 MARTIN A. BERTMAN of man tend unrestraintly to seek pleasure (though this way of speaking must not be confused with speaking of the proper functioning animal. Indeed, the concept of choice makes more complex the system of nature operating on moral behavior). An hydrolic mechanism " by nature " conspicuous in other animals seems, if not missing, then modified in man. For example, a cat will tend to stop eating when physically satisfied, likewise a human infant: to continue would...