Aristotle

12. PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

12 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY We expect to find a world alien to us in Aristotle’s ethics and political philosophy, because we assume that the subject matter treated in it—morals, right, and politics —has changed radically since antiquity. We also expect outdated theoretical premises such as a teleology of nature, theories about the cosmos, and other “metaphysical ” elements. In reality, it is here, in the sphere of practical philosophy, that the conversation with Aristotle proves to be particularly stimulating. For example, he developed a model of human action, the model based on desire —with its important distinction between poiêsis and praxis, that is, production and action—which would lose its importance only through later ethics of will such as that of Kant, and even then was not merely replaced. Similarly, Aristotle’s political theory was modified in modern times, but it was not simply devaluated; his statements about man as a political being and about the various forms of government remain worth considering to this day. Despite the distance in time, the reflections on justice, friendship, weakness of the will, or pleasure still invite philosophical discourse. The reason for this is simple: the questions that are dealt with are not tied to any particular area, and in general the arguments are not so closely linked to pecularities of the Greek polis that they would a priori resist transcultural, universalist discourse. 12.1 THE AUTONOMY OF ETHICS By “ethics” we mean a normative discipline, the philosophy of moral action that as a foundation asks mainly for the moral principle. While Aristotle develops this kind of ethics, he does not stop there. It needs to be explained that the word êthos has a triple meaning: the usual place where one lives one’s life, the habits lived in that place, and finally, the way of thinking and disposition, that is, the character. Given the first meaning, Aristotle deals also with social and political institutions; politics is part of his ethics in a wider sense. Because of the second meaning, his ethics takes on the characteristics of ethology, a doctrine of ethos (habit, custom) which is etymologically related to êthos (cf. EN II 1, 1103a17 f.). However, Aristotle does not merely examine the customs of his own time: in contrast with empirical behavioral sciences or empirical sociology, he deals primarily with the 129 foundations of human behavior as such. Finally, in keeping with the third meaning of êthos, he develops a normative ethics, concerned with far more than just a moral principle. Three treatises dealing with ethics in a narrow sense have come down to us. This textual situation, “which is unique in the whole of Hellenic literature” (Schleiermacher 1817), the “enigma of the three ethics” has not been resolved to this day (cf. Dirlmeier 19835 , 93 ff.). In comparison with the Eudemian Ethics and in particular the Great Ethics (the Magna Moralia, the authenticity of which is disputed ), the discussions in the Nicomachean Ethics are usually the most detailed, and they have by far the greatest effect. For these two reasons (and not as a refutation of Kenny’s [1978] thesis that the Eudemian Ethics is the more substantial work), in the following we shall be referring mainly to the Nicomachean Ethics, or, for short: Ethics. Incidentally, the question why the name features in the title cannot be answered; it could refer to Aristotle’s father, his son, or some other Nicomachus. The Nicomachean Ethics, a mature work, is to a large extent based on a wellconsidered composition. Book I quickly approaches the topic, “the aim of human action,” identifies the goal as happiness (eudaimonia), and goes on to develop its concept in several approaches. This results in two kinds of practical competence, virtues of the character and of the intellect, which are explained successively in books II–VI. The subsequent books continue with “related” topics: weakness of the will (VII 1–11), pleasure (VII 12–15 and X 1–5), and friendship (VIII–IX). The climax and conclusion (X 6–9) is constituted by the discussion of the two ways of life that lead to happiness, theoretical and moral-political existence. (For a more detailed interpretation of the individual parts, see the anthologies by Rorty 1980 and Höffe 1995). Three elements, which are already hinted at in the introductory chapter, give Aristotle’s Ethics its profile: the concept of desire, the question of the good life, and the three qualifications of the so-called excursus on method, from which...