Aristotle's Politics of Morals

Aristotle's Politics of Morals STANFORD CASHDOLLAR I. INTRODUCTION NOWHERE IN THE ARISTOTELIAN CORPUS is there any mention of a science (or art) of ethics or moral philosophy. Aristotle expressly declares that the "inquiry" of the Nicomachean Ethics is "a political one" (g~0o~oq... lroLt~t~:r zig o6cra, 1094b11; cf. 1095a2, 15). The Eudemian Ethics takes it for granted that the reader (or audience) understands its "inquiry" to be political (1216b35-39, 1218a33-35, 1234b22-24). The Great Ethics, an early peripatetic treatise (though likely not by Aristotle himself) calls itself "a political pursuit" (1181b26-27; of. 1197628-29)? Yet even most of those scholars who note one or more of these facts proceed to dismiss them and treat the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics as if their respective subject-matters constituted two interrelated but distinct bodies of knowledge, investigated by two interrelated but distinct sciences or branches of philosophy-ethics and political theory. It is usually noted t.hat the latter portion of the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics is a transition from ethics to politics, for it is generally agreed that the subject-matters of the Politics are introduced and anticipated here. Often also we find statements to the effect that Aristotle combined (fused, confounded) ethies and politics into a comprehensive "human philosophy" (EN 1181b15) but a philosophy which, as understood by these scholars, includes as its parts or its branches a science of ethics and a science of politics, in name perhaps the same but in effect two different sciences, arts, or fields of philosophical study. While opinions on this matter are found in several grades along the scale which would extend from unity to complete separatism, the bulk of scholars' opinions clearly collect very near the separatist end, while the scholars themselves Hereafter EN for Nicomachean Ethics, EE for Eudemian Ethics, and MM for Great Ethics or Magna Moralia. Citations are by Bekker pages. Standard English versions of EN, such as that of Ross (in The Works of Aristotle, Vol. IX, London, 1915), are misleading in translating ~o~,t~tr~l xlg ogoa by "political science, in one sense of that term." While this translation is not inaccurate, it misguides the reader, who assumes that the other "sense of that term" is the inquiry of the Politics. But the sense in which EN is not political science is the same as that in which the Politics is not political science, viz. that 7to~.t~tKfl itsolf is a practical science (art) whose gpaTga~e[ct lies in action more than in thought. EN and Politics are political science in that their thought precedes and is for the sake of its practice (cf. EN 1103b26), but as such they are both political science (art) only in that sense. (That there is no other sense in which EN is not political science is implicit in the argumentation of this paper.) I have attempted to avoid this possible misdirection by the equally accurate translation "a political one," taking go~.txl~:~i as adjectival with gg0oSog, and ~lg in its normal usage as the indefinite article, just as a few lines above Aristotle speaks of "a difference" among ends 05tatpopd 8~ xtg, 1094a3). Those translators who likewise understand 7rO~tTtKr as adjectival but retain Ross's force of ztg (e.g. political inquiry in a certain sense) do a graver disservice. There is no sense at all in which EN is not a political inquiry. [145] 146 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY excuse themselves for thinking that this is what Aristotle meant even though he could never bring himself to say so.2 It is the intent of this paper to present textual evidence to the effect that any form of separatism with regard to the science(s) or branch(es) of philosophy which deal(s) with the subject-matters of the Ethics and Politics is mistaken. There seems to be no reason not to take Aristotle at his word and to believe not that the contents of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics constitute two branches of human philosophy but that the various eighteen books collected under these names constitute a political inquiry which is coextensive with human philosophy...