Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

204 Pages·2004·2.08 MB·English

by  Gabriel Richardson Lear

Happy Lives and the Highest Good
Happy Lives and the Highest Good
AN ESSAY ON ARISTOTLE'S
NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
Gabriel Richardson Lear
Copyright © 2004 by Princeton University Press Published by
Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New
Jersey 08540
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Richardson
Lear, Gabriel, 1971– Happy lives and the highest good : an essay
on Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics / Gabriel Richardson Lear.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-11466-8 (alk. paper) 1. Aristole, Nicomachean ethics.
2. Ethics, Ancient. I. Title.
B430.L43 2004
171′.3—dc212003042899
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This
book has been composed in Sabon and American Gothic Printed
on acid-free paper. ∞
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Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FOR MY PARENTS
Dale and Leslie Richardson
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
CHAPTER TWO
The Finality Criterion
1. Introduction
2. What It Is to Be an Aristotelian Telos
3. Teleology in the Nicomachean Ethics
4. Teleology, Desire, and Middle-Level Ends
5. The Puzzle in NE I.7 and Two Possible Solutions
6. Ackrill’s Inclusivist Solution
CHAPTER THREE
The Self-Sufficiency of Happiness
1. Self-Sufficiency: Three Problems for a Monistic Reading of
Eudaimonia
2. Self-Sufficiency as a Mark of Finality
3. Self-Sufficiency in the Philebus
4. The Self-Sufficiency of Monistic Goods
5. Choice worthiness and Self-Sufficiency
6. Self-Sufficient Happiness
CHAPTER FOUR
Acting for the Sake of an Object of Love
1. Love and Final Causation in Aristotle’s Scientific Works
2. How Teleological Approximation Could Solve the Problem of
Middle-Level Ends
3. Approximation in the Nicomachean Ethics?
CHAPTER FIVE
Theoretical and Practical Reason
1. The Separateness and Similarity of Theoretical and Practical
Reason
2. Theoretical Sophia versus Practical Wisdom
3. The Relationship of Phronêsis to Theoretical Wisdom
CHAPTER SIX
Moral Virtue and To Kalon
1. To Kalon Outside Human Action
2. To Kalon in Human Action
3. The Account of Fine Action at Rhetoric I.9
4. To Kalon and Spirited Desire
CHAPTER SEVEN
Courage, Temperance, and Greatness of Soul
1. Courage: NE III.6–9
2. Temperance: NE III.10–12
3. Greatness of Soul: NE IV.3
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two Happy Lives and Their Most Final Ends
1. The Competition between the Philosophical and Political Lives
2. The Superior Finality of Contemplation
3. Human Approximation of Divine Life: Part One
4. Human Approximation of Divine Life: Part Two
5. Choosing Moral Virtue for the Sake of Contemplation
APPENDIX
Acting for Love in the Symposium
1. Possessing the Object of Love
2. The Intrinsic Value of Intermediate Objects of Love
Works Cited
Index Locorum
General Index
Acknowledgments
MANY PEOPLE HAVE HELPED ME think and write about the material in
this book, though whether I have made good use of their advice is for them
to say. My former colleagues in the Yale philosophy department have been
generous both in general support and in commenting on drafts of chapters 4
and 5. In particular, I thank Robert Adams, Tad Brennan, and Michael
Della Rocca. Stephen Menn offered helpful guidance at an early stage.
David Sedley offered useful comments on a draft of chapter 3. David
Charles and two other anonymous readers for Princeton University Press
wrote especially thorough reports on my submitted manuscript. I have
learned from them and hope I have managed to go some way toward
answering the problems they raised for my argument.
This book began as my Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton University. I am
grateful for my time spent there. The intense conversations in seminars that
spilled out afterward to the Annex made it a happy initiation into the life of
philosophical leisure. In particular, I thank the members of the Philosophy
Department Dissertation Seminar 1999–2000 and the members of the
University Center for Human Values Mellon Graduate Seminar 1999–2000
who read and commented energetically on earlier versions of chapters 2
through 4. I also thank my fellow graduate students working in classical
philosophy, in particular Jonathan Beere, Ursula Coope, and Zena Hitz.
Alexander Nehamas is a teacher to whom I owe much. And I thank
Christian Wildberg for his helpful comments as a reader of my dissertation.
But above all, I thank my former advisers, John Cooper and Sarah
Broadie. The countless hours they spent talking me through my ideas and
writing meticulous comments on drafts have made this a better piece of
work than it would otherwise have been. But more than that, they have
been models of scholarship and philosophical insight to which I aspire.
I wish also to thank my husband, Jonathan, who has encouraged me
every step of the way; Sophia Lear for being full of poise and warmth in
the midst of frenzy; my sisters, Leslie and Dana; and my parents, who
encouraged me from the beginning to be a philosopher.
Happy Lives and the Highest Good