Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the ''Nicomachean Ethics''

319 Pages·2008·1.03 MB·English

by  Ronna Burger

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A R I S T O T L E S D I A L O G U E

W I T H S O C R A T E S

’
A R I S T O T L E S

D I A L O G U E W I T H
S O C R A T E S

O N T H E
N I C O M A C H E A N
E T H I C S
Ronna Burger
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2008 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Paperback edition 2009
Printed in the United States of America
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 3 4 5 6
isbn-13: 978-0-226-08050-5 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-08052-9 (paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-08050-1 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-08052-8 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burger, Ronna, 1947–
Aristotle’s dialogue with Socrates: on the Nicomachean ethics/
Ronna Burger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-08050-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-08050-1 (hardcover: alk. paper)
I. Aristotle. Nicomachean ethics. 2. Ethics. 3. Socrates. I. Title.
b430.b87 2008
171'.3—dc22
2007034913
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction The Socratic Question of the Ethics 1

PART I THE HUMAN GOOD
1 The Final End and the Way to It 13
From the Good to the Human Good 13
Opinions about Happiness 21
The Human Good and the Human Ergon 30
Happiness in a Complete Life 36
The Nonrational Psych¯e 41

PART II THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE JUST
2 Excellence of Character 47
A Non-Socratic Account 48
Habituation 51
Ethical Virtue and the Measure of the Mean 56
Responsibility and Nature 62
3 Virtues and Vices 68
The Beautiful as Telos of the Virtues 69
Justice in the City and Justice in the Soul 92

PART III THE RETURN TO THE GOOD
4 Excellence of Thought 109
The Pivot of the Argument of the Ethics 109
The Rational Psych¯e 112
contents / vi
Intellectual Virtues 115
Phron¯esis, Sophia, and the Claim to Happiness 123
5 Pleasure and the Discovery of
Nature 131
A New Beginning:
From the Bestial to the Divine 132
The Faction of Passion and Reason 135
Pleasure by Nature and the Good 153
6 Friendship and the Discovery of
the Self 159
Rational and Political Nature 159
Perfect Friendship and Other Species 161
Justice in Friendship 166
The Friend as an Other Self 171
Friendship, Eros, and Philosophy 183
7 Happiness 190
Pleasure Revisited 190
The Theoretical Life 198
The Legislative Art 207
A Socratic Answer to a Socratic Question? 212
Appendix 1 Socrates, Plato, Philosophy 218
Appendix 2 Virtues and Vices 221
Appendix 3 Categories of Justice 223
Appendix 4 Classifi cations of Pleasure 225
Notes 227
Bibliography 289
Index 299
acknowledgments
A book is produced by art; it does not grow by nature. Yet if one’s work goes
on for long enough—as in the present instance—that clear-cut boundary
begins to be blurred. Under those circumstances, too many debts are accu-
mulated to acknowledge individually and some too great to acknowledge in
the way they deserve. In such cases, though—Aristotle speaks of gods, par-
ents, and fellow participants in philosophy—one must pay back what one
can, no matter how far it falls short of what one owes.
Writing, like thinking, is a solitary activity; but my own internal dialogue
has been enriched and enlivened by discussion with friends and my expression
of it enhanced by their responses, for which I owe special thanks to Michael
Davis, Mary Nichols, and Stuart Warner. As my work on Aristotle developed
I learned much from presenting it to receptive but challenging audiences
at conferences and college campuses, including St. John’s in A nnapolis and
Santa Fe, the University of Chicago, Boston College, the Catholic University
of America, Assumption College, Roosevelt University, Howard University,
the University of Dallas, Villanova University, Middlebury College, Boston
University, and Fordham University. I am particularly grateful to my gradu-
ate students at Tulane, past and present, with whom I have worked out my
understanding of Plato and Aristotle in ways that continue to feel like an
adventure. In bringing this study to its present public form, it is my good
fortune to have had the initial encouragement and ongoing support of my
editor, John Tryneski, at the University of Chicago Press. The manuscript in
its fi nal stages benefi ted from comments and questions raised by readers for
the Press and from the careful work of my copy editor, Mary Caraway.
The plan for this project began to emerge in the course of several sum-
mers of concentrated research and writing, supported by fellowships from
Tulane University, the Earhart Foundation, and the National Endowment
vii
acknowledgments / viii
for the Humanities. It was a distinctive privilege to have a research fellow-
ship at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation in Munich in 1999–2000
and, in particular, to share ideas with Heinrich Meier, director of the Foun-
dation, whose interest in this project has helped sustain it over time. The
prelude to that year in Munich was a public talk I presented at the Siemens
Foundation in 1994. On that occasion, I had the honor of being introduced
by my mentor, Seth Benardete, who made this remark: “Heidegger found
Sophocles’ tragedies to be a philosophic refl ection on ethics superior to Ar-
istotle’s, but Burger promises to bring Aristotle’s Ethics back into the fold of
philosophy.” If I have been able to pursue that promise, it is on the basis of an
understanding of philosophy and the experience of its distinctive pleasures
that I came to know over my years of study and conversation with Benar-
dete. He is not here to see this project come to fruition, but his infl uence will
be evident throughout.
My fi rst discoveries of the treasures of Aristotle’s Ethics occurred almost as
long ago as the birth of my son, now a college student; watching his life take
shape, while refl ecting, in memory, on the place of my parents in my own,
has kept me in touch with the reality of the questions this book addresses.
My exploration of Aristotle’s thought, and through it our own fundamental
concerns, is something I have shared from the start with my husband, Robert
Berman. We lived together with this study all along, and there are few ideas
or arguments in it that were not clarifi ed, deepened, and extended by his
questioning and analysis.
I should acknowledge, fi nally, my appreciation of the unintended con-
sequences of unwished-for circumstances. Forced by the aftermath of Hur-
ricane Katrina to evacuate New Orleans during the fall semester of 2005, a
generous family in Houston provided us a home away from home. Lucky to
have my laptop computer stored with all my previous work and fi nding my-
self abruptly freed for a time from my usual academic responsibilities, I was
able to complete a draft of the book that I now hand over to an unknown
audience.
INTRODUCTION
The Socratic Question of the Ethics
Aristotle sees the perfection of man as Plato sees it and more.
However, because man’s perfection is not self-evident or easy to
explain by a demonstration leading to certainty, he saw fi t to start
from a position anterior to that from which Plato had started.
And it has become evident that the knowledge that he [Aristotle]
investigated at the outset just because he loved to do so . . . has
turned out to be necessary for acquiring the intellect for the sake
of which man is made.
—Alfarabi, “The Philosophy of Aristotle,” i and xix 1
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics addresses a question of the utmost importance
to us: What is the human good? Or, as the question comes to be elaborated,
What is happiness? What is the good life for a human being? Its explora-
tion of this question has made the Ethics one of the most infl uential works in
the philosophical tradition, yet what exactly its teaching is has long puzzled
readers and provoked much debate. The very arrangement of the text and
the problems posed by it might lead one to wonder whether there is any un-
derlying argument that makes the work a coherent whole. After grappling
with its fundamental question about the human good in Book I, the inquiry
enters upon what looks like a long, indirect path to its goal, beginning with
an investigation of virtue; when, at the end of the tenth and last book, it
fi nally returns to its original question, or something close to it, the answer
proposed appears to leave behind much of the rich understanding of human
life developed along the way.
Wherever the path of the Ethics fi nally leads, the question to which it re-
sponds sets Aristotle on a course following in the footsteps of Socrates. Ac-
cording to the history of philosophy that Aristotle constructs in Metaphysics
1