Table Of Content

Title Pages Aristotle's Ethical Theory W.F.R. Hardie Print publication date: 1980 Print ISBN-13: 9780198246329 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198246329.001.0001 Title Pages (p.i) Aristotle's Ethical Theory (p.ii) (p.iii) Aristotle's Ethical Theory (p.iv) This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States Page 1 of 2 Title Pages by Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 1968, 1980 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 978-0-19-824632-9 Access brought to you by: Page 2 of 2 Dedication Aristotle's Ethical Theory W.F.R. Hardie Print publication date: 1980 Print ISBN-13: 9780198246329 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198246329.001.0001 Dedication (p.v) TO I. St. M. H. Access brought to you by: Page 1 of 1 Preface (1968) Aristotle's Ethical Theory W.F.R. Hardie Print publication date: 1980 Print ISBN-13: 9780198246329 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198246329.001.0001 (p.vi) (p.vii) Preface (1968) I HAVE tried in this book to give an account of Aristotle’s main ethical doctrines, and to justify my interpretations by the detailed scrutiny of particular passages, often very familiar passages. In the study of Aristotle familiarity can be an obstacle to understanding; we are prone to think we know what he means before we do. I hope that I have avoided some misunderstandings by making the analyses of particular passages part of a continuous account of the whole relevant doctrine. The book contains some independent discussions of philosophical questions which I take to be raised by Aristotle’s work. A historian of philosophy may be tempted to think that his whole task is to discover what questions his author was asking and how he answered them, and not himself to discuss philosophical questions. But he cannot avoid discussing philosophical questions if he finds that what is said in the text he studies is intelligible only as a step towards saying something different and better. He must place his author in a historical sequence but also on a map of the subject. Interpretation involves risks, but the risks are less if they are taken openly. I have not assumed in readers any knowledge of Greek. When I have mentioned Greek words I have transliterated them as well as translated. Translated passages are usually quotations from the Oxford Translation of Aristotle.1 I am grateful to many with whom I have discussed Aristotelian questions, in particular to Professor G. E. L. Owen who read some of the chapters in typescript. My obligations to commentators, and to the writers of books and articles, will be obvious to readers who read only the Index. I regret if I have anywhere failed to Page 1 of 2 Preface (1968) acknowledge what (p.viii) I have appropriated. My greatest obligation is to the works of Sir David Ross. I have to make some acknowledgements of pcrmission to use work previously published. Chapter VII (‘Virtue is a Mean’) was published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1964–5. I am grateful to the editor for his permission to print it again here. I have used some of the material contained in two other articles: ‘Aristotle’s Treatment of the Relation between the Soul and the Body’ published in the Philosophical Quarterly, 1964, and ‘The Final Good in Aristotle’s Ethics’ published in Philosophy, 1965. I thank the editors of these journals for their permission. I thank also the editor of the Listener for his permission to use (in the Appendix to Chapter V) paragraphs from a Third Programme talk (‘Bodies and Minds’) which was published in his paper on 14 April 1960. I acknowledge the courtesy of the Librarian of Balliol College, Oxford, in allowing me to borrow some manuscripts by the late Professor J. A. Smith. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the publishers and printers, and to their reader, whose acute queries and suggestions were always reasonable and almost always accepted. Corpus Christi College W. F. R. H. Oxford Notes: (1) Works of Aristotle. Translated into English under the editorship of J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross. Access brought to you by: Page 2 of 2 Preface to the Second Edition (1980) Aristotle's Ethical Theory W.F.R. Hardie Print publication date: 1980 Print ISBN-13: 9780198246329 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198246329.001.0001 (p.ix) Preface to the Second Edition (1980) THIS book was published in 1968 and has been out of print for a number of years. It is now reprinted with the pagination unchanged but with additional matter in the form of Appended Notes. These notes are printed continuously at the end of the book in an order determined by the order of the chapters or pages to which they primarily refer. The Bibliography has been rearranged and brought up to date. The revised Index has been enlarged by the inclusion of references to the Appended Notes, and an index of Aristotelian passages has been added. In writing the notes I have had two main objectives in view: to correct or supplement some of the interpretations which I now think were wrong or inadequate in the book and to take account of some recent contributions to the study of the Ethics. Some of the points made in the notes have been anticipated in articles. In particular I thank the editor of Philosophy for allowing me to use my article, ‘Aristotle on the best life for a man’ (1979). Points argued in it reappear with modifications in the notes to chapter II (The Final Good) and chapter XVI (Theoretical Activity). I have come to think differently on two questions which I have found puzzling in Aristotle’s doctrine on ethical virtue. What has Aristotle in mind when he speaks, most explicitly in his introduction to EN VII but not only there, of extraordinary or heroic virtue? The first note appended to XIII (Moral Weakness) is a second version, written two years later, of the Appendix (‘Continence, Virtue, Heroic Virtue’) which I was allowed to add to my chapter VII (‘Virtue is a Mean’) when the greater part of that chapter was reprinted in Articles on Aristotle, 2 (1977). The second puzzle has some connection with the first. What was Aristotle’s purpose in IV 3 where he gives a description of the (p.x) magnanimous man (rnegalopsuchos) which has evoked hostile and disrespectful reactions? I have discussed megalopsuchia and the interpretations of commentators in an article Page 1 of 2 Preface to the Second Edition (1980) in Phronesis (1978), and have found room here only for a short note to chapter VI. The notes on V (The Nature of Man) are based on, but not transcribed from, parts of an article, ‘Concepts of Consciousness in Aristotle’, in Mind (1976). Two major books were published after I had, as I thought, completed my Appended Notes: the edition of the De Motu Animalium (1978) by Martha Craven Nussbaum and The Aristotelian Ethics (1978) by Anthony Kenny. Beyond adding to my Bibliography I could react only by writing two short ‘postscripts’: one to my chapter XII (Practical Syllogism) suggested by the fourth of Nussbaum’s five Interpretive Essays (‘Practical Syllogisms and Practical Science’) and one in response to the second of Kenny’s philosophical chapters (‘Happiness in the Aristotelian Ethics’). W. F. R. H. Corpus Christi College Oxford Access brought to you by: Page 2 of 2 Introductory Note: Aristotle’s Ethical Writings Aristotle's Ethical Theory W.F.R. Hardie Print publication date: 1980 Print ISBN-13: 9780198246329 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198246329.001.0001 Introductory Note: Aristotle’s Ethical Writings W.F.R. Hardie DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198246329.003.0001 Abstract and Keywords This book examines Aristotle's ethical doctrines as they are expounded in the work known as the Nicomachean Ethics (EN). Two other works on ethics have come down as Aristotle's, the Eudemian Ethics (EE) and the Great Ethics or Magna Moralia. This chapter briefly refers to the general character of these other two treatises, and to the variety of the opinions which have been held by scholars about their relations to the Nicomachean Ethics. It also describes the characteristics of the Nicomachean Ethics. The discussion aims to anticipate some of the questions which the non-specialist reader is likely to have in mind about Aristotle's ethical writings. Keywords: Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Greek philosophy, Magna Moralia, Aristotle THIS book examines Aristotle’s ethical doctrines as they are expounded in the work known as the Nicomachean Ethics. Two other works on ethics have come down to us as Aristotle’s, the Eudemian Ethics and the Great Ethics or Magna Moralia. Later in this note I shall refer briefly to the general character of these other two treatises, and to the variety of the opinions which have been held by scholars about their relations to the Nicomachean Ethics. But I shall first say something about the characteristics of the Nicomachean Ethics. I am assuming that the reader may never have read an Aristotelian treatise and may not know Greek. Such a reader, if he approaches the work expecting it to resemble a modern book, planned as a whole and written for publication, will find in it features which should surprise him and cause him to wonder how the work came to be written in its present form.1 Page 1 of 10 Introductory Note: Aristotle’s Ethical Writings The EN is divided into ten ‘books’ of roughly similar length, a length (twenty pages or so) which makes it natural to think of them as analogous to the chapters of a modern book. But the analogy fails in more than one way. In a modern book it is normal for each chapter to deal with a single topic and hence we expect the chapters to vary considerably in length. It is true that, if a chapter threatens to exceed a certain length, the author may allow one topic to spread over two chapters, just as in the EN the topic (p.2) of philia (friendship) spreads over two books (VIII and IX). In the EN some of the books deal with a single topic, or a set of closely connected topics, as ν with justice and VI with the intellectual excellencies. But sometimes there is a transition from one topic to another in the middle of a book. It is as if a book had to be of a certain approximate length, perhaps the length convenient for a single roll of papyrus. When we look at the over-all arrangement of the contents of the EN we notice a more important difference between the treatise and a modern book: there are signs that the treatise was not planned and composed as a unitary whole by the author of its parts or that, if it was, it was planned to have a looser structure than a modern book. It need not surprise us to find separate discussions of the final good or end, happiness, in both the first and the last books (I and X); for it is natural to separate preliminary outlines from final conclusions. But it is disconcerting that there is no clear reference in I to the doctrine of X that the highest form of happiness is intellectual ‘contemplation’ (theōria), although in X we are reminded of what has been said in I.1 Again the reader may be surprised to find two whole books2 dealing with friendship and only one3 book covering, in a rather untidy form, the important topics of the virtues of the intellect and the intellectual aspect of right conduct. Again the formulas of transition are often mechanical, e.g. at the beginning of VII: ‘let us now make a fresh start and point out…’4 Such formulas suggest the stitching together of sections which might have been composed without an eye on an over-all plan. There is one very conspicuous anomaly in the arrangement of the treatise. It contains two separated treatments of pleasure which are not made to seem consistent and neither of which refers to the other.5 At the end of the first treatment our text says: ‘we have discussed pleasure and pain…; it remains to speak of friendship.’6 Then the section on friendship (VIII and IX) ends with the words: ‘so much, then, for friendship; our next task must be to discuss (p.3) pleasure.’1 It is difficult to suppose that Aristotle could have planned this sequence. The two treatments of pleasure cover similar ground in their criticisms of the views which they reject but X contains also an elaborate exposition of a positive doctrine. A possible inference is that the discussion of pleasure and pain in VII was inserted by an editor who might have felt that the piece dealt with the subject from an angle different from that of the discussion in X and made points not repeated there. We can be grateful for his clumsiness if it preserved an essay by Aristotle which would otherwise have been lost. A Page 2 of 10 Introductory Note: Aristotle’s Ethical Writings modern editor producing posthumously the work of the author might have printed the earlier less finished treatment of pleasure as an appendix. So much on the general arrangement of the contents of the work. There are, moreover, considerable variations in the texture of the argument, in the degree of finish and elaboration with which the points are made. Some passages are highly condensed or sketchy. Here, for example, is a complete argument from the attack in 1. 6 on the Platonic doctrine of the good: ‘but again it will not be good any the more for being eternal, since that which lasts long is no whiter than that which perishes in a day.’2 Sometimes an argument is mentioned rather than stated: one passage in the Metaphysics mentions three Platonic arguments and three Aristotelian refutations in four lines.3 A man preparing a lecture may need to write down only a word or two to remind him of an argument which he knows will trip from his tongue. There are other ways in which the composition is unequal. Sometimes the sequence of thought is unclear. Sometimes pas sages are repeated in an apparently pointless way with minor variations. Commentators would like to change the order of paragraphs or sentences in order to make the argument more consecutive and more intelligible. Modern editors have some times actually practised such surgery. An eminent scholar once went so far as to compare the contents of an Aristotelian treatise with the contents of a waste- paper basket. Two explanations of this kind of roughness or disorder might suggest themselves. One is that a basic text, amended from time to time by Aristotle, has (p.4) accumulated variants and accretions but has never been finished and polished. Another is that an editor in producing a text has at some points conflated two or more versions of sections dealing with the same points, and has been over-anxious that nothing significant or valuable should be lost. Sometimes both causes may be at work. This source of difficulty is specially frequent in the central books of the EN (V–VII). The description I have given of some of the ways in which the EN is, from our point of view, a work of an unexpected and unfamiliar form would be misleading if it were taken to imply that the treatise is not a methodical and carefully written exposition of Aristotle’s ethical views. The philosophy of morals is a set of more and less closely connected topics. Hence both the selection of topics to be discussed and the order in which they are discussed, whether in a book or in a course of lectures, are inevitably arbitrary to some extent. Thus the fact that we cannot be sure how far the work in its present form was planned by Aristotle himself is not inconsistent with the assurance of Rackham that ‘the Nicomachean Ethics is the authoritative statement of Aristotle’s system’.1 It has always over the centuries been so regarded. Again the observation that the state of the text is at some points confused must not be understood as suggesting that Page 3 of 10