Thoughts to accompany Aristotle readings
(as excerpted in Reeve & Miller’s Introductory Readings in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, 2nd edition)
Physics
(Ta Phusika, Growing Things)
Book I.1
Here Aristotle is laying out his basic goal and methodology. Worth noting, and perhaps surprising, is his claim that our understanding should “advance from universals to particulars”; he’s not working with an image like the Allegory of the Cave, which would involve a move from particulars to universals.
[N.B.: Dr. Cynthia Freeland’s brief guide to Bk. II might of assistance: http://www.uh.edu/~cfreelan/courses/PhysII.html]
Book II.1
Some points to reflect on include his way of distinguishing between natural objects and artifacts. The main point of this chapter is to show that there is a reason to think that the nature (phusis) of a thing is more the matter of the thing (see the passage 193a15-31; be able to put in your own words what this reason is) and to show that there are also reasons to think that the nature of a thing is more the shape/form of a thing. In fact, he gives three such reasons, so see if you can isolate them. (Hint: he gives all three in the paragraph 193b7-18. The first two such sentences give the first reason, and summarize the previous paragraph. The second and third reasons are each introduced by “Further....”)
Compare his “if you were to bury a bed” with the final fragment of Antiphon that’s included in Reeve and Miller (p. 44 in the 2nd ed.).
Then he takes up whether the nature (phusis) of a thing is more the matter of the thing or the shape/form of a thing, and in the course of this, he describes the thought of some Milesians.
Book II.2
Aristotle surveys earlier thinkers’ contributions to discussing matter and form. Note that “Those who say there are Ideas” are the Platonists, for “idea” is a transliteration (though not a great translation) of ιδεα, which is one word Plato uses to denote “Form.”
Notice Aristotle’s discussion of how the student of nature studies things like snub (like the how the snub-nose of some breeds of dog came to be, or how it affects their respiration), not things like curved (even though a snub nose is a curved nose). Natural objects are, Aristotle holds, “less separable” than mathematical objects. So when the student of nature studies, say, the straightness of the growth of a certain species of tree, the student is not studying straightness in itself, the way a geometer would. And since the Platonists (“those who say there are Ideas”) separate (Aristotle claims) the Forms from the physical world they are trying to account for, they are in principle unable to account for the physical world. (Aristotle would presumably say that the best they could do would be to account for the mathematical world.)
Book II.3
This is a major site for what’s come to be called Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes: the material cause (the out of which), the formal cause (the by which), the efficient (or making) cause (the from which), and the final cause (the for the sake of which). Get clear on the examples he gives of each.
(And beware of a possibly confusing point here: Aristotle uses the label “that from which” here to refer to the material cause; elsewhere he uses “that out of which,” and uses “that from which” for the efficient cause.)
After laying out his doctrine of the four causes, which is mostly clear, he raises the idea of a “coincident cause,” which discussion mostly isn’t.
I think what he’s getting at includes the phenomenon whereby, if I stumble on a loose brick on the path, the next issue of The Point News might read “Philosopher Trips While Walking.” While there would be nothing false about this headline, my being a philosopher would be merely coincident to my unfortunate brick encounter. (Unless, of course, I’d been reading, say, about Thales while walking; then one could make the case that “being a philosopher” was more than a coincident cause of the fall.)
Book II.4 & 5
In these chapters Aristotle sets out to obtain some clarity about in what sense luck and chance can be said to be causes.
Book II.6
This chapter continues the discussion of luck and chance, and includes an account of what distinguishes chance from luck.
Book II.7
Here Aristotle sums up his discussion of causation, and singles out the issue of the two sorts of initiators of motion. Later, he’ll call these unmoved movers and moved movers.
Book II.8
Aristotle distinguishes between what has come to be called teleological explanation (like it rains because it’s better that way, or because Zeus wills it) and mechanistic explanation (the necessity of how evaporation/condensation/precipitation works).
Delightful is that Aristotle entertains natural selection, and gives what amounts to an argument against it.
Book II.9
Since Aristotle wants to say that necessity plays a causal role in change, and since he has given his doctrine of causation, he realizes that he has to find a home for necessity in his view of causation. This requires some stretching and pulling.
Chapter 1
Notice how from the start, Aristotle assumes the existence of the psyche. He does not list as one of the questions to be examined whether there is such a thing. If we were to raise this to him, his response, like that of anyone in his day, would likely be, “But surely a living organism differs from a dead one.”
402a1-9
Aristotle distinguishes between attributes of the psyche and attributes of the animal that has the psyche. Can you think of clear cases of the one, clear cases of the other, and unclear cases?
403a3-b21
The remainder of the chapter gives us the first clues about what Aristotle takes to be the issues involved in whether such things as emotions (he focuses on the example of anger) involve only the body or the psyche too, and the related issue of whether the psyche is separable from matter. Take good notes on your careful reading, for you will find yourselves later referring back to this section.
403a24-b9
Note Aristotle’s description of a thoroughly materialist account of anger (as the boiling of the blood) and his “dialectical” account (as the desire for retaliation). Note how he uses this passage to argue that because the study of the psyche involves the study of material things, the study of the psyche falls within the province of the study of nature. We are witnessing the birth of naturalistic psychology.
This chapter contains some general comments about what a psyche is.
412a6-21
The psyche isn't substance in the fullest sense of substance (ousia),
namely in the sense in which the bronze sphere is substance. Instead it
actualizes matter into a composite, and it's that composite which is substance
in the fullest sense.
412a22-27
Aristotle distinguishes between the first and the second actuality of
something. What he means is this. Let
Aristotle's claim here is that psyche is the first actualization. Why is this point worth him making? Well, for starters, the implication of saying that psyche is the first actualization is that the psyche would be not some sort of activity, but the capacity to engage in some sorts of activities; more precisely, not the undeveloped capacity (that would be Alice), but the actualized potential to engage in some sort of activities.
At some point, then, Aristotle will have to tell us which are the relevant activities. He starts on this project at the passage 412b10-413a10, where he says that the psyche of something is the what-it-is-to-be-that-thing, by which he means something like the essential function (the ergon, "peculiar work") of the thing. This, of course, leaves unaddressed the question of which particular activities constitute the psyche of which living things (that is, which particular activities constitute the peculiar workings of which living things). This question will start to be addressed in II.2.
It also leaves open how the psyche actualizes the body; for example, does the psyche actualize the body like the way a sailor sails a ship? If not, then how else? This will come in (the notoriously perplexing) III.5.
412b3-9
What does Aristotle mean by his response to the question "Are the psyche
and body one?"
Chapter 2
413b22
Aristotle’s word phantasia is translated by Fine and Irwin (in editions from
Hackett Publishing Company) as "appearance" (and see their glossary
entry for this term), and by Hamlyn (in Ackrill’s A New Aristotle Reader)
as "imagination." It is a difficult word to translate, for it is more
interesting than "appearance" but less fancy than what we mean by
"imagination." When Aristotle talks of phantasia, he means it
not in the sense of what distinguishes poets from mental drudges like the rest
of us. He means it in the traditional sense, used even by Descartes, to refer
to something like "the ability for at least part of the outside world to
appear to you to be a certain way." Something like "the ability to
entertain images." So in this sense, Aristotle thinks that a fish must
have phantasia, for it must have an image (provided by sense-perception)
of the food source towards which it's moving.
413b25-32
Aristotle proceeds to mess up his nice picture by declaring that thought alone
is separable (from the body). Furthermore, this seems to land him in the
Platonist camp, for it represents a case of a form (the psychic faculty of
thought) as being able to exist separately from the world of spatio-temporal
particulars. Either Aristotle is right that there is something essentially
different about thought (as distinguished from self-feeding, growth, movement,
and sensation), or we have to chalk this exception up to Aristotle not being
able to throw off the influence of his teacher.
For what it's worth, we can see a similar problem in Aristotle's discussion from Met. XII.5, 6 & 9, where he talks about the divine substance. Here again there is a form which can exist separate from spatio-temporal particulars, and so perhaps represents another bit of residual Platonism.
But then maybe it's the same bit. For what is it that Aristotle takes the divine substance to be doing? Thinking. Which is exactly the exception he's making here at 413b25-32.
Chapter 3
Aristotle gets back into his Aristotelian mode when he says that not much can be said about psyche in general, and that to understand what a psyche is we need to study different sorts of empsyched beings. This approach is what makes Aristotle's mind so well-suited for studying, nay starting, biology.
Chapter 4
This chapter explores the most basic psyche, the nutritive psyche.
415a26-b1
Note Aristotle's teleology in claiming that everything living reproduces so as
to partake of the everlasting as much as possible. He looks around, notices
that all forms of life reproduce, and concludes that there must be a universal
"urge" (whether felt or unfelt) to reproduce. He does not settle on
(or entertain) the more mechanistic explanation that forms of life which don't
reproduce die off and so aren't around to be noticed by Aristotle.
415b9-28
Aristotle claims that the psyche is the cause of the body in three ways: it's
the efficient cause (the "from which"), the final cause (the
"for the sake of which"), and the formal cause (the "by
which," here described as "the substance" of the body).
Obviously, the psyche can't be the material cause (the "out of
which") of the body.
416a6
What does he mean by saying "in accordance with their functions, a plant’s
roots correspond to an animal’s head"?
416a9-18
Now that Aristotle has claimed that it's the psyche that is responsible for the
ability of a living thing to feed itself and grow, he must counter the view
that it's fire that is the essence of feeding and growth. Why might someone
think that fire is the source of feeding and growth? Well, fire is, after all,
the only element which increases by itself. Effort must be taken to ensure that
a fire doesn't feed itself, for except in artificial conditions (like
sand pits and wood stoves), fire left on its own will spread. That's fire's
nature. The nature of composite things ("everything naturally
constituted") involves proportion and limit (note the echo of Pythagoras
here), and so an incomposite element like fire isn't up to the job of limiting
feeding. Aristotle perhaps is thinking that if there were fire in us which allows
us to feed and grow, then that fire would grow out of control, and so consume
our very bodies. Interesting.
Chapter 3
Aristotle here discusses what phantasia is,
and how it differs from perception, belief, and knowledge. This serves as a
bridge between his discussions of perception and of thinking.
Irwin & Fine render phantasia as
“appearance,” and others (like Hamlyn) translate it as “imagination” (not in
the specific sense of creativity, but in the sense of “imaging” or “forming an
image of something).
428a6-17
He adduces four different considerations for why perceiving differs from
imaging (which is an appropriately less ambitious word than
"imagining"; to image something is for you to have that thing appear
to you): at "For perception is...," at "Moreover,...," at
"Further,...," and at Again,...." What are the four? Laurels to
those getting the fourth (in a way that makes it genuinely different from the
rest).
It’s not clear why, but the final sentence repeats the first of the four points.
428a18-24
He gives a reason for phantasia not being knowledge, and two reasons for
it not being belief.
428a25-b9
He gives an argument for phantasia not being a combination of belief and
perception. The last part (b5-9) of the passage is difficult, but makes sense.
Chapter 4
Now we get squarely to Aristotle's views on the nature of the thinking faculty (intellect, nous).
429a14-18
Although Aristotle seems only to suppose that perception is analogous to
thought, he seems go further and to endorse the analogy, at least insofar as
thinking requires that the intellect be capable of receiving the form of the
object of thought. The analog is said of perception at the opening of II.12.
429a19-29
This passage is not only crucial for Aristotle's account of the psyche, but the
point it makes is hugely influential in the history of theorizing about the
mind, its relation to the brain, and its ability to attain knowledge.
Aristotle holds that because everything can come to be known by the cognitive psyche (nothing in the cosmos need remain locked away from us), the intellect must have no nature. It is pure potentiality. For if the intellect had an actual nature, a form of its own, that nature would interrupt the ability of the intellect to receive the forms of some objects. The slate has to be blank (actually blank, though potentially full; cf. 430a1) in order for everything to be legibly written on it.
It won't be until Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781 and 1787) that someone proposes in any detail that the mind is hardwired to think with certain categories (like space, time, causality, substance), with the consequence that anything not conforming to those categories couldn't be an object of thought for us. Aristotle is more optimistic about the ability of the intellect to know everything in principle.
But that's not all. Aristotle draws out the implication that if the intellect is to be characterless so as to be able to take on the character of anything it thinks about, then it cannot "be mixed with the body." This is reminiscent of 413b24-31, where he had said that the intellect alone is separable (from the body? from the organism, including the rest of the psyche?).
Despite this precedent, this poses no small problem for Aristotle's general account of the psyche in II.1: "The psyche must, then, be substance qua form of a natural body which has life potentially...The psyche, therefore, will be the actuality of a body of this kind." If the psyche is form and actuality, then how can the intellect (part of the psyche, after all) be formless and pure potentiality?
Second, even if Aristotle adjusts his general account of what a psyche is, then, given his association of matter with potentiality and form with actuality (412a9), it stands to reason that if the intellect is without form, it's without actuality. But then if it's potentiality, wouldn't it have to be material?
Third, Aristotle believes that even matter has a form, though a lower level form than that of which the matter is matter. For example, a lump of bronze has the form of being a certain ratio of the four elements, even before the sculptor induces the higher level form of sphericality onto the lump. Since matter has some form, that limits the potential it has. Bronze could never become food, for instance. And even the element of water could never become fire. But even if Aristotle responds to the second point above with the claim that the intellect is purer potentiality then anything material could ever be, wouldn't it follow that when the intellect isn't thinking, it vanishes into the void (since it has no nature of its own)? To call this counter-intuitive would be too gentle.
429a29-b9
Aristotle notes two ways in which perception differs from thought, and they
both involve perception being, and thought not being, separate from the body.
(1) Only thought isn't worsened by having an intense object. (2) The intellect
can think by itself, but the perceptual faculties require an external object.
(And lest you object that it's possible to imagine an object that's not
present, remember that Aristotle has already given not one, but four reasons
for holding that imaging is distinct from perception [428a5-16].)
429b23-430a9
Aristotle poses and responds to two questions about his view of what the
intellect is. (1) If x can act on y only in virtue of some
similarity between them (for example, rain can act on a seed only if they are
both material objects and only if they exist at the same time and place), then
how can actual objects of thought act on a completely non-actual intellect? (2)
Can the intellect think about itself? (Given what Aristotle has said in this
chapter, why might this second question be a special challenge for him?)
He provides an answer to each in the second half of the passage. What are his answers?
Chapter 5
This is where Aristotle introduces the distinction between the passive intellect and the active (or producing) intellect. It represents a fast break from the previous chapter's analogy between perception and thought (cf. 429a14-18). In fact, it is surprising that the account of thinking in III.4 is so bereft of any hint of there being two intellects, or, at the very least, two aspects of the intellect. An example of this puzzlement is that where before he had said that the intellect has no nature and is only potential (429a21), he now commits himself to saying that there is an intellect which is pure activity, and so is pure form and has a full nature (activity, form, and nature all being linked in Aristotle's metaphysics). This new wrinkle can't simply be appended onto III.4, for it's incompatible with much of III.4.
Any ideas?
Chapters 10 & 11
These chapters discuss how thinking things get going. Desire is necessary but not sufficient for deliberation about what to do. You’re on your own for the rest of these short chapters.
Metaphysics
(Ta
Meta Ta Phusika, The Things after the
Physics)
Book I.1
Note how Aristotle “builds” knowledge, and builds it in a way that is distinctively more empirically oriented than Plato (as seen in Plato’s Analogy of the Sun, Divided Line, or Allegory of the Cave).
The desire to understand, however, doesn’t have to be built at all, according to Aristotle’s opening sentence. Someone who isn’t interested in figuring out the environment would be a defective human.
Book I.2
The sense of “science” (epistēmē, as described in Irwin & Fine’s glossary) that Aristotle means here is not as narrow as what we mean by the word. He means by it no more than a systematic discipline of knowledge. (See reading notes for IV.1 below for more.)
Philosophy begins in wonder. Beautiful.
Book I.3-4
A review of some Presocratics. These names should now be familiar to you, and you can use these chapters as something of a review that Aristotle has written for your final exam.
Book I.6 &
9
Here Aristotle describes some criticisms of Plato’s Theory of Forms (to which he usually refers as Plato’s Theory of Ideas; he does use the word idea in the Greek, but idea no more means our “idea” than apologia in the Greek means our “apology”).
The final paragraph of ch. 9 closes with a condensed (and therefore frustratingly dense) three arguments that Platonists give for the existence of the Forms (argument from the sciences, the one over the many, the argument about thinking), and mentions “the Third Man,” which is an objection to Plato’s Forms.
Book IV.1
Recall the note from Metaphysics I.2 above.
There is knowledge of the capitals of all 50 states, but this knowledge doesn’t qualify as epistēmē.
An epistēmē is also not just a systematic discipline of study, for then astrology would qualify as epistēmē. (After all, people can spend years studying how the alignment of certain planets and stars is supposed to influence events here on earth—where the influence is claimed to transcend mere gravity and light transmission.)
An epistēmē, properly defined is a systematic discipline of knowledge. Yet it would be stylistically ugly to translate every occurrence of the word epistēmē with “systematic discipline of knowledge,” so most translators simply opt for “knowledge” (usually with a footnote somewhere that epistēmē is more specific than our “knowledge”—due to the case of the state capitals above) or opt for “science” (usually with a footnote that epistēmē is more general than our very narrow sense of “science”).
History is an epistēmē, but most of us wouldn’t consider it a science.
So the take-home message here is that although Irwin & Fine use “science” as their translation for epistēmē, don’t think of it as science in a narrow sense.
Aristotle’s question in this chapter is: Although every systematic discipline of knowledge studies beings, is there such a thing as a systematic discipline of knowing about being (about “being insofar as it is being,” or about “being qua being,” this latter standing as the format in which Aristotle’s wording here is most quoted)?
Book IV.2
Compare this to Categories 1 (at the front of the book), and then answer this:
“Is Aristotle claiming in IV.2 that being is spoken of homonymously, synonymously, or paronymously?”
Can you tell from the rest of IV.2 why the answer to this question would matter to Aristotle?
Book IV.3
Aristotle
(i) identifies the philosopher’s activity (from that of, say, the activity of
the natural scientist), and (ii) discusses a principle about which he claims we
can have indubitable knowledge, “the firmest principle of all.”
α. What is this principle?
β. Name another philosopher who looks for an indubitable principle.
γ. What is the connection between (i) and (ii)?
Book VII
Book VII, also called Z, or Zeta, is generally considered the most difficult book of the Metaphysics. University of Washington’s Professor S. Marc Cohen has an outline that might help.
Book XII.6
Note Aristotle’s view that motion and time cannot have come into being. If you’re a medieval theologian reading this, then you’re dipping your quill in the red ink and marking it “This has to go.”
Note also Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s Forms at 1071b15 that everlasting Forms wouldn’t be able to cause changes in the perceptible world, and hence are not explanatory of the world.
Later in that same paragraph he sets up his view that there must be something ( = a substance) the essence of which is actuality. It would have to be, he claims, non-material (why?) and everlasting (why?).
Book XII.7
Aristotle here talks of the motion of this everlasting substance: it initiates motion (like that of the “first heaven,” whatever that is) without itself moving. Question: how can it initiate motion if (as he said in the opening of the previous chapter) motion cannot have come into being? [Hint: the answer has something to do with what Aristotle says in this chapter about being an object of love. Which of the four causes would this be?]
Starting at about 1072b19 and into XII.9, Aristotle talks of understanding. As Fine and Irwin’s glossary indicates, the noun version of this word is nous (with noein being the verb). If you’ve read Anaxagoras, you’ve read about nous.
Book XII.9
One of Aristotle’s most famous lines is at 1074b30: the god’s understanding is an understanding of understanding. (Or, as it’s sometimes rendered, its thinking is a thinking about thinking.)
Categories
(Katēgoriai, = “Predications”)
Chapter 1
In this chapter, Aristotle is warning us of some of the subtle ways in which language can confuse us. Two things can share the same name without sharing the same nature.
While it’s true to say “That’s an animal” while pointing at a man or at a painting of an ox, they’re animals in different ways. Strictly speaking the painting of an ox isn’t an animal; it’s a painting of an animal. But it’s still an animal in a way, for we get on quite fine stopping to look at the painting, and asking someone “Can you find the animal in this painting?” We’d be rather taken aback at a reply along the lines of “Harrumph, there’s no animal there. Just a painting of one!”
This first way of two things having the same name without sharing the same thing nature is the way in which a man and a painted ox are both animals—they are said to be animals homonymously. (“Homonym” means “same name”.... as in “the same ONLY in name.”)
The second way of two things sharing a name but not a nature is what Aristotle calls being called synonymously the same thing, the way that it’s true of both a man and an ox to say “That’s an animal.” What it is for a man to be an animal is exactly what it is for an ox to be an animal, insofar as the definition, or essence, of animal will be the same in both claims. But a man is obviously very different from an ox. So “animal” in “The man is an animal” and “animal” in “The ox is an animal” are synonyms; the occurrences of the word have the same meaning, even though the man and the ox aren’t the same kind of thing. They share a predicate (being an animal) but not a full nature.
The third way can be made clearer by taking a liberty with Aristotle’s examples, and very compressed discussion. The name “grammar” can apply to a body of knowledge (about the way parts of speech work) or to a physical book (“Can I buy this grammar from you?”). Same name, but very different entities; only one can be purchased, for instance. Since we’re not playing fast and loose with the name, in the sense of equivocating, they’re not grammars homonymously. Yet they’re also not grammars in the same way—or synonymously. Rather one gets its name from the other; the book gets to be called a grammar because of its content—it’s about grammar. So the subject and the book have the same name (that is, they’re both grammars) because they’re named paronymously; think of it meaning that they’re named derivatively. And the derivation continues further, for the grammarian gets that name because he or she studies grammar.
The word “brave” can name both the equivalent of being courageous and a young Native American adult. These two are not the same, for we don’t call the young Lakota man “a courageous,” even if we think he is courageous. The courageous action and the Lakota youth are named brave paronymously, because the latter derives his name from the former. Same name, different nature, but related natures. Where synonymy is like two parallel tracks equal to each other (a man is an animal and an ox is an animal in parallel ways), paronymy is like tracks diverging from a hub (a grammarian and a grammar and the quality of being grammatical all get their names by radiating from the knowledge of parts of speech, which is the central variety of grammar.
Chapter 2
As you read this chapter, fill in this matrix:
|
|
said of a subject |
not said of a subject |
|
in a subject |
|
|
|
not in a subject |
|
|
Dr. Cynthia Freeland’s cat may be of service for this chapter and the next: http://www.uh.edu/~cfreelan/courses/categories.html
Chapter 3
A straightforward enough discussion of what we might call the transitivity of predication.
Chapter 4
This list of ten categories is often referred to as Aristotle’s doctrine of the categories.
Chapter 5
A much longer chapter than the preceding, its opening sentence reveals how Aristotle is using chapters 2 and 4, with chapters 1 and 3 being used later in chapter 5. Think of chapter 5, therefore, as the for-the-sake-of-which for the preceding chapters.
Aristotle here lays out in this chapter what he takes to be distinctive of primary being (= primary substance), as opposed to secondary being (which includes what he here calls secondary substance, as well as all the other nine categories). So white, or whiteness, and man or humanness or humanity, exist; not in the primary sense in which Plato thought, however, but in a secondary sense. What primarily exists is this man or that man, of whom whiteness is or is not predicated (or said) or in whom this particular whiteness inheres or is in.
Nicomachean
Ethics
(Ta
Ēthika Nikomacheia)
Book I
Chs. 1 & 2
Aristotle emphasizes the final cause of crafts and investigations (without calling it the final cause) and argues that some final causes are subordinate to others. The point (final cause?!) of him doing this is to conclude at the end of I.2 that political science is the highest study concerning the human good.
Although it may strike as strange to open a book on ethics by discussing how much more important politics is than ethics, these first two chapters turn out to serve nicely with the final chapter of NE as bookends for the ethics, indicating how Aristotle sees ethics as a necessary preface to politics. (We have to know what the good for individuals consists in before we can discuss the good for states.)
Ch. 3
Aristotle lays down some methodological points, including that we should not seek more exactness in any inquiry than the topic allows and that the young are not suited for studying politics (or, by implication, ethics). He gives two reasons about the young; what are they?
At 1098a27-b9 Aristotle makes further methodological points, including repeating some of these.
Ch. 4
Aristotle notes that although most (as well as “the cultivated”) think of the human good as happiness, eudaimonia (= living well = doing well), there is a range of opinions about what this consists in.
Aristotle claims that we need to take seriously only the opinions of those who “have been brought up in fine habits.” While this might seem to amount to Aristotle cheating by getting to ignore opinions he doesn’t agree with, consider the analogical claim: in discussing matters of health, we need not take seriously the opinions of those who have been raised in unhealthy habits, for these habits might color their ability to appreciate the healthiness of, for example, being moderate about eating sweets, being diligent about exercise, or being abstinent of tobacco.
Besides, Aristotle realizes that there still remains, even among those raised in fine habits, plenty of disagreement about what happiness consists in.
Ch. 5
Aristotle suggests that people think of happiness as whatever is the end of the life that they think is the best life.
The end of the life of gratification is pleasure, the end of the life of politics could be either honor or virtue, and wealth is the end of the money-maker’s life.
What are the objections Aristotle raises to the suitability of pleasure, honor, virtue, and money-making as the human good?
Note that he defers the consideration of the life of study; this comes much later, in X.7-8.
Ch. 7
Aristotle argues in I.7 that the highest human good must be both complete and self-sufficient. Understand both claims, and see if you can find a tension between the two conditions he’s setting up for something to be considered the highest human good.
Ch. 8
Happiness (see the entry for this word in Irwin and Fine’s glossary at the end of the book) is not just a state, but an activity, Aristotle claims. He seems to think that virtuous activity is the strongest candidate for what happiness is (for it would already thereby include pleasure—why?), even though concludes this chapter by supporting the claim that happiness also needs certain externals.
A possibly inconsistent triad in NE I: Is Aristotle inconsistent in making the following three claims?
Ch. 9
The role of fortune in happiness. Note his reasoning for children and animals not being able to be happy. And what he says about Priam of Troy.
Ch. 13
An important discussion of the rational and nonrational parts of the psyche. The virtues of character (Book II) are distinguished from those of thought (Book VI).
Book II
Ch. 1
Aristotle makes some general remarks on virtue, which some prefer to translate “excellence.” (See the entry for “Virtue” in Irwin and Fine’s glossary, p. 355.)
Ch. 2
How virtues lie on a mean between excess and deficiency.
Ch. 3
Note the role Aristotle thinks pleasures and pains have in moral education.
Ch. 4
Be able to describe and evaluate how
Aristotle tries to solve the apparent paradox of how anyone can ever come to
have the virtues, since in order to be virtuous, you have to do virtuous
actions, but in order to do virtuous actions, they have to come from a virtuous
state of character.
Ch. 5
For more on what Aristotle means by “state,” see the glossary.
Ch. 6
Aristotle says some things
that make him sound like a relativist (the mean is different for each person),
yet also seems to think that actions are objectively good or bad. What
gives?
Note Aristotle’s famous
definition of virtue is at 1107a1: “Virtue, then, is (a) a state that
decides....”
Book III.1-5
Aristotle’s discussion of the voluntary and of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness.
Book V.1-2
Aristotle tries applying his doctrine of the mean to the virtue of justice. To his credit, he realizes that this requires special consideration, for on the face of it, justice wouldn’t seem to lie on a mean. It’s easy enough to understand someone not being just enough, but what would it be to be TOO just?
Book VI
Ch. 1
Note how Aristotle distinguishes the two parts of the psyche that have reason.
Ch. 2
Note his famous line that “Thought by itself, however, moves nothing.” And be able to describe how Aristotle thinks decision, thought, and desire relate.
Chs. 5, 7, 12 & 13
Aristotle discusses phronesis (usually translated as “practical wisdom”) and the phronimos (“the person of practical wisdom”). Terry Irwin, the translator of Reeve & Miller’s selections from the Nicomachean Ethics, however, unfortunately translates these as “intelligence” and “the intelligent person.” Just keep this point in mind in your reading.
Book VII.1-3
A discussion of continence and temperance, and their opposites.
Book X
Chs. 6-8
Something puzzling to many interpreters of Aristotle is how most of the Nicomachean Ethics goes on about the social virtues, but then in the final book, he starts talking about the superiority of contemplation and study. Is he having a momentary throwback to his Platonic youth?
Ch. 9
As mentioned in these notes for NE I.1-2, this final chapter reveals how Aristotle sees the relationship between this work and that of the Politics.
Politics
(Ta
Politika)
Book I.1
Just as with the opening of the NE, this work starts with a discussion pivoting on the final cause—in this case, the final cause of various forms of community.
In the final paragraph of this chapter, Aristotle describes his method: to analyze (literally, to break down) composite communities into their constituent communities, until he arrives at incomposite (that is, atomic, uncuttable) communities.
Book I.2
Aristotle’s preference for the polis (translated here as “city,” but meaning more like “city and surrounding provinces” or even our “greater metropolitan area”) is clear. Foreigners (barbaroi, because Greeks thought non-Greeks sounded like they were saying “bar bar bar,” akin to our “blah, blah, blah”) are all slavish, he thinks.
An important view for Aristotle is that “the city exists by nature,” for he is therefore saying that the polis exist by phusis, not by nomos—by nature, not be convention. So it is not the result of a social contract or tricked up in order to allow us to satisfy our conventional wants. We are as much polis-dwelling as bees are hive-dwelling. A solitary person has an incompletely developed nature.
When he says at 1253a20 that “the whole is necessarily prior to the part,” he does not mean prior in time (for how could the whole come into being unless the parts came first?). He means logical priority, not temporal priority. That is, the entire animal is logically prior to the foot of the animal, insofar as the foot is the foot of the (whole) animal. So the notion of the whole is needed in giving an account (or definition, or statement of the essence of) the part.
Book I.3-6 [supplemental handout in class]
These chapters contain Aristotle’s famous discussion of slavery, which he divides into two sorts: those who are slaves by nature (phusis) and those who are slaves by convention (nomos). Not surprisingly, he comes out in favor of natural slavery, and against slavery by convention. (And interestingly, most slavery in the ancient Mediterranean (Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Macedonian, and Roman) was slavery by convention—that is, the sources of most slaves were military conquests (adult males on the losing side were, and women and children were taken as slaves) and piracy (pirates raiding passenger ships or raiding seaside villages for captives to sell on the slave market).
Book III.6-9
In this book, Aristotle shows what system of political organization he believes in.
In III.9 Aristotle makes the claim that the polis does not exist for the sake of (there’s the final cause again!) allowing people to acquire property, for the sake of even just living, or for the sake of forming alliances for defense or trade. Rather the end is living well for its parts, and you will recall the lesson from the Nicomachean Ethics: excellence (virtue) is necessary (even if not sufficient) for living well (= happiness; see NE I.4).
Book IV.11
More on the political system Aristotle favors.
Book VII
Chapter 1 sounds like a recap of the parts of the Nicomachean Ethics that are most relevant for Aristotle’s discussion in Chapters 2 and 3 of the the best kinds of political rule.
Chapters 13 and 15 show themselves to be presupposing the Nicomachean Ethics. The three conditions given in chapter 13 as requirements for becoming good certainly fit with the NE, but are more crisply stated here than in the NE.
Book VIII.1-3 [supplemental handout in class]
In VIII.1 Aristotle argues for education being publicly funded and provided. Note that his argument is not that the poor need help paying for education, but simply that education is so crucial to the health of the polis that the polis is responsible for providing education. Education is political, he is saying. Not in the sense that education is politically biased (like toward the right or toward the left), but in the sense that it is a duty of political associations, like building roads.
In VIII.2-3 Aristotle argues that education should not be limited to what is useful, but should aim at “leisured activity” (not an oxymoron, if you get Aristotle; he is not talking about reclining on a beach). Some education should be “noble and suitable for a free person,” and Aristotle’s closing line to chapter 3 is one of his few memorable lines.
Putting these chapters together, we have that education should be public and should be (at least in large part) liberal arts.