A Podcast on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

So, I promised to try these National Review book podcasts, starting with 182: The Nicomachean Ethics. It's an interview with another Thomas Jefferson professor, this one from the University of Texas, Lorraine Smith Pangle. 

There are a lot of books in this series I have never read, and others I have read only lightly; you have to go all the way back to 163: Return of the King to get to one I feel as comfortable with as I do with Aristotle's ethics. It looks like a great introductory series of bite-sized podcasts on worthy books numerous enough that even well-educated people will have missed many of them.

Because this particular book is one I feel qualified to address, I'm going to take the liberty of answering the interviewer's questions before I listen to Dr. Pangle's answers. You can then compare and contrast what she has to say with what I do. 

Q1: "Why is the Nicomachean Ethics a great book?"

It is great because it teaches you how to be happy as a human being. The answer provided has seemed plausible to ancients, to the Medievals, to the early and late Moderns, and still does to many of us today. Even as you may disagree with parts of it from your own perspective, it gives you an independent place to stand while you criticize your own generation's answers -- one that has withstood the test of time for thousands of years, and inspired many of the best men and women who ever lived.

Q2: "According to Aristotle, what is the good [at which all things aim]?"

The good at which all things aim is existence, but not mere existence: a kind of perfected existence, which we can call 'flourishing' and which is eudaimonia in the Greek. Eudaimonia is often translated as 'happiness,' but it's really not an emotional state per se but this perfection of our existence. This is literally all things, insofar as they have power to aim. Trees move to track the sunlight, which helps them to flourish. Squirrels wildly pursue both food to help them continue to exist in a healthy way, and sex to further their existence into the next generation. Aristotle is going to say that we have both of these sets of capacities, the vegetable (or nutrative) and the animal. But humans also have a rational capacity that he thinks is lacking in those, and so we can pursue the good of a flourishing existence in a much deeper and more complete way. The goal of the ethics is to shape our lives into the best possible ones, the most perfected existence available to us.

[She answers this one in a very different way, one that more closely follows the text's unraveling of the story rather than giving the top-down answer.]

Q3: "What does he say about the good of politics?"

Aristotle, like Plato, thinks that human goods are only achievable in their highest forms in the context of a community devoted to them. Insofar as philosophy is one of the highest expressions of human good, one of the ways we live our most excellent lives, you need a community to sustain it. Partly you need to eat, so some of the community will be devoted to providing for that good; partly you need education. Partly you need others with whom to talk philosophy, who have also been interested in the questions and educated about how to pursue them. This will be true for the other elements of flourishing, such as art or sport or any other. Politics thus has to create a society that produces enough wealth to support the best life, and enough stability to pursue it; and that can defend itself against the outside world well enough to make that life sustainable in a dangerous world. This is one reason courage is both the first virtue he discusses in detail, and one he returns to over and over as an exemplary virtue. The good of politics is, ultimately, creating the conditions for this human good of a flourishing life. 

[She follows the first book's discussion closely here, explaining the end of ethics instead of politics, which is correct scholarship but not really what the interviewer had asked.]

Q4: "No, really, politics?"

[I've already answered this, but she is right to focus on the importance of participation in political life in the best life. Because the business of politics is to create and sustain the conditions for the best life, active participation in this is supposed to be both a part of the good life and a kind of moral duty -- it wouldn't be virtuous to leave this to others and not carry your part of the load, and it is good for both yourself and everyone else that good and virtuous people devote themselves to it.]

Q5: "Explain 'Nicomachean'?"

[I'll leave this one to her able answer, as the follow-on question about organization, and the next question about how important it is to study this closely.]

Q8: "Is this book in dialogue with Socrates and Plato?"

Sometimes explicitly so, for example, Book VII raises Socrates' view of the problem of knowledge and incontinent moral behavior. Scholars debate how much Aristotle was a Platonist and how much he really had a radically different take on the questions Plato and Socrates had raised. In some of Aristotle's works, especially the scientific works, he's doing things that Plato and Socrates may not have even considered; but especially when he writes on moral philosophy, he is right at the core of what most interested both of them, at least as Plato presents Socrates. I would say that Aristotle proposes substantially different answers especially on the nature of virtue, not as a form of knowledge (as Socrates had proposed) but as an active and habitual pursuit of excellence that shapes one's character over time. 

Q9: "What does the word 'Aristotelian' mean?"

Aristotle's works were lost for centuries, during which time much of Plato remained available in the West, as did later Roman thinkers' works. One can use the word to refer to the elements of things like Stoic works that resemble and probably drew on Aristotle's works, but I would tend to employ it more properly to the works of philosophy that were developed in the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian world once Aristotle became available to these later thinkers. The philosophies of all of these civilizations reformed themselves along lines they drew out of Aristotle, and each other's readings of Aristotle, in a way that is like him but also like them. Thus, they are 'Aristotelian.' 

Q10: [This is a question about her particular interpretation and understanding of what Aristotle means; I certainly don't know better than she does what she meant or thinks, so I'll leave those questions to her.]

Q11: "Why is courage so important? Why is it the highest virtue?"

I said above why it was necessary, and exemplary, but courage is not the highest virtue. Rather, it is a particularly clear example. If you want to discuss justice, it can be hard to say what is just; it's not hard to say what the brave thing to do in battle is (i.e., one's duty rather than running away or hiding). So when Aristotle comes around to justice, which many (but not me) believe he thinks is the highest virtue, he returns to courage as an example. Justice, he says, is fairness plus lawfulness -- but 'lawfulness' means something specific, not just obedience to any laws at all. It means that the laws should require you to do what you would do if you were virtuous, i.e., the laws on military service should require you to do your duty and punish you if you run or hide. In this way, Aristotle says, justice is a kind of perfection of virtue.

However, I would argue that justice isn't Aristotle's highest virtue either, but magnanimity. The magnanimous man does what is most worthy of honor. What is most worthy of honor? The most excellent version of the most virtuous thing. The just man does what is virtuous, but perhaps only because he is compelled. The magnanimous man does it because it is excellent, and he strives to do it in the most honorable way that he possibly can. Aristotle describes this as a kind of crown or ornament to virtue, a higher virtue even than justice in my reading.

Q12: "What are the other virtues?"

[No reason to give the list twice, except to note that she gives magnanimity as 'greatness of soul,' which is a literal translation of magna and anima.]

Q13: "What is the role of a community in cultivating these virtues? Is that what politics are all about?"

Already answered, above. However, I want to note that she raises a point about the importance of a good upbringing in moral education that I didn't, but that was a focal point of one of my teachers' thinking on Aristotle. 

Q14: "You mentioned this version of politics is not liberal. What did you mean by that?"

[Again, it's only proper that she should speak for herself about her own thoughts! I do agree with her understanding of what Aristotle was about, though.]

Q15: "Is this a book that every public official should read or is it just too remote from their everyday concerns?"

I doubt most of them are capable of understanding it, nor even very interested in it -- mostly our public officials are thieves and liars, not the kind of virtuous men and women Aristotle was addressing. 

[I endorse her answer as to why ordinary citizens should definitely engage it, however, just because of the failure of our political order to produce a good politics.]

Q16: "Discuss Aristotle's influence on Christianity."

[Frequently discussed here, so I will pass.]

Q17: "What does the book say about natural right?"

[She gives an interesting answer here, which focuses on Churchill.]

Q18: "Favorite translation?"

This is a question about her own thoughts, so she should give them.

Q19: "Why did you devote your life to studying Aristotle?"

This is also a question for her, which she should be allowed to answer without interruption.