Nicomachean Ethics I.6b

I will restate what I told Thomas Doubting in the comments below: take heart. Not all of the Nicomachean Ethics is as dense as the passages we are dealing with right now. After the first book, it will become much easier sailing. The rest of Book I is pretty dense, though. That's why we are taking it so slowly. Getting all this part right makes the rest easy to understand. You do have to work through the hard parts seriously, and not just skip over them to get to the fun parts about courage and friendship. They are coming, however.

Today we will discuss the second part of Book I, section 6.

But let us discuss these matters elsewhere; an objection to what we have said, however, may be discerned in the fact that the Platonists have not been speaking about all goods, and that the goods that are pursued and loved for themselves are called good by reference to a single Form, while those which tend to produce or to preserve these somehow or to prevent their contraries are called so by reference to these, and in a secondary sense. Clearly, then, goods must be spoken of in two ways, and some must be good in themselves, the others by reason of these.

Here Aristotle is acknowledging the Platonic defense I mentioned yesterday, while insisting that "good" has to have at least two meanings in order for that defense to be valid. 

This is part of a larger Aristotelian point that he mentioned yesterday in passing when he said that "'good' has as many senses as 'being.'" In Metaphysics Γ.2, Aristotle says that 'being is said in many ways,' and it is true: when we use words like "is" or "are" to speak of things that exist ("John is") or that have certain qualities ("John is bold," "...is my nephew") we are doing several different things. Aristotle is the root of Aquinas' and Avicenna's conception that being and goodness are in fact the same thing, but here we can see that Aristotle isn't wholly committed to that point because he is willing to accept that "good" could have not less than two senses, but not necessarily as many as "being" does. (How many is that? It's complicated.)

Let us separate, then, things good in themselves from things useful, and consider whether the former are called good by reference to a single Idea. What sort of goods would one call good in themselves? Is it those that are pursued even when isolated from others, such as intelligence, sight, and certain pleasures and honours? Certainly, if we pursue these also for the sake of something else, yet one would place them among things good in themselves. Or is nothing other than the Idea of good good in itself? In that case the Form will be empty. But if the things we have named are also things good in themselves, the account of the good will have to appear as something identical in them all, as that of whiteness is identical in snow and in white lead. But of honour, wisdom, and pleasure, just in respect of their goodness, the accounts are distinct and diverse. The good, therefore, is not some common element answering to one Idea.

Aristotle begins by denying that the Platonic Form of the Good can exist by showing two ways that it might exist, and denying each of the horns of that dilemma. The first is that "things that are Good in themselves" only includes the Form of the Good itself; but if that were true, the Platonic Form wouldn't be the form of anything else, and therefore the Form would be empty. That clearly isn't what Plato wanted; he wanted a Form that embraced and unified all the various good things.

Then, by analogy to a physical quality, Aristotle attempts to show that the qualities being unified aren't a good fit for a Form. When we say that snow and white lead are both white, we mean something that these days is easy to explain: they are reflecting light waves in such a way that our eyes send signals to our brain that our brain interprets as 'white.' When we say that honor is good and that wisdom is good and that pleasure is good, we mean different things -- or so Aristotle says here. Since they aren't the same thing, a unifying Form seems to be inappropriate.

Is Aristotle right about this? Not obviously, not even on his own terms. As I mentioned when discussing EN I.2, in the Rhetoric he gives an account of how honor can be used as a means of creating a comparable system of valuation for apparently unlike goods. It turns out that it is possible to treat the goods of pleasure and wisdom as comparable, which means there must be something that does unify them on a scale of value. That something is honor, which is his other candidate for a thing good in itself. 

So when we sit around as properly brought-up men and women and discuss whether pleasure or wisdom is more honorable, we are talking about the goods of all of these things as if they were one kind of thing, possessed in a larger or smaller quantity. If so, the Platonic idea seems more defensible than he is giving it credit for here. 

But what then do we mean by the good? It is surely not like the things that only chance to have the same name. Are goods one, then, by being derived from one good or by all contributing to one good, or are they rather one by analogy?

Analogy is an Aristotelian defense against the idea I just raised: maybe there isn't a real comparison between pleasure and wisdom, but we can use honor as a way of creating an analogy between them. Analogies always break, as I frequently remark here, because comparing unlike things will always run into a point of dissimilarity unless it turns out that you were really comparing the same thing by different names (e.g. "Clark Kent is [analogy] with Superman"). 

Wisdom and pleasure are obviously not the same thing by different names. Is the goodness in them analogous, or is it really the case that we can compare the goodness of pleasure with the goodness of wisdom? 

As is often true in philosophy, it is possible to argue this one from either side. You could say that there is an analogy just because the pleasure one will get from getting drunk instead of studying Aristotle tonight is just different from whatever good comes from the increased wisdom you get by studying Aristotle. Perhaps, then, we are just making an analogy.

On the other hand, it does seem like we can easily judge between whether we are ourselves made better by drinking or by study; so there is a common good, the good for us, that is seems to be the same. If we are doing it as Aristotle himself suggests, by comparing the honor involved, there is some honor to be gained by drinking heroically among friends; but there is more to be had by obtaining a reputation for wisdom among those same friends. So again, this doesn't seem to be an analogy: it does seem that in both cases we are comparing the same thing to itself. 

Certainly as sight is in the body, so is reason in the soul, and so on in other cases. But perhaps these subjects had better be dismissed for the present; for perfect precision about them would be more appropriate to another branch of philosophy.

Here is the point about each science having its own fit subject. Aristotle wants to talk about ethics; but he's veered into metaphysics, and now is starting to talk about natural philosophy (the precursor of medical science). 

And similarly with regard to the Idea; even if there is some one good which is universally predicable of goods or is capable of separate and independent existence, clearly it could not be achieved or attained by man; but we are now seeking something attainable.

This argument seems neatly to exclude Platonic thought from the field of ethics. A man can't attain one of the Forms, even if he might pursue it; but ethics should aim at something men could obtain. There is an obvious counterargument, which Aristotle gives immediately to acknowledge and reject it.

Perhaps, however, some one might think it worth while to recognize this with a view to the goods that are attainable and achievable; for having this as a sort of pattern we shall know better the goods that are good for us, and if we know them shall attain them. This argument has some plausibility, but seems to clash with the procedure of the sciences; for all of these, though they aim at some good and seek to supply the deficiency of it, leave on one side the knowledge of the good.

So if you could grasp the Form of the Good, it could at least lead you to the goods you could obtain because you would recognize that they instantiated goodness in some way. Then you could usefully employ Platonic ideals ethically. Aristotle acknowledges the plausibility of that, but stands on the division of sciences (the division that he has himself been violating throughout this discussion of metaphysics as applied to ethics).

Yet that all the exponents of the arts should be ignorant of, and should not even seek, so great an aid is not probable. It is hard, too, to see how a weaver or a carpenter will be benefited in regard to his own craft by knowing this 'good itself', or how the man who has viewed the Idea itself will be a better doctor or general thereby. For a doctor seems not even to study health in this way, but the health of man, or perhaps rather the health of a particular man; it is individuals that he is healing.

Here are just some further objections to a high and distant Good as useful for practical purposes. We have a mechanism for testing these arguments that Aristotle did not. In later Christian thought this will become aligned with the idea of God. Is knowing God useful to a weaver in the production of good weavings? It might be; it has certainly been men who pursued knowledge of God who made extraordinary stained glass, or stonework cathedrals. Would it make you a better doctor? It might; even in our relatively secular society, a large proportion of hospitals are explicitly religious entities. 

But enough of these topics.

You may be glad to see this final remark! I find this part very interesting, but it has taken a long time to get to the point that I feel qualified to comment as a sort-of equal in the discussion -- not a true equal, but perhaps as a kind of junior partner to this ancient debate. I feel like I understand what is going on at last, and what the stakes of the discussion are. That is something quite worthwhile, which I hope I can introduce to you.