13But further (E) it is agreed that pain is bad and to be avoided; for some pain is without qualification bad, and other pain is bad because it is in some respect an impediment to us. Now the contrary of that which is to be avoided, qua something to be avoided and bad, is good. Pleasure, then, is necessarily a good. For the answer of Speusippus, that pleasure is contrary both to pain and to good, as the greater is contrary both to the less and to the equal, is not successful; since he would not say that pleasure is essentially just a species of evil.
Speusippus succeeded Plato as the head of the Academy. He was deeply suspicious of Plato's notions about the Good, and of forms in general; Aristotle, though he differs as well, rejects Speusippus' particular critique.
And (F) if certain pleasures are bad, that does not prevent the chief good from being some pleasure, just as the chief good may be some form of knowledge though certain kinds of knowledge are bad. Perhaps it is even necessary, if each disposition has unimpeded activities, that, whether the activity (if unimpeded) of all our dispositions or that of some one of them is happiness, this should be the thing most worthy of our choice; and this activity is pleasure. Thus the chief good would be some pleasure, though most pleasures might perhaps be bad without qualification.
Theologically later Christian Aristotelians will accept that the chief good lies in contemplation of the divine, which is supposed to maximize pleasure, beauty, and knowledge all at once. The idea that 'some pleasure' could be good even though most pleasures are bad -- so bad that we should push pleasures off like the old men at the gates of Troy looking upon Helen -- is nevertheless surprising.
John Stuart Mill, the Utilitarian, defends a version of this idea himself. Utility is supposed to be the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain; against the charge that this is merely hedonism, he said that the fact that people can't think of higher pleasures says more about them than about pleasure. Perhaps the highest pleasures do include things like contemplation of the divine, which might excel the lower pleasures we have been warned against so sternly.
And for this reason all men think that the happy life is pleasant and weave pleasure into their ideal of happiness-and reasonably too; for no activity is perfect when it is impeded, and happiness is a perfect thing; this is why the happy man needs the goods of the body and external goods, i.e. those of fortune, viz. in order that he may not be impeded in these ways. Those who say that the victim on the rack or the man who falls into great misfortunes is happy if he is good, are, whether they mean to or not, talking nonsense. Now because we need fortune as well as other things, some people think good fortune the same thing as happiness; but it is not that, for even good fortune itself when in excess is an impediment, and perhaps should then be no longer called good fortune; for its limit is fixed by reference to happiness.And indeed the fact that all things, both brutes and men, pursue pleasure is an indication of its being somehow the chief good:
The above section is one of the times that Aristotle talks about fortune and happiness. Happiness is the goal of ethics, we know from Book I. Yet things that we can't control ourselves -- such as whether or not we receive honors from others -- aren't thought worthy of being the goal of ethics because that goal should be something that lies within our power to do or not do.
Finding that Lady Luck (Agatha Tyche) is so involved with our happiness thus ought to make us wonder about happiness as the proper end of ethics. Yet it turns out that fortune's limits are set by our natural capacity for happiness rather than the other way around: so it does, in a way, depend on us and what is internal to us. We are lucky if we get what we need, but not more, for the 'good luck' of winning more ends up being an impediment to us realizing our happiness after all. We have to perfect what is within ourselves, and to hope only for that which allows such internal perfection.
No voice is wholly lost that many peoples... But since no one nature or state either is or is thought the best for all, neither do all pursue the same pleasure; yet all pursue pleasure. And perhaps they actually pursue not the pleasure they think they pursue nor that which they would say they pursue, but the same pleasure; for all things have by nature something divine in them. But the bodily pleasures have appropriated the name both because we oftenest steer our course for them and because all men share in them; thus because they alone are familiar, men think there are no others.It is evident also that if pleasure, i.e. the activity of our faculties, is not a good, it will not be the case that the happy man lives a pleasant life; for to what end should he need pleasure, if it is not a good but the happy man may even live a painful life? For pain is neither an evil nor a good, if pleasure is not; why then should he avoid it? Therefore, too, the life of the good man will not be pleasanter than that of any one else, if his activities are not more pleasant.
From Book I, we know that happiness is an activity that becomes a habituated character: and the pursuit of one's habits is pleasant. Thus, the happy life of ethics does entail pleasure and comfort, at least once we have done the hard work of building the good habits.
14(G) With regard to the bodily pleasures, those who say that some pleasures are very much to be chosen, viz. the noble pleasures, but not the bodily pleasures, i.e. those with which the self-indulgent man is concerned, must consider why, then, the contrary pains are bad.
"Those who say" this include Aristotle himself, who has said this to us directly (Helen at the gates, again).
For the contrary of bad is good. Are the necessary pleasures good in the sense in which even that which is not bad is good?
I.e. the strictly logical sense, in which X and not-X are contraries. Thus, if bad is X, everything that is not X is a contrary of X. Since the good is (merely) not-bad, it is a contrary of the bad.
Yet recall I.3, in which we are warned against using the proofs of strict logic in ethical arguments. Aristotle isn't making that argument here, just raising it for consideration; he moves right along to another suggestion.
Or are they good up to a point? Is it that where you have states and processes of which there cannot be too much, there cannot be too much of the corresponding pleasure, and that where there can be too much of the one there can be too much of the other also? Now there can be too much of bodily goods, and the bad man is bad by virtue of pursuing the excess, not by virtue of pursuing the necessary pleasures (for all men enjoy in some way or other both dainty foods and wines and sexual intercourse, but not all men do so as they ought). The contrary is the case with pain; for he does not avoid the excess of it, he avoids it altogether; and this is peculiar to him, for the alternative to excess of pleasure is not pain, except to the man who pursues this excess.
So we shouldn't (and mostly don't, although it's too strong to say that 'all men enjoy in some sense' wine and sex given that some ascetics do not) entirely avoid pleasing things like wine and sex; but we should limit them according to a proper rule. Yet not so with pain, which for the most part we try to avoid entirely (athletes being an exception here, and a praiseworthy one even for Aristotle).
Since we should state not only the truth, but also the cause of error-for this contributes towards producing conviction, since when a reasonable explanation is given of why the false view appears true, this tends to produce belief in the true view-therefore we must state why the bodily pleasures appear the more worthy of choice.
Note the frame: Aristotle is going to explain why this is an error, not advocate for that position.
(a) Firstly, then, it is because they expel pain; owing to the excesses of pain that men experience, they pursue excessive and in general bodily pleasure as being a cure for the pain. Now curative agencies produce intense feeling-which is the reason why they are pursued-because they show up against the contrary pain. (Indeed pleasure is thought not to be good for these two reasons, as has been said, viz. that (a) some of them are activities belonging to a bad nature-either congenital, as in the case of a brute, or due to habit, i.e. those of bad men; while (b) others are meant to cure a defective nature, and it is better to be in a healthy state than to be getting into it, but these arise during the process of being made perfect and are therefore only incidentally good.)
Pain also drives out pain, as my father used to note: if you had a sore of some manner, he would offer to kick you in the shins so you'd stop noticing whatever the original pain was. (Dad did not actually ever kick anyone; he was much too nice. I suspect he had the phrase from his time as a US Army Drill Sergeant, when he almost certainly also didn’t kick anyone.) That's also a good reason to think this reason -- that pleasure drives out pain -- is not an adequate one. Yet we know that the ones Aristotle offers are valid: medicines that block pain can be intense, as opiates, but not thereby healthy: and it is better not to need a medicine because you are healthy than to be being medicated as part of healing. Thus, the best state does not mean 'pleasure' simply because pleasures drive out pain.
(b) Further, [physical pleasures] are pursued because of their violence by those who cannot enjoy other pleasures. (At all events they go out of their way to manufacture thirsts somehow for themselves. When these are harmless, the practice is irreproachable; when they are hurtful, it is bad.) For they [i.e., people who cannot enjoy other pleasures] have nothing else to enjoy, and, besides, a neutral state is painful to many people because of their nature.
One might pursue drunkenness simply to feel something, in other words; sometimes alcoholics make that claim.
For the animal nature is always in travail, as the students of natural science also testify, saying that sight and hearing are painful; but we have become used to this, as they maintain. Similarly, while, in youth, people are, owing to the growth that is going on, in a situation like that of drunken men, and youth is pleasant, on the other hand people of excitable nature always need relief; for even their body is ever in torment owing to its special composition, and they are always under the influence of violent desire; but pain is driven out both by the contrary pleasure, and by any chance pleasure if it be strong; and for these reasons they [i.e excitable people] become self-indulgent and bad. But the pleasures that do not involve pains do not admit of excess; and these are among the things pleasant by nature and not incidentally. By things pleasant incidentally I mean those that act as cures (for because as a result people are cured, through some action of the part that remains healthy, for this reason the process is thought pleasant); by things naturally pleasant I mean those that stimulate the action of the healthy nature.
What pleasures don't admit of excess? Philosophical contemplation is one; no amount of it will make you fat, or stupid, or lazy, or careless. The aforementioned contemplation of the divine is another one, albeit for most of us theoretical: it is a pleasure to be hoped for religiously, rather than something we can actually experience. Yet such contemplation of the divine as we are able to do also, insofar as it is pleasant, does not admit of excess.
There is no one thing that is always pleasant, because our nature is not simple but there is another element in us as well, inasmuch as we are perishable creatures, so that if the one element does something, this is unnatural to the other nature, and when the two elements are evenly balanced, what is done seems neither painful nor pleasant; for if the nature of anything were simple, the same action would always be most pleasant to it. This is why God always enjoys a single and simple pleasure; for there is not only an activity of movement but an activity of immobility, and pleasure is found more in rest than in movement.
To be 'simple' in this sense is not to have parts. God's simplicity is defended by Aquinas almost at the very beginning of the Summa Theologiae; but his version of the arguments are summaries of things that were spelled out by the Greeks, including Aristotle, and expounded upon in a monotheistic context especially by Avicenna in his Metaphysics of the Healing, which constitutes the larger work's thirteenth book. (And it is quite a tome, unlike these "books" of the EN! Very worthwhile, if you have ever have the time for it.)
But 'change in all things is sweet', as the poet says, because of some vice; for as it is the vicious man that is changeable, so the nature that needs change is vicious; for it is not simple nor good.
God's simplicity and goodness are very much unlike our goodness, a point that later Aristotelians will concede with the doctrine of univocal, equivocal and analogical talk. Those of you who go on to study Medieval philosophy will need to grasp the differences.
Yet Aristotle is making a more basic point. The good things are good all the time: a virtuous life is the life of living according to good habits. Every day you should get enough rest, eat enough but not too much food, enjoy some exercise, be kind and pleasant and so forth. These things don't need to change because they are good things in themselves, and doing them will always be good all the time. You'll spend time with friends, you'll make art or commentary or engage in philosophical reflection; and there is no need to change any of this, because it's always good for you to do.
The vicious get bored, and need to move from this excess to that one in order to seek pleasures because they are not fulfilling their natural needs. If they were, they wouldn't be vicious: they would be happy.
We have now discussed continence and incontinence, and pleasure and pain, both what each is and in what sense some of them are good and others bad; it remains to speak of friendship.
No comments:
Post a Comment