Notes to assist readings of Aristotle's Ethics
© G. Smith 1997
"Those great men, Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, the most consummate in politics, who founded states, or instructed princes, or wrote most accurately on public government, were at the same time the most acute at all abstracted and sublime speculations; the clearest light being ever necessary to guide the most important actions. And, whatever the world may say, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman."
by the Philosopher Bishop Berkeley quoted in Jonathan Barnes' Introduction to Aristotle's Ethics 1976.
BIODATA: Aristotle's life
born in very rural Stagira 384
his father a physician at the court of Philip of Macedon
led to royal connections and Aristotle went to Athens & joined Plato's Academy
learned to be an independent thinker
30 treatises survive with his pupil Theophrastus covering very wide areas
Came to be tutor of Alexander son of Philip of Macedon
came to Athens & founded his own school, the Lyceum 334-323.
Influences
Plato
a polymath, intellectual virtues
unstable politics; exile in Atarneus under Hermias' patronage
lived and thought in the world of the city state.
The text of the Ethics
only lecture notes; internal inconsistencies
his more mature thought; to be read slowly with intellectual rests
sip at the Ethics - the vintage is old and strong.
Attitudes when reading the Ethics
man is a political animal
we read the Ethics in order to act as good men do
"Our task . . .is to achieve the highest human good"
thinking about moral matters will lead us to judge well and act rightly.
The Ethics aims to make us "good men" = expert and successful human beings.
Aristotle's gift to moral philosophy: the Mean 'menos'
misnamed later as The Golden Mean = mhden agan Nothing to excess.
"Observe the mean, be moderate, avoid excess and avoid deficiency."
(last phrase too often left out)
the mean is relative to you; not a median point on a continuum
triads: every virtue is flanked by overdoing it and underdoing it.
ta ethika = "Matters to do with character" Not a book of Rules to Live By.
eudaimonia "happiness" not= pleasure (life suitable for cattle) but "to live well and act well"
how to fulfil ourselves as men; exercising our powers and realising one's dispositions
the only ultimate moral rule is to maximise happiness.
the good man is a producer of happiness; enlightened egoists= courage, liberal, temperate.
arete = virtue = soundly based excellent reasoning; takes time to build it up.
G. Smith 1998