Aristotle’s Ethics

Let me ask a ridiculous question. What if one day you were dragged from your home, thrown into a room with no windows, hooked up to a machine that gave you all the nutrients needed to survive, and then the door was closed and sealed forever. In this dark, empty room all alone, could you be good? Could you be evil? Could you be happy? This is what I am wondering after reading book I of the Ethics by Aristotle.

 

In this selection from the Great Books 10 year plan, Aristotle is searching for that big, uncatchable idea: the greatest good. First Aristotle thinks there are things we pursue for their own sake, and some things we go after for other ends. For example, I might play soccer because I love soccer. However, I might play soccer because I want to be in shape. And I might want to be in shape so that I look good on the beach. Because there are some things that we desire to get at other things, Aristotle thinks that by tracing things back we can eventually come to a “best good.” Knowing that “best good” is obviously really important.

 

Aristotle thinks the best way to that good is through studying, none other than political science—or the liberal arts. These are the “ruling sciences”—the sciences that can tell us how to live and act. Every English major, international relations, and philosophy major just jumped up in celebratory song with cries of vindication.

 

As Aristotle scopes out what the good is, he bumps into happiness. He realizes happiness is the most self-sufficient state. It is the thing that everything else is pursued for. Every virtue and every vice are chased because they promise happiness.

 

Then there arises this riddle: is happiness attained by learning, by habit of certain action), or some other form of cultivation? Here is where Aristotle answers his riddle and my first question about the room.

 

“If happiness comes in this way it will be widely shared for anyone who is not deformed in his capacity for virtue will be able to achieve happiness through some sort of learning and attention.”

 

For Mr. Aristotle, fortune does not make or break our happiness. It is our habit and learning of virtue that determines our happiness. However, when he says, “anyone who is not deformed in his capacity for virtue,” seems to mean you need a something beyond will-power and good training for happiness.

 

In an empty box, you can’t be good or evil. There is no way to be virtuous and no way to be totally wicked. You are without the full capacity to do anything. I suppose you could be wicked or good in your mind, but what wrong can be down when it is only imagined? Or how can you be virtuous if you don’t have the mental capacity?

 

When I was talking to Peter, my reading partner on this epic literary saga to read all the Great Books, he was caught by Aristotle’s idea that a life cannot be judged until it is over. Peter told me, he thinks you can’t make that call until all the facts are in. To me that is kind of terrifying and freeing. On one hand, we must always be trying to do good, to live well until the last monument of our lives. On the other, no matter the things we have done, our life’s legacy is not decided until it over. There is always a chance down to the last moment to turn towards the “best good.”

 

At the end of book I, Aristotle feels political scientists should try to understand the soul if they are going to promote the good for their citizens. He goes on to break down the soul into levels. Whether or not it is a metaphysical soul, there is an intellectual and an emotional side of the soul. Both can obey reason, which seems to imply both can revolt from reason. Searching for the soul is a muddled affair.

 

However, it seems that one of Ancient Greece’s most renowned philosophers refutes materialism’s claim that our lives are determined. It seems that Aristotle believes in a free will. This only makes the search for the “best good” and how to achieve it more important and urgent as it is within our power to act or not.