Nicomachean Ethics

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Nicomachean Ethics

• Aristotle

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Dont expect more precision than the subject
matter admits of

• Before embarking on an examination of what the
  nature of the best life for a person, Aristotle
  offers the above caveat.
• Wealth and courage are generally good, but have
  on occasion contributed to the ruin of people.
• One should not expect precise proofs out of an
  ethicist or political scientist because they have
  to deal with things that are just generally true
  similarly one should not expect approximate
  proofs out of a mathematician, who deals with
  things that are determinate and definite.

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The Function Argument (briefly)

• 1. Every action is aimed at some goal (end).
• 2. Accomplishing that goal then is the
  characteristic function of whoever aims at that
  goal. In other words, what makes a thing what it
  is is the goal that it is aimed at. For example
  the characteristic function of a house builder is
  the goal of building good houses, and the
  characteristic function of a flute player is
  playing the flute well. What makes a house
  builder a house builder is that they have the
  goal of building houses well. Nobody else has
  such a goal.
• 3. Every goal has standards of quality that come
  with that particular goal
• Therefore, human life has a characteristic
  function.
• But what is the goal of human life, and what are
  the standards of quality for it?

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The goal of human life

• Aristotle says that everyone agrees that the goal
  of human life is happiness.
• However, this is a translation mishap. When the
  modern English speaker thinks of happiness they
  think of the feeling of being happy (a sort of
  pleasure).
• The word Aristotle used is e?da?µ???a
  (eudaimonia), which means something more like
  well-being or fulfillment than happiness.
• But what does happiness consist of?

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Happiness

• Aristotle dismisses some answers that others
  supply to the question what is hapiness?
• The masses say that the life of pleasure is
  happiness, but Aristotle contends that this is
  vulgar and not fitting of a human being.
• Politicians say happiness is in honor, but
  Aristotle points out that that requires other
  people to honor you. Surely someone could be
  live well without others honoring them.

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3 lives

• The life of mere survival (the vegetative life)
• This cannot be the characteristic life of a
  person because even plants do this, so there must
  be more to life for us.
• The life of pleasure (the animal life)
• This cannot be the characteristic life of a
  person because even animals do this, so there
  must be more to life for us.
• The life of virtue and reflection (the best life
  for a person)
• Since only human beings can live the life of
  virtue and reflection (uses our faculty of
  reason) this is the characteristic function of
  human life.

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The Swine Objection

• We will return to Aristotles account of virtue
  in the virtue ethics section.
• For now, the important part of Aristotles
  account is that he provides a strong objection to
  hedonism as a theory of morality or prudence.
• Briefly put, hedonism is the life of the pig in
  slop, and is not fit for a human being.