Eudaimonia

My name is Anthony Price.

I'm a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College,

University of London.

I'm now giving you a series of short talks

about the central ethical work of Aristotle

known as the Nicomachean Ethics, written in the 4th century BC.

This must be the work of moral philosophy

that has the longest history of reading and commenting.

After being dominant in the Middle Ages,

it went somewhat into eclipse in the modern period

but has emerged again very strongly in the past 150 years

in two ways partly because we increasingly

appreciate there's a mode of doing philosophy,

which is doing philosophy with and about a text.

And secondly, because there is a relatively recently

flourishing branch of moral philosophy

often called virtue ethics, which draws on Aristotle

and stands in contrast to forms of ethical theory

that aim to set up some form of practical rationality

whereby we can decide on a distinction

between good and bad actions without an appeal

to ethical values and without presupposing

any ethical point of view.

Aristotelians are skeptical of this notion

of practical rationality and find an inspiration

in Aristotle for a kind of rationality

which is at once an exercise of character

and an exercise of practical judgment.

I shall start in my first two talks

by talking about a central concept

in Greek moral philosophy, which is that of happiness

or, in the Greek term, eudaimonia.

Aristotle's moral philosophy starts very characteristically

with a number of common places.

A famous passage in Proust's great novel

compares the working of involuntary memory

to the operation of Japanese paper figures, which

placed in water suddenly expand, take on life, look

like recognizable people.

And this transformation is what Aristotle creates out

of what had been common places.

And a common place that comes early in the ethics

is the thought that we all, whatever sort of people we are,

whatever lives we lead, we all aim to achieve eudaimonia,

to be happy in a sense, but the term happy can mislead.

We think of happiness as something that one can feel.

One feels happy.

But for Aristotle, eudaimonia is not that.

It is, he identifies it and says we all identify it,

with living and doing well.

But doing well curiously is ambiguous, in fact,

in Greek as also in English.

It might mean faring well, coming out well, being favored

by the gods.

But Aristotle takes it to mean acting well.

And so for him, eudaimonia, or happiness,

or human flourishing, or success is

identical with acting well or living well

if we take a wider perspective.

Now, that leaves open, of course,

what the criteria of well are.

But what is Aristotle is quite confident about

is that the goal is indeed acting well.

And it is in the nature of human beings that we act.

We don't just move.

We're not just pushed around by external forces.

We make decisions, we act, and we act on judgment.

We also use judgment in forming opinions.

And Aristotle rational activity has two aspects or spheres--

the intellectual sphere of forming

true beliefs for good reasons in ways

that show a understanding of the way the world works

and also in acting on what we hope are good reasons.

Fundamental here is a famous argument

that we meet in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics,

known as the Function Argument.

What makes human beings distinctive human beings,

as [INAUDIBLE] puts it, rational animals?

Well, it is that we form opinions and act on judgment,

on reasons, good or bad reasons.

And this applies in the sphere of forming beliefs,

or achieving understanding of the way the world works,

but also in human action.

The human good, therefore, is identified for Aristotle

with the happy, successful achievement

of the human function in thought and action.

And for Aristotle, it is then in our nature

that we form beliefs on reasons, and we act on reasons.

That is given.

More difficult is identifying what

is a good reason as opposed to a bad reason.

And Aristotle there leaves much open in the sphere of practice,

and I shall later describe how he gives a crucial role

both to virtue of character and to practical judgment.

Now, there are various ways in which

one can fail in realizing the human function.

One, of course, is that one forms opinions or acts

on bad reasons that one takes to be good.

But there's another interesting possibility.

And that is when it actually comes to adopting a belief

or performing an action, one fails to accord even

with one's own reasons.

This can't happen in the theoretical case.

Suppose, to take an Aristotelian example,

I read the 8th book of the physics

from Aristotle's argument that all motion in the universe

ultimately derives from a single unmoved mover.

I might read this argument, be in a manner persuaded of it,

I can't see that it goes wrong, but actually

find that at the end, I remain incredulous.

I don't form a belief in accordance with the argument.

In the practical case, it is possible

that I reach a view that I have best reason to act in some way

and act in another.

Suppose, to take an example from Martha Nussbaum,

suppose that I am and know I am already overweight,

and so, I decide it's best if I don't eat another bagel.

Nonetheless, I may do so.

I may fail to act on my reasons.

Both types of failure are possible,

but the crucial and distinctively

Aristotelian thought is that it is such failure that

needs explanation.

We are by nature in essence rational animals.

It is natural to us to form opinions

and to choose actions on reasons.

And it is if we fail to think or act according to the reasons

that we perceive or think we perceive that an explanation is

called for.