dialogue

Aristotle and Common Sense Ethics Aristotle was born in 384 BCE and died in 322 BCE and is classified as one of the greatest philosophers of all time. He was born in Stagira and was often called the Stagirite. He came to Athens as a teenager and remained for two decades in Plato’s Academy. Following Plato’s death in 347 BCE, Aristotle traveled to Assos and to Lebos, where he associated with Theophrastus and collected a wealth of biological data, and later to Macedonia, where he tutored Alexander the Great. His father was a court physician. In 335 BCE he returned to Athens and founded his own philosophical school in the Lyceum.

Alexander died in 323 BCE which unleashed anti-Macedonian forces in Athens. Aristotle was charged with impiety, but remembering the fate of Socrates he decided to flee to Chalcis instead of staying and standing trial. Within the year he suffered from a stomach ailment, some speculate that he may have been poisoned, and died.

Aristotle’s moral philosophy, as it appears in his manuscript now called Nicomachean Ethics, reflects his teleological (purpose) metaphysics. The notion of goal or purpose is the overriding one in his moral theory. Aristotle noted that the entire animal world (including man) appeared to have a purpose. What then is man’s purpose or function? What separates man from the animals? His ability to reason. Thus, the human’s function is to engage in an activity of the soul which is in accordance with virtue and which follows a rational principle. Even though Aristotle wrote about virtue, values and morals, it’s interesting to note that he was an elitist. For instance, he believed that certain material conditions must hold before happiness can be achieved. Here are the conditions: we need good friends, some wealth, and political power. We need a good birth, good children, and good looks (…for the man who is ugly in appearance…is not likely to be happy). We must not be very short. Furthermore, we must be free from the need of performing manual labor. (No man can practice virtue who is living the life of a mechanic or laborer.) Except for these elitist biases, Aristotle’s moral theory would be left intact.

In his ethical writings Aristotle adopted a scientific or empirical approach to ethical problems. Instead of trying to reflect on what the good life is for everyone, he examined the behavior and talked with various people in everyday life. He noticed that some people are leading what they call “good lives” and others are leading what they call “bad lives.”

He further noticed that the various lives that people of common sense considered to be “good” all contain one common characteristic: happiness. And those who think their lives are bad have the characteristic of being unhappy. Therefore, Aristotle concludes that the good life for man is a “life of happiness.”

But what is happiness? Is it a life of pleasure, success, and fame? He tries to demonstrate this in his Nicomachean Ethics. This process is now called analytical philosophy. “Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.” This definition may not be much clearer and in fact happiness has been a puzzle to philosophers for centuries.

Aristotle is trying to explain that happiness is not “static.” It is an activity. We sometimes think of happiness as a fixed goal that awaits us if we behave in certain ways. People who think this way think that happiness is an object.

But Aristotle is actually denying this. Happiness is not a goal; rather it is something that accompanies certain activities. Happiness is a characteristic of men’s lives. Happiness is a way of doing things; for instance, of refusing to be defeated by circumstances. Happiness is like this: it is a way of engaging in the various activities of life, such as eating, making love, working and so on. If a person engages in these activities with a degree of balance or moderation (temperance/self-control) then we can say that that person is happy. The person who enjoys intellectual pursuits, friendship, is not frequently downcast, depressed, and anxious; so we can say that person appears happy.

Aristotle’s classical moralist theories attempt to answer two questions: What is the good life for people? And how ought people to behave? His reply would be: 1) the good life for people is a life of happiness and 2) people ought to behave so as to achieve happiness.

WeLLLLLLLLLL-----How should we behave in order to achieve happiness? Aristotle’s answer is to be found in the well-known formula called the “doctrine of the mean,” often referred to as the “Golden Mean.”

For Aristotle there is no one answer for everyone. For instance, what does it take to fulfill one person may not be the same for another person. The correct amount is a “mean” between eating too much and too little--to keep from going from one extreme to another. Thus, there are various correct ways of living for different people. What is good for one person may not be good for another. And sometimes we have to discover this through experimentation or trial and error as we grow. The choices that we make are all context bound and in accordance with (REASON). In this regard Aristotle is an empiricist in ethics.

Thus courage, liberality, pride, modesty and so on are virtues of moderation. All this requires moral understanding and we must first have a sound training in good habits and virtues when we are young so that when we come to understand what the golden mean is for us, we will also have the self control to follow it. Aristotle demonstrates a morality of “common sense” in dealing with ethical issues.

Aristotle and Common Sense notes courtesy of Joyce Murphy, Adjunct Philosophy Instructor