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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS*

By Richard Kraut

I. Introduction

The term phusis (nature) and its cognates are ubiquitous in Aristotle’s practical writings, and it would be a major undertaking to give them the careful attention they deserve. My treatment of this topic will therefore have to skim the surface. I begin by discussing Aristotle’s dictum that human beings are by nature political animals.1 I then integrate the inter- pretation I place on that thesis with a general account of the role Aristotle assigns to nature in human development. My working hypothesis is that he takes nature to be a guide to action in the following way: because the task of political inquiry is to give the best possible shape to human char- acter, such inquiry must arrive at an understanding of the materials with which it is working. A carpenter must know something about wood and stone; similarly, as ethical inquirers, we must know something about what nature makes available to us. I conclude by contrasting, on the one hand, the close connection Aristotle sees between human nature and our task as ethical agents, and, on the other, the greater distance posited by modern moral philosophy between what we must do and what we are naturally inclined to do.

II. Our Nature as Political Animals

Aristotle sometimes notes, as he begins his treatises, that the subject he is investigating owes its existence to something naturally present in all human beings. “All men desire by nature to know” is the familiar open-

* I am grateful to David Keyt and Fred Miller, and to the other contributors to this volume, for their helpful comments on the previous draft of this paper.

1 I have consulted and learned from these works: Fred D. Miller, Jr., Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 27–37; Wolfgang Kullmann, “Man as a Political Animal in Aristotle,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr., eds., A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 94–117; David Keyt, “Three Basic Theorems in Aristotle’s Politics,” in Keyt and Miller, eds., A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, 118–41, esp. 123–26; Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 142–58; and John M. Cooper, “Political Animals and Civic Friendship,” in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety, eds., Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 65–90. The present essay develops a suggestion I make in Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 247–53. Many of the authors cited here would accept my claim that there is an empirical component in Aristotle’s thesis that we are political animals; what is distinctive about my approach is that I seek a more precise characterization of that empirical component than others do.

© 2007 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA. 199

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200 RICHARD KRAUT

ing line of the Metaphysics (I.1.980a1). Poetry, we are told in chapter 4 of the Poetics, arises from the inherently mimetic nature of all human beings and the pleasure we take in mimetic objects (1448b4–9). In the first book of the Politics, one of the conclusions at which Aristotle almost immedi- ately arrives is that “man is by nature a political animal” (I.2.1253a2–3). Readers are thus assured that the interest they take in the subject under investigation is no passing fancy or fashion, no mere reflection of this time and place, but grows out of something ingrained in human nature.

To defend his claim that all men desire to know, Aristotle appeals to the pleasure we take in perception. Perhaps he is thinking of the propensity of healthy infants to scrutinize and explore their environment. The curi- osity of children does seem to be part of their natural endowment, and so too is the pleasure nearly all human beings take in looking at those portions of their environment that strike them as well-made and attractive.

Similarly, Aristotle is no doubt right in his assumption that imitation is an activity we all engage in, starting from childhood. The development of our social skills would be severely impeded if we did not react to smiles with smiles, frowns with frowns, and so on. As adults, we continue to look to models of accomplishment or good behavior: people to admire, love, or respect. Whether intentionally or not, we act like and become like those whom we admire.

But what of Aristotle’s claim that we are by nature political animals? That thesis, I would like to suggest, does not quite have the same ring of truth as the other two. Or perhaps it would be better to say that what he means by this claim is uncertain, and that we have to search for an interpretation of it before we can know whether to agree. The desire for knowledge (perceptual knowledge, at any rate) is present in us right from the start, and so is our propensity to imitate; that is perhaps why we find it easy to agree that we are natural knowers and imitators. But it is somewhat of a stretch to think of a child as a political animal. If it is assumed (as it so often is) that the naturalness of a human tendency is shown by its presence at the beginning of our lives, then it is far from clear that we are naturally political animals.2 Our doubts are multiplied by the fact that a large proportion of adult human beings do not partici- pate in politics and show no interest in it.

Of course, if we translate Aristotle’s word politikon as “social,” then we can agree that we are all, from the start and by our very nature, social beings. That is precisely how the Revised Oxford Translation of the Nicomachean Ethics renders Aristotle’s statement that man is by nature politikon (I.7.1097b11). W. D. Ross, whose translation forms the basis of the Revised Oxford Translation, had made Aristotle say, “man is born for

2 Later in this essay (note 4), I will reject the premise of this argument. My goal at this point is to explain why Aristotle’s thesis that we are by nature political does not have an immediate ring of truth; it is not to argue that, upon consideration, we should reject that thesis.

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 201

citizenship,” but Jonathan Barnes, in revising Ross’s translation, puts into Aristotle’s mouth the more plausible statement: “man is sociable by nature.” The thesis that we are naturally sociable, if it is taken to mean that we all seek the company of others and would shun the prospect of total isola- tion, is just as reasonable as the thesis that we like looking at the world and take pleasure in imitation. But is that what Aristotle means when he says that we are by nature politikoi?

So it may seem. Consider, for example, the way he expresses this idea in Politics III.6: “It has been said in our first discourses . . . that by nature human beings are political animals. That is why, even when they do not need assistance from each other, they have no less of a desire to live together. That is not to deny that the common advantage also draws them together, insofar as it contributes to each a portion of living well” (1278b17– 23). The benefits of social interaction only partially explain our interest in being with others; there is, in addition, a brute need to associate with others of our kind, and to escape the isolation of the solitary self. Our desire to associate with others is not the product of deliberation. Although we try to get something for ourselves by social interaction, a desire to associate with others is already naturally present in us, preceding any calculation we make about how we might profit from social interaction.

Similarly, Aristotle says at EN IX.9: “[P]resumably it is absurd to make the happy person solitary. For no one would choose to have all good things by himself, since a human being is political and by nature lives with others” (1169b17–19).

Nonetheless, this cannot be the whole content of the thesis that we are naturally politikoi. If that meant only that we want to associate with one or more other human beings, then Aristotle would have to admit that our nature as political beings is completely fulfilled within the household or within any sort of relationship with another person. But that is not his view. He thinks of our couple-forming nature (that is, our propensity to seek reproductive partners and establish households) and our political nature as two separate psychological phenomena. Thus, he says in EN VIII.12: “Between man and wife friendship seems to exist by nature; for human beings are by nature couple-forming [sunduastikon] —more so than polit- ical, inasmuch as the household is prior to and more necessary than the city, and making children is more common among the animals” (1162a17– 19). Similarly, in the Eudemian Ethics, he says that “human beings are not merely political animals but also householding (oikonomikôn) animals” (VI.10.1242a22–26). If calling us naturally politikoi merely meant that we want to be with someone else, then it would make no sense to say that we are not only couple-forming animals, not only household animals, but polit- ical animals as well. Evidently, Aristotle thinks of our nature as politikoi as a complex psychological matter, consisting not only in a desire to be with others, but also something that propels us beyond the household and into the far larger and more complex community that he calls the polis.

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202 RICHARD KRAUT

Thus, Barnes’s correction of Ross’s translation unduly restricts Aristo- tle’s meaning: Aristotle is not merely saying that we have a social nature (that we want to be with others) but, more significantly, that we have a political nature: we have a nature that suits us for life in the polis. That should be obvious from the context of Aristotle’s statement in EN I.7: “By self sufficient we do not mean what is sufficient for someone alone, living a solitary life, but what is sufficient also for parents, children, wife, and in general friends and citizens [ politais], since by nature human beings are politikoi” (1097b8–11). The point that we are by nature political is meant to support the thesis that a well-lived life for a human being is lived not only with family and friends but with fellow citizens as well: we should not leave politai (citizens) out of this picture, because we are by nature politikoi. Our political nature, then, does not consist solely in a desire to be with others, or a need for parents, children, wife, and friends. Isolation would be bad for us for all sorts of reasons: because we need parents, because we need children, because we need wives, because we need friends —and also because we have a political nature. Here “sociable” is a poor trans- lation of politikos.

These passages, in other words, leave no doubt that Aristotle’s claim that we are by nature political sometimes means no more than that we are sociable (in that we seek the company of others), and in other cases posits a more specifically political nature —a nature that would not be fulfilled merely by family life or life in any other small group that safeguards us against loneliness. The problem I am raising is that, at first blush, it seems quite implausible to suppose that we are by nature not merely social, but political as well.

III. The Impulse Toward Political Community

Let us now try a different way of understanding what Aristotle means. Perhaps the claim that we are by nature politikoi, when it is not a reference to our sociality (that is, our desire to associate with others), is merely a normative, and not at all a psychological proposition. So understood, this thesis means that we human beings are of such a nature that we do better by living in political communities than we do by living outside them. When human beings long ago developed larger forms of association than the household and the tiny village —when they established communities complex enough in their governing structure and economy to be called cities —that was a good thing. Given our nature, living in such circum- stances is good for us: that (together with a psychological claim about our sociability) is what it means to say that we are by nature political.

There is nothing controversial in the suggestion that, according to Aris- totle, it is good for us to live in the polis. What can be disputed, however, is the claim that he intends nothing about human psychology, when he

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 203

says that we are by nature politikoi, except that we abhor isolation and seek human company of some sort or other. It is more plausible to take him to believe that there is a human propensity to engage in a specific type of relationship with others: the object toward which this impulse pushes us is not some human relationship or other, but a political rela- tionship —a certain kind of association with non-kin. We find him saying precisely this near the end of Politics I.2. After he describes the process by which the polis arose from smaller and less complex communities, he remarks: “by nature there exists in everyone an impulse [hormê] towards such a community” (1253a29–30). By “such a community” (toiautên koinônian) he can only mean a political community. Thus, he is claiming that by nature all human beings possess a psychological mechanism —a propensity, impulse, instinct, or drive —whose object is not merely the company of another (whether that be a son, a wife, or an intimate friend); rather, the object of that tendency is to associate with others in a way that is appropriately called political, because the relationship sought is the kind that fellow citizens have with each other. (Once again, the Revised Oxford Translation, by Benjamin Jowett, misses this: it makes Aristotle say, “A social instinct is planted in all men by nature. . . .”)3

But what does it mean to say that we have a hormê toward political community? I take Aristotle’s idea to be this: Something that always was, currently is, and always will be present in human nature is activated at a certain point in history, when circumstances are favorable to its expres- sion. Once the instinct to form families and households has given rise to this social formation, a different instinct, long dormant, makes itself felt, and pushes us toward the creation and maintenance of a different kind of human relationship and a different kind of social organization. Just as families are not sustained solely by a purely rational calculation of self- interest, but depend, in addition, on a nonrational impulse to set up and maintain a household (Pol. I.2.1252a28–30), so too the political commu- nity owes its origin and continued existence to some propensity that supplements the rational calculation of self-interest that leads people to engage in political life. Just as there is a sexual urge, which supplements whatever deliberations lie behind the formation of families, so there is a political urge, which brings us into relationship with non-kin and sup- plements our cool recognition of the greater advantages that accrue to us when we cooperate with strangers in civic life.

If we return to a passage cited earlier, we should now be able to rec- ognize that this is precisely what Aristotle is driving at. Recall the words he uses in Politics III.6: “It has been said in our first discourses . . . that by nature human beings are political animals. That is why, even when they do not need assistance from each other, they have no less of a desire to

3 Jowett, in other words, is the original Oxford translator whose rendering is allowed to stand by Barnes, the editor of the Revised Oxford Translation.

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204 RICHARD KRAUT

live together. That is not to deny that the common advantage also draws them together, insofar as it contributes to each a portion of living well” (1278b17–23). Here we have a clear recognition on Aristotle’s part that he is positing a psychological mechanism that supplements our ability to recognize, through rational calculation, that cooperating with others will bring greater rewards. The political instinct is nonrational, just as the family instinct is nonrational. Nature has done us the favor of pointing us in the right direction: first toward family life and then toward political life. It is not loneliness (the desire simply to be with someone or other) that drives us into cities, but a propensity, as nonrational as the sexual urge, directed at those who are farther removed from us than are family members and close friends. That propensity can properly be called “nat- ural” even if it does not make itself felt at the earliest stages of human life; like the sexual drive, it lies dormant in all of us and arises only when conditions are in place that elicit it.4

What propensity is this? What psychological phenomenon is Aristotle thinking of when he speaks of us as political animals? I take him to be saying that whenever two or more people (whether or not they are akin or attached by intense emotional ties) are able to enter into a cooperative relationship, the political nature of human beings is at work, because their desire for the instrumental benefits they reap through their cooperation cannot by itself explain why they are able to interact successfully.5 My conjecture, in other words, is that Aristotle is thinking of the background of trust, good will, and friendliness that must exist among people if they are to join together and attain the benefits of cooperation. To say that we are by nature political, then, is in part to say that a tendency to have enough trust in others to interact with them for mutual advantage is an inherent and unlearned feature of our psychology. This tendency can properly be called “political” because, as Aristotle sees it, the most valu-

4 That is why we should reject an assumption that initially made us question whether human beings are naturally political (see note 2). The presence of a tendency in young children is only one way, not the only way, to establish that it is natural. A tendency is also properly called “natural,” even when it arises later in life, if it is not the product of reasoning or any other conscious effort to summon it into existence.

5 A passage from Aristotle’s History of Animals (I.1.487b34–488a10) provides evidence that for Aristotle what makes it appropriate to characterize a species as political is the tendency and ability of its members to cooperate —that is, to share a common goal. Here he says: “Political (animals) are those for whom one common thing is the task of all” (488a7–8). I am grateful to Chris Bobonich for calling my attention to the support this statement gives my interpretation. I should also note that here again the Revised Oxford Translation, which in this case is that of d’A. W. Thompson, uses “social” for Aristotle’s politikon. No doubt, that is because the translator wants to avoid having Aristotle say that bees, wasps, and the like are political. (After all, they don’t have laws or constitutions.) The passage makes it clear, however, that animals can have a tendency to live in aggregates (and are in that sense social) even when they do not form cooperative societies. Notice that this passage provides further evidence that the political nature of human beings is not merely a matter of their preferring to spend their time in the company of others to social isolation. It is one thing for animals to be gregarious (agelaia); it is another to be politikoi.

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 205

able result to which this innate tendency leads is the existence of that complex social organization we call a city.6

The minimal level of trust needed for cooperation can be called a kind of friendship among people, and there is no doubt that Aristotle recog- nizes that under proper conditions this low level of friendliness arises even outside the circle of intimate friends and family. He alludes to this aspect of human psychology in the preliminary remarks he makes about friend- ship at the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics VIII: “It seems to exist by nature in a parent’s relation to offspring and offspring’s relation to parent, not only among humans but also among birds and most animals, and among mem- bers of the same species, and especially among humans —which is why we praise those who love humankind ( philanthrôpous). One can see on one’s travels how akin and dear every human is to every other. Friendship seems to hold cities together, and legislators care more about it than justice” (VIII.1.1155b16–24). Just as love is the natural glue that holds families together, so a similar kind of glue, present by nature in all humans, can, when properly cultivated and directed by legislators, unify cities. This is not a phenomenon that exists solely among fellow citizens, however: it can be observed in the good will shown to strangers when they travel, and thus exists even when we are not trying to cooperate with others.

Aristotle is saying that these related phenomena —trust, good will, friendship —played a role in the first formation of cities. It was not sheer calculation of self-interest that led families and tribes to cooperate with other families and tribes in the formation of cities; there also had to be some- thing noninstrumental in these relationships, because people do not nec- essarily cooperate even when it is in their interest to do so. And it is quite fortunate that human beings have an inherent capacity for that kind of rela- tionship even with strangers: without it, cities would never have come into existence, and when it is not activated, they are in danger of falling apart.

It may seem strange that Aristotle should believe that considerations of self-interest are not by themselves sufficient to generate and sustain polit- ical communities. What reason would he have to suppose that cities do not come into existence when one tribe sees that it will be able to meet its needs for security, food, and other material resources by joining together with another and forming a larger social organization? Why posit a polit- ical impulse (which, we now see, is a kind of trust and friendliness) as part of the psychological mechanism that brings two tribes together, instead of accounting for their joining together as the outcome of nothing but self-interested rational planning?

6 That is why it would be merely a verbal objection against Aristotle if one protested that the trustful cooperative drive he posits and calls “political” is indeterminate in its object, in that it will lead to participation in many sorts of associations, and not merely in the polis. Aristotle can agree that the political drive does not merely lead to and sustain the polis, but he will point out that things are best named in a way that reflects the ends that they properly serve (Anim. II.4.416b23), and thus the cooperative impulse we have should be named after the most important cooperative group to which we belong.

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206 RICHARD KRAUT

I conjecture that Aristotle is thinking along the following lines: Since there are several emotional impediments to the formation of associations among strangers, the best way to account for the existence of such com- munities is to posit the presence of a nonrational social glue that drives and keeps strangers together. In certain circumstances, fear of strangers, distrust, envy, spite, hatred, and anger will prevent people from forming alliances. If all of the emotional factors that play a role in the relationships among strangers were centrifugal, we would never be able to form ties that extend beyond the family and close friends. There has to be some centripetal psychological mechanism that supplements the calculation of the advantages of joining forces with others, because, in the absence of that binding element, distrust and other corrosive forces would prevent people from joining together, in spite of their recognition of the advan- tages of doing so. Positing such a psychological mechanism is not a sheer inference to the existence of an unobservable entity; for we are fully aware of it, when it is pointed out to us.

Aristotle is, of course, aware that many existing cities are in danger of collapse. Deviant constitutions are those in which rulers have a low level of concern for and trust in those whom they ought to be serving. As centrifugal emotional tendencies gain greater force and increasingly gov- ern civic life, both rulers and ruled become less able to achieve or even to see what would be in their interest, and the city’s very existence becomes increasingly fragile. Aristotle claims that these constitutions are against nature (Pol. III.17.1287b41): that is, when cities are governed in these ways, the natural tendency, present in all human beings, to cooperate even with strangers in ways that cannot be reduced to mutual self- interest, has been overcome by stronger forces.

Earlier I noted that Aristotle’s thesis that human beings are by nature political animals lacks the intuitive plausibility of his claims that we are natural knowers and imitators. Now that we have a better understanding of what he means by saying that we are naturally political, that doctrine should not seem so implausible after all. If sexual attraction were not a natural force —if we had to rely solely on the cool calculation of self- interest as the guiding factor in the conduct of our sexual lives —we would never form couples or remain in such relationships. Aristotle’s positing of a political hormê —his idea that there is something analogous at work in the agglomeration of strangers into cooperative communities —is not a hypothesis that can easily be dismissed. When we help a stranger at some risk or inconvenience to ourselves, there is often something at work other than our desire for our own advantage. Having been done a good turn by a stranger, we tend to respond in kind, even when we have no expectation of meeting again.7 If these propensities were not part of our

7 Paul Seabright, The Company of Strangers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 55, reporting on experiments in behavioral economics.

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 207

natural psychological equipment, it is unlikely that complex social orga- nizations of strangers could be sustained.

IV. First Nature as a Guide to Ethical Reflection

That we are political animals is only one small part of Aristotle’s con- ception of human nature. As I noted earlier, he also takes us to be learning animals and imitative animals, and surely many other features could be added to this list. However, we can get only so far in our study of Aris- totle by creating a list of what he thinks human beings are by nature. To understand the ways in which his ethical theory is built on a conception of human nature, we have to move to a higher level of generality and consider his ideas about what role a conception of nature should play in ethical theory.

When Aristotle talks about the nature of a thing, he is sometimes refer- ring to the final stage of development toward which it is growing, if it is developing properly (“nature is an end,” Pol. I.2.1252b30–32), and he is sometimes referring to whatever is present to that individual at the begin- ning of its existence, something that must be worked up into something else, if it is to develop properly. My focus here has been, and will continue to be, not the nature that lies at the end of proper development, but the nature that inheres in a living thing at the beginning of its existence — what we can therefore call (following John McDowell) its “first nature.” 8

Why does Aristotle think that first nature should be of interest to us when we study ethical theory? His practical philosophy takes it upon itself to say what our final goal or goals should be —but why should it be important, for the success of this project, for it to put forward a picture of what our first nature is? Why not figure out what our highest goal should be and go there, to the extent that we can, without fussing about whether we have an inbuilt capacity or propensity to go there? Of course, if we are incapable of achieving a certain goal, because our nature prevents us from doing so, then we will have to abandon that plan. But is that the only reason Aristotle has for taking an interest in first nature?

There are other questions that should be raised about Aristotle’s inter- est in first nature: From the premise that we are naturally inclined to do X or to desire X, does Aristotle infer that it is good for us to X, or that X should receive more of our attention than that toward which we have no natural inclination? Does the possibility occur to him that something that is natural to us might need to be discouraged, diminished in force, or perhaps even eliminated?

It might be thought that Aristotle’s answer to these questions is brief and (to a modern philosophical taste) unsatisfying: he frequently remarks

8 John McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” in McDowell, Mind, Value, and Reality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), esp. 184, 188–90.

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208 RICHARD KRAUT

that nature does nothing in vain.9 That could be taken to mean that nature makes no errors, or, to be more precise, that whatever is part of a living thing’s first nature is good for it, and is made good for it precisely because of its being natural. That is perhaps why it is important for ethical theory to notice that we are political animals: just as nutrition, growth, locomo- tion, and perception are made good for living things by virtue of their naturalness, so political life is made good for human beings by the fact that we are naturally driven toward it.

But a moment’s thought is all it takes to see that this reading of Aris- totle cannot be entirely correct. First, he says that human beings are by nature many things: imitative animals, knowledge-seeking animals, polit- ical animals, and much else besides. Consulting our first nature, then, does not pick out just one goal for us to seek, but many. We still need to decide whether some of these goals are more important than others, and the fact that we are inclined in all of these directions by nature will not answer that question.

Second, we do not find Aristotle making any appeal to our first nature when he finally faces the task of deciding between the competing attrac- tions of the political life and the philosophical life (EN X.7–8). That we have an innate desire for knowledge is a point that is not even mentioned in his defense of the philosophical life.

Third, Aristotle regards the generative and perceptual capacities of nonhuman living things as good for a reason that is independent of the naturalness of those capacities. What makes reproduction good for a plant or an animal is the fact that by leaving another of the same kind in its place, it comes as close as it can to living the eternal and changeless life of the divine substance.10 Plants are in a less favorable position than animals, on the scale of nature, because even though sense organs are no more and no less natural than nutritive and reproductive organs, sensa- tion offers a low-grade form of knowledge, which is worth having for its own sake. Thus, the goodness of having a faculty and the degree of goodness of having it are not matters that are settled simply by its nat- uralness. In fact, our ability to recognize nature as a force that does good rests on the fact that we can hold these two things —what is natural and what is good —apart. We recognize that participation in some kind of eternal duration and some form of knowledge is good for any living thing; and then, having arrived at this way of determining what it is for an organism to live well, we are assured that in fact nature is frequently a force for good, because it gives living beings the resources they need to attain their good.

Nonetheless, it would be implausible to suppose that a thing’s first nature plays no guiding role in Aristotle’s ethical theory. Consider the fact that

9 See, for example: Cael. I.4.271a33, II.11.291b13; GA II.6.744a36, 744b16; Pol. I.2.1253a9. 10 Anim. II.4.415a23–b7; GA I.23.731a24–b5, II.1.731b24–732a1.

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 209

the three leading candidates for the highest good (under consideration in EN I.5) are goals for which all human beings have, in Aristotle’s opinion, a natural tendency. These are the life of bodily pleasure, the political life, and the life devoted to contemplating theoretical truths. In all three cases, there is, Aristotle thinks, a natural tendency that propels us forward. Can it be an accident that the most serious candidates for the goal of the best human life are ones toward which we are naturally driven?

V. Bentham and Hepburn’s Rose

In order to get our bearings, it will be helpful at this point to mention two extreme views about what nature has to do with ethics. We will see that Aristotle’s views on this matter are intermediate between these end- points, and are far more plausible than either.

The first view is that of Jeremy Bentham. He begins An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation with these well-known words: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. . . . The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system. . . .” 11

The second view is put forward by Rose Sayer, the character played by Katharine Hepburn in the film The African Queen (1951). Her goal is to prevail upon Charlie Allnut, a jack-of-all-trades employed by a Belgian mining company (the role played by Humphrey Bogart), to sail his boat (“The African Queen”) down an unnavigable river, and then to torpedo a German battleship. (The action takes place in central Africa at the outset of the First World War.) Rose is a Christian missionary and a British patriot, whereas Charlie is an easygoing laborer who has dropped out of the worlds of civic duty and routinized labor. When he realizes how adamant Rose is, and how indifferent to danger, he reneges on his prom- ise to help her; she responds by giving him the silent treatment and pouring his large stock of gin into the river. That gives her a victory in their war of wills. He begs for understanding: “What ya being so mean for, Miss? A man takes a drop too much once in a while, it’s only human nature.” Rose will have none of that: “Nature, Mr. Allnut,” she says, “is what we are put in this world to rise above.” 12

11 Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart (London: Athlone Press, 1970).

12 This line is in the screenplay of James Agee and John Huston, but not in the book on which the film is based: C. S. Forester, The African Queen (New York: The Modern Library, 1935).

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210 RICHARD KRAUT

Aristotle could not agree that we should “rise above” nature if that means that we are to struggle against and, if possible, eradicate all of the innate psychological forces that exert themselves upon us. In one respect, however, his position is closer to Rose’s than it is to Bentham’s. Bentham asserts that it would be futile to try to stand back from the “sovereign master” nature has placed in us, whereas Rose thinks that we can put a natural inclination or capacity at arm’s length, ask what its worth is, and escape its influence if we so choose. On this issue, Aristotle sides with Rose. He says in Politics VII.13: “There are . . . three things through which people become good and excellent. These three are nature, habit, and reason. For to begin with, one must have a certain nature —that of a human, and not that of one of the other animals; similarly, one’s body and soul must be of a certain sort. But in some cases no benefit comes from having a certain nature, for habits make one change. . . . Now, the other animals live by nature most of all, and a small number of them live also by habit, but man lives also by reason. For he alone has reason. Therefore, these things must harmonize with each other. For people do many things contrary to their habits and their nature, because of reason, if they are persuaded that it is better to do otherwise” (1332a38–b8).13

Though Aristotle does not say so here, he is thinking of the three factors he mentions as holding sway at three different periods in an individual’s development. Nature exerts its greatest influence at the earliest stage. Then our habits take over, and they may either enhance or undermine what nature has contributed. Finally, as our deliberative skills mature, we become capable of making reasoned decisions. Just as habit can under- mine the contribution of nature, so too reason can set itself up in oppo- sition to the combined effects of nature and habit. Thus, Aristotle would reject Bentham’s picture of the subjugation of reason and every other human faculty to the governance of pleasure and pain. He would agree with Bentham that nature plays a role in human development, and also that the desire for pleasurable things is natural to us and to every other animal. But he would say that Bentham vastly overestimates the force of natural propensities and capacities. Habit can undermine nature, by fail- ing to exploit its gifts. And if habit does not ruin what nature has given

13 Aristotle is, with good reason, convinced that when natural substances (that is, indi- vidual living things) change according to regularities that hold without exception or for the most part, something must be at work other than mere chance: something that is natural (in one of the ways in which things can be natural) must be operating. See Physics II.8.199b18, b25–26. But he should not be taken to mean that whenever nature makes a contribution to the development of a human being, by being present regardless of habituation or reasoning, that contribution will always or for the most part play a decisive role in human action. For nature is only one influence on us; habit and reason also play important roles. I will later discuss (in Section VIII) his suggestion that in a small number of cases a person’s virtue owes more to the extraordinarily good nature with which he began life than to any other factor (EN X.9.1179b20–23). Aristotle can say, without contradicting himself, that nature plays a larger role among these individuals than it does in most cases.

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 211

us, reason can step in at a later stage and successfully undermine the combined force of nature and habit.

Aristotle assumes that, for the most part (I will soon mention some exceptions), what nature gives us at the beginning of our lives should be used and developed. It would be crazy to suppose otherwise. We all agree that our capacity to take in nutrition should not be left dormant; that when we start to show the strength and inclination to stand and walk, we should be helped and encouraged; that if a disease would undermine our ability to perceive the world, then preventive measures must be taken; that our desires to explore and imitate should be fulfilled; and that our love of pleasure is not to be extirpated, but directed at objects that are truly pleasurable and good. If Hepburn’s Rose means that these natural capacities and drives are to be extirpated, her dictum is a piece of madness.

Perhaps, then, she is best taken to mean that our highest goal (what we are put on earth to achieve) is not something for which we have any natural propensity or capacity —that it may even be something that goes against our nature. Aristotle would reject even that more modest claim. Because he sees nature as a friend not only to plants and animals but to humans as well, he would find little plausibility in the suggestion that we should choose for our highest end something that goes against the grain of nature. That suggestion would strike him as no more credible than the proposition that when oak trees or lions bring to completion a process that is natural to them, they are faring poorly, and that it would be better for them to live a life that is unnatural to them. Nature has, for the most part, done well by other kinds of living things. Why suppose, then, that human beings are less well equipped with natural resources?

VI. Nature’s Deficiencies

Aristotle does not believe, however, that nature inevitably and invari- ably gives each living thing all that would be best for it to have. For one thing, the deck that nature deals to certain living things is not always a full deck. Aristotle thinks that nature has not provided most women or non-Greek males a fully functional rational capacity (Pol. I.13.1260a12–13).

That is, of course, a familiar feature of Aristotle’s outlook, but we should take care to recognize that it provides us with further evidence for a point made earlier (in Section IV). The naturalness of a capacity or propensity cannot, according to Aristotle, be what makes it good for a living thing to have it, because we can evaluate how well or poorly nature provides for the well-being of a living thing. For example, he insists that nature gives many human beings a rational capacity that is inherently weak and lim- ited. In order to make that judgment, he must rely on a conception of what is good for a living thing that is independent of his theory of what belongs to a thing by its nature. Aristotle’s view must be that, for the most part,

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212 RICHARD KRAUT

nature provides living things with much that they need, but sometimes it provides many members of a species with far less than that. In order to make that judgment, he must separate the question “What is good for a thing?” from the question “What is a thing’s first nature?”

Aristotle also recognizes that nature goes astray in a more radical way: not only does it give certain individuals less of a good thing than they should have, it also puts some people at a disadvantage by giving them harmful capacities or tendencies. This point emerges unambiguously in Nicomachean Ethics VII, where Aristotle briefly discusses the unfortunate condition of brutishness (thêriotês): a falling away from human norms more extreme than mere badness of character (kakia). Brutishness can be acquired later in life, because of bad habits or a disease, but it is some- times present at birth: people are sometimes born with base natures (mochthêras phuseis, VII.5.1148b18). He gives quite a few examples, in VII.5, of what he has in mind. To mention only one: some are by their nature disposed to be afraid of everything —even the noise of a mouse (1149a7–8). Sometimes, Aristotle holds, it would be best for the psycho- logical mechanisms of first nature to be extirpated.

He recognizes, in EN III.5, that we cannot be blamed for the presence of something that we receive from nature. We may have desires, fears, and other emotions that are implanted in us without our acceptance or connivance, and whose force cannot be diminished. But it would be a further step to say that we cannot help but act on such desires or emo- tions. As we have seen, Aristotle holds (Pol. VII.13) that reasoning can counteract the combined force of nature and habit; it can lead to the conclusion that a desire is to be resisted. The threat of punishment may add to one’s incentive to overcome the force of an illicit desire. However, if the force of the natural emotion is simply too strong for a human being to resist, Aristotle concedes that one is to be forgiven (EN III.1.1110a23–26).

VII. Correcting Second Nature

In one passage, Aristotle seems to imply that counteracting our natural tendencies is a common feature of ethical life —not some rarity restricted to weird examples of brutishness. He says in EN II.9: “One should also examine what we ourselves are easily drawn towards (eukataphoroi ). For different people have natural tendencies toward different goals (alloi pros alla pephukamen), and this we will recognize from the pleasure or pain that arises in us. One should drag oneself off in the contrary direction, for by pulling forcefully away from error, we shall reach what is intermediate, like those who straighten bent wood” (1109b1–7). That makes him sound rather like Hepburn’s Rose. He seems to be saying that each of us, because of our first nature, has some tendencies that need to be corrected or uprooted, because if we follow our natural bent in these cases, we will go astray.

I think it is better, however, to take this passage to be discussing not first but second nature: not innate tendencies but the bad habits we have

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 213

formed, and our need to counteract them when we are adults. Of course, Aristotle cannot be taken to be saying here that it is the job of parents to observe the natural tendencies of their young children and to weed out, by means of proper habituation, whatever bad impulses they find. For this passage is not giving advice to parents. Rather, Aristotle is talking about our need, as more or less virtuous adults, to monitor ourselves, and to eliminate the rough spots in our character.

Notice that his comparison of the corrective process he recommends to the straightening of bent wood implies that whatever defective tenden- cies we find in ourselves can be not only diminished but eliminated. What was once bent can be made straight. That is most plausibly taken to mean that since the defects we have acquired through the force of habit are not inherent deficiencies, the force of contrary habit can lead to their elimi- nation. The defects we have acquired over the course of early develop- ment can be entirely set right, if only we recognize how undesirable they are and set ourselves wholeheartedly against them through a long pro- cess of counterhabituation.

The alternative interpretation, according to which Aristotle is explain- ing how we can eliminate character defects that have been implanted in us from the start, is less plausible. For what evidence is there that, accord- ing to Aristotle, we can not only rationally decide to resist the pull of bad natural dispositions (as he says at Pol. VII.13.1332a38–b8), but eliminate those natural limitations? He regards the defective reason of natural slaves and women (Pol. I.13.1260a12–13) as a condition that cannot be cured by proper habituation, since it was not created by poor habits.14 Similarly, then, we should take him to mean that although the defective traits of character that nature has implanted in us cannot be eliminated, the defects we have acquired by habit can. Accordingly, when he uses the word phuein ( pephukamen) in the passage quoted above, we should take him to mean that certain desires have grown into us and in that sense have become natural to us (cf. EN VII.3.1147a22). They have, as we say, become second nature to us. We can gradually diminish the force of these natural tendencies, and eventually eradicate them, if we are disciplined enough to bend ourselves in the opposite direction for a long period of time.

We should therefore recognize at least three ways in which Aristotle talks about nature. As first nature, it is what is already present in us prior to habituation. As second nature, it is what grows into us, as a result of a process of habituation. And, as perfected nature, it is the goal at which we should arrive when the process of habituation has worked well and we achieve something that is good.15

14 I discuss Aristotle’s attempt to defend the institution of chattel slavery in Aristotle: Political Philosophy, 207–305.

15 Aristotle is, of course, fully aware of the multiple uses of phusis. See especially Meta- physics V.4 and Physics II.1.

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214 RICHARD KRAUT

VIII. Natural and Extraordinary Virtue

Aristotle holds that such virtues as justice and courage and their cor- responding vices develop in us through a process of habituation (ethos), and he calls them ethical (êthikê) virtues and vices to emphasize their causal origin (EN II.1.1103a17–18). He infers that we do not have these qualities by nature. For if we were naturally just or naturally unjust, nothing in our upbringing could alter that condition —just as the down- ward movement of a stone, being built into its nature, cannot be redirected, no matter how many times one tries to train it by throwing it upwards (a21–24).16 We are not by nature good or bad; rather, we are of such a nature as to receive these qualities ( pephukosi hêmin dexasthai ), and we are perfected (teleiomenois) by means of habit (1103a25–26).

It would be a mistake to take Aristotle to be saying that human beings are no more disposed to become good than to become bad. Nature, so conceived, would be neutral; it would allow the possibility of develop- ment in many directions, but would not favor one over another. Accord- ing to this way of reading Aristotle, he thinks that we begin our lives as blank slates, being no more inclined by nature to act well than to act badly.

We already know, however, that this cannot be what he has in mind. He thinks that nature pushes us in all sorts of directions: it makes us imita- tive, curious, political beings. Furthermore, he explicitly claims in EN VI.13 that good qualities of a rudimentary sort are naturally present in us: “It seems that each of the virtues belongs to everyone somehow ( pôs) by nature. For we are just or temperate or brave or have the others imme- diately at birth. But nonetheless we seek something else: to be good in the full sense (kuriôs) and to have such qualities in a different way. For the natural virtues belong to children and beasts, but without understanding (nous) they are evidently harmful” (VI.13.1144b4–9). Nature does not merely leave open the path to virtue: it gives us a push in that direction, but not so forcefully that we cannot go astray, regardless of the habits we form and the way we reason. When he says (in EN II.1) that we are not virtuous by nature, he should be taken to mean that we are not born with full virtue. For we are born with a certain kind of virtue and are thus already on our way, from the very start, toward becoming fully virtuous.

We can only guess what Aristotle has in mind, but perhaps he is thinking along these lines: Mimesis is natural to us, and mimesis is not merely the representing activity of the poet but also the imitative activity of the child. When children are treated in a certain way, they respond in

16 Here we have further evidence for the conclusion arrived at in the previous section, namely, that the natural tendencies that Aristotle urges us to oppose are part of our second rather than our first nature. He thinks that just as throwing a stone upwards cannot under- mine its natural downward direction, so what is crooked in our character from the very beginning cannot be straightened through the force of habit.

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 215

kind. Should they be loved and treated well (as they typically are: EN VIII.12.1161b24–26), they will do likewise. So they will be inclined to share (to some degree) with others and to give what help they can. Fur- thermore, a political impulse is naturally present in us all. As we have seen, this is an inclination to establish and sustain noninstrumental con- nections even with those who live beyond the household. When you visit the child of a couple you know, and he does you a kindness, you are observing the political impulse at work —the same impulse that endears us to foreigners when we travel, and that, by overcoming fear and dis- trust, led to the formation of cities and continues to sustain them.

Although it is not widely recognized, there is a definite hint in Aristotle that some people are fortunate enough to receive from nature an extraor- dinary predisposition toward virtue. He says in EN X.9: “Some think we become good by nature, others by habit, others by teaching. Now, obvi- ously the contribution of nature (to tês phuseôs) does not depend on us, but results from certain divine causes in those who are truly fortunate . . .” (1179b20–23). This remark is easily misunderstood: Aristotle, it might be thought, cannot really believe that a divine cause interferes with the natural course of events and favors a few with a superior endowment. In fact, however, he several times allows for the existence of rare individuals who somehow transcend the normal limits of human nature and possess a godlike virtue. Just as there is such a thing as brutishness —a disposition to perform acts so transgressive of human norms that they mark one as subhuman —so there is, in some, the capacity to rise above the normal limits of human excellence and to attain a superhuman superiority. Such rare individuals “become gods through an excess of virtue” (VII.1.1145a23– 24): their virtues are the same in kind as those we normally attribute to some human beings ( justice, courage, etc.), but much greater in scale and degree. These individuals would not only be capable of great feats, even beyond those that are expected of excellent human beings; they would also be so trustworthy and incorruptible that the usual safeguards that cities use to guard against the abuse of power would be inappropriate (Pol. III.13.1284b25–34). They would be like gods among human beings (III.13.1284a10–11), and justice would require that they be given unlim- ited powers of governance (VII.15.1332b16–23).17

Since Aristotle thinks that a godlike human being is a possibility, and leaves room for such an individual in his political theory, we should not take him to be speaking tongue in cheek when he refers to “certain divine causes in those who are truly fortunate” (EN X.9.1179b22–23). What he must mean is that, in certain extraordinary cases, the contribution of nature to the development of virtue is so powerful that it is appropriate to regard it as a divine cause; after all, it produces a divine effect —a godlike human being. He does not have in mind a magical intervention

17 For discussion, see my Aristotle: Political Philosophy, 410–15.

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216 RICHARD KRAUT

by a divine agent with a will of its own —as though Zeus could make a stone fly ever upward. Rather, he is saying that whatever produces a godlike human being (perhaps the favorable circumstances of concep- tion) should be called a divine cause.

Even so, our passage remains puzzling: How, it may be asked, can Aristotle remain open, in the final chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, to the thesis that nature sometimes makes an individual virtuous? Has he not built his whole conception of the ethical virtues on the denial of that hypothesis? Their very name — ethical (êthikê) virtues —emphasizes that they arise through habit (ethos), not nature. Although nature, as Aristotle sees it, sets us off in the right direction by giving us the natural virtues (VI.13), his theory of human development leaves no room for the possible existence of an individual so well endowed by nature that he can skip the process of habituation. So what are we to make of the fact that, in EN X.9, after raising the question of how we become good —“some think we become good by nature, others by habit, others by teaching” (1179b20– 21) —he does not reject the first option outright, but seems open to that possibility? (“Now, obviously the contribution of nature [to tês phuseôs] does not depend on us, but results from certain divine causes in those who are truly fortunate . . .” [b21–23].)

I suggest that the puzzle can be solved in this way: Aristotle’s thought in EN X.9 is that in certain lucky individuals there is an extremely strong natural bias in favor of acquiring the virtues, one that goes far beyond the gentle impetus that is present in most of us. Typically, the natural pre- disposition to become virtuous is not so strong that it is bound to persist even in adverse conditions. What Aristotle has in mind in EN X.9 is that there may be a few lucky children whose natural virtue is so strong a force that they will develop good habits even in the midst of temptations and pressures that would induce most people to fall well short of excel- lence. Even if these lucky few are, for example, neglected or mistreated as children, they still enjoy working with others and doing more than their share in common projects. Should they be exposed, later in life, to sophis- tic arguments that cast doubt on ethical life, the force of their natural bent will incline them to be deeply suspicious and to scrutinize those argu- ments with great care. They will acquire not only good habits but also practical wisdom, and the reason why they are so successful lies in the powerful predisposition toward virtue they received as part of their innate endowment. Nature is what makes them virtuous, in that their extraor- dinary nature practically guarantees that their habits and reasoning will be of the highest order.

Evidently, first nature does not treat all people alike. It gives many human beings —those who are slaves by their nature —too small a power of reasoning. It places in some a tendency to act in ways that grossly transgress human norms. But often it gives people a fully functioning rational capacity and a predisposition to treat each other well. These are

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 217

the people Aristotle has in mind when he says that human beings are by nature political animals. Political communities could never have arisen, and cannot endure for long, without the existence of a large number of people who have the capacity and predisposition to come together and engage in collective reasoning about the good of the whole community. There are, every now and then, a few extraordinary individuals who can be entrusted with unlimited power, but for the most part political life depends on a wide dispersal of skills of practical thought and feeling. If nature had constructed human beings differently, there would be no large communities of people unrelated by blood and without strong bonds of affiliation who nonetheless, to some degree, tend to treat each other well.

IX. Why Does Human Life So Often Go Badly?

Since natural virtue is widespread, why isn’t full virtue equally wide- spread? Why, if so many start off not only with the natural endowment they need to become completely good people, but also with an initial tendency in this direction, does it so frequently happen that adults fall far short of full virtue? Aristotle’s answer is that nature gives us a great deal that can be used both well and badly, and it is an extremely difficult task (except for a favored few) to acquire all of the emotional and cognitive skills that are needed to deploy all of these natural resources successfully. Our initial predisposition to respond well to others and our capacity to learn do not, by themselves, take us very far. We have to learn how to put to good use our capacity for feeling pleasure, and the emotional respon- siveness (anger, fear, and so on) with which we begin. “There are many ways to go wrong . . . but only one way to be correct, which is why the one is easy and the other difficult” (EN II.6.1106b28–32). Of course, most people can manage to abide by the law and avoid the obvious forms of evildoing (V.9.1137a5–17). But to recognize, on each occasion, how a prac- tical problem should be solved, to be guided over the course of a life by a proper understanding of what is valuable, and to respond to people and things with appropriate feelings: that is extraordinarily hard, and, as Aristotle says, often the best we can do is pull ourselves away from the kinds of errors that our habits dispose us to make.

Asking why people so often fail to become fully virtuous, in spite of the fact that they have natural virtues, is somewhat like asking why so few people have full knowledge of the sciences, in spite of the fact that all human beings desire to know. Learning a science is hard; natural curios- ity will make someone want to learn, but there is no guarantee that the causal explanations science gives will be grasped by the student. Learn- ing to be ethical is, in a way, even more difficult, because it requires not only the acquisition of an intellectual skill (practical wisdom), but also the proper handling of the emotions and our desire for pleasure. Ethical life is a battle between the adequate but not abundant internal resources

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218 RICHARD KRAUT

nature has given us and the overwhelming practical tasks, both cognitive and affective, that confront us.

In this respect, we are, in Aristotle’s opinion, less well endowed by nature than most other living things. They receive from nature more or less what they need in order to find nourishment, grow, move about in and perceive the world, and reproduce. Their internal resources are often abundant, not merely adequate to their tasks. They need external resources as well, of course —food, sexual partners, and the like —and nature does not guarantee that they will have them. They can starve, or be killed and become the food of others. But human beings are also vulnerable to misfortunes brought about by plagues, crop failures, and the like. On top of that, we are faced with the problem that our internal resources are barely adequate to the tasks of political life, much as we need that sort of life. Nature’s contribution to the acquisition of the internal resources we need is never by itself sufficient, because no one can excel without acquir- ing good habits and deliberative excellence. In any case, it is up to each person, no matter how well favored by nature, to complete the job nature has initiated. Few are equal to the great demands of that job. It would be futile and senseless to blame nature for giving us so little help, for it is not an agent. Aristotle holds that we cannot reasonably let ourselves off the hook: difficult as ethical excellence is to acquire, it is within our reach. Barring severe limitations in external resources and the mistreatment we suffer from other human beings, we can blame only ourselves when our lives go badly. Although we cannot rightly be held responsible for the cards that nature and our parents have dealt us, we can control the way we play those cards, and we are properly held responsible and considered blameworthy when we misplay them. Conversely, those whose great virtue is partly the result of nature’s endowment should, all the same, receive high praise, just as athletes who have perfected nature’s gift to them rightly receive our admiration.18

A stronger indictment against nature (were it an agent) could be drawn up by some of the leading schools of contemporary moral philosophy. A utilitarian, for example, might lament the fact that we naturally place ourselves at the center of our social universe and have to struggle to live

18 For a full treatment of this topic, see Susan Sauvé Meyer, Aristotle on Moral Responsibility (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 122–48. A briefer discussion is available in her essay “Aristotle on the Voluntary,” in Richard Kraut, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Malden, ME: Blackwell, 2006), 137–57, esp. 153–56. Contemporary philosophical interest in the question of whether we are properly subject to praise and blame, even when luck contributes significantly to our successes and failures, has been stimulated by Bernard Williams, “Moral Luck,” in Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973–1980 (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 20–39; and Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck,” in Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 24–38. See also Gary Watson, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme,” in Watson, Agency and Answerability: Selected Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 219–59; and S. L. Hurley, Justice, Luck, and Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

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NATURE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS AND POLITICS 219

in accordance with the severe demands of morality, which require us to think of our own well-being as almost insignificant, a mere drop in the vast ocean of general welfare. Similarly, those who are influenced by Immanuel Kant’s brand of cosmopolitanism can easily be led to see moral life as a constant struggle to give appropriate weight to the demands imposed on us by our membership in the ethical commonwealth that includes all persons.19 For such a Kantian, one’s natural attachment to the self and its idiosyncratic undertakings or to one’s family, friends, and local associations can, from the perspective of complete impartiality, be of doubtful legitimacy. For both the utilitarian and the Kantian, there is a sense in which Hepburn’s Rose is right: nature, because it gives us, for no reason, a peculiar attachment to ourselves, is something we must to some degree rise above. Aristotle, by contrast, rejects the idea that we must guard against a natural but excessive attachment to the self (EN IX.8). The self is to be educated about where its good lies, not lectured about its small significance. In modern moral philosophy, however, there is deep skepticism about Aristotle’s doctrine that enlightened self-interest coincides with a proper understanding of what we must do. Contemporary ethical theory therefore looks not to nature but elsewhere —to reason and free- dom —as the root ideas from which to build a conception of how we are to live. Our job is not to develop further what nature gives us, but to foster our reasoning powers so that they can sit in judgment of a human nature that often places major obstacles in the way of acting morally.

X. Conclusion

I conclude that there is a good deal of truth in the picture of the Greeks put forward by a slew of nineteenth-century German thinkers —Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Friedrich Schiller, and their followers —according to whom the fortunate Hellenes of antiquity were more at one with nature than we fragmented moderns are.20 At any rate, I think this gross gen- eralization is roughly correct when applied to the comparison of Aristotle and modern schools of ethical thought. Whether the kind of unity with nature that we find in Aristotle is still possible for us, and, if possible, worth striving for, is a fascinating question that I must leave aside.

Philosophy and Classics, Northwestern University

19 See, for example, Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). Nagel says, in The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986): “[W]hen we take up the objective standpoint, the problem is not that values seem to disappear but that there seem to be too many of them, coming from every life and drowning out those that arise from our own” (147). This issue is also addressed in Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).

20 See Nicholas White, Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), chap. 1. White argues —unsuccessfully, I think —that the appearance of greater har- mony is illusory.

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