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Aristotle Through Lenses from Bernard Williams
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2016
Abstract
This paper looks at a theme in ancient Greek ethics from perspectives developed by Bernard Williams.1 The ancient theme is the place of theoretical activity in human life, and I shall be referring to Aristotle. Williams is relevant through one strand in his scepticism about ‘morality, the peculiar institution’.2 His discussion suggests questions not merely about Aristotle but ones it would be interesting to put to Aristotle and see how he would or should respond to them.
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- Information
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 78: The History of Philosophy , July 2016 , pp. 23 - 35
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2016
References
1 This paper began life as a contribution to a conference at the University of Chicago, October 2011, on Bernard Williams's legacy for philosophy today. My remit was to present something on how our current study of ancient Greek ethics might benefit from thinking about themes from Bernard Williams.
2 Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985, 174–196).
3 Nicomachean Ethics X, 1177b1–25; Politics VII, 1334a10–38; VIII, 1337b30–1338a13.
4 Nicomachean Ethics X, 1176b9–1177a1; Politics VIII, 1337b35–1338a1.
5 Nicomachean Ethics III, 1113a23–34.
6 The point is not that Kant's summum bonum plays the same part in his system as Mill's does in his, since this is clearly false. However, Kant mistakenly thought that ancient theories of the summum bonum were heteronomous accounts of moral rightness (Critique of Practical Reason, §§ 64–65). And Mill seems to have thought this too (see the beginning of Utilitarianism). All this has helped spread the impression that the ancient systems were consequentialist attempts to derive the right from the good.
7 For more discussion, see S. Broadie, Aristotle and Beyond: Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chs. 9–12.
8 Nicomachean Ethics I, 1094b9–9; X. 7–8.
9 Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 109.
10 Cf. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan and Co., 1930), 489–92.
11 The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), with some changes.
12 Cf. Isocrates's approval of academic studies as at least keeping the young men from harmful pursuits (Panathenaicus 26–7).
13 Which does not, of course, entail that undertaking the political action does not count as meritorious unless it succeeds.
14 My wording may seem to represent this love as a feature of theoretical excellence as such, but as a human disposition it can be shared by those who admire and support theoretical activity for its own sake without themselves taking part in it. Even so there is a difference between loving it from a distance and loving it from inside.
15 Other examples of ‘higher’ activities could be inserted into the argument, either in addition or instead.
16 It was a commonplace that the task of the politikos is to make the citizens virtuous; see e.g. Nicomachean Ethics I, 1099b28-32.
17 Theoretical excellence is godlike but still, for Aristotle, a thoroughly human ideal.