Nicomachean Ethics I: Aristotle and the Socratic Paradox
The first book of Aristotle’s highly-regarded collection of lecture notes known as the Nicomachean Ethics is a blueprint of what man’s ultimate aim is in life. It is undoubtedly a daring and ambitious philosophical enterprise. However, Aristotle manages to effectively defend his views on important and controversial topics such as the chief good and the completeness and self-sufficiency it must possess. His views with regards to this chief good are influenced by several strands of thought, but the philosophy of Socrates in particular seems to stand out in the first section of his masterpiece work on ethics. The purpose of this essay will be to survey different ideas brought up by Aristotle in the opening book of the Ethics and to look at how they stem from his engagement with Socrates’ notorious so-called “Socratic Paradox.”
A rudimentary outline of the Socratic Paradox before delving into any further analysis will help illuminate what follows. The so-called “Paradox” appears to consist of two central ideas. First, there is the considerably controversial one found in Plato’s Meno that “all men desire good things” (Meno 77c). Seeing that Socrates believed bad things harm their possessor, the claim leads directly into the second and more notorious idea made in the Protagoras. The statement is the following: “none of the wise men thinks that any human being willingly makes a mistake or willingly does anything wrong or bad” (Protagoras 345e). The overall theory can be seen as paradoxical because it is considerably counterintuitive and seemingly refutable with just a few simple examples of wicked people throughout history. However, Aristotle would not be the sort of thinker to hastily disregard something like the Socratic Paradox, seeing that, in his Topics, he attaches importance to reputable opinions—which are those accepted “by all, or by the majority, or by the most notable and reputable of [men]” (Topics I.100b). Obviously Socrates falls in the latter category among people and thus his theory should not be held at the same level as a charlatan’s or fraud’s. In fact, as is turns out, Aristotle not only considers the seemingly illogical quite idea worthy of reflection, but rather, actually some elements of it.
The first instance of any influence on behalf of the Socratic Paradox on Aristotle’s ethical theory is found in the opening sentence of the Ethics. The sentence runs as follows: “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim” (NE 1.1094.1-3). Here Aristotle is opening his work with a very contentious claim, though he prudently places “thought to” in the sentence’s first clause in order to declare that he may be referring to Plato and/or Socrates and not stating it as dogma. However, it becomes clearer throughout the first book that Aristotle does at least essentially back up the primordial idea of the Paradox that “all men desire good things.” This is so because it seems to form the basis of his theory of the chief good. His approval of this first part of the paradox, the one found in the Meno, is essentially the extent of his fragmentary agreement with Socrates’ theory; the other part, that nobody does wrong willingly, is of little importance in Book 1, and is combated later on in Book 7 of the Ethics when dealing with the issue of incontinence.
It is worth noting that Aristotle’s first sentence of the Ethics is loaded with more meaning than may be taken from it in the first reading. From it readers observe the incredible impact the first leg of the Socratic Paradox has on Aristotle’s notion of a chief good being the ultimate aim of man. Notice the second clause of the sentence: “and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” The clause is unusually disjointed with regards to the first part of the sentence. Why does it follow that “for this reason” some aim singularly called “the good” is humanity’s ultimate ambition? It seems to stem from the fact that there is a variety of subordinate goods and a myriad of fields and activities with different aims. Why would there be many goods, art, inquiries, and aims if not to satisfy some self-sufficient good that is to be desired above all others? Aristotle writes that since “there are evidently more than one end, and we choose some of these (e.g. wealth, flutes, and in general instruments) for the sake of something else, clearly not all ends are complete ends; but the chief good is evidently something complete” (NE 1.1097a.25-29). Though it may sound distant from Socrates’ point, it all derives from the same idea mentioned in the beginning that all men desire good things.
Anyhow, this chief good is supposed to be the end of the highest art, the all-encompassing art, which for Aristotle is politics. But unfortunately the words “complete” and “self-sufficient” have been thrown around a few times already in describing the qualities of this chief good so maybe a more detailed analysis of what these notions entail is necessary before delving into what exactly this chief good consists of. Since the chief good by necessity must be the highest good-in-itself as opposed to an intermediary good, it must be “fulfilling.” Aristotle writes “the chief good is evidently something complete” (NE 1.1097a.27-28) and to be “complete without qualification” (NE 1.1097a.35) means being “desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else” (NE 1.1097a.35-36). In other words, this chief good is desire’s dead end. It is also found to be self-sufficient. For Aristotle, something self-sufficient is that “which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing” (NE 1.1097b.15-16). Now that these important terms have been defined, Aristotle’s idea of what this chief good consists of will become clearer.
In the first book of the Ethics, this chief good that stems from Socrates’ original idea that men desire good things is defined as happiness. The term “happiness,” by the way, should not be confused with the same one people speak of in the English language. This Greek notion of happiness is more encompassing and the Greek word for it is “eudaimonia” but for the sake of ease the English term will be used throughout. Aristotle believes that this happiness as ultimate aim is basically something universally agreed upon as he claims that “both the general run of men and people of superior refinement” (NE 1.1095a.17-18) seem to give it the utmost importance. Beyond happiness there is nothing to want, for, as Aristotle writes, it is “the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing” (NE 1.1099a.24-25). Curiously, this seems to match one of the requirements of the Socratic Paradox, which is the belief that people desire good things because nobody in their right mind desires to live wretchedly. Living wretchedly is obviously the opposite of happiness, so once again some possible Socratic influence in Aristotle’s theory of the chief good becomes apparent.
However, there seems to be an issue with happiness being the highest good. While it may be agreed upon that it is the ultimate aim of human action and behavior, different people have different ideas of what it consists of. The reason for this is because some people are clearly picturing happiness as something that is not in fact complete or self-sufficient. For instance, some may say excellence is “the end of the political life” (NE 1.1095b.31-32), but Aristotle believes that “even this appears somewhat incomplete; for possession of excellence seems actually incompatible with being asleep, or with lifelong inactivity, and, further, with the greatest sufferings and misfortunes” (NE 1.1095b.32-34). Aristotle goes on to state that “a man who was living so one would call happy, unless he were maintaining a thesis at all costs” (NE 1.1096a.1-2). So the error in human thinking seems to be taking these incomplete and insufficient goods as the highest goods.
What could happiness consist of if it is self-sufficient? Aristotle hypothesizes that this may relate to the function of man in general. This comes from the idea that the good of a function or activity resides in the function it has. So if man has any function it is to be an exclusive one. This function would have to involve “the rational element” (NE 1.1098.3-4) found only in human beings. For Aristotle, “the function of man is an activity of soul in accordance with, or not without, rational principle” (NE 1.1098.8-9) However, this would involve a certain sort of accordance with reason, the most excellent one possible. Thus “human good turns out to be activity of soul in conformity with excellence, and if there are more than one excellence, in conformity with the best and most complete” (NE 1.1098.16-18) in “a complete life” (NE 1.1098.19).
In sum, everything in this well-structured exposition of man’s ultimate aim has its foundation in Aristotle’s theory of action and human motivation, a surrogate and edited version of the Socratic Paradox’s first leg. This is so because claiming “every action and choice” aims at some good is in fact almost synonymous with claiming that “all men desire good things.” What saves Aristotle from being trapped in the realm of seeming “paradoxicality,” though, is that he makes little mention of the idea that nobody does wrong willingly, even though he would agree that nobody aims for a wretched life. What also prevents Aristotle’s theory from gaining instant notoriety is found in the intermeshing of “goods” with “aims.” This association of the good with causality makes the previous absurdity of claiming that “every action and choice…is aimed at some good” more difficult to discard because it is less ambiguous than Socrates’ original idea. Aristotle thus manages to strip away the latter element of the Socratic element in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics and sticks with a more explicative version of the first part in order to arrive at very important conclusions that determine the way we should act and the best way to live.
WORKS CITED:
Aristotle. “Nicomachean Ethics.” A New Aristotle Reader. Ed. J.L. Ackrill.
Princeton University Press, 1989. 363-478.
Aristotle. “Topics.” A New Aristotle Reader. Ed. J.L. Ackrill.
University Press, 1989. 60-78.
Plato. “Meno.” Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1997. 870-897.
Plato. “Protagoras.” Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper.
Publishing Company, 1997. 746-790.
