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Reconciling the EE Account of Complete Virtue with that of the NE:
With this alternative interpretation of the first half of the final chapter of the EE concerning ‘complete’ virtue fairly well sketched out, we can now look back at how it compares to the picture of virtue Aristotle develops in the NE and at whether these two accounts can now be more easily reconciled. We can approach this by simply applying the alternative account of complete virtue to the passages in the NE identified by both Woods and Broadie as contradicting the corresponding EE account (at least according to the traditional interpretation). We can, however, briefly reflect on a
passage from another paper by Broadie in which she considers the subtle differences in the ways
Aristotle describes virtue in the NE and the EE:
“In presenting goodness through a contrast with disastrous possibilities that the natural goods place in the way of foolish, unjust, and immoderate agents, Aristotle puts uppermost the fact (no doubt implicit but not emphasized in the main Eudemian Ethics account of moral virtue, II. 2-5[*]) that the virtuous man is incorruptible.”83
With the associated footnote:
“[*] This account has nothing corresponding to the NE’s requirement of a ‘firm and unchanging disposition’, 1105a33. That idea is touched on at EE 1238a12-14, but only as a spin-off from a discussion of firmness of friendship.”84 We do perhaps have reason to consider that the NE requirement for a firm and unchanging disposition was implied in the account of virtue given by Aristotle in the early parts of the EE, and his students may have assumed as much – that this dispositional requirement was implied – but in any case it would appear that Aristotle felt compelled, in the final chapter EE, to make it entirely explicit that complete virtue should be founded on such a deeply disposed nature, thus implying that this point was perhaps not actually implicit in the earlier discussions concerning virtue. We can thereforeunderstand the NE and the EE as providing two subtly different methods of describing virtue, with Aristotle presenting each virtue in the NE in its most complete and unified senses, and in the subtly different structure of the EE, describing each initially in terms of their appearance only, before only at the very last moment introducing the condition for completeness made explicit throughout the NE.
With regards to the passages of the NE account of virtue that are typically taken as incompatible with that given in the EE, both Broadie85 and Woods86 highlight an apparent contradiction in Aristotle’s argument, centred on the following two passages:
“…courage is a mean in relation to what inspires confidence and fear in the circumstances described; and it makes choices and stands its ground because it is noble to do so, or shameful not to.”87
And most explicitly:
“…courageous people act for the sake of what is noble…”88 Woods and Broadie see these statements as an apparent contradiction of the claim we find in the EE that an agent can be considered virtuous but at the same time not fine or noble, since it appears, in these two passages, to be part of the definition of virtue that virtuous actions are performed for the sake of what is noble and thus fine by definition. We now take it, however, that it would seem wrong to consider the merely-good agent as being really virtuous at all, for while they will sometimes perform virtuous actions for their own sake, i.e. when their dispositions have been temporarily altered by the environment of war, they will not always do this. So whereas the fine-and-good agent always acts for the sake of what is noble, the mere-good Spartan will do so only sometimes, and then only incidentally.
1. Introduction
What we take from the Nicomachean Ethics:
2. The First Half of the Final Chapter of the Eudemian Ethics:
The Traditional Interpretation the Kaloik’agathoi:
Distinguishing the Merely-Good Agent from the Disgraceful Agent:
Distinguishing the Fine-and-Good Agent from the Merely-Good Agent:
A Second Alternative Interpretation of Aristotle’s God in the EE:
A Principle for One’s Possession of the Natural Goods (and Nobility):
4. God in the Metaphysics:
Aristotle’s Aim in the Metaphysics:
Problems for the Traditional Interpretation: .
Summing up the Traditional Interpretation and its Problems:
1072a35-b4: Thoughts Concerning Final Ends are Unchanging Unmoved Movers.
The Best Human Life as we find it discussed in the Metaphysics:
5. Reconciling the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics (and On the Soul, the Physics and the
Metaphysics):
6. What to make of all of this in the modern context:
Bibliography
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Reconciling Book 8 Chapter 3 of the Eudemian Ethics with the Nicomachean Ethics Account of Virtue, Nobility and the Best Human Life.
