Nichomachean Ethics

            In Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle explores the good and happiness. He discusses what their defining characteristics are, how people attain them, to what extent it is even possible to attain them, their relationship to virtue, their relationship to knowledge, their relationship to character and morality, their relationship to education and, as the discussion ended, their relationship to society, which, I think, will extend into Politics.

            Because the writing is so dense, I found it really hard to understand at times.  There were lots of middle sections that confused me, and one feature of the writing that made me pause time and again was the tendency for there to be drawn-out explanations for some points, and mere recollection of consensus for others. What I mean is, phrases like, “Surely, one would agree that…” or “…it is absurd to assume that…” seem to pop up a lot (in this piece and in others we’ve read).  I understand that is sometimes done because a point has already been expounded upon earlier, and there’s no need to explain it again, but there are instances when I think the philosophers take for granted things that could be argued differently.  Of course, that’s the purpose of having a stance and defending it: you use prior knowledge and assumptions based on that knowledge to make points. But what are interesting to me are the instances when what is assumed is just as interesting as what’s being argued.  When the discussion in Nichomachean Ethics moves toward man’s actions and the degree to which something is right or wrong, Aristotle writes about how ridiculous it is to think that “there is a mean, an excess, and a deficiency in an unjust or a cowardly or a self-indulgent act” (p116).  He then continues to expound on his point.  You could have an entire conversation about the relativity of right and wrong before finishing that section on virtue, one that would be just as informative and important for the following sections, and yet a totally different point is being argued.

            Later on in the piece, Aristotle writes, “For just as legal traditions and [national] character prevail in states, so paternal words and ancestral habits prevail in households – and the latter have even greater authority because of the ties of kinship and of benefits rendered, [for members of a household] have the requisite natural affection and obedience [toward the father] to start with” (p130).  Do they?  Aristotle is making an argument about education and how it should be “done”, whether access to it should be given to the few or to many, which is one of the most important debates to be had, but embedded in that argument are assumptions about family life and the roles of men and women and “who leads”, which are just as compelling, in my view.  I’m guessing this is where critical perspectives enter the debate, to bring to the forefront not only the obvious questions, but the varying positions from which we pose those questions.