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Aristotle on the Virtues of Slaves, Women, and Children ARISTOTLE ON THE VIRTUES OF SLAVES, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Kristen Anne Inglis May 2011 © 2011Kristen Anne Inglis ARISTOTLE ON THE VIRTUES OF SLAVES, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN Kristen Anne Inglis Cornell University 2011 There is a puzzle about what Aristotle means when (e.g. at Pol. 1.13) he attributes virtue of character to deliberatively imperfect persons like slaves, women, and children. This is because his official ethical works (EN, EE) seem to insist that virtue requires the deliberative excellence of practical wisdom (phronêsis). If slaves, women, and children don’t have the virtue that Aristotle develops at length in the ethical works, then what exactly is the “virtue” that he ascribes to them? I argue that the virtue of slaves, women, and children, while not amounting to virtue strictly-speaking, approximates such virtue in the following way (chapter 1). Start with the uncontroversial idea that virtue strictly-speaking, as a mode of rational excellence, essentially involves not only the excellence of an agent’s (strictly) rational or deliberative part, but also the excellence of her non-rational part—her alogon or emotional part—qua that part’s ability to “follow” or “be persuaded by” reason. Now, while slaves, women, and children lack perfect deliberative faculties and so cannot have the deliberative excellence required for virtue strictly-speaking, they can at the very least have non-rational parts that follow reason in a way, and so can have virtue that approximates virtue strictly-speaking. Such obedience of the alogon consists, I argue, in the alogon attaching to fine objects qua fine (chapter 2). To support this claim, I look at what Aristotle says about following reason. I then examine the motivational and evaluative capacities of non- rational desire and argue that appetite (epithumia) and spirited desire (thumos) can, if habituated properly, be motivated by considerations of the fine (kalon) as such (chapters 3 & 4). Granting that slaves, women, and children can have non-rational desires for fine action as such, can they decide on (prohairesthai) fine action? To answer this question, I argue for an account of decision whereby it essentially arises out of reflective deliberation about the constituents of happiness (chapters 5 &6). Because women can, but slaves and women cannot, engage in such deliberation, only women are capable of deciding on virtuous actions. The virtues of slaves and children do not include prohairetic motivation (chapter 7). BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Kristen Inglis was born in 1981 in Norfolk, Virginia. She completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy and economics at the University of Virginia before starting her phD in philosophy at Cornell. iii Dedicated, with love, to my parents Jennifer McKendree and Scott Inglis. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank dissertation committee members Terence Irwin, Gail Fine, and Nick Sturgeon for the support they provided me while writing this dissertation. I benefitted greatly from their critical comments and mentoring. Above all, I owe Terence Irwin for the many hours he spent discussing ideas with me, commenting on chapter drafts, and facilitating my research time at Oxford. Many thanks also to Tad Brennan, Dan Devereux, Dominic Scott, Andrew Chignell, and graduate students in the Cornell philosophy department for helpful comments and discussions on much of the material in the dissertation. Finally, I thank my family for their unfailing support and love as I struggled with the ups and downs of writing this work. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. The Virtues of Slaves, Women, and Children as Approximations of Paradigmatic Virtue……………………………………………………………………………………...1 2. What is it for an Alogon to Follow Reason?..................................................................17 3. Spirit, Appetite, and Pursuit of the Fine (Kalon)……………………………………...46 4. The Cognitive Involved in Non-Rational Desire……………………………………...70 5. Aristotelian Decision (Prohairesis)…………………………………………………...99 6. On the Apparent Non-Rational Portrait of Paradigmatic Virtue…………….………134 7. Slaves’, Women’s, and Children’s Rational Capacities……………………………..170 8. Works Cited………………………………………………………………………….187 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DA: De Anima EE: Ethica Eudemia EN: Ethica Nicomachea HA: Historia Animalium MA: De Motu Animalium Met.: Metaphysica MM: Magna Moralia Phys: Physica Poet. De Arte Poetica Pol.: Politica Rhet.: Rhetorica Top. Topic vii CH 1 THE VIRTUES OF WOMEN, SLAVES, AND CHILDREN AS APPROXIMATIONS OF PARADIGMATIC VIRTUE I. Introduction In Politics 1.13 Aristotle asks whether natural slaves,1 women, and young people can participate in the same kind of virtue of character as adult male citizens do. He decides that while they can participate in a type of virtue of character, they do not participate in the same virtue as adult male citizens. We must suppose that all [slaves, women, and children] necessarily partake of the virtues of character, but not in the same way: rather, in such measure as is proper to each in relation to his own function (hoson hekastôi pros to hautou ergon). Hence the ruler must possess virtue of character in completeness (telean) (for any work, taken absolutely, belongs to the master-craftsman, and reason is a master- craftsman (architektonos)); while each of the others must have that share of this virtue which is appropriate to them (hoson epiballei autois). (Pol. 1.13 1260a14- 17) When Aristotle attributes virtue of character to slaves, women, and children, he cannot be attributing to them the virtue of character he discusses in his ethical works (call this latter virtue “paradigmatic virtue”). For paradigmatic virtue requires the deliberative excellence 1 Aristotle distinguishes between legal slaves and natural slaves. Natural slaves are people whose natural constitutions make them disadvantaged, and disadvantaged in a way that actually makes it advantageous for them to be ruled and owned by another. This inferior natural constitution consists in having a deficient reasoning capacity, a deficiency that, in Aristotle’s view, is found in non-Greeks: “Hence, as the poets say, ‘It is proper that Greeks should rule non-Greeks,’ on the assumption that non-Greek and slave are by nature identical” (Pol. 1.2 1252b4-1252b8). Aristotle also defines a natural slave as anyone “who, though human, belongs by nature not to himself by to another,” explaining that “a human being belongs to another if, in spite of being human, he is a possession; and a possession is a tool for action and has a separate existence” (Pol. 1.5 1254a13-18). He provides further characterizations of natural slaves at Pol. 1.5 1254b22-3 and 1.13 1260a12. 1 of practical wisdom (phronêsis) (EN 6.13 1144b30-2), and Aristotle suggests later in Pol. 1.13 that slaves, women, and children, being deliberatively deficient,2 lack practical wisdom. This raises the following question: if the virtues of slaves, women, and children are not instances of paradigmatic virtue, what are the natures of these virtues? What sorts of ethical capacities do slaves, women, and children have, according to Aristotle? For example, we might ask about the kind of motivational attitudes involved in slaves’, women’s, and children’s virtues, and in particular about how these attitudes compare with those of the paradigmatically virtuous person. The latter, Aristotle tells us, has both non-rational and rational motivation prompting her to act virtuously; that is, in addition to having appetitive desires (epithumia)3 and spirited desires (thumos)4 that prompt her to act virtuously, she decides (prohairesthai) 5 on virtuous activity. A related question concerns the values or ends for the sake of which virtuous slaves, women, and children perform virtuous actions. Do slaves, women, and children, like the paradigmatically virtuous person,6 do virtuous actions for the sake of the fine (kalon)? Or are they like the slavishly virtuous people of the Phaedo7 who live orderly lives not because they value virtuous activity for its own sake but because they want to maximize their self-interest (which they narrowly conceive as pleasure) over a lifetime? Determining these specifics about the ethical capacities of slaves, women, and 2 “Although the parts of the soul are present in all [i.e., slaves, women, and children] (kai pasin enhuparchei men ta moria tês psuchês), they are present in different ways. For the slave lacks the deliberative faculty (bouleutikon) entirely (holôs). The woman has it, but it is without authority (akuron). A child (pais) has it, but it is incomplete (ateles)” (Pol. 1.13 1260a10-14). 3 For passages suggesting that the virtuous person’s appetites prompt her to pursue virtuous action, see EN 2.3 1104b5-7 and EN 3.12 1119b15-6. 4 For a passage where Aristotle says that spirited desire prompts the virtuous agent to pursue virtuous action, see EN 3.8 1116b32-1117a5. 5 EN 2.4 1105a30-1105b1. 6 The virtuous person acts “because it is fine” (hoti kalon, 1116a11, b3, 1117b9, MM 1191a20) and “for the sake of the fine” (tou kalou heneka 1115b12-3, 23, 1116b31, 1117a8) (Cf. dia to kalon 1120a24-8, 1122b6- 7, 1123a24-5, EE 1230a27-33, 1248b36-7, MM 1190a28-34, 1191a23-4, b15). 7 Phaedo 68c-69c. 2 children is important for two reasons. For starters, we might just want to know what Aristotle thinks about the ethical capacities of people who made up more than half the population8
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