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Aristotle's Explanation for the Value of the External Goods Ian Halim Aristotle’s Explanation for the Value of the External Goods Ian Halim Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2011 Ian Halim All rights reserved ABSTRACT Aristotle’s Explanation for the Value of the External Goods Ian Halim An interpretation of how Aristotle explains the value of worldly goods within the terms of his ethical theory in the Nicomachean Ethics . Aristotle claims that to live in a worthwhile and subjectively satisfying way—that is, to achieve eudaimonia —one needs such things as honor, wealth, friends, and political power. He groups these things together as the external goods, since they are all external in a spatial sense from the perspective of any given person. It is clear that people almost always attach value to such things, but it is less clear why Aristotle should. My aim is to explain why Aristotle regards these things as important, and—in a more formal sense—how far his definition of eudaimonia explains their value. On Aristotle’s formal theory, the external goods ought to gain value through some relation to excellent rational activity, but fleshing out the details of this relation raises problems. Chapter 2 assesses Aristotle’s formal argument for the value of such goods at NE I.1099a31-b8, chapter 1 develops an account of Aristotle’s method in order to support this assessment, and chapter 3 considers the kinds of explanations for the value of the external goods available to Aristotle in terms of his account of action. Chapter 4 draws on the results of the earlier chapters to assess Aristotle’s position on moral luck—that is, how Aristotle regards his various categories of value as depending upon factors outside of the agent’s control. My aim throughout is to consider how successfully Aristotle draws on his formal theory in order to explain the value of the external goods as well as external things in the broadest sense. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 32 Aristotle’s Theory and Practice of Method in the NE Chapter 1 Appendix 72 Two Case Studies in Aristotle’s NE Method Chapter 2 94 Aristotle’s Argument for the External Goods Requirement Chapter 3 129 The External Goods Within Aristotle’s Account of Action Chapter 4 175 Aristotle’s NE on Moral Luck? Conclusion 210 Bibliography 221 i Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Wolfgang Mann, for his invaluable expertise and support throughout this project. It has been an honor and a pleasure having Prof. Mann as my advisor, and I have benefited enormously from working with him. While I had undertaken some interesting projects before beginning to work with Prof. Mann, I did my best work in graduate school under his direction. I would also like to thank my other committee members—Elizabeth Scharffenberger and Helene Foley—for reading many drafts of individual chapters and offering invaluable criticism, advice, and encouragement. I would also like to thank Katharina Volk for being part of my dissertation defense committee. All of the members of my committee offered support and advice not only about the immediate concerns of the dissertation, but also of a broader and more personal nature. I am very grateful to have had this kind of committee. Finally, I would also like to thank my outside examiner, Prof. David Johnston, for particularly acute questions during the defense. His attention to detail is the best kind of flattery—to have one’s work taken seriously. Joseph Karbowski also deserves special mention. In addition to reading some early drafts of the first two chapters, Joe read an almost-final draft of my entire thesis during the summer of 2011 in an incredibly short period—and then offered me some characteristically keen observations. Not only that, but Joe’s enthusiasm for my project gave me a boost that was much-needed at that time. I would also like to thank all of my friends for their support during the time I have worked on my dissertation. In particular, I would like to thank Peter Flynn. I would also ii like to thank Dan Levy, Ingrid Wiegand, Kerry Saunders, Elorine Angela Scott, Rachel Lemonik, Jai Anand Kasturi, Lee Hadbavny, Kevin Findlan, Yevgeny Vilensky, Unhee Do, Cristina Cammarano, Dror Post, and Ben Schupmann. And I would like to thank Herbert Kreyszig and Daniel Lazare for their companionship on the 6 th floor of Butler in the summer of 2010 while I was writing the first draft of chapter 4. I would also like to thank Tobias Myers for many lunches throughout our time in graduate school together. And I would like to thank Patrick Glauthier for his friendship as well. I would also like to thank the members of the Columbia Hiking Club for their friendship over the last several years, particularly Stephan Mackowiak, Tracy Santanelli, Adam Ovadia, Brian Bulthuis, Katherine Nautiyal, Sara van Gunst, Wen Zhu, Jan Sysel, Stefano Recchia, Josef Szende, and Raj Kumar. I would also like to thank Eric Vazquez, Corey Valdez, and Margaret Elvekrog. From my earlier days in graduate school, I would like to thank Jeff Bareith, Allan Roth, David Kaufman, Armando Mastrogiovanni, and Chris Miller. In addition, I would also like to thank several of my friends for their special generosity to me during the summer and early fall of 2011—time I spent putting the finishing touches on the first full draft, distributing, and defending. In particular, I would like to thank Jan Sysel and Wen Zhu, Ingrid Wiegand, Sara van Gunst, and Dror Post. Their generosity allowed me to continue to work on my dissertation in New York City throughout the summer. Finally, I would also like to thank my family for their love and support—Nagui and Pauline, Lukas and Lea, and Andrea and Theodore. Thank you. Ian Halim December 2011 iii For Dorothy and Richard iv 1 Introduction In Nicomachean Ethics I, Aristotle first defines eudaimonia as the highest practical good before going on to offer a more conceptually specified, formal account of what it is. Part of this more specified account consists in two criteria that eudaimonia must satisfy— finality and self-sufficiency. This good must be final, in the sense that it is chosen for its own sake and all other goods are chosen for its sake. And it must be self-sufficient in the sense that it is a complete good that is not improved by the addition of any other goods. In the well-known function argument, Aristotle then further identifies eudaimonia with the purpose or function of man, and determines this function to be a certain exercise or activation of the intellect in accord with excellence. At this point, then, Aristotle has worked out a partly but incompletely specified definition of the highest human good as a certain kind of excellent rational activity that is both final and self-sufficient. Since it is final and self-sufficient, it must in some sense subsume other genuine goods—they must be choiceworthy for its sake (since it is final) and if they are goods at all, they must not be entirely separate from it (since it is self-sufficient). To take a relatively neat case of the part that another good plays within eudaimonia , Aristotle explains in NE I that pleasure is contained within the life of excellent activity, since the man of excellence is a lover of the fine ( philokalos ) and therefore takes pleasure in performing fine actions (1099a7-21). Aristotle here regards his theory as explaining something that most people already believe—that pleasure is part of what makes a man eudaim ōn—which is to say, living in a happy, flourishing, and worthwhile way. Aristotle also offers this account of how pleasure is included within eudaimonia in a section of the 2 NE that explicitly deals with the views of others and tries to explain their relation to the formal definition of eudaimonia (1098b9-1099b8). And it seems clear that he regards himself as having offered a plausible explanation of how pleasure satisfies the formal criteria of finality and self-sufficiency. Thus Aristotle remarks here that the life of the lovers-of-the-fine ( philokaloi ) does not need pleasure “as some kind of additional appendage” ( ὥσπερ περιάπτου τινός) but contains pleasure “in itself” ( ἐν ἑαυτῷ) (1099a16-16). Likewise, the lover-of-the-fine’s love of fine actions seems prior to the pleasure that accrues to such actions for him, so that such pleasure can be said to derive from the fineness of such acts, rather than the other way around. In this sense, then, such pleasure also satisfies finality—being choiceworthy because of excellent activity. The major wrinkle is that there are other kinds of pleasures (i.e., bodily or appetitive pleasures) that are less easily subsumed within Aristotle’s scheme. But what matters for my purposes here is that Aristotle is fairly successful at explaining how his formal definition of eudaimonia accommodates pleasure, and also that he regards himself as being successful at explaining this. Aristotle’s treatment of the external goods is more strained, and it is his argument for why eudaimonia needs the external goods that forms the immediate impetus for this dissertation. The external goods are defined spatially—as those goods physically outside of the agent’s body or soul (Aristotle seems to alternate on this point), and they include such things as wealth, honor, political power, and even one’s friends. Since people quite obviously ordinarily ascribe so much value to these things, giving an account of what kind of value they have in terms of his theory is a pressing matter for Aristotle.
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