Ethics with Aristotle
Sarah Broadie
Oxford, 1991

"[T]he good life ... can be attained only if we are prepared to subordinate some desires to others: which latter therefore constitute *reasons* for choosing what we do and rejecting what we may have felt like doing." (BROADIE-1991, p. 21)

"Aristotle's discussion swings between the notion of the supreme good as *a certain sort of life*, and the notion of it as *some element within a life* which may dominate that life in the logical sense of typifying it.... The central good of a life is the one which, if that life were rightly regarded as happy, would be the source of its being a happy life." (BROADIE-1991, p. 26)

Happiness is "that in life for the sake of which one is glad to have been born rather than not (1215b30; 1216a11-14; cf. 1215b15-22)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 32)

"This analysis of happiness in terms of finality, completeness and self-sufficiency is really an account of what it is for something to figure as happiness. Such an attitude ... involves a categorial or functional distinction between whatever good is termed 'happiness' and the other goods. The former is seen or felt as completing the latter much as a line is completed by its end-point." (BROADIE-1991, p. 33) [PSA: the example Aristotle uses at Physics VII.3 246a10ff is that of a house being completed by its roof.]

"[R]eason to him is not ... a narrowly calculative or demonstrative faculty. It includes the capacity for language (Politics 1253a9-15), the sense of past and future (On the Soul 433b5-10), and reflectiveness in general." (BROADIE-1991, p. 36)

Citing 1099b20-25, Broadie notes: "It is *better*, he says, to be happy through care and training than by chance. Hence if happiness is to be the *supreme* good, it must represent an investment of human thought and effort." (BROADIE-1991, p. 50)

"[H]uman virtue, when achieved, is precisely an excellence of reason and feeling in partnership. Analytically, then, human virtue breaks down into two coordinated kinds of excellence, one for each part. Thus the acme of moral development is not a state in which one part as been sloughed off or has merged into the other." (BROADIE-1991, p. 64)

"Acquiring a virtue ... is not an alteration, but a perfecting or completing of our nature (1103a25)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 74). [PSA: A few pages earlier Broadie had contrasted this *completing* with the *frustrating* of our capacities. We could also use the term *languishing*.]

"[S]ome agents are, as Aristotle puts it, corrupted in their vision (1144a29-36), and what seems right to them is wrong." (BROADIE-1991, p. 80)

"[W]hen Aristotle discusses prohairesis in the context of deliberation, he emphasizes (e.g., EE 1227b36) that a prohairesis is *of* some action *for the sake of* something else." (BROADIE-1991, p. 88) [PSA: Another way to put this is seeing the action *as* the pursuit of the goal or purpose.]

"The fine or noble is connected with what is fitting, appropriate or in the broad sense just, and is standardly contrasted with the useful and the pleasant (see e.g., 1104b30-32). It can also be equated with what is admirable and therefore outstandingly or conspicuously good. But 'for the sake of the noble' can also cover cases in which the agent acts simply because it would be disgraceful (ignoble) not to." (BROADIE-1991, p. 92)

"[W]hat is truly noble are good actions or activities (or engaging in them); the dispositions for these; and the persons who have those dispositions (see especially EE VIII.3)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 93)

"[M]oral states are not only manifested in behaviour like the behaviour by which they were acquired, but are also preserved, reinforced and transmitted by the behaviour in which they are manifested. As Aristotle remarks: 'That excellence, then, is concerned with pleasures and pains, and that by the acts from which it arises it is both increased and, if they are done differently, destroyed, and that the acts from which it arose are those in which it actualizes itself - let this be taken as said' (1105a13-16)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 98)

After wondering "how merely performing the actions leads to moral character", Broadie describes part of Aristotle's answer: "we are of a nature to be able to receive the virtues, but are completed by them only through ethos (1103a25-26). From the start we have the capacity for prohairetic activity, but this capacity is necessarily indeterminate, since without the ethe of a specific upbringing it cannot issue in prohairesis of any determinate sort. The indeterminate capacity could be said to be looking for determination [PSA: i.e., activation], since we shall be incomplete until we exercise it, and we cannot exercise it unless determinately." (BROADIE-1991, p. 104) [PSA: I would question the word 'merely' here, since the formation of character involves both episteme - i.e., the ability to give an account (logos) of one's actions and life - and a settled hexis or practice.]

"[T]he process whereby an untrained soul becomes receptive and obedient to external authority is identical with the process whereby it comes to be morally in a state to be able to form its own judgments of what is right, or to mediate its behavioural and emotional response by its own rational perception." (BROADIE-1991, p. 105) [PSA: I would sketch the course of this process as: (1) obedience to external authority (2) internalization of external authority (3) accepting one's own judgment as authoritative.]

"Learning that there are things which one is expected to do even when all concerned are aware that one does not feel like doing them is perhaps the only way we have of learning from scratch that there are things worth doing and aiming for which are not immediately pleasant. This is our way into an active sense of 'noble'.... [W]e also thereby learn that these things are good in a way which belongs to a world beyond the world of impulse.... Our original nature prepares us to be at home with the noble and with reason and structured agency; otherwise we could never come to completion as autonomous prohairetic beings." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 109-110)

"The actions of a person drunk or enraged are 'done in ignorance', Aristotle says, because they are not done through *ignorance*, but through *drunkenness* or *rage*, which confer a kind of ignorance (1110b24-27).... In action done *through* ignorance, it is as if the cause of ignorance is external: it lies in the facts, which happen not to square with the agent's picture. But in drunkennes, rage, and physical passion, the source of ignorance lies in the agent.... '*Through* ignorance' refers to action rationally based on a false assumption regarding some particular of one's position, whereas drunkenness etc. are states of globally diminished awareness of the situation and its factual and ethical implications. Appetite sees only the object of lust, rage sees only the insulting gesture and not what else might be destroyed if one acts at once to extinguish it. This awareness of only one aspect of the situation is one of the best-known effects of passion, and would be hard to reproduce in someone who is cool and calm.... It is something like global unawareness that puts the wicked person in the same class as drunken and enraged agents; for although the wicked person's picture of the facts may be clear ..., factually true and based on reasonable evidence, it is nonetheless an ethically distorted reading through and through.... As with drunkenness and rage, one cannot cure this kind of ignorance by feeding him new information, but only by getting him to care about things differently." (BROADIE-1991, p. 148)

"The voluntary agent ... is 'master' (kurios) or 'controller' of his effects (1223a5-7).... The voluntary agent controls his effect, whether it shall be or not, and this is what is meant by saying that something 'depends on him': whether it comes about depends on him if and only if he controls whether it shall be rather than not." (BROADIE-1991, p. 152)

"By behaving in the ways that characterise a certain ethical bent, one comes to *be* of that ethical bent, and a point may be reached where it is too late to change. When not caught up in moment-by-moment practical action and response, the individual may dislike what he is. Aristotle speaks of someone wishing to cease to be unjust, when by now this is impossible (1114a12-14 and 20-21). [fn40: These passages imply that vice *in general* is (once acquired) inescapable. But Categories 13a23-31 shows more optimism about the possibility of reform.]" (BROADIE-1991, pp. 160-161)

"[O]nly an utterly unmindful person is unaware of the fact that by pursuing certain lines of conduct we come to be *such as to* act in those ways (1114a3-10)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 165)

"Aristotle recognises that some individuals suffer from congenital moral defects.... He also recognises that some are moral cripples because of illness and others because they were abused as children. We cannot, he says, straightforwardly regard these as bad (kakoi) human beings, where 'bad' means the opposite of what is normally meant by 'excellent' or 'virtuous' (1145b16-30; 1148b15-1149a1). Those who are congenitally warped or are constitutionally drawn to monstrous activities for which normal human beings feel no inclination are classified as 'wild-beastlike' (theriodes). Theirs is a 'different kind of badness' (1145b27). This, like ordinary wickedness, and like moral weakness, is 'to be avoided' (1145b16-17); but, Aristotle implies, it cannot be avoided by means of ordinary moral education of the individuals concerned. It follows that the ethical use of the moral predicates and the ascription of moral responsibility has no application here.... There is therefore room for humane discretion (epieikeia: see 1137b14-1138a3) in our response to such cases." (BROADIE-1991, p. 173)

"[A] rational choice, Aristotle says at EE 1227b36, is *of X for the sake of Y*. It cannot be characterised without reference to both....  The reason of a rational choice is structurally part of it.... That is to say, what the person did, under its full description, was X-for-the-sake-of-Y, rather than merely X." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 179-180) Broadie then goes on to quote EE 1228a2-4: 'It is from a man's choice that we judge his character - that is from the object for the sake of which he acts, not from the act itself.'

"[I]f we begin with the idea that rational choice is *of* something *for the sake of* something, it then makes sense to hold that choice with the supreme good in view is rational choice par excellence." (BROADIE-1991, p. 184)

"[S]ince practical wisdom is a human virtue (and someone who does not know this about it does not begin to know what it is), no one can get the full benefit of practical wisdom merely from someone else, since without having it himself he is humanly incomplete (cf. 1144a1-6)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 191) [PSA: this is part of the process of maturation; see p. 105 above.]

"The objects of Aristotelian practical reason, however, are human actions, and their contingency is the contingency of what depends on the agent *to do or not to do*.... [W]hen affirmation is of some action at the soul's command *to perform or not to perform* - the affirmation here being the decision to make real by *doing* - then the soul exhibits not its weakness but its strength to realise values worthy of itself." (BROADIE-1991, p. 214)

"Aristotle freely deploys a functionally grounded conception of *practical truth* (1139a25-31). As 'truth', it applies even to prescriptions; and as 'practical', even to their factual premisses. We are concerned with rational choice or prohairesis as the point in which deliberation culminates and fromm which action should begin. 'For every one ceases to inquire how he is to act when he has brought the moving principle back to himself and to the ruling part of himself; for this is what chooses.' (1113a5-7; cf 1112b23-24, 1226b13-14, and 1227a16-18)." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 219-220) [PSA: cf. Posterior Analytics 84b31-37.]

"[T]he object of rational choice is the action finally specified by deliberation: between us and the doing of it there is no distance requiring further deliberation to overcome. Choice is not opinion (doxa) either, since the objects of opinion can be anything you like, but the possible objects of rational choice are only those over which it makes sense for us to deliberate: matters which we see as contingent and in our power (1112a18ff; 1226a26-30). The connection with deliberation is borne out by the word: choice is a prohairesis, the preference of something over something else, which implies weighing up alternatives (1112a16-17; 1226b7-9)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 220) [PSA: here again see Posterior Analytics 84b31-37, where Aristotle discusses the "thickening" of the middle term, which eliminates the distance that deliberation needed to fill.]

"[T]hought and desire together affirm a prescription: thought affirms it in response to the need for guidance on the part of the desiderative side, and desire affirms it by way of acceptance. And Aristotle says that when the prescription is a good one, the soul is in possession of 'practical truth' (1139a24-31)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 220)

"He has chosen the term 'true' precisely to make the point that practice like theory is an exercise of reason, its success a success of reason." (BROADIE-1991, p. 221)

"So far as enactment of the choice depends on the agent, its quasi-semantic truth (when enacted) is not a quality of the choice as a rational conclusion, but results from his standing by it instead of abandoning it incontinently. Truth in this sense is a function of character rather than reason or intellect." (BROADIE-1991, p. 224) [PSA: prohairesis is a *commitment* and includes a commitment to continued *awareness* of the choice made.]

"For Aristotle, successful cognition with respect to whatever material is the ability to make the kind of response appropriate for anyone taking an interest in that material. Thus ... we are not sufficiently aware of the facts of a practical situation until we know what to do in it." (BROADIE-1991, p. 249)

"Astuteness is called 'intelligence', because for Aristotle the term 'intelligence' implies a grasp of what is *true* (1139b15-17; 1141a3-5). One has not read the situation correctly or truly until one knows what to do in it; and knowing what to do in it is not just knowing by one's own lights what to do in it, but knowing what is really right to do in it, which is the same as knowing what the virtuous person would know." (BROADIE-1991, p. 250) [PSA: one who knows what is really right in the situation can provide the correct account (orthos logos) of his choice and action.]

With regard to phronesis, Broadie writes: "Aristotle does not say much about how this consummate virtue is developed. At 1142a14-15 he mentions that it depends on experience and at 1103a15 that the intellectual excellences (of which it is one) are acquired through 'teaching'. In the case of practical wisdom, this does not mean through formal instructions [72] but through explaining: having it explained to you why another's choice was a good one or not, and being shown how one's own failed to take account of something relevant." [fn72: At 1143b6-9 he says that practical wisdom, by contrast with accomplishment in theoretical matters (sophia), gives the impression of being a 'natural growth'.] (BROADIE-1991, p. 253) [PSA: note that the ability to provide an explanation (apodeixis) is the hallmark of understanding (episteme) and that this is effectively equivalent to the ability to give an account (logos) of one's commitments and conduct.]

"[N]o one can be morally virtuous, strictly speaking, unless he is also practically wise (1144b1-32). This is because only the agent's own astuteness can issue in *his* brave or temperate or just actions.... [A] virtue which is nothing but obedience has to be activated from outside, by rulers, parents or laws." (BROADIE-1991, p. 258) [PSA: again this is part of the process of maturation; see above at p. 105 and p. 191.]

"[I]ncontinence, though certainly a moral defect, is not vice, for the vicious person acts according to vicious choice (1146b22-23; 1148a16ff; 1151a5ff)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 267)

"[T]he paradigm of incontinence is the condition in which an agent, actively rational as a rule, sinks back to the original condition. The point is not merely that this person behaves irrationally because he acts against his better judgment, but that in so acting he pursues objects that he would have pursued had he never been touched by reason (cf. 1118a23-25)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 269)

"[H]ow does temperance differ from continence? Aristotle says that the temperate person *finds nothing pleasant* that conflicts with reason, whereas the continent one finds conflicting things pleasant but does not give way to them (1151b34-1152a3)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 270)

In discussing differences between the akrates, the enkrates, and the spoudaios, Broadie comments on Aristotle's "assumption that the continent man is inferior to the virtuous merely through *caring about* the forbidden object. For the upshot is that it is better to lack than to have that sort of desiderative interest (even when having it does not involve being tempted) in just those cases where the forbidden thing is of such a kind that it is not appropriate to value such things in the sense of holding them dear in a practical way, by planning for them." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 273-274)

"The art of deliberating well lies in being able to decide which changes in ourselves and our circumstances do count as good reasons for modifying or abandoning a choice, and to ignore those which do not. The fact that some changes may so count means that a rational agent must remain cognitively and affectively open to unforeseen aspects of the unfolding situation. He even has to be ready to change course completely (cf. 1151b4-22). Just this necessary flexibility renders us, as a species, vulnerable to temptation. We cannot in advance turn away from precisely the new factors that would constitute irrelevant distractions, because we cannot anticipate exactly what they will be and how they will affect us. Beings endowed with that sort of omniscience would likely not need to deliberate in the first place. Thus the general possibility of incontinence lies at the heart of human practical rationality." (BROADIE-1991, p. 279)

"Aristotle also often speaks of the incontinent person as at odds with himself (e.g. 1102b14-25; 1111b13-16;; 1166b6-8; EE II.8; On the Soul 433b5-8; 434112-15), and we are surely to understand that the agent himself is frequently aware of the conflict." (BROADIE-1991, p. 282)

"The deviant impulse can sometimes rattle the agent so that he hardly knows what he is doing. Sometimes it warps his assessment of the situation so that the rational choice seems not to relate to it. Sometimes he struggles to stick to the choice, but gives in. Sometimes, under the influence, he simply finds himself not caring about what he has chosen or about having chosen it. Sometimes, we might say, he has made the choice but no longer feels that it has to do with him. Phenomenologically these effects are different. And their causal roles are not necessarily the same. Thus warping of judgment might sometimes pave the way for the wrong action by making it seem all right; but sometimes the corruption seems more like the by-product of an impulse which (even if judgment had not been affected) would have been sufficient to issue in the action. The differences suggest different points of susceptibility or different thresholds of distrubance answering to variations in physical and psychic constitution. People who easily lose their heads are not necessarily prone to self-deceptive incontinence or the temporary brazenness of the person who knowingly flings his principles aside. Aristotle indicates that there is plenty of room for closer studies of an empirical kind. He, however, groups this heterogeneous set of cases together, because it is what they have in common - namely, *failure to use the practical knowledge possessed* - that sends the moral educator the crucial message: no amount of good deliberation is enough in the absence of a moral nature prepared and able, when the time comes to act, to grasp *by actually doing it* what there is most reason to do." (BROADIE-1991, p. 287)

"[P]ractical life provides its own proof of the opening words of the Metaphysics: 'All men by nature reach out for knowledge'. As agents we also desire to *do* but this is not fundamentally different from desiring to think and perceive; for doing, too, is a mode of knowing, an exercise of knowledge." (BROADIE-1991, p. 291)

After quoting 1146b31-35 on the two senses of knowledge in relation to action, Broadie writes: "But whether this rules out clearheaded incontinence depends entirely on how we interpret 'attends to' (theorei). The word is often translated 'contemplates', 'reflects on' or 'thinks about'. Ordinarily, it connotes active observation or scrutiny - focusing on something rather than merely 'bearing it in mind'. Aristotle also uses it to mark the active theoretical deployment of theoretical knowledge. Note it is with examples of theoretical knowledge that he standardly illustrates the distinction between having knowledge and using it (see DA 417a21ff; GA 735a11; Metaphysics 1048a34; 1050a12-14). Thus it is not surprising if, in these contexts, the verb 'theorein' functions as a virtual synonym for 'use one's knowledge'." (BROADIE-1991, p. 295) [PSA: it seems to me that you can't effectively apply or exercise your understanding of things if you don't maintain active awareness or keep it in focus...]

"[W]hat the theoretical thinker engages in when he uses his theoretical knowledge is not aesthetic contemplation of facts and principles, but an endeavour to explore or understand further by means of them or to uncover underlying principles. Looking at them is not yet employing them in the required sense, for (it is not too much to say) they are not there just to be looked at. It would not be easy to characterise in general the mental condition of a thinker who is using his knowledge in the required sense; i.e., as a scientist or philosopher. Having it all clearly in front of him is arguably not (perhaps cannot be) a necessary condition of appropriate use, and it certainly is not sufficient if, as is possible, someone may have everything clearly tabulated in consciousness yet be unwilling or unable to do anything scientific or philosophical with it. It looks as if 'theorein', in Aristotle's discourse about theoretical knowledge, connotes whatever would count as an appropriately scientific or philosophical engagement and does not stand for any particular independently describable psychological condition. If that is so, then at 1146b34-35 'theorei' applied in the practical dimension cannot mean literally what it means in the theoretical: i.e., 'actively engages as a scientist or philosopher should'. This is a resounding contradiction in terms, given that practice has to do with the contingent and particular, science with the necessary and universal. It is therefore likely that in this practical application the verb is, as I suggested above, used loosely to mean, in effect, 'actively engages in the practical equivalent of theorein'. But the practical equivalent of the scientist's appropriate use of scientific knowledge is appropriate use of practical knowledge; and this is not holding it clearly in mind, but acting in accordance with it. [fn28: Aristotle several times illustrates the difference between having and using theoretical knowledge by pointing to the difference between having the skill to build a house and *building* one (DA 417b8-10; Metaphysics 1048b1; 1050a11-12). If 'using' means 'doing' (not merely 'thinking about') in poiesis, it ought to mean the same in praxis.]" (BROADIE-1991, pp. 295-296) [PSA: There is much to puzzle over here. At root, Broadie assumes that theoria simply *means* 'theoretical'. But if it means something more like 'awareness', then doesn't someone who is 'theorizing' in the practical dimension 'actively engage as a spoudaios or phronimos should'? And doesn't a spoudaios or phronimos have a deep understanding of the human telos/ergon/eidos and keep that understanding clearly in mind both while deliberating (which is a form of zetesis) and while taking action?]

"The principal elements in Aristotle's theory of pleasure are the metaphysical concepts of *nature* and *activity*. [PSA: and *awareness*.] Every living creature is a substance of a given nature, and in the Physics Aristotle defines the nature of a thing as its 'inner principle of movement and rest' (192b11-33). What here concerns us in that definition is that nature is expressed in unforced behaviour which the substance initiates itself. Artifacts lack natures in this sense; they are inert things that move only when manipulated. It is the nature of a live substance to act so as to attain its natural end or perfection. For those endowed with awareness, which is to say animals in general, there is pleasure in the perfect functioning distinctive of their natures. The kind of pleasure depends on the kind of functioning, and this in turn depends on the nature, for the functioning is nothing other than the nature in action." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 320-321)

"Enjoying something, which is enjoying it for what *it* is, is a kind of affirmation that it is good in itself, much as pursuing something is an affirmation that it is good in one way or another." (BROADIE-1991, p. 329)

Under a section entitled "Pleasure as Value-Judgment", Broadie writes: "Rational choice presupposes analysis, but enjoyment gives rise to it. Since the enjoyment is nothing but a kind of focusing, one comes to know *through* enjoyment more about what it is that one enjoys. The activity itself generates a discriminating awareness of the activity and its foci." (BROADIE-1991, p. 332)

"Through enjoyment the activity enjoyed becomes more perfect - clearer, more discriminating, more fully what an activity of this kind should be.... By perfecting the activity in the sense of making it *finer*, enjoyment also perfects it in the sense of *strengthening* it against competition. And this dual development is rooted in the subject's perfect, in the sense of *full*, absorption." (BROADIE-1991, p. 337)

In drawing out the implications of Aristotle's idea that pleasure is a "form of pursuit and value-affirmation", Broadie draws attentino to two aspects: "*taking pleasure in* some good and noble activity is the quintessentially right way of valuing something valuable for its own sake. Since only through enjoyment are we undividedly engaged with it, our enjoyment is the most decisive possible acknowledgement of intrinsic worth. Second, if ... enjoyment - and therefore what is enjoyed - can only be an activity ... then we have from this quarter further proof of the doctrine that happiness (the central good of the life rightly deemed happy) is an *activity*." (BROADIE-1991, p. 339)

"It takes time for the growing dog - the building under construction - completely to reach its form. And what the fully developed thing is, is what it could not completely be except through having developed. It essentially has a history, because its completeness is the completeness of something previously incomplete. The finished thing is an end, no doubt, but an end for which there had to have been a 'means' - its earlier developing self." (BROADIE-1991, p. 341)

"[P]leasure is the manifestation of agency and positive nature." (BROADIE-1991, p. 345)

"[E]njoyment centres on doing, not on having done.... Thus the best examples of enjoyed activities are one such as seeing and intellectual grasping [PSA: and living well], of which one can say: 'To see is to have seen, to grasp is to have grasped' (Metaphysics 1048b22-34). This does not imply what it may seem to, that to see is immediately to put the seeing behind one as over and done with, but rather the opposite: that the perfection of seeing is *not* in its being over and done with, since *present* seeing is perfect." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 345-346)

After quoting 1175a10-21, Broadie observes: "What is distinctive about Aristotle's view is the underlying metaphysics which ensures that the living being is its life's own source, and *as such* is the subject of pleasure. The individual lives by engaging in its natural activities; these are *its* natural activities; these are *its* natural activities only because by engaging in them it constitutes itself as a living *it*; by engaging it appropriates them as its own, and this appropriation is pleasure: the agent's celebration and also its sign to itself of successful self-constitution." (BROADIE-1991, p. 353) [PSA: and self-completion.]

"[S]ome enjoyments by their very nature show a stunted or perverted character. Pleasure perfects the activity, which is to say that it locks the agent in still further, developing even in the act his propensity for acting so. If, for example, the activity is childish, unchecked indulgence keeps the subject on the same childish level.... In us there is necessarily a gap between our first nature, childish and animal, and human life at its best, since otherwise there would be no scope for second nature and reason. The gap is a space in which misplaced or deforming pleasures can flourish." (BROADIE-1991, p. 355)

"[D]iscipline instilled in childhood is less a mark of current immaturity than of future maturity under development." (BROADIE-1991, p. 367)

"[A] life untouched by theoria is defective in a way that matters, however good in other ways. So theoria is intrinsically noble, like the recognized virtues and virtuous actions, and ennobles those who value it in the appropriate way. Hence just as ordinary moral goodness and practical wisdom fall short of complete excellence unless perfected by nobility, nobility itself is incomplete without devotion to theoria as a noble end in itself.... [T]he ideal life surpasses the merely good life by recognising a distinct category of the noble *in which goods of no practical use can find a home*." (BROADIE-1991, p. 377)

"[I]s the difference between Aristotle's noble-and-good person and his merely good (hence incomplete) person that the latter lacks the category of the noble? I do not think so, as I shall now explain. The good man is not made good by natural goods he has, uses or pursues; the dependence goes the other way.... 'all goodness involves rational choice; it has been said before what we mean by this - goodness makes a man choose everything for the sake of some object, and that object is what is fine [or noble] (1230a26-29; cf. 1229a2-4).... Nobility is goodness reflectively valuing itself and its action as they should be valued: not as natural goods which can be used and misused, still less as means to such goods, but as admirable in themselves." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 378-379)

"[A]lthough (as Socrates did not see) there would be no topic to discuss when people discuss virtue were it not that virtue is *first* made real in action ... it is nevertheless a fact that once this virtue, real independently of self-reflection, begins to be 'examined', the conclusions drawn from the examination can crucially affect (and, it may be, infect) the character of their object." (BROADIE-1991, p. 380)

"What is most noble to do or bring about is what only oneself can: what can exist only through us as individuals operating in the specifically human mode." (BROADIE-1991, p. 383)

"By the criterion relating to *what* is done, theoria certainly counts as a noble activity, and it is ranked as such in the Politics (see, e.g., VII.3). However, here in the Eudemian Ethics Aristotle says only that it, or the promotion of it, is the '*noblest* limit' (1249b19) by which to decide how far to go in having, pursuing and using the natural goods.... We should ... take 'noblest limit' as implying that theoria is not the *only* end by which to measure the pursuit of natural goods. Other kinds of noble activity are ends for the noble person.... This would not arise, of course, if nothing is noble except pursuing and engaging in theoria or if no rational choice were wise unless made with this end in view. But there is no ground in the Eudemian Ethics for such a monolithic interpretation, and much to suggest that Aristotle recognises a plurality of noble ends: the best kind of friendship is one example, and his sketches of the virtues of courage and magnificence suggest a variety of other noble possibilities. Other noble activities have in common with theoria that they all satisfy Aristotle's closing dictum: 'This is the best limit for the soul: to perceive the nonrational part of the soul *as such* as little as possible' (1249b21-23; my emphasis).... [H]e does not mean that the best person is a practical or theoretical intellect purified of all feelings fostered and shaped by prerational training, but that these feelings in the best soul are in tune with reason.... [T]he ethically important contrast here is not between bodiless and embodied activity, but between sheerly biological activities and those distinctively human." (BROADIE-1991, p. 384)

"Theoria is not only glorious in itself, but is a moral safeguard: it preserves practical nobility in superfluity much as practical nobility preserves sheer basic goodness." (BROADIE-1991, p. 385)

"[W]hatever can affect our lives through final causality alone is closer to a kind of perfection of goodness than things which cause by efficiency." (BROADIE-1991, p. 386)

"Whatever the sense in which theoria is 'of' God (1249b17), the theoria is ours, and an end for us. Its divine relevance (which need not be precisely expounded to make the point) gives it a right to a preeminent place in human life. With this conclusion Aristotle has carried out the main task of the EE, which was to show, first, that happiness is activity in accordance with complete excellence (1219a38-39), and then, by attending to its various aspects, what complete excellence is. He has also in effect answered the initial question about the three lives: if they are exclusive alternatives, the best is none of the three; otherwise the best is 'political' *and* theoretical. It is a life of practical wisdom enlightened by nobility and looking towards theoria.... [I]n the best, complete virtue must be exercised, i.e., the excellence of every part of the soul including the theoretic part." (BROADIE-1991, p. 387)

"[A] sense of the noble shapes the ends in terms of which we deliberate." (BROADIE-1991, p. 387)

"It is not possible to become courageous or temperate through argument, but perhaps it is possible to come to love excellent action for its own sake through being brought to see, by an inquiry such as Aristotle's, that excellent human activity is what in essence the supreme human good must be." (BROADIE-1991, p. 387)

"In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle builds a case for theoria by showing that a life of 'complete excellence', which has so far been understood in practical terms, must include it as an objective. Turning now to the Nicomachean account, we are struck by the differences, the most drastic of which are Aristotle's assertions (1) that theoria is complete or perfect happiness (1177a16-18; 1178b7-8); and (2) that the life of practical excellence is 'happiest' only 'in a secondary way' (1178a8-9)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 389)

"These difference notwithstanding, Aristotle's intention in the NE, so I would argue, is fundamentally the same as in the EE. Just as the latter tries to show that the life of practical excellence at its best naturally reaches out to theoria, so the former tries to show theoria as the culmination of the same life: the life of practical excellence at its best." (BROADIE-1991, p. 389)

"A virtue that does not fundamentally enhance its possessors is not a true virtue in Aristotle's sense.... For if we are essentially practical, to support theoria will not enhance us if supporting theoria is an ornamental appendage to practice at its best, but only if supporting theoria is squarely required for our *practical* best to be realised." (BROADIE-1991, p. 389)

"In the NE the final emphasis is such as to make it appear that theoria is not merely vital but of *supreme* importance - a question on which the EE, so far as it suggests anything at all, sends a more ambiguous message." (BROADIE-1991, p. 389)

Aristotle's purpose "is to endow the life of essentially *practical* beings with a content required for it to approach the ideal of *such* a life at its best. The endowment does not logically convert it into a kind of life not essentially practical, but from good to best of the same type." (BROADIE-1991, p. 392) [PSA: this is not the contemplative life, but the examined life.]

"[T]he full potential for theoria is self-reflective practice under conditions that allow for this kind of reflection." (BROADIE-1991, p. 393)

"The argument for theoria must be 'ethical' in the sense of relating that activity to topics at the heart of ethics, such as virtue, good conduct, and practical wisdom.... [T]heoria is to be valued as enhancing the very same rational human nature that reaches its more easily recognised peaks in the *practical* virtues." (BROADIE-1991, p. 399)

"'Theoria' covers any sort of detached, intelligent, attentive pondering, especially when not directed to a practical goal. Thus it can denote the intellectual or aesthetic exploration of some object, or the absorbed following of structures as they unfold when we look and stay looking more deeply." (BROADIE-1991, p. 401) [PSA: I would also include the aspects of active awareness and appreciative beholding, including artistic contemplation as Aristotle mentions in the EE.]

Aristotle says that it is pleasanter, because more perfect, to know than to be seeking knowledge (1177a25-27). He is sometimes misunderstood as meaning that the state of having discovered a truth is pleasanter and more perfect than the activity of inquiry about it. This is absurd, since pleasure attaches not to states but activities. In fact he is comparing one activity with another; the activity in which we are at one with the developing object, and the less fulfilling activity in which we cast about trying to locate it." (BROADIE-1991, p. 401)

"[W]e as individuals make who we are by identifying ourselves with whatever side of our nature is activated and enhanced by some preferred activity.... In the present context it carries the interesting implication that *if* ... supreme happiness is an activity in some way divine, then divinity or godlikeness can belong in some way to us as particular individuals. In this we human beings would be exceptional, for our share in the divine would be more than is found in creatures of every species, who partake in eternity *because their species is eternal*.... 'Happiness extends, then, just so far as theoria does, and those to whom theoria more fully belongs are more truly happy, not accidentally, but in virtue of the theoria; for this is in itself precious. Happiness, therefore, must be some form of theoria.' (1178b24-32)." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 404-405) [PSA: in the subjective sense this might be straightforwardly true, since we cannot *experience* fulfillment without awareness.]

"[T]he harder one argues that theoria ought to be prized as uniquely divine, the weaker one's ground for insisting upon it as a life-shaping human objective." (BROADIE-1991, p. 408)

"Our rationality ... is bound up with our awareness of misery as misery, which is the same as our aspiration to be on a level where we are free of it - free not through death, but *living* free from it - and this is to be living as far as possible 'like the gods'.... What is it to live as a god? It is a life of ease and freedom." (BROADIE-1991, p. 409)

"[T]he activity whereby a god is a god is surely complete and perfect; so how can other activities add anything of significance? We can see how, if we consider a point which a less anthropomorphic view might not so easily permit. The divine life would not be complete without those gratuitous activities, for these are the celebration by the gods of their own freedom and power. However good something is, how can the celebration of it not create a situation still better in beings capable of celebrating their good? And surely it is better to be not merely capable of one's good but capable also of celebrating and knowing it worth celebration.... [W]e should not be deterred from seeing in *celebration* a model that might make sense of the following position: there is a kind of activity which is (1) complete and perfect and (2) in some way embeds in itself a different sort of activity which has its own grounds for being considered complete and perfect; and (3) these activities belong to one and the same being; and (4) each is the perfection of the being's nature." (BROADIE-1991, p. 410)

"I am suggesting the concept of celebration as the key to the formal structure of what it is like to live as a god. The complexity of the structure is not of the teleological type found everywhere in nature, in which one element is a means to another, but reflects the complexity of that self-awareness unique to us and the gods.... What powers this drive is not merely the desire to escape the pain of suffering, but a sense that the grind of suffering is a waste of human potential and that we are *fitted* for a different level of life.... Thus right from the roots we are acting from a kind of ethical vision of ourselves as cut out for a life more than *merely* mortal. The philosopher's task is to shape this dream into a coherent, practicable, ideal worthy of those who dream it." (BROADIE-1991, p. 411)

The fundamental question is: "What shall we do with ease and prosperity, whoever of us attains it?" (BROADIE-1991, p. 411)

"[T]he fully happy life for man ... is a life of practical virtue crowned by theoretic activity ... the life in question (1) is properly described as both 'theoretic' and 'practical' (2) is the supreme human good, complete and perfect, under both descriptions." (BROADIE-1991, p. 412)

"Though every element of a whole is necessary for its completeness, not all contribute in the same way, and some modes of contribution lend themselves more than other to being thought of as what 'completes' it.... [T]he element added last in constructing the whole may be thought of as the one par excellence to which it owes its completeness, especially is that element is such that it has to be added last.... From the developmental point of view which pervades Aristotle's ethics, it is not difficult to understand how one of several elements in a whole can figure as *the* one that completes it." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 412-413)

"[A]n act of celebrating has something in common with the act which gave rise to what is celebrated, since each in its way is a valuing of the same thing. And one might say that even if the *object* celebrated is complete without being celebrated, the successful *valuing* of this object - valuing it enough to do or produce it - is incomplete if not consummated by a kind of celebration." (BROADIE-1991, p. 413)

"[T]o prize as well as achieve one's achievement is more human than simply to move on to achieving the next good thing." (BROADIE-1991, p. 414)

"[V]irtue is better or more admirable is conscious of its own worth." (BROADIE-1991, p. 414)

"[T]he life of practical virtue is incomplete unless at some level it celebrates itself into completeness by a movement (still practical) into something quite different: for instance, theoria. In that case, the life of practical virtue is not something to which, at its best, theoria has to be added to form the superlative life and which therefore itself is inferior to the superlative. Instead, it is itself the entire superlative, since it generates within itself the element by which it becomes complete." (BROADIE-1991, p. 414) [PSA: rather than theoria as philosophical theory, this could simply be active awareness, beholding, and appreciation; at the least, philosophical theory needs to do justice to that awareness, beholding, and appreciation.]

"[O]ur love of theoria is not a species of practical wisdom ... rather, it is an evaluative attitude colouring deliberation and helping us hit the mean.... love of theoria refers to a rational activity which 'rules' only by being loved and sought.... But what is the nature of that mean which love of theoria helps us in practice to hit? In the Eudemian Ethics it is the mean between excess and deficiency in possession of natural goods beyond what is necessary for excellent praxis. But in the Nicomachean Ethics it is, I think, a second-order mean between taking practical life too seriously and taking it not seriously enough." (BROADIE-1991, p. 415)

"The happy *life* (in that biographical sense) is the life characterised by whatever *activity* Aristotle sees fit to equate with happiness. The equation does not mean that one is happy only when engaging in that activity.... It means that the activity is what above all distinguishes the happy life or above all qualifies it to be called 'happy'." (BROADIE-1991, p. 416) [PSA: here translating eudaimon as *fulfilled* makes more sense than *happy*, for it is the activity of deep awareness that distinguishes and completes the examined life, as the roof completes the house.]

"[T]he theoretic *life* is a species of the *life* of practical virtue. Hence it is not an alternative life or a rival ideal of happiness." (BROADIE-1991, p. 417)

"But what if at the end of the day something is left over: more time, energy, material resources than are needed for sheer carrying on? It is not just a question of the leisure of workers but of, for instnace, retired persons, like Cephalus in the Republic. This is the question to which Aristotle gives his answer when he says: 'Complete happiness is theoria' [61], by which he means, I am arguing, that theoria is the final differentia of the happy life - this happy life (it is taken for granted) being the life of a decent and worthy person, the person of practical excellence. I may seem to have written as if the proposition that theoria is a leisure activity is virtually equivalent to the proposition that theoria is an activity that takes place on an infrastructure of active practical virtue. This suggests that leisure for theoria is essentially an attribute of virtuous people: a strange description of the facts. [fn61: It is clear from EE 1215a24-35 and Politics 1337b30-1338a3 that the question of happiness is the question of how to use leisure.]" (BROADIE-1991, p. 418) [PSA: this is not strange at all: only practically and actively virtuous people are truly prepared to engage in theoria and can truly appreciate it.]

"[T]heoria contributes to the happy life by essentially being the leisure-activity of those whose practical excellence deserves no less." (BROADIE-1991, p. 419)

"NE Book I reread in the light of Book X affords many clues, especially in its references to happiness as something divine (1099b11-18; 1101b23-27)." (BROADIE-1991, p. 419)

"[I]t belongs to the life of practical virtue to be naturally completed by theoria." (BROADIE-1991, p. 419)

[C]hoosing to spend leisure in a certain way is a sort of practical reflection on the value of all the thought and human effort that went into creating the conditions for such reflection. To pursue something as a leisure-activity is a way of saying, when so engaged, 'This is what it was all for'." (BROADIE-1991, pp. 419-420)

"[T]he form in which Aristotle addresses the ethical question of our use of leisure presumes the absolute worth of a life of practical virtue and the priority of its characteristic obligations." (BROADIE-1991, p. 420)

"[T]heoria answers to a human need which noble praxis is less well able to satisfy, as also to the need for something serious which amusement cannot satisfy either." (BROADIE-1991, p. 421)

"[F]ar from recommending a retreat from life on the ordinary, practical level, Aristotle asks that it be lived with a different emphasis.... theoria is already a natural human activity, and we engage in it almost all the time without decision and probably without being able to help it. As he says at the beginning of the Metaphysics: 'All men by nature reach out for knowledge [or: understanding]' .... Only by being deliberately cultivated can theoria rise from the level of idle impressions and loose ruminations to take on the strength and objective beauty that will place it beyond need of apology." (BROADIE-1991, p. 424) [PSA: this is the examined life - which makes Broadie's reference to apologia all the more apt.]

In reference to the puzzling passage at 1178a9-22 in which Aristotle mentions a life that is 'happiest in a secondary way', Broadie comments: "the reference is, I believe, to the modest life of practical virtue without significant leisure." (BROADIE-1991, p. 429)

"[H]is theoretic individual, as I understand the case, is indeed a *model citizen*: one who, in addition to making his own good practical contribution, gives due recognition to his and his community's practical achievements by putting the consequent affluence to the highest possible use." (BROADIE-1991, p. 430)

END