Aristotle's Man: Speculations upon Aristotelian Anthropology
Stephen R.L. Clark
Clarendon Press, 1975

Clark endeavors to identify Aristotle's conception of humanity within the universe and to draw out the implications of that conception for the human way of life. 

"The ergon of a variety of living creature, tool, or organ is the particular form of life, of activity which 'makes sense' of its structure" (CLARK, p. 16). Thus: "'Life', 'soul', and 'ergon' can all refer to the same features. So also can 'telos', for sight is also the telos of the eye (GA 778a33f.). 'Each thing's ergon is its telos' (EE 1219a8). 'For the ergon is the end, and the activity the ergon' (Met 1050a22)." (ibid.)

"'It is clear from beasts' having sensation but no share in praxis' (EN 1139a20). This is because they have no share in prohairesis (EN 1111b12, EE 1225b27), nor therefore in eudaimonia or good fortune (Phys 197b4ff, EN 1099b32ff), for prohairesis is the source of praxis (EN 1139a31)." (CLARK, p. 21) [PSA: Unlike the beasts, human beings engage in praxis - as I would say, humans "take action".]

"Prohairesis is deliberative desire (EN 1139a23). Man is the only one of the animals that deliberates (HA 488b24). Neither children nor beasts (alike in many ways: HA 588a33ff) can 'act', only one who has reflected (EE 1224a28). They lack prohairesis because they lack the ability to deliberate and 'the concept of "why"' (EE 1226b23ff)." (CLARK, p. 22) [PSA: see BROADIE-1991 on X-for-the-sake-of-Y, which is connected to the ability to provide an account (logos) for one's commitments and conduct.]

"We must live according to the best that is in us (EN 1177b33), according to that element which is responsible for our linguistic, social, deliberative capacities. One needs a share in something divine to be capable of the good life that we seek (EE 1217a27ff; cf EN 1178b28, DA 430a14ff). Man's ergon is divine, but also human." (CLARK, p. 26)

"Man has the most divinity of all the animals, if any others have any at all (PA 656a7)." (CLARK, p. 28) See also PA 686a28. This is why "Aristotle's biological continuum descends from man, the most perfected of all (GA 737b27)", specifically from the human male "'which has a nature that has been completed' (HA 608b7)" (CLARK, p. 29). 

The role of the mind is critically important for the unity of the person: "'the impulses of the acratic man go in opposite directions' (EN 1102b21). In losing their human unity, becoming imbalanced, creatures must consolidate their lesser powers as best they can. In doing so they are deprived of the power to make long-term plans for living well, and act only to achieve present satisfactions." (CLARK, p. 46) See also EE I.2 (?).

With regard to the what it is to be (to ti en einai) human, Clark observes that "men are unusual in that they must choose their completion and may be mistaken in taking something as their purpose in being." (CLARK, p. 54)

Yet completion is not immediate: "Entities take time... The human mind, or that of composite individuals, is in a certain period of time (Met. 1075a8), and similarly a certain amount of time is needed for a man to have achieved eudaimonia (EN 1098a18)." (CLARK, p. 57) And: "'What each thing is when fully developed we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse or a family' (Pol. 1252b32ff)" (ibid.).

And completion or development or maturation is both natural and beautiful: "'In the works of nature the reason why and the beautiful are more present than in the works of craft' (PA 639b19ff; cf. 645a23ff; Met 1065b2)." (CLARK, p. 60) Indeed, "'all things naturally have something of the divine' (EN 1153b32)" (CLARK, p. 67) and the divine is beautiful.

Thought, perception, and living are completions in a similar sense. What has perception has awareness of pleasure and pain (DA 413b23) but "to perceive is to operate in pleasure/pain terms, and to perceive well is to escape from these terms"; the same is true of living and of living well. Thus "to survive as a good human being it is necessary to be interested in things other than one's own survival" (CLARK, p. 77).

Yet perception can go astray. "Only if we are properly balanced and at one with the world shall we see straight. 'What particularly distinguishes the sound man is his seeing the truth in every case, being as it were a rule and measure of them' (EN 1113a32; cf. Met. 1062b33ff)." (CLARK, p. 79) "An organism is preserved by the union of opposite powers: one entity comes to be by combination. And what is thus one is a unit of measurement, and the standard form from which the sick diverge. 'To be one is to be the primary measure of each kind' (Met. 1052b18; cf. 1087b33ff).... To fail of the organic unity proper to one's kind is, to that extent, to fail of one's kind...." (CLARK, p. 86) And unity is a matter of development or completion or ripening (pepsis): "'For when it has been ripened, it is completed and has come to be' (Meteor. 379b20ff). 'There is only a heap until it is ripened, and some one thing has come to be from its elements' (Met. 1040b[??]).... The rest, the coming-to-be one, which the healthy organism achieves is, like any standard, the opposite of all types of motion (Phys. 261b18ff). The 'rest' which the human soul can achieve... also lies at the end of a process of ordering: 'for by bringing the soul to rest from its natural turmoil something wise and knowledgeable is revealed' (Phys. 247b17ff)." (CLARK, p. 87) Furthermore, "'The inferior man is not one but many, and on the same day is different and unstable' (EE 1240b16ff; EN 1159b7ff)" (CLARK, p. 100). This is one reason why "Properly to be friends with oneself, at a time and over time, it is necessary to have a stable policy of living" (CLARK, p. 101). Thus "the good man is not at discord, but a friend to himself, and 'a man is like that by nature, but a wicked man is contrary to nature' (EE 1240b12ff): our difficulties live in making a unity of ourselves and a true community of our society. They are the same problem." (CLARK, p. 110). Indeed, "the good life is the same for city and for individual (EN 1094b7ff; Pol. 1324a5ff): both must retain their balance, see things as they are, abide by their obligations, treat others differently when they are relevantly different (cf. Pol. 1324b32ff et al.), serve the most divine element in themselves (cf. EN 1168b31)." (CLARK, p. 111)

Citing Kahn's paper "Sensation and Consciousness in Aristotle's Psychology" (1966), Clark concludes that "the primary sense is equivalent to the potential of a living being for waking consciousness" and that "this potential may be for more or less aware waking life" (CLARK, p. 81).

With regard to purpose, Clark quotes the Metaphysics: "'The reasonable man, at least, always acts for a purpose, and this is a limit; for the end is a limit' (Met. 994b15). To act non-purposively, in fact, is not really to act." (CLARK, p. 145)

The etymology of eudaimonia is relevant here. "Heraclitus determined that 'a man's daimon is his character' (22B119DK). Similarly, Xenocrates: 'he who has a sound soul is eudaimon, for the soul is each man's daimon' (Topics, 112a37ff). Aristotle clearly thinks this a trifle strained: for him a daimon is a spirit, a god in a more literal sense. 'He says that all men have daimones which accompany them throughout their bodily existence' (fr. 193 Rose)." (CLARK, p. 146)

"'Everyone who can live according to his will should place some target of good living on which to concentrate in doing all his acts (as not to order one's life vis-a-vis some goal is a mark of considerable lack of sense)' (EE 1214b6ff). One who does not attempt this, 'being obedient to his passions will find his study in vain and without profit' (EN 1095a4ff). One who does, will follow Plato's advice, and by doing this one thing wil become one instead of many (Plato Republic, 423d3ff)." (CLARK, p. 149).

"That eudaimonia lacks nothing (EN 1176b5) surely means no more than that the eudaimon is not in need, that there is no further good which is required to complete the good life." "For we are not concerned with abstract eudaimonia, but with the eudaimon, who is an organic whole." (CLARK, p. 155)

Yet "'None of the other animals can be eudaimon, for none have any share in theoria' (EN 1178b27ff). [PSA: or, as I would say, in awareness] We need a share in something divine to be capable of eudaimonia (EE 1217a26ff)." (CLARK, p. 160)

"Men cannot, physically and logically, obtain that which is best for more than a moment (cf. DC 279a12ff, Met. 1072b13, EN 1174b31ff, PA 644b32ff), and therefore it is not this best which is man's good, but the living of a life in which he sometimes does." (CLARK, p. 161)

"In the only extant Aristotelian use of 'to athanatizein' other than EN 1177b31ff it seems to refer directly to an immortality via honour: 'I would never have deliberately sacrificed to Hermeias as to an immortal, but as for a mortal I prepared a memorial and wanting to immortalize his nature I adorned it with funeral honours' (fr. 645 Rose). To immortalize oneself is not to treat oneself as an immortal but to make onceself as like such as possible, by doing something fine." (CLARK, pp. 171-172) Indeed "We must live according to the best in us, and that best does not age (DA 408b23).... for to live in accord with the best in us is to live for more than our immediate selves. 'It is not altogether possible for men to get the best of all things nor share in the nature of the best' (Eudemos fr. 6 Ross)." (CLARK, p. 173) "To immortalize oneself, to practise theoria, is to realize the presence in the soul of the undying which is itself the Prime. And therefore to be aware of the world.... To realize the god in onself is to discover the world, the phenomenal world (which is the only one there is), as an intelligible and undivided whole, such that there is no room for any grasping ego." (CLARK, pp. 186-187) "Verdenius is quite right to distinguish the godlike from the god: what what *makes* is godlike is our mirroring [PSA: i.e., emulation] of that God." (CLARK, p. 188) "One who has realized the being of the world needs no further incentive to be 'moral' - both because he has brought his soul to rest already in order to find that something wise and knowledgeable which was hidden there, and because to serve the 'Mind of Heaven' is to do what comes naturally: and 'the wicked man is contrary to nature' (EE 1140b21ff)." (CLARK, p. 189) "Theoria is the practise of enlightenment, and its culmination is the discovery of the divine world. It cannot be proved, but only prepared for, and once seen it is recognized as our natural being. 'Those being brought to their completion (the initiates) need not to learn but to receive something' (fr. 45 Rose). We, to be completed as men, do not have to learn (cf. Met 992b24), but to receive." (CLARK, p. 190)

To clarify these matters, Clark introduces three complementary concepts: theocentricity (a focus on god), egocentricity (a focus on self), and exocentricity (a focus on the world). "Theocentricity, like egocentricity, is perhaps a limiting case, but the exocentric must always hover between these poles, of self and the god. In seeing with the god, we see with our own eyes but in a certain way, and in seeing thus, momentarily, we meet *not* a self-world ordered by our pleasures and pains, but the World. Not as an object over against us, but enthusiastically - for enthousiasmos is in origin inspiration and possession by the god. Reality is not the dead world of myth but the realized, actualized world of human living, and its core is the realization of the divine." (CLARK, p. 197) "What sort of action does this god's view lead to? Plainly, if we are to serve the god, and that is the intelligible or intellectual world, we are to serve the beautiful: 'this is the end of virtue' (EN 1115b13, 1122b6ff). If we are virtuous we do what is right for its own sake, because the deed is 'beautiful', and seek no further end by the individual act. We practise virtue, we concern ourselves with what is thus worth while, in order to clear the way to the knowledge of the god, and having reached that end we act correctly in the world. We act as the knowledgeable man [sophos?] would in order to become knowledgeable." (CLARK, p. 197)

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