Confronting Aristotle's Ethics: Ancient and Modern Morality
Eugene Garver
University of Chicago Press, 2006

"[T]he Ethics revolves around the idea that the abilities that let us choose actions that are their own end are precisely the abilities that bring the soul into the best condition. To elaborate the point a little more slowly: of the actions that produce valuable results, there are some which we value for their own sake. These, for Aristotle's project to make sense, must coincide with the exercise of powers that have brought the soul into the best possible shape. That coincidence of the two dimensions of goodness is the radical thesis that lies at the center of the Ethics. Aristotle's great gamble is that being good and doing good coincide." (GARVER, pp. 4-5)

"The Ethics is a meditation on how to lead an active life. It locates human beings and human goods in a world made up of activities and the potentialities that make those activities possible. To be is to be active. We realize our nature by being as active as possible. Effective human action embodies the metaphysical urge to convert incomplete processes into complete activities, a metaphysical imperative Aristotle calls the love for the noble.... The key elements of the good life, virtue, happiness, choice, praxis, all need to be understood as activities.... What I see as the crux of the Ethics, the identity between a person being good and doing good, is the identity of the best human activities considered as the realization of the soul - energeia as the perfection of a dunamis - and the best activities considered as securing the most desirable goods - energeia as the perfection of kinesis." (GARVER, pp. 7-8)

"Aristotle exhibits the same pattern of thought, the same drive to see the autonomous values in the world, throughout his range of inquiry. We will be more faithful to Aristotle's own way of thinking if we concentrate not on energeia as a term but on perfection, completion, realization, actualization as patterns enacted in Aristotle's inquiries. In the Rhetoric we see it in the definition of rhetoric. In the Ethics, we see it in actions that are chosen for their own sake. In the Politics, we see it in the self-sufficient community that aims at living well, in the Physics in the definition of nature as an internal principle of motion, and in the De Anima in the definition of soul as the first activity (energeia) of an organic body." (GARVER, p. 8)

"Instead of presenting a contest between the active and contemplative lives, Aristotle shows how the philosophical life completes and political and practical life. The philosophical life is not an alternative to the practical life but its fulfillment. It is the good person, and not the theologian, who truly understands the assertion that people are not the best thing in the universe (NE VI.7 1141a20-21), because only the good person can understand and act on that thesis as a practical truth." (GARVER, p. 12)

Garver makes an argument by analogy between rhetoric and ethics, specifically by introducing the concept of an internal end. "Aristotle limits the available *means* to argument and thereby constructs a new, internal *end* for the art of rhetoric. Here is the first surprising conclusion to draw from the Rhetoric to apply to the Ethics: internal ends emerge out of *limiting* the *available means* for achieving a given, external end.... the internal *ends* of actions chosen for their own sake emerge out of *limitations* of the available *means* for achieving given, external ends.... Nothing can have a function, an ergon, without these two ends.... the only way to aim *rationally* at external ends is through commitment to the internal ends that are properly associated with them. In other words, when we have an internal end, we "aim" at it rationally as we aim to gain mastery of the practice it involves. In that way we do all we can to secure the external end. Practices - using that term as to include everything in the Ethics' first sentence - must have internal ends to be rational." (GARVER, p. 20) However, I note that for Aristotle eudaimonia is not in fact an external end.

"Aristotle sees a difference between artful and sophistic *practice*, based on the difference between finding the available means of persuasion and simply aiming at persuading. Better rhetoric is more rational rhetoric. The same holds in ethics. There too it will be fatal to find morality in the ends of action and rationality in the means. There too the end internal to the practice of virtue will be the source of both morality and rationality. Acting well consists in concentrating on internal ends, acting for the noble (e.g., NE III.7.1115b13, III.12.1119b16, IV.1.1120a24, 1122b6-7, EE III.1.1229a4, 1230a26-33).... 'Sophistry is not a matter of ability (dynamis) but of deliberate decision (prohairesis)' (Rh I.1.1355b17-18; see 1371a6-8, top I.1.100a19-101a4, NE II.2.1103a5, IV.7.1127b9-20).... By contrast, Aristotle's rhetorician ... *wants* to persuade, but *aims at* finding the available means of persuasion." (GARVER, pp. 24-25) I'm not persuaded by this argument, because it seems that sophists are quite adept at finding the available means of persuasion, it's just that in their willingness to do anything to persuade they lack a commitment to wisdom.

"An end is rational in proportion as pursuing it is an activity. Exercising reason is a human being's way of being active and fully human (NE I.7.1098a7, I.13.1102b31-1103a1, IX.9.1170a29-37). Our desire to achieve some good becomes complete by being realized in activities that are their own end." (GARVER, p. 31)

"While virtue takes more than knowledge, the virtues are *more rational* than the arts. The virtuous person, unlike the rhetorician or other artisan, knows himself (NE II.2.1103b26-31). He knows himself as an agent, as the cause which connects the ultimate principles with ultimate things to be done (NE III.3.1112b31-32, VI.2.1139b4-5, IX.9.1168b28-33, DA 433b28, Met VI.1.1025b18-28, XI.1064a10-11, EE II.6.1223a5). When our internal goods are objects of decision, knowing them we know ourselves. 'Every activity aims at the end that corresponds to the habit of which it is the manifestation. So it is with the activity of the courageous man: his courage is noble; therefore its end is nobility, for a thing is defined by its end' (NE III.7.1115b20-22; see too III.7.1115b23-24, III.9.1117b7-9, IV.2.1122b6-7)." (GARVER, p. 32) [PSA: but the correspndence between the hexis and the energeia / praxis goes in the other direction: the energeia is primary and the hexis derives its value from the activity.]

"Ethical knowledge is knowledge of the self as the locus of good. (NE.2.1103b26-31, X.9.1179a33-b12). The agent is identified with his ends: a person's ends reveal his ethos and who he is (NE III.2.1111b4-6, III.4.1113a21-22, IX.5.1166a13-17, EE II.10.1226a11-13, II.11.1227b34-1228a4, Rh I.9.1367b21-27)." (GARVER, p. 33)

"To live well, one must practice the metaphysical truths that the basic substances in the world are defined by their activities, that activities are complete motions and complete realizations of our psychic powers. Living well means organizing one's life around the perfect energeiai listed at Metaphysics IX.6.1048b23-25 - seeing, understanding, thinking, living well, and being happy." (GARVER, p. 34)

"Vicious people aim at pleasure because they can't aim at anything good in itself. Thinking that external goods are the only goods, one becomes a pleasure maximizer by default. Ignorance of the noble has the pursuit of pleasure as a consequence, since all goods that are not goods of activity and agency are pursued as pleasures. If I aim at wealth, fame, or political power, they are good because they please me. But when I desire something because I think it is good, rather than think it good because I want it, I want to *do* something about it. To think something good I have to care about how I get it, and in particular want it to be a function of my actions and decisions instead of luck or of the favor of another (NE I.9.1099b20-25; see Top III.3.118b8-10, Pol VII.1.1323b23-33, VII.13.1332a28-36)." (GARVER, p. 41)

"The vicious person believes that because something is good he should have it. The virtuous person thinks that because something is good he should *do* it. Therefore, too, the vicious person can only want apparent goods, not real goods, since true goods are goods of activity." (GARVER, p. 41)

Quoting Aristotle: "'The absolutely good is absolutely desirable but what is good for oneself is desirable for oneself; and the two ought to come into agreement.... When there is discord between them, a man is not yet perfectly good; for it is possible for unrestraint to be engendered in him, as unrestraint is caused by discord between the good and the pleasant in the emotions.' (EE VII.2.1236b39-1237a3)" (GARVER, p. 42)

"The confrontation of the virtues with the ultimate individual is built into the virtue itself (NE VI.7.1141b14-16, VI.8.1142a11-15, 1142a23-25, VI.11.114332-35). The clever person will give money to some individual as a member of a class.... but the object of liberality is an individual. 'Having the right feelings at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the mean and best condition, and this is proper to virtue' (NE II.6.1106b21-23; see IV.5.1125b33-1126a1)." (GARVER, p. 45)

"Ethical virtues... incorporate decision into themselves, integrating rationality and goodness. They are habits of deciding, hexeis prohairetike (NE II.6.1106a36-1107a2). Since the virtues are already governed by deliberative desire and desiring reason (NE VI.2.1139a23-35, 1139b5-6), they don't need an external desire or decision.... Because the virtues incorporate decision into themselves, they are modes of practical rationality that are not teachable, are not powers for opposites, and do not exclude emotion." (GARVER, p. 50)

"Hexeis ... lead to activities that are their own end because the hexeis themselves are, considered as dunameis, complete. Complete activities can only be the realization of such complete potencies. Only because virtuous *habits* are their own good, desirable in themselves, are virtuous *actions* their own good. Actions that are their own end can only be the realization of such good potencies." (GARVER, p. 60)

"The virtues bring the soul into good condition and in that way they are complete in themselves. Because the relation of soul to virtue is perfect - the soul is fully realized, fully active, in being virtuous - so too is the relation of virtuous habit to virtuous act perfect. The transition from virtuous habit to virtuous action has a completeness that other realizations lack." (GARVER, p. 62)

"We can now choose to make a living at a craft. Indeed, the very expression, "making a living," is so unintelligible to Aristotle that our ease in understanding it shows our distance from Aristotle's world. It is one thing for ethics to neglect techne; it is another for ethics to be confronted with a regime of techne in competition with it.... While Aristotle seems to us blind to the possibilities of highly ethical virtues being developed and expressed through the practice of a craft, he was very alert to the possibility that the more people's lives are organized around technai, the more ethics becomes a matter for one's private, nonpolitical life." (GARVER, p. 85)

"The denigration of techne is one of those features of Aristotle's thought I mentioned at the beginning as both attractive and repellent. It is attractive because it follows from his strict separation of praxis from poiesis, doing from making, a separation essential to carving out a special place for ethical virtue and for the idea of doing something for the sake of the noble. Equally, it is repellent because it blinds Aristotle to the important human capacity to find challenge and satisfaction in a diversity of (nonpolitical) activities. The contempt Aristotle expresses for techne and for artisans is not a bubbling up for nonphilosophical class prejudices against trade or money. It is central to his developing the autonomy of praxis." (GARVER, p. 87)

"Benjamin Constant in "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns" (1819) ... argues that courage is no longer functional: "An age must come in which commerce replaces war. We have reached that age." The polis has been replaced by the state, and so courage must be replaced by the virtues of commerce, a long distance from Aristotle's claims that the mechanical and mercantile lives are inimical to virtue (Pol VII.8.1328b39-41), or the remark in the Laws (705a) that commerce 'fills the land with wholesaling and retailing, breeds shifty and deceitful habits in a man's soul and makes the citizens distrustful and hostile.' The marketplace replaces the battlefield as the school for citizenship. There we acquire the virtues of probity, of satifying others, of discipline, self-control, and self-sacrifice in entirely new forms. The virtues of commerce are not only part of flourishing for the new individual, but are central to his identity as a member of the new state, as a producer and consumer. 'Commerce inspires in men,' Constant writes, 'a vivid love of individual independence. Commerce supplies their needs, satisfies their desires, without the intervention of authorities.'" (GARVER, p. 91)

"Phronesis has to be very different in contemporary circumstances, because it cannot be simply the orthos logos of the ethical virtues. It has jobs to do unimagined by Aristotle, because of the relation between virtue and techne and the increased role of techne in our lives. It is common to distinguish a slave society from a society with slaves. Similarly one can distinguish a technical or technological society from a society that contains technai. Aristotle's conceptions of ethical virtue, phronesis, and the good life make sense only within a nontechnological society, a society in which man's political nature is central. Living well requires a different kind of practical rationality when must negotiate a world dominated by techne." (GARVER, p. 92). For the record, I disagree and I'm not sure that Garver has made the case for this claim.

"Virtue functions as the differentia for saying what sort of energeia or activity happiness is. The genus of happiness (eudaimonia) is energeia, and its differentia is virtue, since happiness is energeia kat'areten (NE I.7.1098a16, I.8.1099a29-31, I.13.1102a5-6, Pol VII.1.1332a8-11, b23, VII.8.1328a37-38). Virtue, the differentia, then, designates the dunamis made active and actual in the energeia of happiness." (GARVER, p. 96) [PSA: it's not clear to me that the genos of eudaimonia is energeia; if so, what are the other members of this kind?]

"Virtue belongs in the definition of happiness as energeia kat'areten only if there is a necessary connection between virtue as the best condition of the desiring soul and a set of actions worth choosing and doing for their own sake.... Decision is that necessary connection between the two sides of virtue and of energeia. Since decision combines the efficient, formal, and final causes, virtuous actions are self-contained, self-justifying, their own end, in a way that sets them apart from other actions, just as natural substances are set off from other things in the Physics because, for any natural substance, the efficient, formal, and final causes are identical (Ph 11.7.198a25-27, PA I.1.641a25-28, GA I.1.715a4, Met XII.10.1075b8-10, DA II.4.415b12-21)." (GARVER, pp. 101-102) 

"[T]he vices take the external end as their end by making a passion into the principle of action. To make one's passion into a principle is a form of ignorance and error. The passions are indeterminate principles that prevent us from knowing the concrete individual." (GARVER, p. 110) I see this as a reference to practical truth and the fact that aphrosune prevents one from realizing that truth.

"The person of practical wisdom determines the mean amount of the passions by deliberating about how to achieve a given end. The mean is that hexis, that method of organizing passions into a deliberate desire (NE III.3.1113a10-12).... Only thus can moral goodness be understood as simply the complete and right development of the passions." (GARVER, p. 111) [PSA: it's unclear in what sense the mean is a *hexis*...]

"[P]ractical rationality involves self-knowledge, knowledge of oneself as a practical agent. Vice, by contrast, is ignorance of self. Hence my epigraph: 'Akrasia and vice are entirely different, for vice is unconscious whereas the akratic man is aware of his infirmity.' (NE VII.8.1150b35-36)" (GARVER, p. 113)

"Three properties of virtue correspond to the three dimensions of the vices I listed, corresponding respectively to the formal, efficient, and final causes: (1) virtues lie in a mean with regard to emotions, while the vices result from too much or too little emotion; (2) virtues choose what is appropriate; and (3) virtuous action is its own end, while vicious acts are always for the sake of something else.... Whoever divided the Ethics into books arranged the virtues according to which of these three each discussion emphasizes. The discussion of courage and temperance focuses on how these virtues are means with regard first to fear and confidence and then to the pleasures of taste and touch. Book IV shows how the virtues do what is appropriate, while the vices go wrong by giving to the wrong person, getting angry at the wrong time, giving pleasure in conversation in the wrong way. Justice, finally, requires extensive discussion of how just acts are done for their own sake and consequently are done from a just character. 'Justice is a mean, but not in the same way as the other virtues, but in the sense that it is related to a mean, while injustice relates to the extremes. Justice is that quality through which a man is said to be disposed to do by deliberate decision that which is just' (NE V.5.1133b32-1134a2). The argument begins from virtues best understood as a mean state with regard to the *emotions*, goes through virtues which we know through their characteristic *actions*, and ends with justice, which is manifested in action that is its own end and is characteristic of the just *person*. This development is an ethical progress from more passive to more active virtues." (GARVER, pp. 114-115) [PSA: As Thomas W. Smith observes in his book Revaluing Ethics, the argument then progresses even further through phronesis, then philia, then theoria.]

Commenting on Rhet II.12.1389a13-34, Garver notes: "Given their love of the noble and concomitant contempt for considerations of utility, ardent young men do not automatically develop into virtuous people. Similarly, the vices are not a regression to a common animal nature but a perversion of the human power to decide on and do things for their own sake." (GARVER, p. 119)

"Explaining why people should want to do things for their own sake is equivalent to explaining why good people should love and not just want to be loved. 'All people, or the majority of them, wish noble things but choose beneficial ones; and treating someone well, not in order to be repaid, is noble, but being the recipient of good service is beneficial' (NE VIII.13.1162b34-1163a1; see Rhet II.23.1399a28-32). The centrality of activity in Aristotle's thought comes into play here: 'It is rather the part of virtue to act well than to be acted upon well.' (NE IV.1.1120a11-12) 'It is a law of nature. Activity is a more desirable thing, and there is the same relation between effect and activity as between [the beloved and the lover]: the person benefited is as it were the product of the benefactor.' (EE VII.8.1240a40-b3)" (GARVER, p. 121)

"While modern morality defines itself in opposition to the political, Aristotle sees questions of the best human life as the subject of the science of politics (NE I.2.1094b27-28, 1095a2-11, EE 1216b35-39, 1219a33-35, 1234b22-24). Political wisdom and phronesis are the same quality of mind, although their essence is different (NE VI.8.1141b23-24). Achieving the good for the state is 'a nobler and more divine' (kallion kai theioteron) achievement than achieving the good for the individual (NE I.2.1094b7-10; see Pol VII.15.1334a11-15). The Ethics is a political inquiry, directed primarily at statesmen. We moderns have reversed the relation between ethics and politics. The Ethics presents a single good practical life, while the Politics offers a diversity of possible ways communities can organize themselves to live well. Today, we assume a plurality of ways of living well, with politics coordinating these differences by a modus vivendi, overlapping consensus, or public reason. In Aristotle different opinions about justice produce different states with different conceptions of the good life. Today different opinions about living well produce different moralities that have to be coordinated." (GARVER, p. 127)

"How can I square my claim that the moral virtues are political virtues with the distinction between the good man and the good citizen (Pol II.4.1276b13-33, III.8.1288a38-b2, IV.7.1293b5-7, VII.14.1333a11-12, NE V.2.1130b25-29)? The Ethics tells us that one cannot have ethical virtue without phronesis or phronesis without ethical virtue (NE VI.13.1144b30-32), while the Politics restricts phronesis to rulers. Even in the best state, he says there, it is 'only the statesman, the man who controls or is competent to control, either by himself or with others, who is essentially a good man' (Pol III.5.1278b4-5). I want to affirm the challenging implication of Aristotle's argument: *only rules can exercise full virtue...." [PSA: but in a true democracy, all citizens are rulers because they actively participate in rulership, or can do so, or frequently change places to do so] "Two features of the claim that 'phronesis is the only virtue peculiar to the ruler' need detailed consideration. First, in lines I quoted before, 'the ruler learns it by being ruled ... the good citizen should know and be able both to be ruled and to rule' (Pol III.4.1277b9-16; see IV.11.1295b5-25). We acquire phronesis through acting virtuously with true opinion, much as the citizen-soldier can become truly courageous." (GARVER, p. 144-145) [PSA: presumably by "true opinion" Garver means orthos logos = the correct account.]

"Aristotle says that acquiring wealth is not merely necessary, but the inference is that because there is no noble way of becoming wealthy, the good man possesses and uses, not acquires, wealth well.... The practical life lies between the life of money-making and the contemplative life, between pure necessity and pure purpose.... one of the practical functions of theoria is to keep the political life from degenerating into the economic, while the necessities serve to remind us that we cannot live as gods." (GARVER, p. 153) However, Garver quotes and comments as follows: "'There is no element of virtue in any of the occupations in which the multitude of artisans and market-people and the wage-earning class take part.' (Pol VI.2.1319a26-28) The body, the nutritive soul, and slavish occupations have virtues in the way sharp knives have virtue ... but such virtue is not political: we cannot do these things justly. Much of what we would regard as central to the good moral life Aristotle would consign to the realm of necessity." (GARVER, p. 154)

"Reason, the distinctively human power which is our natural end (Pol VII.15.1334b15), causes corruption as well as perfection: people evade responsibility using argument to excuse base acts: 'the many ... take refuge in arguments, thinking that they are doing philosophy, and that this is the way to become excellent people' (NE II.4.1105b12-14)." (GARVER, p. 164) "Ultimately and surprisingly, I believe that we need phronesis for metaphysics because we need the practical knowledge of how people realize their nature in order to fully understand substance, activity, and even god." (GARVER, p. 165) [PSA: That is, arete is the foundation of philosophy and we need to understand arete (including phronesis) from the inside out in order to reason well in more abstract domains.]

"'The activity of imperfect things is imperfect' (EE II.1.1219a37-38), and 'nothing incomplete is happy because it is not a whole' (b7-8). Aristotle organizes the Ethics and the Politics around the question he fails to raise in the Metaphysics. The crucial question is this: since happiness is an energeia of a certain sort, possessing the qualities that energeiai have of completeness and desirability, what kind of dunamis must it have [PSA: i.e., activate]?" (GARVER, p. 176)

"We cannot fully know about being without knowing about the good, and humans can know about the good only through reflection on the human good. Reflection on man's place in the cosmos is the task of theoria, the metaphysical task to which the ethical life leads and which satisfies the metaphysical urge, the drive toward energeia...." (GARVER, p. 178) [PSA: this is the task, that is, of the examined life.]

"People not only have to find the appropriate environment for actualization, but that environment must be a specifically human and made environment. Desires and ends are not inherently veridical like the senses. That human nature must erect the conditions for its own success allows Aristotle to say without contradiction that man is by nature a political animal while poleis are human products and thus not universally available (Pol I.4.1253a30-31) [PSA: or good; cf. Smith]. For the same reason he can say that virtue and happiness are both easy (NE I.9.1099b18-20) and difficult (II.6.1106b31-33, II.9.1109a25, V.9.1137a9-14)." (GARVER, pp. 178-179)

"Just as only humans can be happy, only people can be vicious rather than merely deformed (NE VII.7.1149b26-1150a8). Virtuous action creates the conditions for its own flourishing - temperance 'preserves phronesis (VI.5.1140b11-12) and 'virtue preserves the principle, while vice corrupts it; and in actions the end we act for is the principle (VII.8.1151a15-16) while vice destroys itself" [quoting NE IX.12/1172a1-14]. (GARVER, p. 179)

"Internalizing desire and the act of decision perfects practical rationality. 'Decision is the principle of praxis' (NE VI.2.1139b4-5; see Poet 6.1149b38-1450a2)." (GARVER, p. 186)

"While acquired, the virtues are more natural - because we are realized in them more fully - than the passions and dunameis that are natural in the sense of given, in the same way that the polis, more natural than the family, takes intentional effort and innovation (Pol I.4.1253a30-31). Virtuous second natures come into being through building and insides, a self. Instead of imitation, the relation of art to nature, we have second nature, the relation of an acquired hexis to the natural dunamis it realizes, neither art nor nature. The virtues become an internal principle, while techne, when successful, always remains an external principle.... The acquired habits of the virtues are themselves the energeiai and perfection of the natural powers." (GARVER, p. 187)

"When he distinguished phronesis from sophia, Aristotle told us that 'man is not the best thing in the universe' (NE VI.7.1141a20-21; see also 1141a34-1141b2, PA I.1.641a35-b12, EE I.1.1219a35-39, Pol VII.15.1334a22-33). The political life is not the best life only if man is not the best thing in the universe." (GARVER, p. 191)

"Happiness is an energeia made up of energeiai. The good person has to make his life one energeia out of many. He has to unify it while still respecting the integrity and value of the component energeiai. 'Nothing incomplete is happy because it is not a whole' (EE II.1.1219b7-8)." (GARVER, p. 193)

"Political activity points us to the contemplative life. Seen as many energeiai, the best life is political; seen as a single energeia, the best life is contemplative. 'The happy man will do and contemplate most of all the actions in accord with virtue' (NE I.10.1100b19-20; see also IV.2.1122a35, IX.4.1166a27, IX.9.1169b33-1170a4, EE I.6.1216b37, VII.12.1245b6). Since it is better to see one's life as a unity, the contemplative life is best, and the political life happy in a secondary way. And if the political life is happy in a secondary way, and if 'happiness extends just as far as theoria extends' (NE X.8.1178b28-29), then it follows from those two premises that *the political life is also theoretical*, although in a secondary way. What can that mean? While in NE X.8 Aristotle says that animals are not happy because they cannot engage in theoria (1178b24-25), he says earlier that animals are not happy because they do not engage in *ethical* activity (I.9.1109-1100a1; see also III.2.1111b6-10, EE I.7.1217a2-29, DA 434a5-10, Pol III.9.1280a32-24, HA I.1.488b24). Those two statements are consistent because to engage in ethical activity is to have all one needs for theoria. 'Living must be considered a kind of knowing' (EE VII.12.1244b29)." (GARVER, pp. 193-194)

"The philosophical life develops from the political life, but the two lives are not the same. Prior to deciding which is best, we have to know how [to] individuate the two lives: 'The question is raised even on the part of those who agree that the life accompanied by virtue is the most worthy of choice, whether the life of citizenship and activity is desirable or rather a life released from all external affairs, for example some sort of contemplative life, which is said by some to be the only life that is philosophic. It is manifest that [the political and the contemplative lives] are the only two modes of life principally chosen by the men most ambitious of excelling in virtue.' (Pol VII.2.1324a25-32) [see also footnote 14, p. 270: "Compare EE I.4.1215a33-b2: 'There are three ways of life in which those to whom fortune gives opportunity invariably choose to life, the life of politics, the life of philosophy, and the life of enjoyment.'"] One must decide which life is best. But as a coda he notes that some say that a contemplative life is the only philosophic life. At a minimum, then, the identity between the philosophic life and a life made up of contemplative acts is not self-evident. Theoria as the organizing principle of a life is not the same as theoria as the content of a life." (GARVER, p. 194) [PSA: this implies that the true philosphical life is the examined life, not the purely contemplative life.]

"If the best and most complete energeia is the energeia of the best and most complete virtue, then the best and most complete virtue will be in turn that virtue which completes and perfects all the virtues, and so completes and perfects our lives. Theoria allows us to see the place of our good actions in the world, to understand our lives as a unity, and thus to live better. We engage in theoria to the extent that we understand the true value of our activities and see our lives as good.... The philosophical life is distinct from the political life, but can only be lived by a good person." (GARVER, pp. 198-199)

"Theoria completes the political life just as self-awareness can complete any energeia." (GARVER, p. 201)

"There is no short-cut to theoria that avoids the complicated excellences of the political life. If our lives are good enough to be seen and lived as single complete energeia, we are living philosophically. And so he says: 'The happy man will do *and contemplate* what is in accordance with virtue' (NE I.10.1100b19-20). To lead a life of theoria, a divine life, is to lead an excellent, specifically human life." (GARVER, p. 201)

"While theoria is the activity of the virtue of sophia, it is the activity of the whole person, since the good person is identified with his reason (NE IX.4.1166a20-23, 1177b26-1178a7, EE II.7.1223b26-27, Pol VII.15.1334b15). The activity of the whole person realizes what is divine in us, making theoria both human and extrahuman." (GARVER, p. 202)

"Divine activity consists in the gods thinking about themselves. Two possible implications can be drawn for what the most divine human activity would be. First, we could infer that we too should think as far as possible about the divine, about the same things the gods think about. The gods think about their activity, and therefore we should think about the gods' activity. But we could equally infer that our activity is most divine when we, like the gods, think about our own activity. Like the gods thinking about thinking, the human philosophic life is an act of self-knowledge. We approach divine activity when we, like the gods, know ourselves (Met XII.9.1074b15-35)." (GARVER, pp. 203-204)

"Instead of phronimoi being wrong about their political lives being happy, they are wrong about their lives not being philosophical. Phronesis is a mode of self-knowledge. While their lives are rational and therefore contemplative, it is an inferior form of theoria and of happiness just because such people are not aware that they engage in theoria. They are not aware of it because their attention lies elsewhere. That is why I could say earlier that if the political life is happy in a secondary way, and if 'happiness and theoria are co-extensive' (NE X.8.1178b28-29), then it follows that the political life is also theoretical, although in a secondary way. People leading politically happy lives are not wrong about their lives. We were wrong about what theoria means." (GARVER, p. 207)

"While Thales and Anaxagoras can engage in individual acts of theoria, only the phronimos can know practically that the philosophical life is the best life. Therefore only the phronimos, and not people like Thales and Anaxagoras, can live a philosophical life. That Aristotle refuses to identify the philosophical life with traditional philosophical activities is signaled by his hedge when he says that 'perfect happiness is some form of contemplative activity' (NE X.8.1177a17-18, 1177b19-25, 1178b21-23)." (GARVER, p. 207)

"Is contemplation a separate and distinct act, one of reflection and recollection once the intensity of the moment has passed? Or do we contemplate while we are acting, as seeing that we see accompanies all perception?" (GARVER, p. 211) [PSA: See Aristotle's discussion of akrasia, and also the fact that hedone is a form of awareness.]

"Since the gods are pure energeia, they cannot be known by people who do not understand what an action that is its own good is. Humans understand divine activity only through knowing its similarities and differences from human activity. That is the final sense in which the political life is the necessary condition for theoria. The gods do not need [CHECKTHIS] ethical virtue in order to engage in theoria because their energeiai are given by their nature and do not need to be achieved, as human energeiai do. But we need ethical virtue to understand divine nature." (GARVER, p. 216)

"The political life and the philosphical life have different kinds of unity. Things made from heteregeneous parts are more natural, and have more significant unity, than those made from homogeneous parts (PA I.646a12-24, 646a35-b10, Pol IV.4.1290b25-39).... A whole made up of parts different in kind is a whole by integration; its nature comes from the whole.... The good man can lead an integrated life that is made up of a wide diversity of activities (see NE I.7.1097a34-b5). The integrated, philosophical life made up of a variety of practical activities is then a better kind of philosophical life than one spent studying theology." (GARVER, p. 217)

"'The right thing is to pray that what is good unconditionally will also be good for us, but to choose what is good for us.' (NE V.1.1129b6-7).... [W]hile my proof text from NE V.1 is about pleonexia and injustice, the fallacy in the inference pattern extends more widely: 'Superfluities are better than necessities, and sometimes more choiceworthy. For living well is better than living; and while living well is a superfluity, living itself is a necessity. Sometimes better things are not more choiceworthy. For example, philosophizing is better than making money, but it is not more choiceworthy for someone who lacks necessities. Superfluity exists when a person already in possession of necessities endeavors to acquire noble things as well. We shall perhaps not be far wrong if we say that what is necessary is more choiceworthy, while what is superfluous is better (Top III.2.118a7-15)." (GARVER, pp. 218-219)

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