For someone who predated Christ by about 350 years, Aristotle sure seems to have a pretty Christian view of God. God, for Aristotle, is the First Cause: that which created the universe and set everything in motion. God is “pure thought, for thought is what is best” (Russell 168). “We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God” (1072b). I’m transported back to my Sunday School classes, wherein God Almighty was described as the creator of the universe, an omnipresent living love, eternal and perfect.
There’s a good reason for this similarity, of course. Aristotle was the primary inspiration for Christian theology until at least the 17th century AD. That’s 2000 years of hegemonic Aristotelian thought, transposed to fit the story of Christ. Thomas Aquinas is basically just a Catholic Aristotle, but even more pedantic!
Some features of Aristotelian theology are unrecognizable to modern Christians, however. For instance, Christians think that God is thinking about them all the time. Aristotle says that’s beneath God’s station; “It must be of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things)…” (1074b). God spends all of God’s time thinking about God, since the most perfect thing to do is to think, and the most perfect thing to think about is God, and God only does perfect things. Pretty self-absorbed if you ask me.
There’s a good reason for prefacing this piece about the soul and Aristotelian ethics with stuff about God. Aristotle, like most of his ancient Greek predecessors, prefers contemplation to action. His theology is only the most obvious expression of that preference. God is pure thought. God does not act in the world; in fact, in God’s self-absorption, “we must infer that God does not know of the existence of our sublunary world” (Russell 168). So, too, for humans—to act well is virtuous, but to contemplate is divine. As we’ll see, though, in order to contemplate you have to have some time on your hands—and who is likely to have that time? The aristocracy.
What about the soul?
For Aristotle, the notion that “humans have souls” is as obvious as the notion that “God is,” and for a parallel reason. The argument for God is that there must be a final cause of that which is; we call that final cause God. The argument for souls is that there must be a final cause of the body. Human bodies exist and move within the world; the soul is that part of the body that has purpose, that causes the body to move. “[The soul] is the ‘essential whatness’ of a body…” (412b). It’s because of our souls that we do anything at all—just like it is because of God, the final cause, that anything in the universe moves at all.
Aristotle also distinguishes between “soul” and “mind.” Quoting Russell: “The mind is the part of us that understands mathematics and philosophy; its objects are timeless, and therefore it is regarded as itself timeless” (170). The soul is bound up with the body, but the mind is higher than the soul, and thereby less bound to the body. In fact, though the soul is mortal and dies with the body, the mind is the part of us that is closest to immortal, as its “objects” are timeless. Or, at least, that is the (simplified” notion Aristotle puts forth in his book On the Soul.
In Nicomachean Ethics, he makes a similar, though not identical, distinction. Here, he divides the human soul into constituent parts: the “vegetative,” the “appetitive,” and the “rational.” All living beings possess the vegetative soul, even plants (hence the name), which has as its final end life itself. All animals possess the appetitive soul. Only humans possess the rational soul.
In either case, Aristotle makes clear that the life of the mind, or the rational part of the soul, is humanity’s highest purpose. “The life of the rational soul consists in contemplation, which is the complete happiness of man, though not fully attainable” (Russell 171). To the extent that we are dragged down by lower purposes, we fail to reach our human potential; but we can never fully divorce ourselves from the appetitive and vegetative parts of our soul, since we are tied to our bodies. But the hierarchy is clear: a good life is one which is more concerned with the life of the mind than other virtues.
Interestingly, this approach implies a kind of conformity of a “good life.” To the extent which we are different from each other as humans, those differences are tied to our bodies, or to the “lower” portions of our soul. The rational soul, however, is divine and impersonal. Russell puts it this way: “The irrational separates us, the rational unites us. Thus the immortality of mind or reason is not a personal immortality of separate men, but a share in God’s immortality” (172).
Perhaps this makes some sense: If we are rational to the extent that our understanding of, say, mathematics and philosophy approaches the capital-T Truth, then more rational minds would converge as they approach the Truth. Regarding knowledge, we are individuals to the extent in which we are ignorant or wrong about the world. But if rational minds work to closely match their maps to the territory, they will find themselves more often in agreement.
A Critique of Pure Contemplation
By now, it is probably clear that for Aristotle, ethics is a pursuit of the privileged. It’s hard to spend much time in contemplation if you have to worry about putting food on the table. Numerous studies have linked high financial stress with worse academic performance.
Aristotle’s project is not, however, to develop a democratic theory of ethics. His is an ethics for, as Russell says, the “respectably middle-aged” (173). Still, it is worth examining his theory closely and determining how, if at all, we can apply Aristotelian ethics in our contemporary world.
As Aristotle lays out in Nicomachean Ethics, happiness is our soul’s ultimate purpose. At the end of the day, all that we do, we do in order to be happy. This he has in common with utilitarians, whose prime ethical principle is to maximize global happiness—“the greatest good for the greatest number” and all that. But Aristotle doesn’t take this global view—in his ethics, each individual must act virtuously in order to serve their own happiness. And insofar as we act according to the rational part of our soul, we act virtuously, and thereby serve our happiness.
The rational part of the soul is the arbiter of virtue. For Aristotle, there is no single ethical principle to follow. We cannot simply be virtuous by following, for example, the principle of utility, or Kant’s categorical imperative. Rather, we learn to be virtuous from moral exemplars, and by performing virtuous acts. In essence, we “fake it ‘til we make it”: we learn by doing, and from the example of our betters. And we thereby habituate the rational part of our souls to better understand what virtue is.
A key part of Aristotelian ethics, and the one most familiar to most people, is the “Golden Mean.” On this view, all virtue is a midpoint between two vices. Courage, for instance, is the virtuous midpoint between cowardice and recklessness. So too with generosity—the midpoint between profligacy and stinginess; and honesty—between dishonesty and brutal honesty.
The exact dimensions of virtue, on this view, are situated in context. For this reason, it is hard to know what the right thing to do is; even harder to do it.
Hence also it is no easy task to be good…[A]nyone can get angry—that is easy—or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.
So, for Aristotle, becoming virtuous is a process that takes place in a complete life. It is a process of becoming, rather than being.
So far, perhaps, this sounds acceptable. We could all stand to learn from our betters when contemplating the “right thing to do,” we could all stand to learn more by doing. The golden mean is attractive in its aversion to one-size-fits-all ethical principles and with its attention to context. And the recognition of the impossibility of finally becoming truly virtuous matches with our understanding of human weakness and imperfection, while also allowing room for growth rather than implying a fatalistic, static moral existence.
But there’s a catch. Recall that the mind, the rational part of the soul, takes priority for Aristotle; that for him, contemplation is always more perfect than action. This divide shows up in his ethics, too.
Aristotle distinguishes between intellectual virtues and moral virtues. Intellectual virtues are associated with the rational part of the soul; moral virtues, with the “appetitive” part of the soul. Naturally, the intellectual virtues are more perfect than the moral virtues.
This leads to an inexorable conclusion, as expressed here by Russell:
Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative…Practical virtue brings only a secondary kind of happiness; the supreme happiness is in the exercise of reason, for reason, more than anything else, is man (181).
The extent to which this view favors an aristocratic elite—indeed only truly addresses such an elite—is obvious. Who has the leisure time, energy, and education to most perfectly practice contemplative, intellectual virtues? The few, or in modern terms, the 1%. Russell points this out as well: “Not only is there no objection to slavery, or to the superiority of husbands and fathers over wives and children, but it is held that what is best is essentially only for the few—proud men and philosophers” (183, emphasis added).
(Interestingly, despite Aristotle’s view of God being strikingly similar to the Christian view, his ethics are far from Christian. Per Russell: “The Stoic-Christian view…must hold that virtue is as possible for the slave as for his master. Christian ethics disapproves of pride, which Aristotle thinks a virtue, and praises humility, which he thinks a vice” (177). Christian ethics is much more compatible with a modern, social justice-oriented ethics than Aristotelian ethics is.)
Modern application
What 21st century problems does Aristotelian ethics credibly address, and what problems are better addressed by a different ethical framework? Aristotelian ethics more or less works well for so-called First World Problems, especially at the individual level. The Golden Mean is an especially useful heuristic here, as it is likely much more difficult to live according to strict Kantian or utilitarian principles (which are maximalist, leaving no room for moderation). Such problems might include:
Choosing one’s food - trend toward eating less meat
Choosing one’s level of internet use - e.g., sensibly limiting one’s social media consumption
Choosing lighter carbon footprint activities, e.g. flying less often
Choosing one’s career - e.g., not based solely on earning potential or interest, but also on the good one can do (not necessarily as understood within, say, effective altruism, but rather with an eye to the Aristotelian understanding of magnanimity, as attainable through one’s career)
Choosing what to learn about the world - Aristotelian ethics would likely encourage broad, shallow learning as opposed to deep, narrow learning
Choosing how to be in relationship with others - e.g., prioritizing comity and loyalty to one’s friends rather than unwavering honesty or excessive generosity
So perhaps, for those of us who inhabit the higher rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy more often, Aristotelian ethics offers useful insights as to how we should think about our choices. But there is little in Aristotelian ethics for the majority of the global population, or, for that matter, anyone without the luxury of choice (or without the time/resources to think about how to make good choices).
Think of it this way. Median per capita income, globally, is about $3000/year. That implies that the median human lives on ~$8/day. While this is not extreme poverty (typically defined as a quarter of this, $2/day), it’s obvious that anyone living in such financial conditions lacks so much of the choice that most Americans take for granted. This is true both in market capitalism—there would be no question of choosing more expensive food, choosing one’s career, etc.—and in the negative externalities caused by such financial conditions, like stress and lack of free time, that also limit choice. If you have to commute for hours to your low wage job, take on 40+ hours of week, care for your family and your house by yourself, you’re going to have a lot less time to contemplate and learn about the world. Et cetera.
In short, it’s all well and good to choose the better, more moderate option when you have a choice. But most of the world lives with much less choice than the median American. Aristotelian ethics was never meant to address such people, and there is nothing internally incoherent about his ethics as a result. But ethics in the 21st century should be inclusive. The world is a lot bigger now, and the good life should be available to all.
The more antiquated aspects of Aristotelian ethics, those rooted in his metaphysics, are of course inadequate to the task of understanding how to live well in the 21st century. There is little to be gained by dividing the soul into various parts, for example, or by claiming that rationality is communion with the divine. I would hazard a guess that most people’s idea of the good life is at least somewhat compatible with the Golden Mean and the idea of becoming virtuous by doing virtuous things, but incompatible with such metaphysical distinctions. In other words, I hardly think it necessary to accept Aristotle’s theory of the soul or the divine in order to live well.
Aristotelian ethics is not well-suited to problems outside affluent individuals’ choices. This is not in itself a critique; Aristotle didn’t see himself as advancing a population-wide ethics, he spoke to the individual aristocrat. Nevertheless, humanity in the 21st century faces some really tough problems—climate change, structural racism and inequality, existential risk, poor health care and energy infrastructure, antidemocratic movements and institutions, etc. All of these limit individual autonomy and render Aristotelian ethics increasingly obsolete. Our ethical lens should reflect the enormity of the challenges ahead.