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Pleasure is discussed throughout the whole Ethics, but is given a final more focused and theoretical treatment in Book X. Aristotle starts by questioning the rule of thumb which was accepted as in the more approximate early sections, whereby people think pleasure should be avoided, if not because it is bad simply, then because people tend too much towards pleasure seeking. He argues that people's actions show that this is not really what they believe. He reviews some arguments of previous philosophers, including first Eudoxus and Plato, to argue that pleasure is clearly a good which is pursued for its own sake even if it is not "The Good", or in other words that which all good things have in common. In chapter 3 Aristotle applies to pleasure his theory of motion (kinēsis) as an energeia as explained in his Physics and Metaphysics. In terms of this approach, pleasure is not a movement or (kinēsis) because unlike the movement of walking across a specific room, or of building a house, or a part of a house, it has no end point when we can say it is completed. It is more like seeing which is either happening in a complete way or not happening. "Each moment of pleasurable consciousness is a perfect whole."[107] A sense perception like sight is in perfect activity (teleia energeia) when it is in its best conditions and directed at the best objects. And when any sense is in such perfect activity, then there is pleasure, and similarly thinking (dianoia) and contemplation (theōria) have associated pleasures. But seeing, for example is a whole, as is the associated pleasure. Pleasure does not complete the seeing or thinking, but is an extra activity, just as a healthy person can have an extra good "bloom of well-being".[108] This raises the question of why pleasure does not last, but seem to fade as if we get tired. Aristotle proposes as a solution to this that pleasure is pursued because of desire to live. Life is an activity (energeia) made up of many activities such as music, thinking and contemplation, and pleasure brings the above-mentioned extra completion to each of these, bringing fulfillment and making life worthy of choice. Aristotle says we can dismiss the question of whether we live for pleasure or choose pleasure for the sake of living, for the two activities seem incapable of being separated.[109] Different activities in life, the different sense perceptions, thinking, contemplating, bring different pleasures, and these pleasures make the activities grow, for example a flute player gets better at it as they also get more pleasure from it. But these pleasures and their associated activities also impede with each other just as a flute player cannot participate in an argument while playing. This raises the question of which pleasures are more to be pursued. Some pleasures are more beautiful and some are more base or corrupt. Aristotle ranks some of them as follows:[110] thinking sight hearing and smell taste Aristotle also argues that each type of animal has pleasures which are more appropriate to it, and in the same way there can be differences between people and what pleasures are most suitable to them. Aristotle proposes that it would be most beautiful to say that the person of serious moral stature is the appropriate standard, with whatever things they enjoy being the things most pleasant.[111] Book X. Chapters 6-8: Happiness Turning to happiness then, the aim of the whole Ethics; according to the original definition of Book I it is the activity or being-at-work chosen for its own sake by a morally serious and virtuous person. This raises the question of why play and bodily pleasures cannot be happiness, because for example tyrants sometimes choose such lifestyles. But Aristotle compares tyrants to children, and argues that play and relaxation are best seen not as ends in themselves, but as activities for the sake of more serious living. Any random person can enjoy bodily pleasures, including a slave, and no one would want to be a slave.[112] Aristotle says that if perfect happiness is activity in accordance with the highest virtue, then this highest virtue must be the virtue of the highest part, and Aristotle says this must be the intellect (nous) "or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine". This highest activity, Aristotle says, must be contemplation or speculative thinking (energeia ... theōrētikē). This is also the most sustainable, pleasant, self-sufficient activity; something aimed at for its own sake. (In contrast to politics and warfare it does not involve doing things we'd rather not do, but rather something we do at our leisure.) However, Aristotle says this aim is not strictly human, and that to achieve it means to live in accordance not with our mortal thoughts but with something immortal and divine which is within humans. According to Aristotle, contemplation is the only type of happy activity which it would not be ridiculous to imagine the gods having. The intellect is indeed each person's true self, and this type of happiness would be the happiness most suited to humans, with both happiness (eudaimonia) and the intellect (nous) being things other animals do not have. Aristotle also claims that compared to other virtues, contemplation requires the least in terms of possessions and allows the most self-reliance, "though it is true that, being a man and living in the society of others, he chooses to engage in virtuous action, and so will need external goods to carry on his life as a human being".[113] Book X. Chapter 9: The need for education, habituation and good laws Young Spartans Exercising by Edgar Degas (1834-1917). Aristotle approved of how Spartan law focused upon up-bringing. Finally, Aristotle repeats that the discussion of the Ethics has not reached its aim if it has no effect in practice. Theories are not enough. However, the practice of virtue requires good education and habituation from an early age in the community. Young people otherwise do not ever get to experience the highest forms of pleasure and are distracted by the easiest ones. While parents often attempt to do this, it is critical that there are also good laws in the community. But concerning this need for good laws and education Aristotle says that there has always been a problem, which he is now seeking to address: unlike in the case of medical science, theoreticians of happiness and teachers of virtue such as sophists never have practical experience themselves, whereas good parents and law makers have never theorized and developed a scientific approach to analyzing what the best laws are. Furthermore, very few law-makers, perhaps only the Spartans, have made education the focus of law making, as they should. Education needs to be more like medicine, with both practice and theory, and this requires a new approach to studying politics. Such study should, he says, even help in communities where the laws are not good and the parents need to try to create the right habits in young people themselves without the right help from law-makers. Aristotle closes the Nicomachean Ethics therefore by announcing a programme of study in politics, including the collecting of studies of different constitutions, and the results of this programme are generally assumed to be contained in the work which exists today and is known as the Politics.[114] |
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