Sorry, my summery left some important points in the dark. Aristotle is saying something like this:
When we say something is good, we say that it is a good X or Y, not good simpliciter. When we say someone is a good flute player, we don’t mean that they are good and a flute player, but that they are good qua flute player. By picking someone out as a good flute player, we are already deploying some idea of what it is that distinctively they do and what it is that they aim to do qua flute player.
Now, we’re presently asking ourselves what the good life is, and generally in ethics, we’re concerned with what it means to be a good human being. So, when we say ‘good human being’, what idea are we deploying about what human beings distinctively do and aim at qua human beings? Well, it looks like the thing human beings distinctively do is reason, and the thing they do well when we say they are good qua human being is live a life of virtue in accordance with reason.
And the rest of my book is supposed to explain and elaborate on that.
Souldn’t you skip straight to “If we think X is good, then X is good”?
This is kind of what he’s saying. Aristotle isn’t playing the “lets do ethics from scratch” game. He says explicitly that he is counting on his and his student’s intuitions to get the whole thing going. Ethical philosophy, he says, is only possible for people who were raised well and generally have a pretty good idea about right and wrong and stuff. Aristotle’s ethics is not about making people decent. You need that just to get started. Aristotle’s ethics is about making people extraordinary. It’s about greatness.
This is kind of what he’s saying. Aristotle isn’t playing the “lets do ethics from scratch” game. He says explicitly that he is counting on his and his student’s intuitions to get the whole thing going. Ethical philosophy, he says, is only possible for people who were raised well and generally have a pretty good idea about right and wrong and stuff.
Really? I’m reading Ed Feser right now, and he’s arguing very strongly that the only reason we don’t have objectively grounded ethics right now is that we’re not Aristotelians, and that the ability to objectively ground ethics is one of the biggest advantages of Aristotle over everyone else. He specifically attacks utilitarianism from an Aristotelian viewpoint for giving a moral criterion but not being able to prove from first principles that one should follow it.
Is he operating outside the Aristotelian mainstream?
Is he operating outside the Aristotelian mainstream?
No, I kind of agree with that, though I don’t think he knows what he’s getting himself into. An appeal to intuitions doesn’t take Aristotle out of the objective morality game, and the ‘function argument’ is pretty preliminary.
Aristotle’s ethics is monumentally, catastrophically evil. I think it’s also the perhaps the only real ethical theory we’ve ever come up with, which is a problem. Aristotle isn’t okay with slavery, he positively argues for it. He would say that if we didn’t have slavery, we should start, because slavery is a good thing. He thinks infanticide is a reasonable way to deal with population issues because children are ethically valueless. He is super evil.
Sorry, my summery left some important points in the dark. Aristotle is saying something like this:
When we say something is good, we say that it is a good X or Y, not good simpliciter. When we say someone is a good flute player, we don’t mean that they are good and a flute player, but that they are good qua flute player. By picking someone out as a good flute player, we are already deploying some idea of what it is that distinctively they do and what it is that they aim to do qua flute player.
Now, we’re presently asking ourselves what the good life is, and generally in ethics, we’re concerned with what it means to be a good human being. So, when we say ‘good human being’, what idea are we deploying about what human beings distinctively do and aim at qua human beings? Well, it looks like the thing human beings distinctively do is reason, and the thing they do well when we say they are good qua human being is live a life of virtue in accordance with reason.
And the rest of my book is supposed to explain and elaborate on that.
This is kind of what he’s saying. Aristotle isn’t playing the “lets do ethics from scratch” game. He says explicitly that he is counting on his and his student’s intuitions to get the whole thing going. Ethical philosophy, he says, is only possible for people who were raised well and generally have a pretty good idea about right and wrong and stuff. Aristotle’s ethics is not about making people decent. You need that just to get started. Aristotle’s ethics is about making people extraordinary. It’s about greatness.
Really? I’m reading Ed Feser right now, and he’s arguing very strongly that the only reason we don’t have objectively grounded ethics right now is that we’re not Aristotelians, and that the ability to objectively ground ethics is one of the biggest advantages of Aristotle over everyone else. He specifically attacks utilitarianism from an Aristotelian viewpoint for giving a moral criterion but not being able to prove from first principles that one should follow it.
Is he operating outside the Aristotelian mainstream?
No, I kind of agree with that, though I don’t think he knows what he’s getting himself into. An appeal to intuitions doesn’t take Aristotle out of the objective morality game, and the ‘function argument’ is pretty preliminary.
Aristotle’s ethics is monumentally, catastrophically evil. I think it’s also the perhaps the only real ethical theory we’ve ever come up with, which is a problem. Aristotle isn’t okay with slavery, he positively argues for it. He would say that if we didn’t have slavery, we should start, because slavery is a good thing. He thinks infanticide is a reasonable way to deal with population issues because children are ethically valueless. He is super evil.