Philosophical Titans: Aristotle

Who was Aristotle?

Aristotle might be one of the most famous philosophers to ever exist. A student of Plato, and a tutor to Alexander the Great, over his lifetime he produced a variety of inter-related theories on life, the universe and its processes.

For anyone even slightly interested in Philosophy, he’s an excellent place to start.

Within my philosophical education, he was a very important figure, in particular, his work the Nicomachean Ethics. This is the what I'm going to discuss today.

💡Famous Fact

He systematised syllogistic logic - one of the most famous and widely used forms of deductive logic.

Here’s the famous example:

P1: All men are mortal

P2: Socrates is a man;

C: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The Nichomachean Ethics sketches an account of ethics that is rooted in a proposed human essence. This is as good a ground as any for arguing for a particular theory. So let’s see how it looked:

Here it is:

”The function of a human being is an activity of soul in accordance with reason; and the human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.”

This idea is obviously very exciting. To the untrained eye, it seems to promise certainty regarding the right way to be.

This was at least the conclusion that I drew when I discovered Aristotle’s ethics. The logic is convincing.

For context, let me elaborate a bit more on how Aristotle came to this conclusion:

In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses various objects in the world, and correctly argues that each one has a function, an essence. The “what-it-is-to-be” a particular object.

The good of the object, in Aristotle’s view, is that it functions correctly, in alignment with its end.

You might take a simple example like an eye. The function of an eye is to….see. And the eye’s good then is to see well; to carry out its function well.

You can take a flute-player, a footballer or anything else as an example, and see that each thing has a function, and the good of the thing is that it carries out its function well.

Given this, all that’s necessary is for us to identify the function or essence of the human being, and extrapolate from there to its good, and presto: we have the meaning of life for each human - it’s the above, to act in accordance with reason, and to do it well is to act in accordance with virtue.

I’m sure by now you might have some questions.

The problem with this claim is that there are very many concepts to unpack, and assumptions to clarify. Here's a few that I'm interested in:

1. For one, what is a soul? Do we even have one?

2. Second, why is our function to act in accordance with reason?

3. Three, why is virtue the good of our function, and subsequently, the good of reason?

   
   

There are answers to these questions, but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether they’re good ones.

1. The soul as Aristotle understands it is the life-force of natural things. In that way, only living things can have a soul, and Aristotle splits the types of soul into 3: vegetative, appetitive, and rational.

   
   

   Aristotle was a big fan of categorisation, and in relation to the soul, he categorises living things into different categories with different souls.

   
   

   Plants have a vegetative soul, animals an appetitive soul, and humans a rational soul.

   There is a lot more to say about this, and Aristotle rightly dedicates an entire book to this discussion, but for our purposes, the final piece of the puzzle is to understand that humans possess a rational soul because they, for Aristotle, were the animal whose characteristic activity involves reason. In this way, Aristotle creates a tiered system of functions attributed to different living things, with the capacity to think rationally being the function that only humans possess.

   
   

2. Now, it is reasonable to think that this is wrong. Modern science has produced significant evidence concerning the varying capacity for rationality to exist within different animals such as dolphins, octopuses, and chimpanzees. This spoils the party in some way, as it raises questions concerning whether the function of human beings is activity in accordance with its rational soul. For this would mean we were no different to other rational animals, which generally doesn’t seem to be the case.

   
   

   However, we can grant Aristotle some leeway, and accept that humans are distinct as a species in many ways, and rationality, or human-rationality, is unique to us, and we don’t see other species do all the things that we do.

   
   

   Even if we accept the rationality claim, I would argue that this doesn’t really capture our function anyway. Why?

   
   

   Well, we have recently borne witness to a much more rational species in our world: Artificial Intelligence. I’d argue it’s more accurate to say that the characteristic function of AI systems is reason.

   
   

   Humans are more than just reason, we possess the capacities associated with the other souls Aristotle identifies as well, we are vegetative and nutritive; we breathe, need sun, and have desires. We just also have the capacities of the rational soul as well. This makes our essence an amalgamation of all these capacities: a balance of necessities, desires and reasons.

   
   

   So perhaps our characteristic function needs to be altered from reason, or at the least, more accurately explained as a form of reason that extends from lower-order functions similar to those in plants and animals, and in this way, is unique as a system that is responsive to reasons.

   
   

   That said, we can give Aristotle the benefit of doubt, it is still a very plausible representation of our characteristic function. We are rational in very unique ways.

   
   

3. The final question we have to answer is the best.

   
   

   Let’s accept that we are essentially rational, and that our function is to act in accordance with this.

   
   

   Why though - is virtue the good of reason?

   
   

   Is there any reason for thinking that the end of reason is necessarily virtuous? You could reasonably argue that a very competent supervillain is acting in accordance with reason, and if they are utilising it effectively, they are living properly.

   
   

   This is the most interesting aspect of Aristotle’s claim - as it conditions proper functioning with virtue. That is, the claim is that it is essential to be good in order to be truly be human.

   
   

It’s this thought I’d like to end with.

There are various interpretations of Aristotle’s claim regarding the human essence, and much more detail and elaborations on the structure of this claim - so I would encourage you to read on and develop your thinking on the matter.

Personally, I think the human essence and the subsequent ethical theory is a great way of living, and allows enough flexibility for you to still live your life without feeling unnecessary constraint. What do you think?

See you next time,

Sam