Phl 303

Lecture 2:Plato and Aristotle

Lecture 2: Plato and Aristotle
I. Plato's Radical Idea
Plato vs. the Sophists
Plato's Radical Claim
Plato's Method
II. Aristotle's Refinement of the Idea
Aristotle's Theory of the World
Aristotle's Theory of Happinesss
A. Plato vs. the Sophists
Plato is attacking 3 theses of the Sophists:
1. Value is relative: if something seems right/good to you, it is right/good for you. No gap
between reality and appearance.
2. Virtue is a second-best option. Valuable only as a means to greater social reward. The
very best option: prosperous immorality..
3. Moral norms are social constructs, purely conventional.
Plato counters these with an alternative theory.
Analogy between physical health and health of the soul/mind.
1. Both are anchored in facts about human nature.
2. Both can be studied scientifically, objectively.
3. Both are valued for their own sake.
Key: distinction between appearance and reality.
Appearing healthy vs. really being healthy.
Pleasure is the appearance of health, not the underlying reality.
The distinction between appearance and reality leads to a second distinction:
Doing what one pleases
Doing what one wills
We will the ultimate object of our acts.
When we take medicine, we will to be healthy.
When we enter business, we will to make profit.
We can make mistakes. Then we do what we please, but not what we will.
• Taking a quack cure.
• Investing in Russian stock options.
• Living an immoral life.
Ultimately,we all will to be happy, to lead a good life, to live well ("eudaemonia")
What is happiness?
B. Plato's radical claim:
To be virtuous,even with torture,ignominy, and death, is to live better than to be vicious with
prosperity and long life.
One should pity the wicked, especially if they escape punishment!
How does Plato defend this claim?
C. The Socratic method
"My method is to call in support of my statements the evidence of a single witness, the man I am
arguing with."
Asking questions, and guiding the reasoning of the participant, step by step.
Assumption: there are things you cannot not know. Natural knowledge of ethics.
This knowledge can be implicit (suppressed?). Socratic questioning is used to make the
knowledge explicit, conscious.
The arguments:
1. To act righteously is to do a fine thing.
2. Fine things are either pleasant or beneficial, or both.
3. To act righteously is not (typically) pleasant.
Therefore, to act righteously is beneficial.
1. To punish an evildoer is to do a fine thing to him.
2. Fine things are either pleasant or beneficial or both.
3. To be punished is not pleasant.
Therefore, to be punished is beneficial.
Problems with the arguments?
Pleasant or beneficial to whom? To the one acting righteously, or to others in his society, or to
disinterested onlookers?
To the one being punished, or to the punishers, or to third parties?
The proofs are inconclusive.
What is important: Plato has proposed an alternative to the relativism of the Sophists, one that is
open to scientific,philosophical inquiry.
1. All human beings will the same thing-- to live well.
2. Living well consists in being virtuous.
If this is correct, it follows that:
1. Value is not relative to the subjective perception of the individual. There are true and
false perceptions of happiness.
2. Moral virtue is valuable in itself, not merely as a means to getting on in society.
 3. The standard of value and of moral virtue is to be found in human nature, not in social
conventions.
Is it correct?
II. Aristotle's Refinement of the Idea
Aristotle: student of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great.
Father of Biology.
A. Aristotle's Theory of the World
Aristotle rejected the materialism of many of his predecessors: Empedocles, Democritus.
The Four Causes (ways of explaining things):
1. Formal
2. Final (teleological)
3. Efficient
4. Material
The standard example: a bronze commemorative statue
1. Formal cause: shape of the bronze, its resemblance to military hero on horseback
2. Final cause: its purpose as a commemoration of bravery and service
3. Efficient cause: its origin in a bronze forge
4. Material cause: the mixture of metals in its alloy
Organs have all 4 causes: the heart
1. Formal cause: the specific configuration of parts that make up a healthy, working heart
2. Final cause: its purpose as a blood pump
3. Efficient cause: its origin in the intrauterine development of the fetus
4. Material cause: the various tissues (muscle, blood vessels, nerves) that constitute its
substance
Organisms also: the human being
1. Formal cause: the human "soul", with three aspects: vegetative, perceptual/motor, and
rational
2. Final cause: eudaemonia
3. Efficient cause: the processes of human reproduction
4. Material cause: the various organs and internal systems
Atomism vs. Holism
Atomists (materialists): the parts are prior to the whole. The whole (human being) can be
understood completely by understanding the parts of the body and their interaction.
Holists (Aristotle): the whole is prior to the parts. The parts of the body cannot be understood
apart from the contribution they make to the proper functioning of the whole.
Key issue: legitimacy of final/teleological explanation.
Do organic systems (including human beings) really have purposes, have they really been
designed, or do they only appear so?
B. Aristotle on Happiness
What is Happiness?
The comprehensive, ultimate final cause of human life -- the end for which humans have been
designed.
Distinguish Three Things:
1. Necessary conditions for happiness
Material goods, freedom, virtue, health, availability of friends, rest and recreation
2. Components of happiness
Intellectual activity (learning, inquiring, contemplating), active civic/political life,
friendship, sports/athletics, creating/enjoying art
3. By-products and symptoms of happiness
Pleasure, enjoyment, contentment
Disagrees with Plato: virtue and health are not components of happiness -- they are necessary
conditions of happiness
Disagrees with the hedonist: pleasure is not happiness, it is merely an indicator or perception of
happiness.
Can have false, illusory pleasures.
Aristotle's definition:
Happiness is a complete, active life, lived according to reason.
How does Aristotle identify happiness?
• Subjective step: happiness = our most final end, the self-sufficient end.
• Objective step: our most final, self-sufficent end = our final cause.
The Subjective Step
• All of our actions have a purpose or end: either internal (for their own sake) or external
(as means to a further end).
• There must be some thing that are final ends -- desired for themselves, not merely as
ends.
• Happiness is, by definition, our ³most final end²
• Happiness is most final: we always desire it for itself, never for anything else.
• Happiness is clearly self-sufficient: if you have happiness, what more could you want?
The Objective Step
• Assume that human beings have a function (the performing of which is our final cause)
and that our will (including our desires and our deliberations) are themselves functional.
• Aristotle assumes a principle of harmony: the functioning of a part contributes to the
functioning of the whole.
 1. Our most final end is that which (through the agency of the willl) most reliably
shapes our lives as a whole.
2. What most reliably shapes our lives as a whole, through the agency of some
functional part, is our final cause.
3. Happiness is our most final end.
4. Therefore, happiness = our final cause.

Last updated February 5, 2001

Created by: Robert C. Koons
Send comments to: koons@la.utexas.edu
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