political arrangements that aim at the common interest are correct in conforming to what is unqualifiedly just, while those that aim at the interest of their rulers alone are all mistaken and are perversions of the correct political arrangements”.19
Not only does Aristotle equate unqualified justice with
lawfulness, but to have particular justice as a character virtue
means to assume the perspective of a good citizen. Particular
justice, whether distributive or corrective in kind, is concerned with external goods of fortune,20 especial y those of which one could want
and take more of than one’s fair share: honor, wealth, and safety.21
In the Nicomachean Ethics, there is an overlap between Aristotle’s discussion of particular justice (or injustice) with respect to honor, wealth, and safety, and his treatment of the virtues of magnanimity22
and proper pride,23 which are concerned with honor; liberality24
and magnificence,25 which are relevant to wealth; and courage,26
which deals with safety. If there is to be a clear distinction between (particular) justice and these other particular virtues, it is that the latter concern honor, wealth, and safety as such in their significance for oneself, whereas the particular virtue of justice is concerned with them in respect to one’s attitude towards other citizens who are also
more or less entitled to them.
In other words, Universal justice encompasses particular justice
(as one virtue among others) and is, in turn, the socio-political
condition for the possibility of all of the other particular virtues
19 Ibid., 1279a17-20, my emphasis.
20 Ibid., 1129b1-3.
21 Ibid., 1130b2.
22 Ibid.,
Nicomachean Ethics, IV. 3.
23 Ibid., Nicomachean Ethics, IV.4.
24 Ibid.,
Nicomachean Ethics, IV.1.
25 Ibid.,
Nicomachean Ethics, IV.2.
26 Ibid.,
Nicomachean Ethics, III. 6-9.
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whose practice alone allows human beings to fulfill their purpose.
If having been properly habituated from childhood counts for
everything in virtue, and each virtuous person was at one point a child who needed to be raised by already virtuous parents who
also were once children in need of proper habituation, then where
does the chain of responsibility end? It cannot be traced in a linear
manner back to a particular person or group of persons – even to a
sagacious lawgiver of the past, such as Solon. Rather, for Aristotle,
its “end” must lie in the circular structure of the self-perpetuating
polis: the abode of the eternal essence of Man. This turns the polis into both the creative matrix through which all beings come to be,
and the crowning accomplishment whose excellence is that for-the-
sake-of-which all things, artificial and natural, have their being.
To be sure, Aristotle never explicitly sets forth this view.
Nevertheless, it is a legitimate development from out of the tensions
in Aristotle’s thinking, and something like it is in order if he is to justify the following statement in his Politics, which contradicts the quotations from Nicomachean Ethics that open this paper: “we set down that the highest good is the end of politics... it takes the greatest part of its pains to produce citizens of a certain sort, namely, ones
that are good and inclined to perform beautiful actions.”27 If Man
– taken not as an individual, but collectively in the polis – were essential y one with Nature’s God, then the highest good would
indeed be the end of politics. Political activity, which opens the space for all other uses of the logos definitive of being human, would be the “divine” final cause even of “the things out of which the cosmos
is composed.”28 Indeed, the political subordinates all theoretical
understanding of Nature. The word “theory” stems from the
Greek verb theorein, the noun belonging to which is theoria; these words involve a conflation of two more basic ones, thea and horao
– which taken together mean to attentively see to the appearance
or manifestation of things in an engaged and absorbed manner
that abides with them. This root thea is also the basis of the Greek 27 Ibid., 1099b29-33, my emphasis.
28 Ibid., 1141b2.
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word theatron or “place” ( -tron) of “viewing”, from which we have derived “theater.” The active intellect does not creatively actualize
phenomena in isolation, but by building the viewing-place of the
polis.
3. The Master Craftsmen
It might seem that Aristotle’s notion of the gods in certain passages in the Nicomachean Ethics29 violates the essential identity of the singular divine Being and collective socio-political human
existence, for which I have been arguing. First of al , at least in
certain passages, the gods seem to be a finite multiplicity of beings above human beings, and their distinctive essence is also thinking.
Aristotle contrasts changing social conventions and standards of
justice in the human realm with unchanging laws of nature, and
then implies that the ‘customs’ of the gods would be as unchanging
as the latter: “among the gods, no doubt, nothing changes at al ”.30 A similar passage at 1154b25-33 in the Nicomachean Ethics states that only a bad natured, or deficient, being needs change and finds it
sweet, because the transition from pain to pleasure is pleasurable,
whereas gods enjoy an enduring and single pleasure that is greater
on account of its motionlessness. We find out that this single,
continuous pure pleasure is that of intellectual contemplation,
which Aristotle distinguishes at length from the other merely
human virtues.31 Intellectual virtue is radical y unlike and separate
from distributive justice, courage, generosity, and other virtues
that require other people in order to be practiced, and also from
virtues like temperance or self-restraint, which are contingently
dependent on our composite nature as desiring beings subject to
pain. Intellectual virtue is unconditioned, and it is the sole ‘virtue’
of the gods.
29 Ibid., 1134b28; 1154b25-33; 1177b25–1178b25.
30 Ibid., 1134b28.
31 Ibid., 1177b25–1178b25.
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Aristotle claims that no one would (or should) deny that the
gods are real y alive, and therefore at-work in some way. However,
he maintains that it is also absurd to imagine them making contracts
with one another, or showing bravery in the face of death during
war, or being generous to others, and so forth. Thus, the only way
they are at-work is in their continuous contemplation, and they
seem not to need anything or anyone else, even other gods, in order
to experience this singularly blessed pleasure. This seems especial y
problematic for the interpretation that I have been developing
when we consider that the gods have no political community. In
addition to the implication of this in the passages referred to above, at 1145a10-11 in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle explicitly states that Politics, which orders human cities, does not rule the gods.
There are, however, some passages that blur the categorical
distinction between humans and gods in such a way as to allow us
to take Aristotle’s ‘gods’ as symbolic of the divine element in man,
which transcends his composite animal nature. In the course of
laying out the opposites of three types of character flaws – namely
vice, lack of self-restraint, and an animal-like state – Aristotle notes that the opposite of the animal-like state is not obvious like the
other two, and he goes on to identify it as becoming “godlike”. Just
as an animal-like state is something different from vice, the state
belonging to a god “is something more honorable than virtue” and
is “a virtue that transcends us”. He seems to affirm the view that
“people are turned from humans into gods by a surpassing degree of
virtue”. Aristotle concludes these remarks32 with the observation that both the animal-like man and the godlike man are rare, which of
course implies that, however rare, he takes godlike men to actual y
exist. Aristotle compares the gods to the highest goods, claiming
that they are above praise, since they cannot be measured by any
human standard.33 Yet, in the same passage he implies that there
is nothing wrong with measuring the other way, since he holds
humans up to the standard of gods, calling them “the most godlike
32 Ibid., 1145a20-35.
33 Ibid., 1101b18-25.
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among men, blessed and happy.” It is also the case that at the end
of the discussion of the uniqueness of intellectual virtue (referenced above), Aristotle says that we humans should not rest content with
our mortal nature. We should, rather, strive to be as much like the
immortals as possible.34
These passages certainly allow for a reading of ‘the gods’ not as a
finite class of existing beings separate from humans, but as a foil or counter-point for all that is animal in man. They would hypostatize what, in the finite multiplicity of human being, exists beyond the four causes, as the in-forming principle of all substances. It would be in
this sense, then, that “those who are completely base… do ungodly
things.”35 In other words, vicious persons “can do ten thousand times
as much evil as an animal”36 because they are also something far
more than ‘a rational species of animal’, and so to betray this is to
be worse than an animal without such a potentiality. It is to fail to
realize the ontological difference that there is between beings and
our Being.
However, the view that I have been developing here of the polis
as the theater of Being is further complicated by Aristotle’s implicit establishment of a hierarchy of humanness that begins with a natural slave, goes on to a “merely human” being, and then to a “most
human” being that is god-like. Rational judgment involves clearly and distinctly delineating things, and “making distinctions is not
something most people do.”37 Rather, most people are natural slaves, no better than “fatted cattle” or other “beasts of burden”; they are
incapable of living their own lives properly and need political slave
drivers to beat them into obedience or banish them if they prove
“incurable”.38 Aristotle’s analogy between the relation of a master to his slave and the relationship between the rational part of the soul
and the irrational part that is commanded by it strongly implies that
34 Ibid., 1178b9-25.
35 Ibid., 1166b5-6.
36 Ibid., 1150a9.
37 Ibid., 1172b3-4.
38 Ibid., 1095b19-22; 1180a1-13.
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a slave is not a rational being.39 Therefore, a slave is also incapable of virtue, since “there is no virtue without wise judgment.”40 People who are capable of practicing all of the other virtues except the intellectual one are described by Aristotle as “merely human”, whereas the
intellectual virtue is something “separate” and “most human”; it is
the divine nature within humanity.41 Unlike other virtues, such as
courage or charitableness (which require someone to be courageous
or generous to), contemplation can be pursued without reliance on
anything external; it also does not aim at any greater good or profit
for which it may become merely a useful means.42 It is divine in that
it approximates the self-sufficiency of the gods.43
This cal s into question the socio-political status of god-
like humans with intellectual virtue. Just as it undermines the
reading of virtue as always already socio-political y conditioned
and contextual, the “god-like” ideal of ful y actualized human
potential cal s for a reinterpretation of Aristotle’s conception of
friendship ( philia) – which he takes to be the binding force of the polis. Friendships usual y break up because one or the other of the partners mistakes the type of philia upon which their relationship is based.44 These breakups are so distressing that they become cause
for questioning oneself. This follows from the fact that the intimacy
of friendship, extended over a long span of time, is necessary in
order to secure justified belief concerning our own moral character.45
We come closest to objective knowledge of our own actions only in
the “mirror” of character friendship, and this means that we may
be faced with redefining ourselves or losing our virtuous friends –
possibly because we cannot tolerate the way in which they make us
39 Ibid., 1138b8-10.
40 Ibid., 1144b21-22.
41 Ibid., 1177b25-1178a25.
42 Ibid., 1177a20-1177b5; 1178a29-35.
43 Ibid., 1178b25.
44 Ibid.,
Nicomachean Ethics, 9.3.
45 Ibid., Nicomachean Ethics 9.9 1169b28-1170a4; see also: Magna Moralia 1213a10-26.
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aware of our own failings. According to Aristotle, virtue friendships
are the only ones inherently resistant to slander and other violations of trust, and it is on this account that they should be enduring.46
This, however, presumes that we are capable of enduring them.
Is it possible for anyone who is not a “god-like” philosopher to
endure a virtue friendship with someone who is one? This is as much
as to question whether a virtue friendship is genuinely possible
between non-philosophers. Aristotle is aware of this difficulty. One
is supposed to wish the best for one’s friends, but no one who is not
a philosopher would wish that one’s best friends become god-like,
otherwise one would no longer be fit to be their friend. Note this
passage at 1158b29-1159b15:
But what is equal in matters of justice does not seem to work
the same way as what is equal in friendship… this is clear if the
divergence becomes great… for no longer are they friends, nor
do they deserve to be. This is most manifest in the case of the
gods… In such cases there is no precise boundary up to which
they are friends, for when many things have been taken away the
friendship still remains, but when they are separated greatly, as
from a god, it no longer does. From this an impasse is raised,
that perhaps friends do not wish for the greatest goods for their
friends, such as that they be gods; for then they would no longer
have friends… [for a person like this to wish] for good things
for a friend for that friend’s own sake, that friend would need to
remain whatever he is…
Here self-love and the
supposed altruism of the truest friendship
seem to collide. If we are to maintain that Aristotle’s ethics is not
egoistic, then we must draw the conclusion that character friendship
is only possible between genuine philosophers. Only those with
the ruthless aspiration to become “god-like” would be unafraid of
constantly drawing each other ever further beyond the “merely
human.” This is in line with two passages where Aristotle describes
46 Ibid., 1164a14.
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the highest type of friendship as consisting of the dynamical y
transformational contemplative dialogue exemplified by Plato’s
Socrates.47 Aristotle’s use of the phrase “going hunting” in the latter of these two passages is a metaphor for the love of wisdom. Aristotle
also refers to this proverbial ‘fellowship of eagles’ at 1177a27–1177b3
(my emphasis): “the wise person is able to contemplate even when
he is by himself, and more so to the extent he is more wise. He will contemplate better, no doubt, when he has people to work with, but he is still the most self-sufficient person.” To conclude, the only
enduring philia is one wherein friends are bound together not by
“need” of any kind, but by philo-Sophia – their hopelessly falling for the same beloved, namely Wisdom. Philosophical friendship is
always at least a ménage a trois.
This esoteric reading requires taking Aristotle’s pronouncements on the virtues as exoteric. He deliberately concealed his radical view that, inwardly, the free circle of god-like friends lives beyond
society and above its laws. For such a person the plurality of social y conditioned, public virtues are merely something to be tolerated in
order to keep from arousing suspicion and meddling that would
interfere with contemplation:
…But for someone who contemplates there is no need of such
things for his being-at-work; rather, one might say they get in
the way of his contemplating. But insofar as he is a human being
and lives in company with a number of people, he chooses to do
the things that have to do with virtue, and thus will have need of
such things in order to live a human life.48
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