Rethink.

The translation of the Ethics used below is Joe Sachs’. The quotes are from Bk. 2, Chapter 4 (1105 a17 – 1105 b18)

The issue is locating the key problem in the opening paragraph of Aristotle’s chapter. We will begin with a part of it and skip ahead in the chapter to shed light on it:

One might raise as an impasse, though, how we mean that it is necessary to become just by performing just actions and temperate by performing temperate actions, for if people do things that are just and temperate they already are just or temperate people, just as, if they do the things that have to do with writing or with music, they are literate or musical people. Or is it not even this way in the case of the arts?

Now in Christian thought, and the thought of our secular world with its emphasis on freedom, one is usually only responsible for a moral wrong when one knows what one does is wrong.

Aristotle brings up the issue of the arts because he cannot even conceive of virtue devoid of knowledge. It is true that at 1105 b1-5, he will say the following:

For having the other kinds of artfulness, these things do not count, except the mere knowing, but for having the virtues, the knowing is of little or no strength, while the other conditions ave not a little but all the power, and they are the very ones which arise from repeatedly performing just or temperate actions.

Such a quote might lead us to think “knowing” doesn’t matter as much as “doing.” I actually think the key to this quote is at 1105 b12-18:

Most people… believe that by taking refuge in talk they are philosophizing and in that way will be people of serious stature, doing something similar to those sick people who listen to the doctors carefully but do none of the things they order. So just as they will be in no good condition in body if they treat themselves in this way, neither will those who philosophize in this way be in any good condition in soul.

The issue is that the knowing is so important, I think, it must be made manifest in action. For the emphasis, in virtue, is on such knowledge being made strength through action. For arts, to go back to the previous quote, “mere knowing” will do – the “knowledge” there is immediately effectual, and hard to distinguish truly from action. Thus it seems to me to be of a lesser quality.

To go back up to the quote that started this essay, we can see that the problem with knowledge of the arts stems from deduction. Deduction means we start with a product (1105 a23-4 for art, & a25-32 for virtue), and try to figure out the “causes” of the “effect” that product is. So what one might argue, then, is that the product of virtue does not require one take any pleasure in virtue (note how Bk. 2, Chp. 3′s opening paragraph contrasts with the thought of Immanuel Kant), or that one concentrate on actually producing virtue – “enlightened self-interest” might all be society needs.

The way Aristotle gets around this “impasse” is by hinting, i.e. the passage we started with, that knowledge of the arts is a deviation from knowledge of virtue. For arts should ideally be concerned with only the product effected, but we instead make judgments about the artists’ ability through his creation. The product of virtue, then, is not merely a virtuous action, but a state of the soul, an ability to relate to knowledge and hold it highest properly:

But with the things that come about as a result of the virtues, just because they themselves are a certain way it is not the case that one does them justly or temperately, but only if the one doing them also does them being a certain way: if one does them first of all knowingly, and next, having chosen them and chosen them for their own sake, and third, being in a stable condition and not able to be moved all the way out of it (1105 a29-35).

And now you can see why I’ve purposely picked a convoluted order to discuss this chapter. The key is seeing that knowledge and choice relate to being a certain way, and that cannot be emphasized enough. Such a thought being tucked away in the middle of Aristotle’s chapter, in these modern times, requires a drawing out with which to begin our contemplation.

• Do Wisdom and Virtue Depend On Mortality?
• The Problem of Knowledge and Action in Aristotle’s Poetics
• On the Good: Comment on Aristotle’s Ethics, Bk. 1 Chp. 6
• Do Money and Material Gain Taint Thought, or Validity of Opinion? On Aristotle’s Ethics, Bk. 2 Chp. 7
• Heideggerian Considerations on a Poem of Dickinson’s: How do Nature and Reason Relate?

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