A. W. Price

Virtue and reason in Plato and Aristotle

Book synopsis: In this authoritative discussion of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, A. W. Price considers four related areas: eudaimonia, or living and acting well, as the ultimate end of action; virtues of character in relation to the emotions, and to one another; practical reasoning, especially from an end to ways or means; and acrasia, or action that is contrary to the agents own judgement of what is best. The focal concept is that of eudaimonia, which both Plato and Aristotle view as an abstract goal that is valuable enough to motivate action. Virtue has a double role to play in making its achievement possible, both in proposing subordinate ends apt to the context, and in protecting the agent against temptations to discard them too easily. For both purposes, Price suggests that virtues need to form a unity—but one that can be conceived in various ways. Among the tasks of deliberation is to work out how, and whether, to pursue some putative end in context. Aristotle returns to early Plato in finding it problematic that one should consciously sacrifice acting well to some incidental attraction; Plato later finds this possible by postulating schism within the soul. Price maintains that it is their emphasis upon the centrality of action within human life that makes the reflections of these ancient philosophers perennially relevant.

Choice and Action in Aristotle

There is a current debate about the grammar of intention: do I intend to φ (whose content is an act), or that I φ (whose content is quasi-propositional)? The equivalent question in Aristotle relates especially to choice (prohairesis). I argue that, in the context of practical reasoning, choice, as also wish (boulēsis), has as its object an act. I then explore the role that this plays within his account of the relation of thought to action. In particular, I discuss the relation of deliberation to the practical syllogism, and the thesis that the conclusion of the second is an action.

On criticising values

If we cannot agree that evaluations are judgements that both describe things (ascribing properties to them) and express sentiments, we lack any shared understanding of a common topic. If we ever come to agree how the describing and expressing relate, we shall lose a debate. Suppose that evaluation is a mode of description essentially expressive of sentiment, and that some evaluations can be known to be true: then there must exist properties of such a kind that they can be apprehended only from appropriately affective points of view. Alternatively, it may be that evaluation involves some element distinct from description, so that, in principle, one could always accept the descriptive core of an evaluation while distancing oneself from a non-descriptive element that makes it evaluative. We may distinguish the two kinds of view as lumping , or descriptivist- cum -expressivist, and splitting , or descriptivist- plus -expressivist. Both ascribe to evaluations an expressive aspect as well as a descriptive content; what is at issue is whether the former is integral to the latter, or detachable from it.

Aristotle’s Conception of Practical Thinking

One thing that philosophy owes to Aristotle is a recognition of a kind of thinking that is practical by nature. In De Anima [DA] III 10, Aristotle spells this out as follows: Both of these can produce movement in respect of place, intellect and desire, but intellect which reasons for the sake of something and is practical; and it differs from the contemplative intellect in respect of the end. Every desire too is for the sake of something; for that of which there is a desire is the starting-point of the practical intellect, and the final step is the starting-point of action. Hence it is reasonable that these two appear the sources of movement, desire and practical thought. For the object of desire produces movement, and, because of this, thought produces movement, because the object of desire is its starting-point (433a13–20, after Hamlyn, 1993).

INTUITIONS OF FITTINGNESS

In one sense of the term current among analytical philosophers, the quietist lacks skeptical doubts about the metaphysical or epistemological status of ethical judgments as a class of judgment. He may still have doubts about, say, the current state of morality. There are criteria of courage by which, though they are open-ended, a man may count as acting bravely. It need not follow that he has adopted the best tactics. Yet he must have responded fittingly to danger. But how is that to be identified? “Ought”-judgments are to be understood contextually, with an implicit relativity to certain ends or quasi-ends, and—when the “ought” is only pro tanto —to certain aspects of, or opportunities within, a situation. These judgments are often intuitive in that they do not derive from the application of a principle. Fittingness is an anthropocentric relation that holds within some human perspective; we should not think of it as a feature purportedly inherent in the very nature of things. It is salutary to remember cases where the “ought” is so relativized, say to an undesirable end, that it identifies no reason for action. The nature of the relation does not change when it is relativized to an end that the agent has reason to achieve. “Ought”-judgments should not be interpreted in ambitious ways that make them generally problematic.

Reasoning About Justice in Plato’s Republic

Gerasimos Santas has devoted his career to displaying that in order at once to clarify the content of Plato’s dialogues, and to realize Plato’s purpose in writing them, we must do philosophy ourselves. We have to play the roles both of handmaiden, attending to all the details of the text, and of apprentice, not leaving the philosophy to Plato but joining in the argument. Santas sets us an example of clarity of thought, lucidity of expression, and—to convey a positive quality negatively—lack of egocentricity to set beside that of Gregory Vlastos.