Kraut (2006) How to Justify Ethical Propositions: Aristotle’s Method (3)

Kraut R. (2006) How to Justify Ethical Propositions: Aristotle’s Method. In: The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by Richard Kraut. Oxford: Blackwell.

 

7. The Test of Experience

In fact, Aristotle claims that even after students of ethics have moved from the foundational premise of the subject back through all of the assumptions from which they began their inquiry, they must subject the whole theory to one further test. Surveying it as a whole, they must be confident that it is not merely satisfactory as a theory, but also satisfactory when assessed against their experience of life. After pointing out that his conception of happiness corresponds to the ideas proposed by wise men – Solon and Anaxagoras, for example – he adds:

But although these things too instill some confidence, the truth in practical matters is judged on the basis of the facts and of life. For they are authoritative in these matters. One should examine what was said earlier by bringing it up against the facts [erga] and life, and if they harmonize with the facts, one must accept it, but if they are out of harmony, then one must reject one’s statements. (NE X.8.1179a17–22)

This is a point Aristotle made earlier, in his discussion of pleasure: no argument that condemns all pleasure as evil will carry conviction, he says, because “arguments about what has to do with feelings and actions are less persuasive than facts.” Accordingly, when arguments conflict with what we perceive or feel (ais th¯esis), we should reject the arguments as unsound (X.1.1172a34–b1). We noted earlier (in the second section) that the endoxic method requires a student to pay serious attention not only to the arguments of those who have a reputation for wisdom, but also to what seems to be the case to a large number of non-specialists.

Arguments can lead us astray, and so we should ask ourselves whether they clash with widely held views of those who are guided not by theory but by their everyday perceptions and experience. Similarly, Aristotle holds that even after a theory has been shown to preserve a large number of reputable opinions – those of the wise as well as the many – it needs to correspond to something that lies outside of theory and argumentation. Even if it passes the many intellectual tests to which it is put, an ethical theory must fit with the way we experience our lives. For ethics has to do not merely with the way we should think, but the way we should feel.

Accordingly, if on certain occasions we cannot but feel pleasure, or anger, or fear, then we are right to reject a theory, however well supported, that tells us that we must never have such feelings.

Here we have a test of an ethical theory that is specific to ethics, and does not apply to all systematic intellectual undertakings. A theory about plants does not have to be lived – it only has to be believed – and so the only tests it must pass are intellectual tests. A theory about how human life should be lived has to pass those same kinds of tests, but must do more: it has to be something we can live with.

 

8. Is Aristotle’s Method too Conservative?

The endoxic method, as we have been using the term, is a procedure that includes not only the tests mentioned in NE VII.1 (setting out the endoxa, going through the aporiai, saving as many endoxa as possible by finding ambiguities or assessing competing arguments, solving the puzzles), but all of the others that we have noted: explaining falsehood, moving toward a foundational starting-point and then returning to one’s initial assumptions, and (a procedure peculiar to practical subjects) confirming one’s results by seeing how well they match felt experience. It may seem that such a method, however valuable it may be in expunging falsehoods, is unduly conservative because it restricts one’s study of a subject to options that have already been surveyed by other people. One collects the views of others, including the many and the wise; when apparent conflicts among them are noticed, one decides among them, or shows that the conflicts are merely apparent; and one puts the surviving endoxa into a certain order of explanation, making sure that the whole fits with one’s feelings. But all that can emerge from this process, it might be said, are the views of others: nothing new can be discovered. Of course, in order to decide between conflicting beliefs, one must search for arguments. But presumably those arguments must rely on premises that are themselves reputable opinions; that is, opinions already held by someone or other. It might seem that the student of ethics cannot bring to bear on the subject any new ideas, however plausible they may seem to him. He might fail to find the foundational principle that illuminates all other aspects of the subject because he is not allowed to bring into his collection of endoxa ideas that occur to him alone.

But this charge of conservatism overlooks the fact that Aristotle himself – or anyone else who is studying ethics and proposing an ethical theory – has standing as someone whose views are reputable and should therefore be included among the endoxa. He is someone who is making a special study of ethics, and so he is a member of the class of those who are wise.

What seems true to anyone who is undertaking a serious investigation of a subject thereby becomes a candidate for consideration by the endoxic method. For example, when Aristotle opens the Nicomachean Ethics with the observation that every craft, inquiry, action, and decision seems to aim at what is good, he makes an observation that perhaps no one else had previously formulated, but the novelty of that observation would not disqualify it from counting as an appearance that plays an important theoretical role. Because it is an endoxon, it can be used as a premise in arguments for or against some other endoxon.

An ethical theorist guided by the endoxic method can be as inventive as he likes: he can discover ideas no one has ever had before, and he can use these to reach conclusions that no one has ever reached before. Aristotle’s own theory certainly does not confine itself to working with premises that had already been stated by others. His foundational premise – that the human good consists in excellent activity of the rational soul, adequately supplied by resources, over a sufficient length of time – had never been formulated before, and the arguments for it rely on premises that are original to Aristotle.

Accordingly, when ethical inquiry gives itself the task of setting out, as an initial step, what seems to be the case, there will be two different ways for an investigator to assure himself that a proposition falls into this category. One is partly sociological: one looks not at the credibility of the proposition that is held to be true, but rather at the credentials of those who hold it to be true. Here the questions to be asked are: do those who believe this proposition have some credibility? Are they in any position to assess the truth about this matter? However, as we have just seen, there is a second way in which an investigator can assure himself that a proposition should be included among the endoxa: he may rightly take himself to be someone who has some access to what is true in this area of investigation, and the proposition under consideration may strike him as having some claim to credibility. He considers what seems true to him, and for him to do this, he must confront the proposition under consideration, and to assess its plausibility.

That is quite different from what happens when he looks at the views that others hold, and asks whether those appearances should be included among the endoxa. When he does this, he does not ask “is this plausible?” but only “is this person someone whose views deserve consideration?” For if he were to restrict the endoxa to those appearances that he himself finds plausible, he would lose one of the greatest benefits of the endoxic method: he would not be forcing himself to give a fair hearing to ideas that do not represent the way things seem to him. His examination would only be self-examination – or, at any rate, it would be an examination of what he has in common with others, at the initial stage of inquiry.

For the endoxic method to be a valuable tool of inquiry, it must avoid two methodological extremes: a refusal to consider what strikes one as plausible, on the grounds that no one else has ever had that thought; and a refusal to consider any idea of another person, on the grounds that it seems to one to have no initial plausibility.

 

9. “Brought up Well”

After Aristotle distinguishes, in NE I.4, between two different kinds of starting points – those known to us, and those known without qualification (1095a30–b3) – he adds: “So, presumably we should begin with things known to us.” That is why one needs to have been “brought up well in one’s habits,” if one is to be a good student of this subject (b4–6). For, he adds a few lines later, someone who has learned good habits at an early stage in his life “either has these starting-points, or can easily get them” (b7–8). A person who has developed bad habits will not be able to acquire a satisfactory ethical theory.

This is not a statement about the method to be used in ethical theory – proper habituation when one is a child is not part of the endoxic method – but it implies that certain people will never be able to use the method successfully.

There will be something missing from what they bring to the method: they will not have all of the starting-points on which a justified ethical theory rests. But why not? Why cannot they do as well as others at making a survey of the reputable opinions? After all, someone who has received a poor moral education as a child is able to determine what seems to be the case to the many and to the wise, and to look for ambiguities or arguments that would resolve or adjudicate the differences between competing endoxa.

Aristotle must be assuming here that the materials with which the endoxic method works include how things appear to oneself – not merely how they seem to the many and to the wise. If someone has been brought up badly, and does not recognize this fact about himself, many propositions will strike him as being true, and will be included among the data of his ethical theory, even though they do not deserve serious consideration. The very fact that he has been badly raised means that he does not have sufficient competence, in the study of ethics, to be counted among those whose opinions merit careful scrutiny. And so, even if he tries to make progress in his study of ethics, by paying attention to what others think, he will be handicapped by his attention to data that ought to be excluded.

Aristotle is perhaps also assuming that part of what it is to be brought up in bad habits is to give little or no weight to the way things seem to others but not to oneself. If a child is allowed to treat others as inferior to himself – as people to be manipulated but not loved, honored, or respected – he will not want to acquire, and perhaps cannot acquire, the intellectual habits needed for the successful use of the endoxic method. There will be very few, if any, opinions besides his own that he will think deserve a hearing, and when the opinions of others conflict with what immediately strikes him as being the case, he is likely to dismiss them.

If he comes to the study of ethics with the fixed view that any sacrifice he makes in his power, wealth, and status is inherently a loss in his well-being, or if he finds nothing appealing and pleasant about doing well at a task undertaken for the sake of others, then his ears will be closed to the suggestion that there are other things, beyond his ken, that are no less valuable, perhaps more valuable, than what strikes him as good. His ethical views might be internally consistent. But he lacks the breadth of ethical experience and intellectual objectivity that are needed, if one is to employ the endoxic method successfully and arrive at a genuine proof of what one believes.

Aristotle’s thesis that a student of ethics must have been brought up in good habits is an application of a more general thesis that he insists upon.

In any subject that we successfully study, we must bring to it more than the minimal mental skills that are needed to be counted as a person engaged in the process of thinking. We must also have a proper exposure to the phenomena under investigation: we must go beyond surveying what others think, and must become familiar with the realities that constitute the subject matter of those opinions.

The foundational principles of every science are derived from what we learn through experience (An. Pr. I.30.46a17–21; cf. Gen. An. III.10.760b27–33; Cael. III.7.306a7–17).

Every inquiry, not just ethical inquiry, will properly refuse to give credence to the views of those who have too little acquaintance with the phenomena under investigation. It is not unique to ethical theory that the propositions it contains would not be accepted by all rational human beings.

It would be a mistake to think that it is a defect in an ethical theory if it does not offer arguments about good and bad that ought to be accepted by any thinking person on the basis of propositions that that person already accepts. That would be a defect if the only reason to look for justification is to change the mind of someone with whom one disagrees. But Aristotelian justification, we noted from the start, is not an attempt to persuade others with whom one disagrees, or to transform imaginary ethical skeptics into good people. It is an attempt to get outside oneself and to learn from others, but its goal is to achieve justified self assurance, not consensus.