Frede (2012) The endoxon Mystique: What endoxa are and What They are Not

Frede, Dorothea (2012). The endoxon Mystique: What endoxa are and What They are Not. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 43:185-215. 

 

1. The mystique

In this article I hope to demystify the authority of the endoxa in Aristotle. This is not to deny that there is any basis for that author ity. But just as Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking work in the 1960s, The Feminine Mystique, did not intend to deny the existence of the feminine but was concerned with debunking the ideology that had accrued to it, so the concern of this essay is only to deflate the importance attributed to the so-called endoxic method in Aristotle. This method nowadays is often hailed as the method in many in troductions to his work, and most of all in those to his ethics.

Kraut therefore assumes that endoxa are commonly accepted views, not just those of specialists or people with particular experience, because he holds that Aristotle thereby means to be ‘casting a wide net’ that catches all sorts of fish.

But that is not to say that all such commonly accepted views are to be regarded as endoxa in the sense of NE 7.1 or elsewhere, as maintained by Kraut and many others. Students without knowledge of Greek are often quite surprised to learn that the word endoxon is actually used quite sparingly, except in connection with what Aristotle calls ‘dialectic’, and that the method specified in NE 7. 1 is not as widely applied as claimed by ‘the friends of the endoxa’. For if these friends were right, every method used to set up the starting-points of a science would be endoxic, including Aris totle’s own injunctions. To see why this expansion of ‘the endoxic method’, to the point where it includes virtually every kind of pro cedure in Aristotle, represents an inflation, it is necessary to take a closer look at his own specifications of that method.

 

2. The endoxic method as displayed in NE7 1-2

He starts out with the aporia of how it is even possible to be incontinent, against one’s own convictions (endoxa (ii) and (iii)), a possibility that is rejected by some, most explicitly and most famously by Socrates. The reason why the Socratic position is not listed among the endoxa, despite Socrates’ reputation, is clearly that he denies the phenomenon of akrasia altogether (b–), the existence of which is accepted, albeit in different ways, by all reputable opinions.

The other case in the Nicomachean Ethics that is sometimes pre sented as an example of the endoxic procedure is the brief survey of the three (or four) types of the good life in . : the life of plea sure, the political life, the theoretical life (and the life dedicated to wealth). What promises an endoxic treatment is the initial an nouncement (. , a–). While it would be fruitless to exa mine all positions on the nature of the good life, it is enough to examine (exetazein) those that are most prevalent or widespread (epipolazousas), or that seem to have some reason (tinalogon) in their favour. Again, a closer look shows that what follows is no application of the endoxic method. The views presented on happiness in chapter  are neither treated as reputable nor submitted to aporetic scrutiny. Instead, the life of pleasure is immediately dismissed as vulgar and worthy of beasts—that those in power also cultivate it is no recommendation. The life of honour is admitted with some qualifications: properly understood it should be a life dedicated to virtue, a topic that will receive extensive treatment later. The the oretical life is postponed for further discussion and taken up again in . –. And the life aiming at wealth is dismissed out of hand because it represents a confusion of means and ends.

3. The origin and meaning of endoxon in Aristotle

Before Aristotle, endoxon was used as an adjective that applied to cities, persons, and to deeds of public importance. It indicates that the cities, families, individuals or their actions in question enjoy a certain doxa, a reputation or fame that is due to their role in history, but also to their wealth, nobility, or power. Aristotle seems to be the first to apply that epithet to propositions in philo sophical debate.

Dialectical syllogisms in turn differ from the eristic type in that the latter are based on premisses that only seem acceptable, because their falsity will be obvious to everyone capable of some discrimination (b–). The endoxic premisses hold, then, a middle position between those that are obviously true and those that are obviously false, at least to critical inspection, as Aristotle is going to confirm later (. , a–). It is a middle position because the former leave no room for doubt and therefore no room for debate, while to the latter no sensible person would assent. Reputable opinions, by contrast, do not clearly show their character at the surface (b–: οὐδὲν . . . ἐπιπόλαιον ἔχει παντελῶς τὴν φαντασίαν), so that they present a challenge for both sides in a debate.

 

4. The relation of endoxa to other principles

There are several objections to the simple solution of equating the endoxa in NE  with ‘what is (better) known to us’. As men tioned earlier, in the Topics Aristotle explicitly denies that a thesis that is endoxos should be whatis obvious to everyone or to most, because there would be nothing questionable about it (a: τὸ πᾶσι φανερὸν . . . οὐκ ἔχει ἀπορίαν). As mentioned before, ‘reputable’ is not the sameas‘obvious’, and reputable views need not be identical with common assumptions accepted as beyond doubt by all people, let alone with shared experiences. Aristotle seems to have exploited a certain ambiguity of the meaning of endoxon in ordinary Greek: it refers to someone or something well known, famous, of repute, but leaves open the justification of such prominence. Though most well-known or renowned cities, men, or actions probably deserve that epithet, there is no specific kind of worth tied to it, let alone a moral value. Hence ‘reputable’ has to be taken with caution, in the sense that it entails no entitlement to truth in the case of proposi tions and to acceptance by everyone. That endoxa need not be true does, of course, not mean that they cannot be true or that that their status is dubious. It only means that they are both in need of and worthy of further scrutiny. And that is precisely what happens in NE, as noted earlier. For not all items on Aristotle’s list can and will pass closer inspection.

 

5. A short and eclectic doxography of the endoxic method

The difficulties under discussion are clearly those that Aristotle faced—not those encountered in a survey of ‘reputable views’. So pace Owen, Physics is not a parallel of Nicomachean Ethics, nor does it show that the phainomena that Aristotle pays most at tention to are data familiar from dialectic. It should be noted that Owen is more discriminating with respect to what can count as endoxa than many of the later ‘friends of the endoxa’. For he limits endoxa to opinions other than those derived from sense-experience. Not everything that is ‘better known to us’ is therefore at the same time an endoxon.

Nussbaum’s interpretation of endoxa in terms of a Putnamean internal realism can be mentioned only in brief here. Its basic as sumption is that Aristotle is talking about ‘our most common be liefs and thoughts’ that are about ‘the world as it appears to, as it is experienced by, observers who are members of our kind’. And view’ among humankind. Nussbaum’s translation of . , b , therefore suggests that the endoxa include Aristotle’s own point of view: ‘the truth of all the beliefs we hold [ta endoxa] . . .’. The ‘saving’ promised in the title of her essay does not, then, concern internal problems with Aristotle’s treatment of endoxic views or their meaning, but addresses the lack of appreciation of ‘appear ances’ as the basis of his philosophy in the secondary literature. What allegedly needs to be saved is a proper understanding of the connection between appearances and ordinary belief in Aristotle’s philosophy, as well as of the fact that he thereby radically opposes the tradition from Parmenides to Plato.

Nussbaum’s interpretation of phainomena and endoxa as ‘our common beliefs, usually as revealed in things we say’ has been subjected to criticism from many sides, among them by Cooper, and it is with his view that this short doxographical survey will be concluded, since Kraut’s all-inclusive view has been discussed earlier in this article. In his critique of Nussbaum Cooper points out that the endoxa in NE .  are far from representing the com mon view of all; instead, some of them are the views of specialists. Moreimportant, Aristotle does not regard it as his task to vindicate ‘the common views’. This emerges from the fact that the Socratic position is not rejected, despite the fact that it is in direct conflict with the sacrosanct common views. Instead, ‘the appearances’ are reworked in such a waythatinamodifiedsensetheyarecompatible with the central Socratic contention. In so far as Cooper holds to the position that for Aristotle the established views are at least in conformity with the most reputable ones, he attributes that fact to the structure of language, to age-old experience, and to the Aristotelian conviction that human beings, as intelligent animals, are able to discover how things actually are.

6. Endoxa and akrasia

Aristotle no doubt knew ahead of time that not all endoxa listed in .  would remain standing, and also which ones would and which ones would not. This is indicated right away by his injunction that self-control is less good than temperance, while belonging to the same genus, and that the same predicament applies to lack of control und indulgence (a–b). If he then states that the truth will emerge from a scrutiny of the endoxa, this is not meant as a route to self-enlightenment, but to that of his audience/readers. The prediction that ‘all . . . or most endoxa will be confirmed’ is a slight exaggeration, most likely for pedagogical reasons: an initial announcement that most endoxa will need correction, if not elimi nation, would benotmuchofanencouragementtostudythemwith proper care. At the same time the fact that Aristotle does not expect all or even most of the endoxa to be true explains why he does not end the discussion (in chapter ) with a neat summary that states which of them are left standing without modification and which are corrected, but leaves it to his readers to figure that out for them selves by a careful study of his discussion of the problems.