Cashdollar, Stanford (1973). Aristotle's politics of morals. Journal of the History of Philosophy 11 (2):145-160.
I. INTRODUCTION
It is the intent of this paper to present textual evidence to the effect that any form of separatism with regard to the science(s) or branch(es) of philosophy which deal(s) with the subject-matters of the Ethics and Politics is mistaken. There seems to be no reason not to take Aristotle at his word and to believe not that the contents of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics constitute two branches of human philosophy but that the various eighteen books collected under these names constitute a political inquiry which is coextensive with human philosophy. The result is that ethics so-called is not a branch of that philosophy (or a mere preface to politics), but in fact has no autonomous or semi-autonomous existence at all.
Instead there is for Aristotle a unitary philosophy (politics) which embraces those matters we moderns would respectively assign to the branches of philosophy called ethics and political theory.
II. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
The art or faculty called rhetoric is the offspring of both the dialectical art (or analytics) and the "pursuit concerned with matters of character, which is rightly designated politics" (Rhet. 1356a26-28; cf. 1359b10). This pursuit concerned with character is not spoken of as a part or branch of politics; Aristotle does not refer to that branch of politics which deals with ethics, but merely to that pursuit concerned with matters of character, and this pursuit he designates politics: Nowhere in the Rhetoric do we find any reference to this concern with character as the province of any science, art, or faculty other than politics itself. This treatise also informs us what constitutes the subject-matter of this science. While all the dialectical or formal matters discussed in this treatise properly belong not to rhetoric but to the dialectical art, all the substantive or non-logical matters are "proper things for study" or the "real subject-matter" of the "more accurate science" called politics (1359b1-18): The extent of this subject-matter may be seen in the sections where he outlines what topics each of the three recognized types of speech attempts to persuade about. Deliberative oratory has to do with "the advantageous," demonstrative with "the noble," and forensic with "the just" (1358b21-29). Subsumed under these combined headings, which explicitly overlap each other, Aristotle treats in outline all the basic subjects which make up the contents of the Ethics and the Politics: virtues and vices, pleasures and pains, happiness, voluntary action, friendship, the makeup of states and types of constitutions, laws, the administration of justice, etc. All these matters are necessarily the proper subject-matter of politics, for dialectic is solely concerned with reasoning (demonstration and induction) and not with substantive matters (1356a21-25). These things together constitute the matters of character. 6 The pursuit concerned with character is not a branch or part of but a description or characterization (definition?) of the science of politics.
The assigning of the noble, the just, and the advantageous to politics is not a notion peculiar to the Rhetoric. If it were, one might be allowed to say that in that work--where technical distinctions are less important than the norms of ordinary speech--Aristotle is merely following the traditional (or Platonic) notion of polities to which he himself no longer adheres. But this is not the case.
Statements throughout EN, EE, and Politics are consistent with the Rhetoric. EN speaks of "the noble and the just, which politics investigates" (1094b14-15). The noble and the just are in fact called the "substantive matter" or subject-matter 7 of politics (1094b12). This statement follows the passage in which he discusses the architectonic art (which turns out to be polities) and the nature of its end (1094a18-1094b10). It is only reasonable to follow with a statement of its subject- matter and to further discuss what the "nature of the thing" is (1094b16-27). Latter he speaks of "noble things, and just things, and political things in general" (1095b5). EE allows friendship to be discussed in that treatise for the reason that friendship is "useful" to politics, being no less important than "the things noble and choosable with respect to "investigates human excellence" the human soul in so far as it (EN 1102a16-24), which studies 1105a10-12, 1152bl), voluntary character" (1234b22-24). It is politics which and happiness (EN 1102a5-15), which studies is necessary in order to understand excellence (and makes use of) pleasures and pains (EN and involuntary action (EN 1109b30-34), and human goods and interests (EN 1141a20-23). The "true" political practitioner is characterized by "noble actions," those which spring from excellence (EE 1215b2-4, 1216a25-26; EN 1099b28-33), and it is the same who is responsible for universal justice and the common advantage (EN 1129bl 1 ft., 1130b25-29; Pol. 1282b14-17). The writer of MM is also in accord with this notion. The treatise is said to be "about morals," but the pursuit thereof is said to be "not moral, but political'" (l181a24-b27). While this treatise is in fact fundamentally "about excellence" (1182al), the writer constantly reminds us in the opening sections that it is the "'political good" which is being sought by this "political inquiry" (or by the "'political science" or "faculty") rather than some other kind of good (1182b5-6, 30-31, I183a4-6, 21-24, 33-35). The treatise proceeds to cover the same ground as EN but breaks off during the discussion of friendship. One would search the Corpus end to end without discovering a reference to these subject-matters as being the province of any other science or pursuit than polities (sometimes called the legislative art) or practical reason which is the same psychic disposition (see next paragraph).
These seem to be the only substantial bits of evidence Gauthier and Jolif can find for the broad assertion that Aristotle broke with the Platonic "confusion" of ethics and politics and founded a science of ethics distinct from politics.
Aristotle usually employs the term physis in a much broader manner than the strict definition in the Physics would allow. Nature, both traditionally and commonly in Aristotle, does not include only those substances which have their own source of motion, but the general realm of things about which "truth and knowledge" are possible. 17 This traditional, but non-Platonic, view of nature is consistent with the notion of the two substantial realms of inquiry, where natural matters include substances which Aristotle would technically reserve for first philosophy, viz. substance without motion or change. At the very basis of his teleological metaphysic Aristotle assumes these two realms. Of things that come about "for the sake of something," i.e. events in the Aristotelian purposive universe, (1) some come about as a result of nature, (2) others as a result of cognition and choice (Phys. 196b10-197a7). There is no doubt that these two realms of events are the natural and the moral. This most basic property of the moral, purposive choice, is here used to designate that realm, t8 Each of these realms, then, is constituted of matters which do not exactly coincide with the matters usually assigned to physics and ethics.
Aside from not being the birth of a moral science, moral study is for Aristotle one of several designations for the traditional realm of human affairs--as natural study denotes the traditional realm of "knowledge and truth"--and is clearly not intended as a technical term and one which distinguishes "ethics" from "politics."
Some may hesitate to accept the idea that matters concerning the state are included within the moral by Aristotle, simply because two millennia have conditioned us to think otherwise. Even the present century has seen more or less successful attempts to further reduce and refine the philosophical sphere which can legitimately be called moral. It is difficult or impossible to know when this reduction of the realm of the moral began in Western philosophy, but it is certain that Aristotle is not its original reducer.
For Greeks in general ethos was a term which characterized the individual and the state indiscriminately. Both Plato (e.g. Pol. 549a) and Aristotle describe various constitutions or polities in terms of ethos. It was common knowledge among the Athenians that a citizen takes on, in his own ethos, the qualities of the national ethos in which and according to which he has been raised.
What is novel in and characteristic of Aristotle's usage of ethos and the adjective ethikos is their constant association with deliberate choice and purposive action, a concept also peculiarly Aristotelian. It is possible that he employed ethika in place of the traditional anthrtpina to emphasize that this traditional realm for him is characterized most of all by man's ability to deliberate and choose. It is hard to fully appreciate the organic nature of the polls, but it is quite certain that Aristotle thought of states deliberating and choosing courses of action in the very same way as a man deliberates and chooses: the terminology (and here he uses technical language) which describes a state's delib- eration and choosing is the same as that used in discussing an individual's delib- eration and choosing, z~ The example of a moral problem given in Topics 105b22-23 is similarly applicable to individual or state. (Should A choose x or y, if x and y conflict? Let A be Athens, x war, y peace.) Aristotle describes the state as "one man" with many hands and feet whose ~thos is composed of the many ~th~ of the citizens (Pol. 1281b4-8). It should not surprise us that ~thika are ~thika whether predicated of a man or a state. When Aristotle speaks of human philosophy in EN, he is reverting to the older terminology as he does occasionally. Its matter is coextensive wtih the matters of moral study, although the designation "phi- losophy" might exclude the more dialectical (less scientific) types of moral study. The Posterior Analytics (a logical treatise) merely assigns the further treatment of the modes of cognition to one or other of the two substantial realms of inquiry. The most significant point of those who claim an Aristotelian ethics is based on an appealing but unfortunate misinterpretation.