Nussbaum on Aristotelian External Goods

Before we approach Aristotle's treatment of 'tragic' reversal and the case of Priam, we need to point out that there are four rather different ways in which uncontrolled circumstances may, in these cases, interfere with excellent activity. They may

(1) deprive it of some instrumental means or resource. This resource, in turn, may be either

(a) absolutely necessary for excellent activity, so that its absence altogether blocks the activity; or

(b) its absence may simply constrain or impede the performance of the activity.

(2) Circumstances may block activity by depriving it, not merely of an external instrument, but of the very object or recipient of the activity. (The death of a friend blocks friendship in this more intimate way.) Here again, the activity may be either (a) completely blocked, if the loss is permanent and complete; or (b) impeded, if the loss is temporary and/or partial. We shall concentrate on (ia) and (ib) here, reserving the loss of an object for the next chapter. But Aristotle does not explicitly draw these distinctions, and his examples are drawn from all groups. [327]

For many reversals and all sorts of luck come about in the course of a life; and it is possible for the person who was most especially going well to encounter great calamities in old age, as in the stories told about Priam in the Trojan war. But when a person has such misfortunes and ends in a wretched condition, nobody says that he is living well (oudeis eudaimoniyei). 

The story of Priam is a good test case for Aristotle's ethical theory here. For it begins with a person who had, presumably, developed and maintained a stably virtuous character through life, had acted well and according to excellence - but who was then deprived by war of family, children, friends, power, resources, freedom. In his final pitiable state Priam's capacity to act well is very much diminished; for he cannot, given the constraints upon him, exercise many of the human excellences for which he was previously known. We deeply pity Priam, feeling that he has lost something of great importance in losing his sphere of activity, something that is deeper than mere contented feeling [328-329]. On the other hand, even an ethical theorist who rejects the extremes of the good-condition view may wish to maintain here that calamity does not impair the quality of Priam's life, since he has displayed good character in action consistently through the course of a long life. Aristotle's challenge is to sketch a response that will do justice to these competing intuitions.

프리아모스의 이야기는 이 문맥에서 아리스토텔레스 윤리학의 좋은 시험 사례다. 왜냐하면 이 이야기는, 아마도 평생 동안 안정적인 덕 있는 성품을 형성하고 유지하며, 탁월성에 따라 훌륭히 살아온 한 사람으로 시작되지만, 전쟁으로 인해 가족, 자식들, 친구들, 권력, 자원, 자유를 박탈당한 인물을 보여주기 때문이다. 그가 마지막에 처한 비참한 상태에서는, 프리아모스가 잘 행위할 수 있는 능력이 크게 약화된다. 그에게 가해진 제약들을 고려하면, 그는 이전에 그로 잘 알려졌던 많은 인간적 탁월성들을 더 이상 실현할 수 없다. 우리는 프리아모스를 깊이 연민하게 되며, 단지 만족감이나 기쁨 이상의 어떤 중요한 것을—곧 그의 활동의 장(sphere of activity)—상실했다는 느낌을 받는다. 한편, ‘좋은 상태(good-condition)’ 이론의 극단을 거부하는 윤리 이론가조차도 이 경우에 한해서는, 불행이 프리아모스의 삶의 질 자체를 훼손하지는 않았다고 주장하고 싶어할 수 있다. 그는 오랜 생애를 통해 지속적으로 훌륭한 성품을 행동으로 드러냈기 때문이다. 아리스토텔레스가 직면한 과제는 바로 이러한 상충하는 직관들—한편으로는 활동의 상실이 삶의 훼손이라는 느낌, 다른 한편으로는 성품의 일관성이 삶의 가치를 유지해준다는 견해—모두에 정당한 자리를 부여하는 설명을 제시하는 것이다.

Aristotle's remarks about Priam and related cases go against a well-established tradition in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern, according to which moral goodness, that which is an appropriate object of ethical praise and blame, cannot be harmed or affected by external circumstances. [329]

아리스토텔레스가 프리아모스(Priam)와 유사한 사례들에 대해 언급한 내용은, 도덕적 선(善)—즉 윤리적 칭찬과 비난의 정당한 대상—은 외적 환경에 의해 해를 입거나 영향을 받지 않는다는 고대와 현대를 아우르는 도덕철학의 확립된 전통에 반하는 것이다.

For Plato, the good person could not be harmed by the world: his life is no less good and praiseworthy because of adverse circumstances. For the good-condition theorist, the same is evidently true, though for slightly different reasons. For Kant, whose influence upon modern Aristotle commentators and their audiences cannot, here again, be overestimated, happiness can be augmented or diminished by fortune; but that which is truly deserving of ethical praise and blame, true moral worth, cannot be. This Kantian view has so influenced the tradition of subsequent ethical theory that it has come to seem to many a hallmark of truly moral thinking. [329]

플라톤에게 있어 선한 사람은 세상으로부터 해를 입을 수 없다. 불리한 상황 속에서도 그의 삶은 여전히 선하며, 칭찬받을 만한 것이다. ‘좋은 상태(good-condition)’ 이론가에게도 이러한 입장은 기본적으로 동일하지만, 그 근거는 다소 다르다. 칸트에게 있어서—그리고 그의 영향력은 현대의 아리스토텔레스 해석자들과 그 독자들에게 있어서 과소평가될 수 없는데—행복은 운에 따라 증대되거나 감소할 수 있지만, 진정으로 윤리적 칭찬과 비난의 대상이 되는 것, 곧 도덕적 가치는 결코 그렇게 영향을 받지 않는다. 이러한 칸트적 관점은 이후 윤리 이론의 전통에 깊이 스며들었으며, 많은 이들에게 ‘진정으로 도덕적인 사고방식’의 특징으로 여겨지게 되었다.

 

It is not surprising, then, that interpreters under the influence of one or more of these traditions and anxious to make Aristotle look morally respectable have read the Priam passage oddly, so that it no longer says what would be most shocking, namely that ethical praiseworthiness of life, not just happy feeling, can be augmented or diminished by chance reversals. [329]

The interpretative view that acquits Aristotle of this immoral doctrine is as follows. Aristotle is, in these passages, drawing a distinction between two of his central ethical notions: between eudaimonia and makariotes, living well and being blessed or happy. The former consists in activity according to excellence; the latter in this, plus the blessings of fortune. [329]

아리스토텔레스를 이러한 ‘비도덕적인’ 교의로부터 벗어나게 해주는 해석은 다음과 같다. 아리스토텔레스는 해당 구절들에서 자신의 두 중심 윤리 개념, 즉 eudaimonia(잘 사는 것)와 makariotes(복됨 또는 행복함)을 구별하고 있다는 것이다. 전자는 탁월성에 따른 활동으로 구성되며, 후자는 그것에 더해 운의 축복이 포함된 개념이라는 것이다.

According to this story, which has been put forward by Kant-influenced commentators such as Sir David Ross and H. H. Joachim, the gifts and reversals of fortune can never diminish eudaimonia, i.e., that for which Priam can be praised and blamed; but because they can diminish his enjoyment of his good activity, they do diminish contentment and good feeling. This reading bases itself upon a sentence in the Priam passage that says, 'If things are so, the eudaimon person will never become wretched; nor, however, will he be makarios, if he encounters the luck of Priam' [329-330] We shall later investigate this sentence in its context and ask whether it is really making the distinction desired by the interpreter. 

It is a famous distinction; and its closeness to the Kantian distinction between moral worth and happiness makes us suspicious of it right away as a reading of Aristotle, especially given the anti-Kantian force of Aristotle's remarks about the person on the wheel. Nor does it give us confidence to find that Aristotle's first remark about Priam's case is, eAs for someone who has luck like that and dies in a wretched condition, nobody says that he is living well (nobody eudaimoni^ei him)' (i iooa9-io). Priam is from the beginning denied not just contentment, but eudaimonia itself. But perhaps this is an unreflective belief of the many that Aristotle is going to criticize. So we need to look further to see whether the text as a whole supports the interpreters' distinction. [330]

이 구별은 유명한 것이며, 그것이 칸트의 도덕적 가치(moral worth)와 행복(happiness)의 구분과 매우 유사하다는 점에서, 특히 아리스토텔레스가 ‘바퀴에 묶인 사람’에 대해 보인 반(反)칸트적인 논조를 고려할 때, 아리스토텔레스 해석으로서 처음부터 의심을 품게 만든다. 또한, 프리아모스 사례에 대한 아리스토텔레스의 첫 번째 언급이 다음과 같다는 점도 해석에 대한 신뢰를 주지 않는다.

“그와 같은 불운을 겪고 비참한 상태로 죽은 사람에 대해, 아무도 그가 잘 살았다고(eudaimonei) 말하지 않는다.” (EN 1100a9–10)

이 말에서 프리아모스는 단지 만족감뿐 아니라 eudaimonia 자체를 처음부터 부정당하고 있다. 물론 어쩌면 이것은 아리스토텔레스가 비판하고자 하는 ‘다수의 반성 없는 믿음’일 수도 있다. 그렇다면 우리는 본문 전체가 해석자들이 주장하는 그 구별을 실제로 뒷받침하는지를 좀 더 면밀히 살펴볼 필요가 있다.

In fact it does not. Aristotle makes no significant distinction, in these passages, between eudaimonia and makariotes\ and he clearly claims that both can be damaged or disrupted by certain kinds of luck, though not by all the kinds that some of his contemporaries supposed. [330]

The textual evidence can be succinctly set out: first, passages claiming that eudaimonia is vulnerable to catastrophe; second, passages indicating that Aristotle here treats 'eudaimon' and 'makarion* as interchangeable; those then allow us to draw upon his remarks about the makarion for our picture of eudaimonia. [330]

(1) As we have already seen, the passage about the person on the wheel from EN vn = EE vi clearly asserts that external circumstances are required for eudaimonia; the same was obviously true of the passage from Magna Moralia n.8 that we quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Eudemian Ethics vin.2 argues at length that 'practical wisdom is not the only thing that makes acting well according to excellence (eupragian kaf are ten, the definiens of eudaimonia), but we say that the fortunate, too, do well (eu prattein), implying that good fortune is a cause of good activity just as knowledge is' (1246b3 7-4232). The friendship books will argue that philoi, as 4 external goods', are necessary for full eudaimonia (cf. Ch. 12, and esp. n69b2ff.). But we do not need to look so far afield. For the very disputed passages in EN 1 tell the same story. Nobody calls Priam eudaimon (nooa7-8). Because it is difficult or impossible to do fine things (ta kala prattein) without resources, it is obvious that eudaimonia stands in need of the external goods (1099329-31). And at the conclusion of the Priam passage, Aristotle summarizes, 4 What, then, prevents us from saying that a person is eudaimon if and only if that person is active according to complete excellence and is sufficiently equipped with the external goods not for some chance period of time, but for a complete life?' (1101314-15). Here the presence of 'sufficient' external goods is introduced, in a passage as formally definitional as any in the EN, as a separate necessary condition for eudaimonia itself. [330]

(2) If we now attend to passages in which 'makarion' and ' eudaimon' occur together, we find that these passages confirm and do not disrupt this general picture. For the words are, in fact, treated as interchangeable. This is generally true in the ethical works [330-331]. To take just a single salient example outside of our present context: in EN ix.9, Aristotle reports a debate about the value ofphilia\ There is a debate as to whether the eudaimon needs philoi or not. For they say that makarioi and self-sufficient people have no need of philoi, since they have all good things already... But it seems peculiar to give all good things to the eudaimon and to leave out philoi, which seem to be the greatest of the external goods... And surely it is peculiar to make the makarios a solitary: for nobody would choose to have all the good things in the world all by himself. For the human being is a political creature and naturally disposed to living-with. And this is true of the eudaimon as well... Therefore the eudaimon needs philoi. a detailed discussion of the argument of the passage, see Ch.