COURAGE AND TEMPERANCE—the virtues of war and the virtues of peace—and greatness of soul are fine and choice worthy for their own sakes because they reveal the agent’s commitment to the supreme value of some use of leisure that displays his rational and political nature. When a person protects a wounded comrade or eats at a dinner party or accepts honors with dignity in a moderate way, he shows that in his view the rational use of leisure makes life worth living. As we know, Aristotle thinks that the best use of leisure is in philosophical contemplation. Theôria, after all, is the paradigmatic way of grasping the truth that all other rational activity, and in particular morally virtuous activity, approximates. Thus, when the phronimos acts for the sake of the fine in action, he shows that his understanding of practical truthfulness is determined by the best use of leisure, which is in fact theoretical. And since excellence in practical truthfulness is an approximation of theoretical truthfulness, the agent’s morally virtuous action is simultaneously worth choosing for the sake of contemplation.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Two Happy Lives and Their Most Final Ends

COURAGE AND TEMPERANCE—the virtues of war and the virtues of peace—and greatness of soul are fine and choice worthy for their own sakes because they reveal the agent’s commitment to the supreme value of some use of leisure that displays his rational and political nature. When a person protects a wounded comrade or eats at a dinner party or accepts honors with dignity in a moderate way, he shows that in his view the rational use of leisure makes life worth living. As we know, Aristotle thinks that the best use of leisure is in philosophical contemplation. Theôria, after all, is the paradigmatic way of grasping the truth that all other rational activity, and in particular morally virtuous activity, approximates. Thus, when the phronimos acts for the sake of the fine in action, he shows that his understanding of practical truthfulness is determined by the best use of leisure, which is in fact theoretical. And since excellence in practical truthfulness is an approximation of theoretical truthfulness, the agent’s morally virtuous action is simultaneously worth choosing for the sake of contemplation.

When we turn to NE X.6–8, we see Aristotle draw these observations to their logical conclusion. Morally virtuous action, choice worthy as it is for itself, is choice worthy for the sake of a distinct eudaimonia (1177b2–15). Contemplation, on the other hand, is choice worthy for itself alone (1177b1– 2). Thus contemplation is our most final end, the human good, and perfect or most final (teleia) eudaimonia (1177b24–25). The philosopher who devotes everything he does to contemplation leads the happiest human life (1178a6– 8). In the first section of this chapter I will trace Aristotle’s presentation of this argument.

Now, as in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, in NE X.6–8 Aristotle takes the finality of a good to be a particularly important mark of its being eudaimonia.¹ Thus, he is concerned to show that contemplation has this feature. But he also considers a new worry: If, as we learn now for the first time in the Nicomachean Ethics, contemplation is the divine activity, is it right to think of it as the end of a genuinely human life? If not, then it is not clear that a human being oug ht to pursue it as happiness (1177b26–31). Aristotle argues in NE X.7 that the philosophical life is both divine and the life of our truest self (1177b31–1178a7). However, the argument leads him to make two modifications in NE X.8 of the rather triumphant intellectualism of his previous chapter. First, Aristotle concedes that the political life lived “in accordance with the other virtue” is also happy, although in a secondary way (1178a9–10).² He is not very forth coming about his reasons for this concession, but I will argue in the second section of this chapter that they are twofold: (a) the political life also aims at the excellent activity of our human self, and (b) this morally virtuous activity is itself divine in a way. Second, Aristotle insists that the philosophical life must be lived in the awareness of the philosopher’s human context (1178b5–7, 1178b33– 1179a9). The philosopher is not a god but a human being who is as godlike as it is possible for a political animal to be.

Properly understood, Aristotle’s discussion in NE X.8 of these two qualifications to the praise of the philosophical life in NE X.7 can help us solve a problem that does not seem to have bothered Aristotle very much, but has been frustrating to his modern interpreters. Aristotle believes that the philosophical life includes moral virtue (1178b5–6). But as we have seen in the two previous chapters, and in particular in the discussion of courage, morally virtuous activity celebrates a distinctively political vision of the leisurely life. Why should the philosopher have any interest in that? His political nature is unavoidable, of course, but the external goods that human beings acquire in community are a hindrance to his theoretical activity (1178b3–5). So what reason does the lover of contemplation have to choose virtuous actions that celebrate this aspect of his nature? In fact, it is not hard to imagine reasons for the philosopher to reject moral virtue, for the demands of virtue may be an additional impediment to contemplation. Why, for example, should a philosopher want to be courageous, given that courage may require him to give up his life? So, even if morally virtuous action is choice worthy for the sake of contemplation, it is not clear that it is the best choice for that end.

Aristotle does not provide an explicit solution to this problem. He seems to think that the mere fact of the contemplator’s necessary engagement in practical affairs is sufficient to guarantee that he will act virtuously. “Insofar as he [the philosopher] is a human being and lives with many people, he chooses to act in accordance with [practical] virtue” (1178b5–6).³ Nevertheless, I believe his answer is implicit in his discussion in NE X.7–8 of the happiness of the philosophical and political lives. In brief, Aristotle’s position is this: The lover of contemplation will want to possess contemplation to the extent that his nature allows. Now, in fortunate circumstances, our nature allows us to exercise our theoretical reason. But even in the best of circumstances, the time we spend engaging our theoretical reason will necessarily be extremely short in comparison with the time we must spend using our practical reason. Our animal and political nature requires that we figure out how to acquire all kinds of goods for ourselves, including the time to spend contemplating. So the lover of contemplation, if he wants to participate in contemplation as much as he can, must find a way to extend the possession of contemplation into his practical life. This he can do by exercising phronêsis. For as we have seen, morally virtuous action not only reveals the philosopher’s commitment to contemplation, it approximates contemplation. Since human life is so overwhelmingly practical, morally virtuous action provides a way to possess contemplation that the philosopher cannot ignore. If he were to act against moral virtue for the sake of what could only be a relatively short period of contemplation, he would deprive himself of a kind of possession of his highest good for most of his life.

In the third section of this chapter I will argue for this solution to the problem of the place of moral virtue in the happy life. But before I discuss this and the other issues I have raised, I should defend two assumptions I am making that may seem controversial.

1. THE COMPETITION BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICAL LIVES

I assume that the theoretical life and the “life in accordance with the other virtue” (1178a6–9) are competing alternatives, and not two aspects of the same life.⁴ By this point in Aristotelian scholarship, my assumption is probably not particularly controversial. Still, it is important enough that it ought to be defended. I do not believe that the question can be decided by the meaning of bios alone,⁵ although Aristotle seems usually to refer to some-thing like a biographical life (or to a “complete” portion of such a life) when he writes bios. However, Aristotle’s use of bios in NE I.5 can guide us in the interpretation of this word in NE X. That is because in NE X.6–8 he settles the question he first raised in NE I.5 of which of the three traditional happy lives—the voluptuary’s, the politician’s, or the philosopher’s—is the best.⁶ (In fact, at NE I.5 1096a4–5 Aristotle promises to describe the theoretical life later; NE X.7–8 is the place he does it.) Now David Keyt (1989) has argued that bios means ‘occupation or career’ and so that one may lead two bioi simultaneously in different areas of one’s life. We may think, perhaps, of Thomas Jefferson, who was a farmer and an architect. Now in the first place, Keyt’s conclusion strikes me as rather anachronistic. One has to divorce one’s occupation from one’s overall social position in order for it to be psychologically possible to have two independent careers at once; Jefferson, after all, did not lead a farming life and an architectural life; he led the life of a gentleman farmer. But also, Keyt’s interpretation is clearly not what Aristotle has in mind in NE I.5, for there the three lives in competition for the title of happiest are conceived as mutually exclusive alternatives. Each life is distinguished by what it takes to be the most valuable human good. The political life is one in which honor or virtue or something else (morally virtuous activity, as it turns out) is taken to be the ultimate concern of a life worth living. The voluptuary, on the other hand, values pleasure above all else. It is hard to imagine how a person could value two goods as independently (and not jointly) most valuable without suffering some kind of schizophrenia, or at least conflict (and so unhappiness). And in fact, Aristotle describes the three allegedly happy lives of NE I.5 as being embodied by separate people, implying that in the ideal case, at least, these lives are not led by the same people. There is no indication that one of the “refined men of action,” such as a Callicles, for example, sometimes leads a theoretical bios just because he dabbles in philosophy.⁷ Of course, a person may vacillate in his opinion about what makes a life worth living. A person may, when he is sick, think that happiness is health, and then when he is well, decide it is in fact wealth (NE I.4 1095a23–25). If a person lives with first the one opinion and then the other for long enough, perhaps Aristotle would say that he has lived two lives.⁸ But Aristotle appears to consider this an unfortunate situation, and in any case it does not prove that a bios is only an aspect of life. A bios is a life with a point (which may, in theory at least, be an inclusive end), and a person can only steer his life toward one point at a time.

Of course, the possibility of literally leading a new life does show that bios does not strictly refer to the entire span of one’s time alive. According to Aristotle, not everyone who is alive has a bios. At least, it is not clear to him that slaves have bioi at all (1177a8–9). Perhaps, then, we should say that a bios is a sufficiently lengthy period of time in which one acts for the sake of a goal of one’s own choosing, a goal that seems to the agent to make his life as divinely happy as it could be.⁹ A bios not only has a point, it has a point in light of which the agent more or less consciously makes his choices. This definition of bios has the advantage of explaining why, according to Aristotle, human beings and gods can both lead the theoretical life. So long as both make contemplation the goal of their lives (a telos that is continuously realized, in the case of the gods), both gods and men will lead the same sort of life. Any differences in the particularities of how they achieve that goal will (contra Keyt [1989, 17]) be irrelevant to the question of what life they lead.

The other assumption I have made is that the life lived “in accordance with the other virtue” (1178a9) is the political life, the life of a statesman or prominent citizen. Sarah Broadie, for example, has argued that this life is “the modest life of practical virtue without significant leisure” for contemplation (1991, 429–430).¹⁰ It is true, of course, that Aristotle does not explicitly mention nobility, with which we might expect the politikos to be particularly concerned (NE I.5 1095b22–30), until well into the passage describing this secondarily happy life (1178b3, b13). Furthermore, he does not call this life the political life. He does, of course, call the person who aims at the activity of moral virtue the politikos (1177b12, 1178a27). It may be, though, that the politikos is just one of the people who leads the life in accordance with moral virtue. Still, there are two reasons I think we ought to interpret the secondarily happy life, the life in accordance with the other virtue, as the political life. First, as I said before, Aristotle seems in NE X.6–8 to want to decide the contest between the three lives described in NE I.5. It would be odd for him to consider and reject the life of pleasure (NE X.6) and award the honor to the theoretical life (NE X.7–8), but to ignore the political life altogether and instead discuss some new life as if we already knew what it was. (This would be particularly surprising to Aristotle’s audience of future statesmen who, we can imagine, arrived at his lectures assuming that the political life is the best.) Furthermore, in NE I.5 Aristotle is coy about what the end of the political life really is (1095b30–1096a2). If we take the life in accordance with the other virtue to be the political life, he will be solving this problem. The political life aims not at virtue but at actions in accordance with moral virtue.

The dependence of the secondarily happy life on external goods provides a second reason to interpret it as the political life. For the amount of external goods Aristotle claims are necessary for this life would be necessary only for someone who has devoted himself to performing virtuous actions on a grand scale. To take one example, Aristotle says the temperate person needs abundant means and power (exousia) in order to perform temperate actions (1178a33).¹¹ But surely this is just false if Aristotle is talking about a modest virtuous life. After all, a little later he says that the happy person will not need many great external goods in order to do fine things (1179a1–5). Aristotle’s explanation for the temperate person’s need of exousia is revealing. Without it, “how will he or any of the other virtuous people be manifest (dêlos)?” (1178a33–34). (Notice that Aristotle does not say that a person needs exousia in order to act temperately in the first place. He needs it for his temperance to be clear.)¹² The implication seems to be that the person leading the life “in accordance with the other virtue” needs a prominent financial and social position in order to perform particularly prominent virtuous actions. Indeed, Aristotle says that the greater and more fine the actions are at which a person aims, the more he will need by way of external goods (1178b1–3). But surely the person who aims at morally virtuous actions in this grand way is the politikos.

In my interpretation, then, Aristotle equates the political life with the life lived in accordance with practical virtue.We should see that this is a reasonable identification for him to make. The phronimos chooses his morally virtuous actions because they express the importance to him of rational leisure. It is for this reason that his actions are fine and choice worthy for their own sakes. Now if a person cares about the fine in action, he has reason to choose fine actions that are grand. For, as we saw in chapter 6, above, something in general is fine when it makes manifest its orientation to the good, and the bigger it is, the finer it is by reason of its magnitude (Poet. 8 1451a10–11). Thus, the bigger a virtuous action is, the more beautifully it shows the agent’s conception of what makes life worth living, and the better it is as an action of that sort. I am suggesting, then, that grand virtuous actions are paradigmatic of moral virtue, and they are so because of all human actions they are the most fine. Aristotle’s description of the great-souled man supports this suggestion. (Indeed, Aristotle says that “greatness of soul is in greatness [megethei] just as beauty is in a great body” [1123b6–7].) The great-souled man deserves the greatest honors because he performs the best actions (1123b17–21, b26–27). But the great-souled man’s actions, few though they may be, are all big (1124b6–8, b24–26). Now the philosopher can count himself lucky when the opportunity for great actions arises without feeling the need to seek such occasions out. (As I suggested in the previous chapter, the great-souled man may well be a philosopher, not a statesman.) But the person who values morally virtuous action above all else will rationally seek fulfillment in paradigmatically virtuous actions. Since these are grand and require a more than modest amount of external goods (1178b2–3), the person who lives for the sake of morally virtuous activity will not only prefer grand acts, he will guide his life into venues where such acts are possible. But the person who makes a business of virtuous action on a grand scale is surely the politikos. At least, Aristotle says that “of morally virtuous actions, the political and military ones are outstanding for their beauty and size” (1177b16–17). A person of modest means and position can live for the sake of morally virtuous activity, of course, and he will have nothing to reproach himself for from the point of view of moral virtue. But neither will his life be the paradigm of the life lived for the sake of “the other virtue.” That life is the statesman’s. As we shall see, Aristotle exploits this idea that the politician is the paradigm of moral virtue in his argument that morally virtuous activity is subordinate to contemplation.

2. THE SUPERIOR FINALITY OF CONTEMPLATION

I turn now to Aristotle’s argument in NE X.7 that theoretical activity is the most final end of human life. Aristotle begins with the following claim: “If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it be in accordance with the best [virtue]; and this would be [the virtue] of the best part” (1177a12–13). It is no surprise, after Aristotle’s argument in NE VI that sophia is the highest form of theoretical reason, that the activity of the best part of the soul should turn out to be theoretical and not practical activity (1177a17–18).¹³ As Aristotle told us, theoretical wisdom contemplates the most divine things, while practical reason examines the same kind of objects that concern the beasts (VI.7 1141a25–28). Aristotle uses this point in a more general form as his first argument in favor of the superiority of theoretical activity (1177a19–21).

However, Aristotle’s claim that it would be reasonable for happiness to be the activity of the best (kratistê) virtue, given that it must be activity of some virtue or other, is reminiscent of the conclusion of the function argument in NE I.7.¹⁴ There Aristotle concludes from considerations of the human function that “the human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are many virtues, in accordance with the best (aristen) and most final (teleiotatên)” (1098a16–18). As I argued in chapter 2, Aristotle is interested in the idea of function in NE I.7 because the excellent performance of a thing’s function is the same as its end. (Notice that he introduces the function argument as a fuller specification of eudaimonia as the best good and final end [1097b20–25].) Since the function of a flautist is to play the flute, everything he does (insofar as he is a flautist) is directed toward fulfilling this goal well. Thus, by recalling the function argument in NE X.7, Aristotle reminds us of the special status of the finality of the human good: The human good is a final activity that expresses our human nature. As we will see in the next section, this is an important fact.

If I am right that the beginning of NE X.7 recalls the function argument and thus Aristotle’s claim that the human good is the most final end, then it reminds us that Aristotle must do more than show that contemplation is merely an end. He must also show that it is a most final end, choice worthy for its own sake alone and never for the sake of anything else. ¹⁵ He begins this project in the passage from 1177b1–4: “And this [activity, i.e. theoretical activity] alone would seem to be loved on account of itself; for nothing comes from it beyond the contemplating, but from practical affairs we obtain more or less beyond the action.” The tripartite division of ends found in NE I.7 has been collapsed into two tiers (as found in NE I.2): ends loved only for themselves and ends loved for the sake of something beyond themselves. (Literally, Aristotle claims that contemplation is the only end loved for itself, not that it is the only end loved only for itself, but in the interests of keeping this consistent with his repeated claims that morally virtuous actions are loved for themselves, I think we should interpret him as having the weaker claim in mind.)¹⁶ It is appropriate for Aristotle to ignore the special case of middle level ends, however, since his project is to find the most final end. Whether an end is loved for itself or not, so long as it is loved for something else as well, it will not meet the finality criterion for the highest good.¹⁷ In this argument, Aristotle is not concerned with whether morally virtuous activity is loved for its own sake. The question is whether it is also choiceworthy for the sake of something further.

Now the uselessness of contemplation is a familiar point (NE VI.7 1141a34–b8, VI.12 1143b19–20) and so, too, is the idea that all morally virtuous actions, choice worthy as they are for their own sakes, also seek to bring about some result or other, whether it be victory, health, or a proportionate distribution of goods. But the fact that contemplation is pure activity (energeia) while morally virtuous activity is activity in process (kinêsis) is not really enough for Aristotle’s argument that contemplation is more final than morally virtuous action. For in bringing about victory, health, and just distributions of goods, the morally virtuous person is perpetuating conditions amenable to the exercise of practical virtue. In other words, it is not clear simply from the fact that actions are activities in kinêseis that morally virtuous action aims at an end that is genuinely distinct from and beyond itself. Thus, as he must, Aristotle adds a further argument.

As I suggested in section 1, fine actions on a grand scale such as those the statesman is inclined to perform are paradigmatically virtuous actions. What Aristotle wants to argue in the passage from 1177b4–25, I suggest, is that these paradigmatically virtuous actions at which the political life aims necessarily lead beyond themselves to circumstances in which such actions are no longer called for. In other words, I take Aristotle’s argument not to be that all morally virtuous actions are choice worthy for independent results beyond themselves (although this may be true), but that paradigmatic virtuous actions characteristic of the statesman’s life aim at circumstances in which such grand actions are uncalled for.

And happiness seems to be in leisure; for we are un leisurely in order that we may be at leisure, and we wage war in order that we may live in peace. Now the activity of the practical virtues is either in political life or in war, and actions in these circumstances seem to be un leisurely. Wartime actions are altogether un leisurely (for no one chooses to wage war or provoke war for the sake of waging war; for if someone made enemies of his friends in order to bring about battles and slaughter, he would seem to be altogether bloodthirsty). But the activity of the statesman is also un leisurely and, beyond the political activity itself, obtains power and honors or at any rate happiness for the [statesman] himself and for the citizens, a happiness which is other than the political activity and which, it is clear, we seek as being other. Then if, of the actions in accordance with virtue, the political and military ones stand out in beauty and size, but are un leisurely and aim at some end and are not chosen for their own sakes, while on the other hand, the activity of noûs seems, because it is theoretical, to be exceedingly serious and not to aim at any end beyond itself . . . this would be perfect [or most final, reading teleia in light of haplôs teleion at 1097a33] happiness of man.

There are two important assumptions in this argument. The first is that all outstandingly fine actions are un leisurely; the second is that all un leisurely activities are choice worthy for the sake of leisure activities. Let’s consider the second assumption first.

Aristotle assumes that un leisurely actions are worth undertaking for the sake of leisure. Thus, to use the terminology of NE I.7, leisure is more final than un leisureliness and is its end. Aristotle does not mean, of course, that everyone always does go about their un leisurely business with an eye to being at leisure. (We all know people who toil only to create more work for them-selves.) Instead, his point must be that there is something failed about un leisurely actions that do not lead toward leisure, for leisure is their end. Now this may seem surprising after Aristotle’s rejection of pleasure as the human good. For in the argument at 1176b27–1177a1 he seems to say that leisurely relaxation is not the most final end and, for that reason, is not happiness:

For it would be strange for the end to be amusement (paidian ), and to engage in business and go to trouble one’s whole life for the sake of amusing oneself. For we choose everything so to speak for the sake of something else except for happiness; for this is an end. But to exert oneself and toil for the sake of amusements would seem silly and utterly childish. On the other hand, to amuse oneself in order to exert oneself, as Anacharsis says, seems to be correct; for amusement is like a break, and being un able to toil continuously, people need a break. But a break is not an end.

But Aristotle is not denying here the claim of leisurely activity to be the end.

He is criticizing a particular use of leisure. The problem with the voluptuary is that he spends his leisure in amusements that are properly enjoyed as only a break from work. He is not mistaken insofar as he takes leisurely activity to be the human end. (Indeed, the fact that amusing oneself is a way of spending one’s leisure time is one of the few arguments in favor of thinking of pleasure as the human good [1176b16–17].) Leisure (scholê) in Aristotle’s sense is not a time of relaxation (though it may be used that way); it is the condition of being free from the demands posed by our natural desire for the necessities of life. A leisurely life is one that is not driven by the need to satisfy necessary desires.¹⁸

From this point of view Aristotle’s assumption that un leisurely activity is choice worthy for the sake of leisure is quite plausible. For if un leisureliness is the business of toiling to satisfy necessary animal desires and social obligations, this can be worth choosing only on the assumption that it is worthwhile to live in circumstances in which those demands are met and no longer press upon us. My point is not that people would no longer eat or sleep or have sex if leisure were not possible. Animals take care of their bodily needs, after all, and we are animals. Rather, I am suggesting that un leisureliness is chosen, in Aristotle’s sense, as something good because it leads to leisure. A sign of this is that human un leisureliness is guided by leisure as a telos. Unlike animals, most people do not work only to satisfy the desire of a moment. They try to provide for future appetitive desires so that when those arise they may free themselves of them without toil. (Some people’s work never gets them ahead. This is felt as oppressive in part because the point of labor ultimately is to be free from labor.) So un leisureliness is choice worthy for the sake of leisure time. But since leisure is worth having only if there is some valuable activity with which to occupy it, we can say that un leisurely activities are properly choice-worthy for the sake of some valuable leisure activity. This activity that makes leisure worth having, of course, will be eudaimonia (1177b4).

The crux of Aristotle’s argument for the imperfect finality of morally virtuous action comes in the next step. According To Aristotle, all morally virtuous action is found either in battle or in political affairs (1177b6–8). Since both these contexts are un leisurely, morally virtuous action must be choice worthy for the sake of some independent use of leisure. Aristotle’s division of morally virtuous action into military and political actions is not exhaustive, and this may seem to vitiate his argument. Since Aristotle treats political activity as the activity of the statesman, he seems to have overlooked the moral virtue of the private citizen. Could not private moral activity be the use of leisure for the sake of which un leisureliness is worth choosing? I do not think Aristotle has simply made a mistake here, however, for at 1177b16–17 he explicitly says that the military and political activities he has shown to be un leisurely are only some of the morally virtuous actions. So Aristotle is aware that his typology of moral action is only partial. But he also says here that these virtuous military and political actions are outstanding in their size and beauty. As I argued in the previous section, this means that military and political actions, when performed well, are paradigms of virtue. Thus, in charity to Aristotle, I think we should read his argument as directed in the first instance toward showing that the exemplars of moral virtue are imperfectly final ends. I will say in a moment how we might extend his conclusions to the rest of moral virtue.

We can readily admit that wartime actions, and a fortiori excellent wartime actions, are un leisurely. As Aristotle says, only a bloodthirsty brute would choose war for its own sake (1177b9–10). But political actions aim at something beyond themselves as well. Aristotle probably has in mind an idea such as this: The politician, the one who exercises the political art, is a craftsman (1094a26–b7). As such, the good at which he aims is conceptually distinct from his own happiness. (See 1094b7–10, where the statesman’s goal of happiness for the city is distinguished from the goal of personal happiness.) Thus, attractive as it may seem in itself to exercise political influence, that exercise is always (or at least ought to be) shaped by the further and separate good the statesman hopes to achieve by it.¹⁹ The typical political leader may be guided by the hope of glory, but ideally, political action aims at happiness for oneself and fellow citizens, a happiness that is sought as being something independent of the political action itself (1177b13–15).²⁰ (Of course, even the honor-loving statesman seeks honor as happiness [NE I.5 1095b22–23].) The good statesman not only tries to produce peace, he seeks to provide occasions in which that peace can be enjoyed. In other words, he arranges for the good use of leisure (Pol. VII.14 1334a2–6). Where he directs his energies will depend on his own understanding of human flourishing. Perhaps he will arrange for athletic games, or the building of temples or libraries.²¹ But whatever form these grand political gestures take, they are guided by a conception of happiness that is other than the production of such gestures themselves. For the provision of the good use of leisure is business.²² So all morally virtuous action, at least in its most exemplary forms, is un leisurely and choice worthy for the sake of something beyond itself.²³

Perhaps we can put Aristotle’s point this way. The most fine uses of our practical reason occur in circumstances where there is a challenge to overcome. By facing hardship in an orderly way, the virtuous person shows there is something above his mere animal nature that makes his life worth living. But the very fact that practical reason judges the challenges of war and political business worth moving beyond suggests that such circumstances and the sort of virtuous activities that only they make appropriate are not the ultimate human value. The upshot is that paradigmatically virtuous actions, that is, political and military virtuous actions, however intrinsically valuable they may be given the circumstances, necessarily look to an independent end beyond themselves. And since the peacetime moral actions of an ordinary citizen are more modest examples of the same type of activity, they too ought to look beyond themselves.

It may not be immediately obvious that modest moral virtue has an aspect of un leisureliness as well. Of course, temperance is displayed in the un leisurely course of gratifying animal desire. But wit is also a virtue and can be used when there is no business at hand. (Of course, the famous wit of the Spartans was often produced under pressure. And Samuel Johnson’s wit rises from mere pleasantness to virtue against the backdrop of the suffering of his life.) In any case, if Aristotle does not allow a dinner party to be a use of leisure, he not only flouts without explanation the cultural meaning of the symposium, but he rigs the definition of leisure in favor of theôria’s being the only possible (and not just the best) use of leisure time. Now Aristotle does think that moral virtues are expressed in leisure (Pol. VII.15 1334a14), and it is possible that he slightly overstates his case against the finality of morally virtuous action in NE X.7. But perhaps he thinks that moral virtue is used with respect to the un leisurely aspects of leisure. In other words, moral virtue is un leisurely because it regulates leisure insofar as it is affected by animal desires and not by the leisure itself, that is, the condition of not being driven by such desires. Aristotle seems to have something like this in mind at Politics VII.15 1334a24–34 when he explains how particularly important it is for citizens at leisure to be trained in justice and temperance. We need these virtues especially in leisure because the abundance of leisure makes people prone to hubris. Clearly Aristotle’s thought here is that these moral virtues are valuable in leisure because they keep us from destroying leisure and allow us to use it for some other activity (in the Politics, presumably philosophy or the enjoyment of music and poetry).²⁴ Of course, this solution does not tell us what to make of virtues such as wit. However, we should not underestimate the significance of showing that the most paradigmatic virtuous actions are less final than contemplation, for it is these paradigmatic actions that are under consideration as the highest good. Aristotle shows that they cannot be the highest human good. Instead, they are choice worthy for the sake of that most lovable of the uses of leisure: philosophical contemplation.

Of course, human nature being animal and political as it is, we can never fully move beyond the circumstances that make political activity, not to mention modest moral activity, appropriate. It would be deeply unrealistic to count practical activity as failed simply because it never succeeds in producing stable and uninterrupted leisure for the agent and others. Human nature cannot avoid business and toil. But Aristotle does not think such actions are failed. On the contrary, given the circumstances, which we shall see are inalienable to our nature, Aristotle thinks that all practically virtuous actions are choice worthy for their own sakes.²⁵ What I have tried to argue in the last two chapters, however, is that morally virtuous action is fine and choice worthy for its own sake because it expresses the agent’s orientation to the good, which now Aristotle explicitly says is in leisure. Thus, although morally virtuous actions aim to be and often are productive of leisure and happiness, this is only an aspect of the more general way in which they are choice worthy for the sake of contemplation. They are choice worthy for their own sakes and for the sake of contemplation because in their instrumentality and in their manner they express the agent’s commitment to the supreme value of leisure whose best use is in theoretically virtuous activity.

3. HUMAN APPROXIMATION OF DIVINE LIFE: PART ONE

Immediately after Aristotle draws the conclusion that contemplation is more final than morally virtuous action and is, therefore, happiness, he elaborates on his position in a way that raises a problem:

But a life of this sort [i.e. the theoretical life] would be higher [kreittôn] than a human life; for a person will live this way not insofar as he is a human being, but insofar as there is something divine in him; and the activity of this part is as much superior to activity in accordance with the other virtue as this part is superior to the compound.²⁶ So if noûs is divine compared to the human being, the life in accordance with this [i.e. noûs] is also divine as compared to the human life.

(1177b26–31)

The project of the NE is to discover the human good and the activity that is the human function. If theoretical activity is divine, is it correct to think of it as our human end at all?

Aristotle’s comment in the next line suggests that in some respects, at least, the terms of this objection are not accurate. It may well be that noûs is divine, but

[w]e must not heed those who advise us to think human things since we are human and to think mortal things since we are mortal, but we must be like immortals insofar as possible [eph’hoson endechetai athanatizein] and do everything toward [pros] living in accordance with the best thing in us. (1177b31–34)

Aristotle’s advice here harkens back to passages we discussed in chapter 4. If contemplation is divine, that is no reason to turn the focus of our lives elsewhere. All living things seek to immortalize themselves by imitating god. Indeed, if god’s activity is notice, as Metaphysics Ë.7 and NE X.8 tell us it is, human contemplation will be among the most successful of activities displaying this natural tendency. Now, this argument is a meta-ethical and indeed a meta-physical argument. It provides support for the philosophical life from the standpoint of the cosmos, so to speak. But Aristotle must also address this worry about the divinity of contemplation from the standpoint of his ethical theory. If contemplation is divine, can it be the human good? Is there any way that contemplation can express our human nature, or must we think of philosophers as possessed by god and in some sense not really human at all?²⁷

Aristotle claims that human beings are most of all (malista) their faculty of contemplation (1178a7). By this he must mean that human beings are, in the strictest sense, contemplative creatures.²⁸ But what does it mean to say that we are, strictly speaking, noûs? Presumably, if we are noûs in the strictest sense, then in another respect or way we are something else, in our case the compound of practical reason and the non rational soul (1177b28–29). Aristotle’s discussion in NE X.8 of the philosopher’s behavior insofar as he is human (hêi anthropos) does suggest that the human essence is to be identified in some sense with the compound of body, passions, and practical reason.²⁹ But what relation do these two ways of being human have to each other?³⁰

I think it is important to remember that at the end of NE X.7 Aristotle is trying to show that noûs is human because he must resolve a worry that the divinity of contemplative activity might seem to pose to his theory of happiness; he is not concerned to explain the sense in which our compound nature also is human or how we can be human in two distinct ways. Thus we should not take Aristotle’s silence on the status of our compound nature to be indicative of his answer to these questions. Still, I believe that his argument for the identity of noûs and human nature reveals that he has in mind a teleological model for the relationship between these sides of ourselves:

For even if [noûs] is small in bulk, in power and worth it excels everything else by much more. And each person would seem to be this [i.e. noûs], if in fact it is authoritative [kurion] and better. So it would be strange if someone should choose not the life of himself but of something else. And what is said now agrees with what was said before; for what is proper to each nature is best and most pleasant for it; and the life in accordance with noûs is best and most pleasant for human beings, if in fact this [i.e., noûs] is especially [malista] human being. (1177b34– 1178a7)

Aristotle’s assumption seems to be that each person is to be identified with the most authoritative element of his nature. It is not clear here why he thinks that noûs is the most authoritative element. Perhaps its similarity to the divine nature is meant to establish that. Consider, however, another possibility, available to us from the standpoint of ethics. If our theoretical reason is authoritative, it must be authoritative over the other aspects of our soul and the activities they produce. But authority, as we have encountered it in the NE at least, is often a matter of finality.³¹ As we saw in NE I.1–2, one craft has authority over another when the activity of the lower craft is choice worthy for the sake of the activity of the authoritative craft. Indeed, the political art is considered the most authoritative of all because the ends of all other crafts are choice worthy for the sake of its architectonic end (1094a26–27).³² And in NE VI.13 we saw that full-fledged moral virtue combined with phroneŝis is authoritative over the natural virtue with which we are born because perfected moral virtue is a more mature realization of natural virtue and the state toward which it normally develops (1144b4, b17). So an authoritative capacity or craft is one that directly gives rise to an activity or product for the sake of which the subordinate activities are worth choosing. (A general has authority over his troops because they must act for his end.) It seems possible, then, that Aristotle thinks that noûs is authoritative because its activity is the most final human end toward which all our other actions ought, by nature, to aim. (Notice how at 1177b33–34 he says that we should do everything toward living in accordance with the best part of our soul—panta poiein pros to zên—suggesting that the natural consequence of a part’s being best is that its end is most final.) Now if this is what he has in mind by saying that noûs is authoritative, then he will have provided the proof of the authority of noûs in the argument immediately preceding the objection (1177b4–25, quoted in the previous section). The activity of noûs is choice-worthy for its own sake alone, while the activity of practical virtue (certainly, at least, in paradigmatic cases) is subordinate to it. The former, then, ought to be authoritative over the latter. Aristotle hinted as much at the end of book VI when he assured us that theoretical wisdom would not take orders from phronêsis.³³

If I am right to associate the authority of noûs with its being productive of the most final end of which human action is capable, then it is evident why we ought to think of this part of the soul as being especially what we are. For the most final human end is the human function, and our function defines our essence. When Aristotle says that we are malista noûs, he is not restricting this as a description of our essence. Rather, he means to say that the activity of noûs, divine as it may be, is also the fullest expression of our human nature, where this is to be understood as the most final end toward which human nature as a whole strives.³⁴ The relationship between human nature as notice and human nature as merely anthropic, then, is that between more and less final goals of human striving. We are now in a position to understand the sense in which Aristotle intends those potentially troubling lines at 1177b27–28: “for he will live this way [viz. theoretically] not insofar as he is a human being, but insofar as there is something divine in him.” The part of ourselves by which we contemplate, and in virtue of which contemplation can be our goal, is in some way or other divine and not merely human. But though noûs is not merely human, it is most truly human; it is not alien to our nature.³⁵ So Aristotle’s advice to make ourselves as immortal as possible is defensible even within the framework of the Nicomachean Ethics, according to which an end ought to be pursued as most final when it is our distinctively human good.

The simultaneous humanity and divinity of contemplation is an important point. As we have seen, the gods are paradigms of happiness. Indeed, Aristotle says things are happy only to the extent that their lives resemble the contemplative existence of the gods.

And of human activities, the one most akin to this [contemplative activity of the gods] is most of the character of happiness [eudaimonikôtatê]. And a sign of this is also that the rest of the animals do not have a share of happiness since they are entirely deprived of this sort of activity. For the whole life of the gods is blessed, but for human beings [life is blessed] to the extent that there is some similarity (homoioma ti) to this sort of activity; and none of the other animals is happy, since they in no way participate in theôria. (1178b22–28)

The only reason that we human beings can be happy is that we (and not some alien part of us) are capable of activity that is truly godlike and happy. Thus, in defending the philosophical life as happy, it is important for Aristotle to show that noûs is both genuinely human and divine (1178b8–22, immediately preceding the passage cited above). Human contemplation is not nearly as perfect as divine thought, of course. It is interrupted by hunger and fatigue and sheer mortality (1178b33–35; Meta. Ë.7 1072b24–25). It can grasp only a finite number of truths at a time, while presumably the gods can grasp them all at once. Nevertheless, when we contemplate in our human fashion, we acts as immortals in a way and simultaneously realize our human nature to the fullest extent possible. That is the reason why the philosophical life is the happiest.

4. HUMAN APPROXIMATION OF DIVINE LIFE: PART TWO

But once Aristotle explicitly makes the connection between happiness and godlikeness, we must realize that excellent theoretical activity is not the only way in which we human beings resemble the gods. For as I have argued, the excellent use of practical reason resembles wise human theoretical reasoning. Since this latter is an imperfect version of divine contemplation, morally virtuous action should be godlike too, though in a more removed way.³⁶ If so, the life lived for the sake of activity in accordance with moral virtue ought to be happy, although in a secondary way. That is to say, contemplation will be most final (teleia) happiness, the eudaimonic good that never is chosen for the sake of anything else. But there will be another good—morally virtuous activity—that, although less final than contemplation, can nevertheless function as the most final end of a happy (in a secondary way) human life. This secondarily happy and godlike life will be the political life.

Now Aristotle does argue in NE X.8 1178a9–22 that the life in accordance with the other virtue (i.e., practical virtue) is happy in a secondary way (deuteroŝ).³⁷ But the argument in this passage does not say anything about the resemblance between moral and divine activity. In fact, Aristotle does not say much in defense of the happiness of the political life at all. He first says that the activities in accordance with moral virtue are human (1178a9–10),³⁸ and then launches into an explanation of how morally virtuous action is inextricably linked to our animal and political condition. Morally virtuous actions are performed with respect to other people; they concern the passions and the body (1178a10–16). Excellence of character is connected to the passions in many ways, and practical wisdom cannot be disengaged from excellence of character (1178a16–20). By the time we reach the end of this passage it is hard not to feel that Aristotle is more intent on showing that practical virtue is tied to our animal condition than he is on showing that the actions arising from such virtue are excellent and happy. Furthermore, his argument that divine activity is contemplative may seem to rule out the possibility that there is anything divine about morally virtuous action. For Aristotle’s argument is that it is absurd to think of the gods engaging in practical activity of any kind since anything to do with practical action is unworthy of the gods (1178b10–18).

As I said, Aristotle does not say much by way of justifying the happiness of the political life. Presumably, he did not think it needed much defense. Nevertheless, I believe he commits himself to the claim that practically virtuous activity is godlike and happy in a secondary way, for unless he accepts it, his own principles require him to deny that the political life is happy. At 1178b28–32 Aristotle says:

So far as contemplation extends, happiness does as well. And those to whom contemplation is more present are also happier, not by chance, but on account of the contemplation; for this is more prized on account of itself. So that happiness would be contemplation of a sort (theôriatis).

This passage comes immediately after the one cited above in which Aristotle ties the happiness of a life to its godlikeness. Clearly, he means to say that happiness extends as far as contemplation does because contemplation is the divine activity. Now, scholars sometimes read this passage as suggesting that a life is happy only to the extent that it includes time spent pondering meta-physical truths. But this cannot (or at least should not) be what Aristotle means, for this passage comes after his claim that the political life is happy, yet there is no suggestion that the politikos does philosophy in his spare time. Furthermore, according to Aristotle, a life is happy in virtue of aiming (successfully) at eudaimonia, and the political life aims at the activity of moral virtue. So literal contemplation cannot be what makes this life worth choosing, even if the statesman does spend time exercising his theoretical reason. How could the political life be happy if happiness depends on literal contemplation?

One might suggest that we read Aristotle as saying here that contemplation is responsible for the happiness of only the philosophical life.³⁹ But this cannot be correct either. The utter failure of the beasts to participate in contemplation in any way is supposed to explain why they cannot be happy. If the presence of contemplation is just one way to grasp happiness, his claim that the beasts do not participate in contemplation would be insufficient to rule out the possibility of their happiness.

But let us think about Aristotle’s argument about the beasts (1178b22–28) a moment more. He says that animals do not participate in contemplation in any way (1178b24: to mê metechein; 1178b28: oudamêi koinônei). By contrast, human beings are happy insofar as there is some similarity (homoi-oma ti) between their activity and contemplation. What if we read the vocabulary here in a Platonic spirit? If we do, Aristotle is saying that beasts cannot be happy because their activity does not participate in, that is, approximate the contemplative activity of the gods.⁴⁰ By implication, then, any human life that is happy will be happy in virtue of its approximation to divine contemplative life. A fortiori, the happy political life must be happy in virtue of its godlikeness. Now Aristotle thinks it is absurd to imagine the gods as possessing moral virtue (1178b10–21), but not because there is anything per se undignified about exercising practical reason when in political circumstances. What is unworthy of the gods is the thought of their being tied to (much less finding their leisure in) political circumstances in the first place. For as Aristotle tells us at the beginning of the Politics, the polis arises to meet the insufficiency of the individual (I.2 1252a26–27). If the gods were political, that would imply that they were dependent (and perhaps even mortal) creatures. This is what makes it outlandish, from Aristotle’s point of view, to think of the gods’ activity as morally virtuous action. But these considerations do not rule out the possibility that morally virtuous action is godlike enough to count as happiness for us.⁴¹ The actualization of phronêsis is not theoretical contemplation, but it is, according to my interpretation, theôria . . . tis.⁴² That is to say, the activity of practical wisdom is contemplation . . . of a sort. But theôria tis is what Aristotle concludes happiness must be at the end of this stretch of argument (1178b32).⁴³ He makes this qualification, I suggest, to account for the happy influence of excellent practical reasoning in the political life. In this interpretation we can understand what justification Aristotle has for counting the political life as happy in a secondary way. Courageous, temperate, and just actions are not only expressions of virtue, they are godlike.⁴⁴ But since we are happy to the extent that we engage in godlike contemplation (1178b28–30), where this refers both to the proportion of time spent in theôria and to the varieties of theôria possible for a human being,⁴⁵ the political life aimed at excellent practical reasoning is happy. The divine activity extends into human life not only through human contemplation but also through morally virtuous activity.

5. CHOOSING MORAL VIRTUE FOR THE SAKE OF CONTEMPLATION

As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, it is not clear that morally virtuous action is always the most choice worthy practical option from the point of view of the love of contemplation. Does the philosopher, living his life for the sake of contemplation, have reason to be morally virtuous in Aristotle’s account? There are two parts to this problem. First, virtuous action, and in particular courage, reveals the importance to the agent of a distinctly political use of leisure. But Aristotle makes a point of saying that the philosopher could contemplate on his own (1177a32–34). Furthermore, the external goods with which moral virtue is concerned are an impediment to the philosopher (1178b4–5). Why, then, should the philosopher embrace his political nature as moral virtue, in my interpretation, requires him to do? The second aspect of the problem is that, even if the philosopher has reason to embrace his political context, why should he want to be a morally virtuous citizen? He may, of course, want to appear to be virtuous sometimes, to ease relations with his neighbors. But why should he choose the unshakable moral character that may sometimes prevent him from maximizing his time in contemplation?

There are two ways of addressing these problems that are consistent with my interpretation of how morally virtuous action is choice worthy for the sake of contemplation, but that I find unsatisfactory.⁴⁶ The first strategy takes its cue from Aristotle’s suggestion at NE X.7–8 that human beings have two natures (or two aspects of the same nature), that is, a noetic nature and an anthropic nature found in the compound of practical reason and desire. I will call this the “two-natures strategy” for explaining the place of moral virtue in the philosophical life. The idea is this: Morally virtuous activity is choice worthy for the sake of contemplation because it approximates contemplation; but it is a good we must choose and indeed embrace because it is the excellent exercise of our anthropic nature. If we were not morally virtuous, there would be a part of our nature that was frustrated, and that condition could not be a happy one. Now the two-natures strategy is on the right track insofar as it gives the philosopher a positive reason to embrace the rational virtues of his political and animal nature. The happy life, according to this interpretation, is one in which the virtues of all parts of the soul (or at least all parts of the rational soul) are exercised. But in its effort to find a place for practical virtue in the happiest life, this solution neglects the fact that, according to Aristotle, a life can be happy, albeit in a secondary way, without the possession of theoretical virtue. (At least, I assume from his silence on this question that theôria is not a necessary constituent of the political life.) If Aristotle really thought that a life must gratify all aspects of our rational nature in order to be happy, then he ought not to call the political life happy. It is of no use to appeal to the fact that the political life is happy only in a secondary way. If a life without excellent theoretically rational activity can be happy in any way at all, then by the logic of the two-natures strategy, a philosophical life without excellent practically rational activity should be happy in some way or other as well.

But there is a deeper problem with the two-natures strategy for explaining the place of moral virtue in the philosophical life. Although this strategy allows the philosopher to think of moral virtue as valuable from the point of view of contemplation (it is an approximation of contemplation and reveals his love for contemplation), the philosopher is not compelled to be virtuous for reasons that have anything to do with his philosophical goal. What moves him is the value of fulfilling his anthropic nature. From the point of view of philosophy, it might still be better to be morally mediocre. But if that is so, then in this interpretation, the philosopher, in choosing morally virtuous action, would not do everything for the sake of happiness. I take it for granted, however, that in Aristotle’s account eudaimonia is the focus of all the happy person’s choices (see chapter 2, section 3c, above).

The second possible interpretation of the place of moral virtue in the contemplative life is to argue that morally virtuous action is always the most effective route to maximizing contemplation. Let us call this the “instrumentalist strategy.” Now, this strategy has the merit of justifying the philosopher’s choice of morally virtuous actions from the point of view of his love of contemplation. But it, too, is unsatisfactory. Aristotle does think that morally virtuous action tends to produce conditions suitable for contemplation; this instrumental connection to leisure is one of the ways in which virtuous actions may be fine. Nevertheless, it is implausible to think that each and every virtuous action maximizes the agent’s time for philosophy, as the case of courage shows.⁴⁷ A glorious death does not maximize the agent’s contemplation, even in the long run. We can make the instrumentalist strategy more sophisticated, however. For even if particular morally virtuous actions do not always maximize contemplation, Aristotle might think that a virtuous state of character is a necessary condition for contemplation.⁴⁸ According To this more sophisticated version of the instrumentalist strategy, Aristotle would be saying that the happy person spends as much time as possible in philosophy, but since his human nature, with its appetites and emotions, tends to deflect him from this task, he ought to cultivate the moral virtues that regulate these tendencies.

Now I find it quite plausible to think that many of the Aristotelian moral virtues tend to support contemplation by freeing the soul of distracting emotions. Of course, it is not clear that all of them do. For instance, Aristotle says that under certain conditions, say when someone insults a member of your family, it would be wrong not to get angry (NE IV.5 1126a6–8). But anger is a distraction, and from the point of view of contemplation we might be better off without it altogether. And while generosity and wit may not positively disrupt philosophy, I cannot see what benefit they do it, either. But let us suppose for the moment that moral virtue in general is beneficial to contemplation. Now if the moral virtues are worth the philosopher’s while because they control his anthropic desires, we might wonder if a state of continence would not serve the philosopher just as well. And if continence would do just as well, it might actually be preferable since—not being a steady state of character—it might allow the philosopher to act against moral virtue when that would maximize his opportunities for contemplation. I am not arguing here that continence would, in the end, be just as effective as full moral virtue at producing contemplation. I am only suggesting that it might, in order to put into relief the kind of strategy the instrumentalist is proposing. For in order to defend himself against the view that continence is preferable, the instrumentalist must insist that moral virtue is indispensable for the happiest life because it is more efficient than any other character trait at producing contemplation. In other words, the more the instrumentalist defends his view, the more irrelevant the intrinsic value of moral virtue for the happy life comes to seem. Of course, the instrumentalist strategy allows the philosopher to recognize the intrinsic value of morally virtuous action, but that understanding plays no role in his decision that he will not live without it. A final demerit of this account is that it does not explain why the philosopher should want to celebrate the political aspect of the leisure in which he contemplates.⁴⁹

So let us turn to the first half of the problem first: Why should Aristotle’s philosopher choose actions that valorize a specifically political use of leisure? Aristotle makes it clear that the human philosopher must make allowances for the nonnoetic aspects of his nature if he is to live well. Because we are human beings, our nature needs external goods so that we may eat and be healthy (1178b33–35). And because the philosopher is a human being, he will live in community with other people (1178b5–7). Presumably he will need other people to supply him the necessities of life and perhaps even a little relaxation. So even though the philosopher lives for theoretical wisdom, he cannot avoid dealing with circumstances in which moral virtue could be exercised. So far, though, we see no reason for the lover of contemplation to regard political and animal life as anything more than a necessary burden.

But though Aristotle tends to minimize the philosopher’s connection to community in order to exalt the theoretical life, he does say at one point that it would be better for the philosopher to have fellow workers (sunergoi; 1177a34). Why does Aristotle think this is so? One is reminded of Aristotle’s argument at NE IX.9 1170a4–11 that the happy person will need friends (philoi) because they enable him to be more continuously active. If Aristotle is making the same point here, then the philosopher has reason not just to tolerate political life but to embrace it in its most intimate forms. After all, friends pursue their conception of the good together (NE IX.12 1172a1–6, where he mentions philosophical friends in particular). Since the friend is another self in whose mirror we come to know ourselves and the worth of our joint activities, contemplation with a friend will keep the philosopher directly aware of the value of contemplation when he might otherwise become bored. Philosophical conversations with friends and fellow workers will be less prone to interruption than solitary pondering. Furthermore, the philosopher will to some extent participate in the contemplative activity of his friends even when he cannot be with them. (Plato, for instance, had in some extended sense a share of the philosophical discussions among his students even when he was not with them.) So the political or social expression of human contemplation will be more continuous for this reason as well, and so will be more like the continuous contemplation of the gods which the happy person imitates.⁵⁰ Communal contemplation is also more powerful and far-reaching than the thinking of a solitary person. Even if a person does not literally do philosophy with friends, he takes part in a scholarly project that extends back through the centuries. (This was true even for Aristotle, who often begins his speculation with a review of the theories of his predecessors.) This scholarly tradition, which depends on our political nature, allows the philosopher to proceed more quickly to the contemplation of truths without having to do so much of the hard work of taking wrong turns in his speculation. It is in the interest of someone who loves knowing more than discovering, then, to join an intellectual community. For a human being, contemplation in this context will be more perfect than it would be by himself.

So Aristotle’s philosopher ought to cherish a specifically political use of leisure. Thus there will be no contradiction in his choosing morally virtuous actions that are fine and choice worthy for their own sakes precisely because they reveal the agent’s commitment to such an end. But even if the philosopher has reason to live with other people, why should he want to treat them virtuously, particularly when the acquisition of moral virtue prevents him from acting viciously when that might be more conducive to contemplation?

As we have seen, although the philosopher longs to use his theoretical reason, it is not possible for him to ignore his practical life. As a human being, he just finds himself as a child, a citizen, a spouse, and a parent. (Though in some sense, of course, we choose the latter two roles, Aristotle believes that they are entirely natural.) And this communal life brings with it, whether we like it or not, situations that must be confronted. Someone insults his family, and the philosopher will react; the Persians have swept through Thermopylae, and he will either defend his allies or not. Or, to bring things closer to the philosophical life as we know it, we find ourselves as members of university departments and must take a stand, if only a neutral one, on hiring decisions, the awarding of grades, and where to take visitors for dinner. Since these decisions cannot be avoided, the philosopher must decide how to make them. Indeed, it will be a consequence of his time spent in contemplation that he realizes this. The philosopher contemplates the order of the cosmos, but he cannot have succeeded in understanding this order if he does not understand his place in it as practical and political.⁵¹ So the peculiarly human problem, for the philosopher as well as for everyone else, is to figure out how to gratify our divine nature in this embodied, communal human life. Aristotle tells us we should aim at happiness as a target in all that we do.

It is very hard for us to shake the intuition that within a eudaimonistic system of practical reasoning there is no reason not to maximize happiness. When Aristotle says that contemplation, as happiness, is the most final end, it is natural for us to think he is advising us to amass as many minutes of contemplation as possible. I hope to have shown by now that there are more ways to act for the sake of an independent end than purely instrumental ones. To make contemplation a most final end, then, does not automatically commit the philosopher to maximizing it, come what may. After all, when a carpenter makes a house his final end qua carpenter, he does not set about building as many houses as possible. Rather, he makes the completed house the target of his actions. Happiness, or the human good, as Aristotle conceives it in the Nicomachean Ethics, makes a life happy and worth choosing by being its most final end. In other words, it is because the happy person is successful in making his choices for the sake of theôria that he is happy. That is Aristotle’s point in defining the human good as an end from the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics. Thus a life is not made more valuable by containing more instances of the eudaimonic good. It might be preferable to choose two hours of contemplation over one hour. (This is, after all, one way to act for the sake of contemplation.) But the life as a whole will not be more valuable simply in virtue of its having an hour more contemplation than it might otherwise have had. Aristotelian happiness does not make a life good by being present in it in any old way. Happiness—contemplation—makes a life good by being present as a skopos, or target, of excellent practical reasoning. Thus, it absolutely does not follow from the claim that happiness is contemplation that a person would be better off by maximizing it.

Aristotle makes this point clear in his criticism of one of Eudoxus’s arguments for hedonism (NE X.2). Eudoxus argues that pleasure is the good because, when added to other things, it makes them better (1172b23–25). But according to Aristotle, this argument shows only that pleasure is one of the good things, since any good whatsoever is made more choice worthy by the addition of another good (1172b26–28).⁵² So it is not a mark of the good that it can improve other good things; any good can do that. What is a mark of the good, Aristotle says, is that it cannot be improved. The good (as opposed to a good) cannot be made more choice worthy by the addition of any other good thing (1172b32–34). This point is important for our interpretation of how, according to Aristotle, moral virtue figures in the happiest philosophical life. Since the human good cannot be improved, it is a mistake to think that, according to Aristotle, the philosopher will necessarily improve his condition (will move to a higher level of happiness) by adding more moments of contemplation to his life. That is not the sort of good happiness is. (See chapter 3, section 5, above.)

Now Aristotle’s argument in NE X.2 is sometimes misunderstood in a way that seems to do damage to my approach to the Nicomachean Ethics. Readers of this passage often think that, since the good (eudaimonia) cannot be improved, an instance of the eudaimonic good, whatever it is, cannot be made more desirable by the addition of any other good thing. And this train of thought leads scholars to conclude that, according to Aristotle in this passage at least, eudaimonia must be an inclusive end.⁵³ For what good other than the set of all good things would not be improved by the addition of something desirable? This inference is unwarranted, however. Inclusivist interpreters see Aristotle’s argument against Eudoxus as licensing the following reductio: If contemplation is the human good, then a single instance of contemplation could not be made more choice worthy by anything else; thus, an instance of contemplation could not be improved by even another instance of contemplation; but two instances of contemplation are better than one; therefore, contemplation alone is not the human good. But Aristotle’s remarks in NE X.2 do not commit him to this argument. In addition to being the good, contemplation is also a good thing. And, as Aristotle says, everything (pan) is more choice worthy with the addition of another good thing(1172b27–28; cf. I.7 1097b18–20). So, just because contemplation is something desirable, an hour of it will improve any other good thing, including an earlier hour of contemplation. Indeed, as I argued in chapter 3, it is highly unlikely that Aristotle, as a reader of the Philebus, would think that instances of contemplation cannot be improved. For immediately after Socrates makes the argument about the improvability of pleasure that Aristotle cites against Eudoxus in NE X.2, Socrates argues that noûs cannot be the good for the same reason that pleasure cannot: Contemplative activity can be improved by the addition of another good, in this case pleasure (Philebus 21d ff.). The premise that contemplation plus pleasure or any other good is better than contemplation alone is so commonsensical that it is impossible to believe that Aristotle could read the Philebus and nevertheless believe that an instance of contemplation could not be made more choice worthy by the addition of anythingelse. So what does Aristotle mean by saying, as does Plato, that the good cannot be improved by the addition of any other good thing if he also believes that the good is contemplation?

The first thing we should notice is that, although Aristotle agrees with Plato that the good cannot be improved, his reason for citing the Philebus’s argument against hedonism is not that he thinks it proves that pleasure is not the good. That is, the fact that moments of pleasure can be improved does not, according to Aristotle, show that hedonism is false, as Plato thought it did. (In fact, the overall tenor of NE X.2 is that no one before Aristotle himself has managed to explain why pleasure is not the good.) Rather, Aristotle’s point in citing the Philebus is simply to show that the kind of argument Eudoxus makes in favor of hedonism can also be used against it. So the fact that Aristotle cites the Philebus does not show that he thinks instances of the eudaimonic good are unimprovable.

Aristotle’s point in saying that the good cannot be improved must be that when we consider something as the good, it does not become better—more good in the way that the good itself is good—by adding other good things to it. Now, as I have argued in chapter 2, according to Aristotle in the Nico-machean Ethics, the good is good in the sense of being the most final end of action, that for the sake of which we do everything else. So when Aristotle says the good cannot be improved even though all particular good things can be made more choice worthy, he means that the eudaimonic good plus anything else does not take on more of the character of the most final end than the eudaimonic good on its own possesses. Contemplation plus anything else is not more the most final end than contemplation itself is. That is because, since contemplation is that for the sake of which everything else is worth choosing, anything else we could add to contemplation would actually be choice worthy for the sake of contemplation. Adding goods to contemplation, then, does not yield an end that is more final than contemplation—eudaimonia—on its own. And this remains true even when the good we are adding is more moments of contemplation.

Thus, to return to the problem of whether the happy person should maximize contemplation, once a person has experienced the contemplation of the universe and organizes his life for its sake, contemplation, as happiness, is a permanent part of his life. There is nothing he needs to do to improve his condition as happy. Ceteris paribus, having three more years of contemplation would be preferable to only one more year, of course. No doubt the philosopher would like to contemplate as much as he can. But this is not because that is just what it means for theôria to be the good and his most final end. To consider a good most final does not mean it is the good we try to maximize.⁵⁴ The philosopher wants to have as much contemplation as he can because contemplation is especially valuable among other good things from the point of view of valuing contemplation as a most final end. But the philosopher faces a practical problem when he decides between contemplating a while longer and doing something else. That practical problem of how best on this occasion to act for the sake of happiness is not automatically resolved in favor of the former simply because contemplation is his highest goal.

So, to return to our problem, why does Aristotle think that the happy philosopher will be morally virtuous? Perhaps we can find a clue—though admittedly an inconclusive one—in Aristotle’s explanation for why the philosopher will most of all be loved by the gods:

And the person who is active in accordance with noûs and takes care of this [part of his soul] seems to be in the best state and to be most loved by the gods. For if the gods have some care for human affairs, as it seems they do, it would be reasonable for them to take pleasure in the best thing and the one most akin to them (and this would be noûs) and to do well by those who love this most of all and honor it since they take care of things dear to them [i.e. the gods] and act correctly and finely [orthôs te kai kalôs prattontas]. (1179a22–29)⁵⁵

The philosopher loves and honors noûs, and in this the gods take pleasure. But the gods also judge that the actions through which the philosopher shows his love of noûs are fine and correct. It is possible, perhaps, that the gods have different standards for beauty in action than human beings do. But a far more likely interpretation is that philosophers express their love of noûs through the fine actions of moral virtue. For as we have seen (chapter 6), morally virtuous actions are just those actions through which a person makes clear his love of the human good. This passage seems to say, then, that the gods love human beings who realize their divine nature and who act in a way that honors this divine aspect of themselves. Morally virtuous actions are the actions that honor the divine in us.

Why would the gods care whether human beings honor noûs? Why wouldn’t it be enough for the philosopher to secure their love by maximizing contemplation, perhaps at the expense of moral virtue? One plausible explanation might be this: Human beings are not gods, and so they cannot contemplate continuously, or even most of the time. It is important, then, from the point of view of currying divine favor, that human beings find a way, even when they are not doing philosophy, to show that contemplation—the divine activity—is what makes their lives worth living. For by showing their love of contemplation, they affirm their sense of identity with the divine part of their souls. It is understandable, then, why the gods love human beings who not only spend time exercising their theoretical reason but who also in their excellent practical reasonin greveal their understanding of the superior value of the contemplative life.⁵⁶

So, to return to the point of view of the philosopher deciding whether or not to be morally virtuous: Since the philosopher thinks that contemplation is the supreme value and wants to be happy, Aristotle says he has reason to try to extend theôria and happiness as far as possible into his life. He wants to make his human life—both insofar as it is noetic and insofar as it is emotional and political—as much informed by the value of contemplation as possible. Given that the human contemplator cannot engage continuously in the activity he values above all others, he must find some other way to approximate it (so as to extend a kind of contemplation and godlikeness into his practical life) and a way to show in his practical life where his heart is. This he does by acting in accordance with the most perfect practical truthfulness of morally virtuous activity. The glorious thing about morally virtuous actions, in Aristotle’s theory, is that they tend to maximize eudaimonia, or contemplation, while themselves both approximating it and celebrating it. Given that by far the majority of our lives is taken up with practical concerns, I suspect Aristotle would wonder what possible reason a human lover of contemplation could have to deny himself this theôria tis.

We may be disappointed that Aristotle does not give us an algorithm for determining when the happiness of our lives will be best promoted by choosing to contemplate and when it would be better to engage in particularly human affairs. But his silence should not come as a surprise. Aristotle offers only an outline of happiness. And though he ultimately tells us that contemplation is the ultimate goal upon which practical reason must keep its eye, it is not clear what love of contemplation will tell us to do in conflicts between having time for contemplation and attending to the needs of others.

On the one hand, love of contemplation leads us to want more moments of contemplation. On the other hand, love of contemplation leads us to cherish practical truthfulness as one of the most valuable of all human goods, and it is the truth of our practical situation that happiness is achieved only in lives that are distinctively animal and political. The person who single-mindedly acquires goods for himself at the expense of his family and fellow citizens fails to understand who he is. But how exactly to strike the balance requires an eye for the fine. Practical wisdom must work out the details in action. I suspect that Aristotle would think that individual decisions about when to pursue contemplation directly will be influenced by the person’s particular social position.⁵⁷ If his community is at peace and there is no press ingneed among his family and friends he can meet, then most likely it will be appropriate for him to theorize. If there is a major political decision that must be made, however, or if it is his turn to make provisions for the leisure of his fellow citizens, then moral virtue requires that he turn aside from his study and act.

But however the philosopher chooses to act, he will be guided by a practical virtue that is not radically different from the fine moral habits in which he was trained. In other words, choosing moral virtue for the sake of contemplation does not yield a systematic revision of moral requirements. For instance, if a philosopher is at a party, he will not leave early in a way that might offend his hosts and make him seem a spoilsport to the other guests. He cannot, in his practical life, approximate perfect theoretical truthfulness unless he recognizes the truth of himself as not only rational, but also political and animal. Though his love of contemplation will lead him to avoid making friends with people who disdain philosophy and try to keep him from it, his love of truth will also lead him to recognize that as a political animal it is good for him to have friends. Furthermore, he will understand that when he is at a party with friends, he is part of a community. Since every community is organized for the sake of a common good (Pol. I.1 1252a1– 2; NE VIII.9), the philosopher will see that as a member of the community it is good for him to care for that common good, in this case the relaxation that comes with companionship and laughter. Thus, respect for practical truthfulness will cause the philosopher to attend to the needs of his community in a way that we ordinarily associate with moral virtue. But this is some-thing the person who does everything for the sake of contemplation will want to do. The more he acts in accordance with moral virtue, the more deeply divine activity extends into his life and the more he becomes a mortal god, happy insofar as it is possible for a human being to be.

We began by wondering how a life devoted entirely to the monistic good of contemplation could be recognizable as a happy life in Aristotle’s sense, a life worth choosing and admiring, a fully flourishing life lacking nothing. What place would such a life have for proper moral concern? Aristotle’s answer is this: When we protect those we love courageously, dine with them temperately, give to them generously, and accept their honors with greatness of soul, we grasp the practical truth—we are embodied, political animals who find our rational happiness only in common with others. Grasping this practical truth approximates contemplation and is worth choosing for its sake. So nothing prevents the philosopher from valuing morally virtuous action. Indeed, the way in which such activity is worth choosing for the sake of contemplation makes it worth choosing for its own sake. As an approximation of the highest good, it embodies the intrinsically valuable character of wise contemplation and can, in its own right, extend theôria tis into that practical part of our lives where theoretical contemplation cannot reach. Thus morally virtuous action finds a place in the happiest philosophical life because it is worth choosing for the sake of contemplation and because it is worth choosing for its own sake. This is how the lover of wisdom, like a skilled archer, keeps his target clearly in view.

¹ Aristotle also uses other criteria from NE I.7 for determining the eudaimonic good, in particular self-sufficiency. As I argued in chapter 3, self-sufficiency in NE I.7 refers to the sufficiency of eudaimonia to be an end of human striving. It is likely that the meaning of self-sufficiency changes somewhat when we get to the discussion of NE X.6–8, but even so, I believe it still refers to the sufficiency of an activity as an end. This is particularly clear in NE X.6 1176b3–7: “[I]t is clear that we must consider happiness to be one of the ends choice worthy for its own sake and not one choice worthy on account of some other thing; for happiness lacks nothing but is self-sufficient. And [activities] are choice worthy for themselves from which nothing beyond the activity is sought.” Activities that have their ends entirely in themselves are, by this formulation of the criterion, self-sufficient. Although it is beyond my task here to make this argument, I believe that the self-sufficiency of an activity to be an end is also what Aristotle has in mind at NE X.7 1177a27–b1.

² Broadie (1991, 438 n. 72) argues that the reference of deuterôs (secondary way) is eudai-monestatos (happiest) in the previous line, and not eudaimon (happy), so that Aristotle is saying that the life lived in accordance with the other virtue is happiest in a secondary way. I do not see how this issue can be decided on the basis of the text (or grammar) alone, since it seems equally natural tome to read this as saying that while the theoretical life is happiest, the life in accordance with the other virtue is happy in a secondary way. But whatever we take deuterôs to qualify, the result will be that the life in accordance with the other virtue comes in second place.

³ Cooper ([1975] 1986, 164) reads Aristotle as saying that the philosopher acts in conformity with, but not from, moral virtue. (Cooper retracted this general view of the philosopher’s connection to moral virtue in Cooper [1987] 1999.) However, Aristotle normally uses the phrase “activity in accordance with virtue” to mean activity that is fully virtuous. There is nothing sinister in his use of prattein (to act) here instead of energein (to be active) since he has just been stressing that moral virtue is expressed in praxeis (actions).

⁴ Keyt (1983; 1989) argues that they are two aspects of the same life. So also, in slightly different ways, do Gauthier and Jolif (1970, 860–864) and Stewart (1892, 443–444).

⁵ Cooper [1975] 1986, 159–160; Cooper [1987] 1999, 229 n.14.

⁶ Keyt, the primary defender of the two-aspects view, sees a continuity in Aristotle’s discussion of lives in NE I.5 and X.6–8. Broadie (1991, 372; Broadie and Rowe 2002, 439), Kraut (1989, 17–19), and Roche (1988b, 112–113), all of whom reject Keyt’s interpretation of bios, agree that the lives discussed in NE X.6–8 are the same in kind (though not necessarily exactly the same) as those discussed in NE I.5.

⁷ I take the point about the significance of Aristotle’s embodying the three lives in distinct characters from Roche (1988b, 112–113). Joly (1956, 15) argues that, traditionally, “lives” were seen as incompatible.

⁸ However, Aristotle does not use the word bios in NE I.4, where he mentions that people may change the teleological focus of their lives. Note that the possibility of changing lives that I am considering here is not the same as Keyt’s (1983, 373) suggestion that a person might lead the military life in the summer and the agricultural life for the rest of the year, since a person who cycles through occupations every year knows and intends while he is engaged in one activity to participate in the other later. In my interpretation, these various activities are all part of the same bios, as Aristotle uses that term in NE I.5 and X.6–8. See Cooper [1987] 1999, 229 n.14.

⁹ See chapter 2, section 3 for my argument that a bios is characterized by its most final end.

¹⁰ Although she seems to have changed her view in Broadie and Rowe 2002; at least there she calls the secondarily happy life the political life. Cooper ([1975] 1986, 166–167) argues that the life “in accordance with the other virtue” is the mixed life of moral and intellectual excellence. I believe my first argument discussed next against Broadie’s interpretation rules out Cooper’s interpretation as well, provided that by “mixed life” we mean a life that aims at an inclusive end.

¹¹ Irwin (trans. 1985, not. ad 1178a32) interprets exousia as beingany amount of means by which a person can find something to desire and display temperance with respect to. But Gau-thier and Jolif (1970, not. ad 1178a33) interpret Aristotle as saying here that temperance requires a lot of money and power. LSJ defines exousia thus: “I. power or authority (to do a thing); II. office, magistracy; III. abundance of means.”

¹² Gauthier and Jolif (1970, not. ad 1178a33) say that Plato (Rep. II), Isocrates, and the Stoics all shared this idea that temperance is manifested most of all in exousia.

¹³ I take it that the reference at NE X.7 1177a18–19 to a prior discussion refers to NE VI.7. Broadie (Broadie and Rowe 2002, not. ad 1177a17–18) also thinks that the reference is to NE VI.7 if anywhere. Stewart (1892) takes the reference to be to NE I.5, since NE VI was originally part of the Eudemian Ethics. But if that work was written earlier, Aristotle could have composed this sentence of NE X in the knowledge that he would incorporate the material on the intellectual virtues from the EE into this new work. Gauthier and Jolif (1970, not. ad 1177a19) take Aristotle’s point to be that contemplation fits the criteria for the human good agreed upon in NE I, but take 1177a18 itself to refer to the Protrepticus (not. ad 1177a17–18). Broadie (Broadie and Rowe 2002) suggests that if NE X was written independently of NE VI and its division between theoretical and practical reason, we need not take theôrêtikê in 1177a18 to be contrasted with practical reason. There are two reasons I think we should understand Aristotle to be implyinga contrast, however. First NE X.6–8 continues the discussion of NE I.5, and in I.5 the theoretical life is taken to aim at a conception of happiness that, whatever it is, is something other than the moral virtue (or, as we learn, morally virtuous activity) at which the political life aims. So Aristotle’s audience would have heard theôrêtikê at 1177a18 as an answer to the question of which of the lives of practical and theoretical accomplishment was better. Second, even in the Protrepticus, where Aristotle does not distinguish sharply between theoretical and practical reason, theoretical activity is contrasted with practical rational activity, at least insofar as that is productive. So the important contrast between these two uses of reason would not be a surprise to those who were not familiar with the more radical claims of NE VI.

¹⁴ Agreement on this point appears to be universal.

¹⁵ Lawrence (1993, 14) has argued that that Aristotle’s interest in NE X.7–8 “is not primarily one of ‘devotion’ but one of ‘constitution.’ ” The life of perfect happiness is the ideal life under ideal circumstances, while the secondarily happy life is the ideal “however circumstanced,” i.e., also in conditions that are less than ideal. Stimulating as his argument is, I do not agree for two reasons. First, Aristotle’s evocation of the function argument and his subsequent argument that contemplation is more final than morally virtuous action suggest that he is still thinking of eudai-monia as a most final end and, therefore, as an object of devotion, not constitution. Second, the secondarily happy life is a life of grand moral action and so requires good fortune. Thus, it too seems to be an “ideally circumstanced, or utopian, ideal” (though perhaps less ideally circumstanced than the best philosophical life) and not a “however circumstanced ideal.”

¹⁶ So also Cooper [1975] 1986, 156 n. 12. Irwin (trans. 1985, not. ad 1177b1) actually translates it as, “study seems to be liked because of itself alone” because it is a possible reading of the Greek and is more suited to the context.

¹⁷ Kraut (1989, 191) agrees.

¹⁸ Leisure is the condition of a gentleman, as opposed to a slave or a laborer (Stewart 1892, not. ad 1177b4).

¹⁹ If Aristotle’s argument deploys the finality criterion as he developed it in NE I, it is not sufficient for him to show that political actions are often chosen for the sake of an independent end. He must convince us that they are choiceworthy for the sake of an independent end. Of course, as usual, Aristotle takes typical patterns of choice to be evidence for genuine telê. See Broadie (1991, 422–424) for a different interpretation.

²⁰ I take the force of the ge (at any rate) at 1177b14 to be that whatever else may come from political action, such action is certainly pursued (or at least ought to be pursued) under the assumption that it produces happiness. This is a truism of Platonic and Aristotelian political theory. The statesman’s job is to produce happiness or advantage for the citizens ruled (e.g., Rep. 347d4–6; NE I.2 1094a27–b7).

²¹ Cf. Pol. VII.14 1333b5–26, where Aristotle criticizes contemporary Greek legislators for arranging affairs with respect to a pleonectic vision of happiness.

²² Cf. Theaetetus 172c8–e5, 175d7–176a1, on the un leisureliness of the politikos.

²³ Aristotle offers another reason for thinking that the statesman’s use of moral virtue is un leisurely at Pol. VII.13 1332a7–15. The statesman often finds himself usingpractical virtue to make the best of a bad situation. For instance, the good judge’s meting out of punishment is just, but it would be better if he never had to punish in the first place.

²⁴ I have in mind Aristotle’s claims that the virtue of philosophia is important for times of leisure (1334a23), and that musical education trains children for the proper use of free time (1341b40–41).

²⁵ At 1177b8 Aristotle says that military actions are altogether un leisurely. Perhaps Aristotle thinks that war, unlike peacetime political life, is not essential to human life, and so we can, consistently with our nature, hope to leave military circumstances behind altogether. Cf. Pol. VII.2 1324b41–1325a10.

²⁶ Aristotle refers either to the compound of practical reason and the body (which implies the passions as well), or the compound of practical reason and the non rational part of the soul that shares in reason in a way (i.e., passions and appetite) (Broadie and Rowe 2002, not. ad 1177b28). Both interpretations are supported by Aristotle’s discussion of the compound later at 1178a10–21. It does not matter, for my argument at least, which of these interpretations is correct.

²⁷ As Whiting(1986, 88–89) rightly points out, if Aristotle is claiming in 1177b27–28 that the contemplative life is possible in virtue of a capacity that is not human, but divine, then he is abandoning the project of NE I to discover the human good.

²⁸ Scott 1999, 232.

²⁹ See Whiting(1986, 88–90) for a defense of this interpretation on the basis of keeping NE X consistent with NE I.

³⁰ Two influential possibilities that have been discussed in the scholarly literature: (1) noûs might be separated and entirely alien from the compound of practical reason and the non rational soul (Cooper ([1975] 1986, 168–180); (2) noûs might be a particularly important part or aspect of a composite nature that includes noûs and to suntheton (Cooper [1987] 1999; Keyt 1983; and Whiting1986).

³¹ Protrepticus B60–61 also suggests a teleological account of the parts of the human being (reason, part of the soul that follows reason, and body), and there too the one for the sake of whose end the other parts are arranged is said to be the most authoritative. It is not clear tome, however, whether in the Protrepticus reason is most authoritative because its end is most final or because it gives orders to the other parts of the human being (though obviously these facts are related). Protrepticus B65–69 argues that contemplative knowledge, as opposed to productive knowledge, is the most desirable excellence of reason. When we combine this with the connection drawn between being better/more desirable and the authoritative part of the soul, this may suggest that reason is authoritative because its end is most final. However, as Cooper ([1975] 1986, 169 n. 22) points out, Aristotle does not draw a sharp distinction between theoretical and practical reason in the Protrepticus, and in any case, when he does explain the authority of reason, he appeals to its giving orders to the rest of the soul (B61).

³² See also 1168b30, where the good man is said to assign the noblest goods to the most authoritative element of himself. There is some question whether this passage is consistent with Aristotle’s claims in NE X.7 (Cooper [1975] 1886, 172–173), but since in my interpretation moral actions do honor theoretical noûs, it does not seem to me impossible to read them as consistent. In choosing noble deeds, the true self-lover would act for the sake of his noûs.

Kurios does not always refer in the NE to the most final end, or to what is productive of the most final end. In the discussion of the voluntary, something is kurios when it is an efficient cause (1110a3, a6, 1114a3, a32, b32). In the discussion of courage, military commanders are called kurioi. This could mean that their goals are those for the sake of which soldiers must act, but it probably means that the commanders have the power to cause them harm. Cf. 1129b16, 1139a18, 1147a26, b10.

³³ See also EE 1249b9–21.

³⁴ At DA 416b23–25 Aristotle says we ought to call each soul after the capacity for the sake of which the other capacities are organized. (Since plant souls nourish themselves for the sake of reproduction, it is right to call them reproductive souls.) So, presumably, our souls are called noetic because our other soul capacities are organized for the sake of noûs. If this is what Aristotle means by calling us malista noûs in the NE, he does not mean that we are, strictly speaking, noûs alone; he means that all the capacities of our souls—nutrition, reproduction, perception, locomotion, etc.—are nested (see DA 414b30 ff.) and teleologically ordered for the sake of noetic capacity. (I thank David Charles for bringing this to my attention. See also Menn 2002, 121–122.)

³⁵ Aristotle says at 1178a22 that the activity of noûs is separated from the passions (taking the contrast to be with 1178a19–20), but I agree with Whiting (1986, 85) that Aristotle means that the activity of noûs is not directly engaged with the passions, not that human noûs could exist without the body. Aristotle may well think this, of course, but it is not his point here. Here Aristotle is setting up an argument that theoretical activity is more independent of the goods of fortune and thus more of the character of happiness. So 1178a22 is not evidence against my claim that, according to Aristotle, noûs is properly human nature.

³⁶ Kraut 1989, 62–64. Aristotle’s point in denying morally virtuous action to the gods depends on the alleged absurdity of thinking of gods as political creatures. I say more on this at p. 195, below.

³⁷ See note 2, above, on the reference of deuterôs.

³⁸ As Broadie (Broadie and Rowe, 2002, not. ad 1178a9–10) points out, Aristotle may not intend this to be a justification of the political life’s happiness at all. He may intend it to justify the political life’s being in second place. The tenor of the rest of this passage is in harmony with the latter interpretation, but then that would leave Aristotle with no explicit justification for the happiness of the political life at all.

³⁹ Kraut (1989, 63) might be read as making this argument, though elsewhere (58, 64) he makes an argument that is similar to my interpretation of this passage.

⁴⁰ DA II.4 and GA II.1 claim that animals imitate divine activity through reproduction. Aristotle could be inconsistent on this point. Or, more likely, he could think that reproduction does not capture the specifically rational aspect of divine contemplative activity, and so it does not qualify as a kind of happiness.

⁴¹ Contra Sedley 1999, 324.

⁴² In fact, outside the debate about happy lives, theôrein often refers to practical contemplation. See NE 1139a6–8, 1140a10–14, 1141a25–26 for unambiguous examples.

⁴³ Theôria tis could also be translated as ‘a kind of contemplation,’ i.e., a species of contemplation. But for reasons I have just mentioned, such a translation would confuse this stretch of argument. Theôria in distinction to morally virtuous action has been established as the goal of the philosophical life, so theôria cannot include the activity of practical wisdom as a species. But the life aimed at practical wisdom has already been deemed happy in a way; thus it must include theôria tis.

⁴⁴ See NE I.2 1094b10, where the statesman’s activities are called more godlike than the actions of a private citizen.

⁴⁵ Broadie (Broadie and Rowe 2002, not. ad 1178b29–30) for these two possible interpretations.

⁴⁶ These strategies are similar to ways of solving the problem that scholars who do not share my view of the teleological relation between morally virtuous action and contemplation tend to propose. The first “two natures” solution is natural to philosophers who interpret eudai-monia as an inclusive end, e.g., Cooper ([1987] 1999) and Whiting (1986); see also Lawrence (1993). The second “instrumentalist” strategy is adopted by Kraut (1989) and Tuozzo (1995), although Kraut thinks we may sometimes have reason to choose virtuous actions independently of their connection to happiness.

⁴⁷ It is more plausible to think that each virtuous action maximizes the community’s chances for contemplation, although even this is not certain. Might not the Trojans have had more time for philosophy if they had struck a deal with Agamemnon to return Helen and be spared? But even if we do suppose that all virtuous actions maximize the contemplation of the community, we would need to explain how acting for the sake of the communal happiness at the expense of one’s own could make one happy. (I assume that, according to Aristotle, an action must aim ultimately at the agent’s being happy in order to be rational. Kraut [1989] disagrees. See Irwin [1991] for a response to Kraut.)

⁴⁸ Tuozzo (1995) makes this sort of argument. Plato appears to have something like this in mind when he requires in the Republic that future philosophers be trained in moral virtues. They will need courage to face the challenges of the ascent from the Cave and temperance to resist the temptations of distracting pleasures (Rep. 502d ff., 514a–520a). Of course, since Plato does not distinguish our practical and theoretical rational faculties, it is not surprising that he thinks the excellent reasoner must have all the virtues of reason.

⁴⁹ Because, according to my interpretation, paradigmatic moral actions are un leisurely and thus choice worthy for the sake of an independent eudaimonia, I cannot avail myself of Broadie’s (1991, 410–419) interpretation of the relationship between practical and theoretical virtuous activity in the happiest life. She argues that theoretical activity “celebrates” a well-lived practical life. Though it is true that celebration is not an instrumental relationship (Broadie 1991, 413), it is nevertheless teleological as I understand it. For if X celebrates Y, X must be in some way or other appropriate to the value of Y, and X will be valuable as a celebration because Y is valuable. Indeed, we even say that we engage in celebration for the sake of the thing celebrated. Since I read Aristotle as saying that contemplation is more final than morally virtuous action, where this means that morally virtuous action is choice worthy for the sake of contemplation, I do not think he can mean that contemplation celebrates (i.e., is choice worthy for the sake of) practical virtuous activity. Nevertheless, I do think that celebration provides a model of non instrumental teleology that ought to be explored. Perhaps we could say that the fineness of morally virtuous actions celebrates contemplation.

⁵⁰ Both these suggestions for how communal contemplation might be more continuous than solitary contemplation are special applications of more general points made by Cooper ([1977a] 1999, 345–351) concerning the importance to happiness of shared activities.

⁵¹ I thank John Cooper for this point.

⁵² The flaw in Eudoxus’s argument is evident, Aristotle says, when we recall Plato’s argument in the Philebus that pleasure itself is not the good since it can be improved by the addition of noûs (Philebus 21a ff.). The consideration Eudoxus tries to use in favor of hedonism can actually be turned against it (1172b28–31).

⁵³ Crisp 1994 is a good example of this approach.

⁵⁴ So pace Lawrence 1993, if Aristotle is saying in NE X.7–8 that contemplation is the highest good for the sake of which the happy person makes all his choices, he is not committed to the absurd thought that the happy person should value only contemplation and maximize it at all costs.

⁵⁵ Stewart (1892, not. ad 1179a22) doubts the authenticity of this passage. True, what Aristotle says here does not fit well with his description of the unmoved mover in Meta. Ë (though see Bode´u¨s [2000] for the argument that the unmoved mover is not a god). However, the idea that the gods care for human affairs fits perfectly well with what Aristotle has said about the gods in NE X.8.We cannot think of gods as acting virtuously, but that is no reason they cannot love and reward people.

⁵⁶ Broadie (Broadie and Rowe 2002, not. ad 1179a22–32) suggests that in this passage Aristotle reinterprets the virtue of piety to refer to contemplative activity. His claim at NE I.6 1096a16–17 that piety requires us to prefer truth supports her interpretation. I would add that Aristotle intends all virtuous activity to be expressions of piety, for in all these ways human beings make themselves similar to and loved by the gods.

⁵⁷ See Lawrence (1993) for an interesting discussion.