1
Giulio Di Basilio
1.1 Introduction: Aristotle’s Two Ethics
The tradition has handed down to us under Aristotle’s name a series of ethical writings, namely the Magna Moralia, the Eudemian Ethics (EE), and the Nicomachean Ethics (EN). Doubts of authenticity loom large over the first treatise, and the majority of scholars hesitate to treat it on a par with the other two.1 In the 19th century, doubts of inauthenticity loomed over the EE too, but have since been dispelled.2 Currently, there is general agreement on the importance of both the EE and the EN as authoritative sources of Aristotle’s ethical views.
The presence of two ethical works within the Aristotelian corpus raises a number of interesting questions. Interpreters are faced with two treatises of certain authorship presenting Aristotle’s considered views on ethical matters. This is the only ostensible case of a subject which Aristotle has addressed twice over in his philosophical output. To make matters worse, the EE and the EN share three books in common (i.e. EN V, VI, and VII coincide with EE IV, V, and VI) transmitted to us in the manuscripts (MSS) of both treatises; these books are sometimes referred to as “disputed books” in contrast to the “undisputed” Nicomachean or Eudemian books.
Let us look more closely at the composition of Aristotle’s EE and EN. Both of these works start off with an investigation of the human good, then move on to enquire into virtue, alongside a number of related themes like voluntariness and decision, and then conduct a survey of the individual virtues of character, e.g. courage, temperance, and generosity. These two blocks correspond to EE books I–III and EN books I–IV. As such, they are quite naturally seen as running roughly in parallel.3 Afterwards, the trajectories of the two works converge into the common books. That is, both EE I–III and EN I–IV refer forward to themes examined only in the common books, namely justice, the virtues of the intellect, and then self-control/lack thereof as well as pleasure4; examinations of these themes are to be found in EN V, VI, and VII (=EE IV, V, and VI), respectively. This is presumably the reason why, at this point, our manuscripts of Aristotle’s ethics insert the common books in their usual order so as to bring the examination of virtue to completion before moving on to other ethical themes. At the end of the common books, the two treatises part ways and proceed to examine friendship in their respective lengthy investigations devoted to that theme, namely EE VII and EN VIII–IX.5 The two treatises end with significantly different books: the EE with a short book devoted to an aporia (ch. 1), the question of good luck (ch. 2), and a final chapter on kalokagathia and its horos (ch. 3),6 whereas the EN with a second treatment of pleasure (chs. 1–5), a second examination of happiness (chs. 6–8), and a chapter announcing the transition to politics (ch. 9). The structure of the two treatises can be gleaned from the following synoptic overview:
· Happiness and Virtue EE I, II, III (1214a1–1234b14) EN I, II, III, IV (1094a1–1128b35)
· Justice EE IV = EN IV (1129a1–1138b14)7
· Intellectual Virtues EE V = EN VI (1138b15–1145a11)
· Self-Control and its Lack, Pleasure EE VI = EN VII (1145a13–1154b34)
· Friendship EE VII (1234b16–1246a25) EN VIII, IX (1155a1–1172a15)
· Concluding Sections EE VIII (1246a26–1249b25) EN X (1172a17–1181b23)
This state of affairs raises an interesting question, which has been restated recently by Christopher Rowe as follows: why did Aristotle write two major treatises covering almost exactly the same ground?8
Some might not find this question particularly pressing. One might point out, for instance, that the case of the EE and the EN is not entirely without parallel in the corpus of Aristotle’s writings: repetitions, overlaps, and other inconcinnities abound elsewhere in the corpus; that, in other words, the ethical case only exacerbates a number of ubiquitous issues with which scholars of Aristotle are confronted on a regular basis.9 In a similar vein, one might think that the above question reflects a mistaken approach to Aristotle’s works, which are not to be thought of as modern texts. What is held together by the covers of Aristotle’s EN, for instance, is the product of the editorial act of bringing together separate investigations (logoi) on related topics so as to constitute independent treatises (pragmateiai).10 Indeed, these stand-alone investigations are listed separately in the ancient catalogues of Aristotle’s works, which is evidence of the fact that they must have been conceived independently originally and have been assembled only at a later stage by his followers. This would explain the most awkward result of this editorial endeavour, namely that the EN contains two examinations of pleasures which ignore one another, i.e. EN VII 11–14 = EE VI 11–14 and EN X 1–5.
However, it seems unwise to shrug off the above question along these lines as this would prevent understanding of a unicum in Aristotle’s writings. After all, the case of the ethics is unique in presenting us with two ethical treatises with the same goal (skopos), namely, as Aristotle famously puts it, to become virtuous (EE I 5, 1216b10–25; EN II 2, 1103b26–9; X 9, 1179a35–b4). The sheer presence of two ethical treatises breaking strikingly similar ground and crying out for investigations of the same topics for completion, e.g. justice and pleasure, demands explanation, and warrants close study.
Now, ever since scholars took an interest in these issues, explanations have been offered along significantly different lines. Historically, the first attempt at an explanation has involved the idea that Aristotle changed his mind on some of his ethical views and decided to write another ethical treatise anew. The name of Werner Jaeger is still often attached to this view, for he suggested in the 1920s an overall interpretation of Aristotle’s development, including the ethics.11 According to Jaeger, Aristotle started off as a faithful Platonist and then progressively departed from his master to develop his own ethical views. Crucial to Jaeger’s argument was the usage of one of the so-called common books, namely EN VI (=EE V), which, on his account, harboured clear anti-Platonic views about practical thinking, and hence was to be assigned a late date. Jaeger thought that the conception of practical thinking articulated in the EE was at variance with that common book and that the latter was instead at home in the EN. Since it was assumed that the three common books belonged together, this further entailed that they were to be assigned in toto to the EN. In this way, the EE was relegated to the role of a juvenile and incomplete treatise.
Jaeger’s argument was inconclusive, for it failed to take adequately into account the peculiar status of the common books. This became clearer thanks to the research of Dieter Harlfinger on the manuscripts of the EE.12 Harlfinger showed that part of our manuscripts of the EE include the common books, contrary to the then-dominant idea that they were borrowed wholesale from the EN. Once this is taken into account, it no longer becomes possible to argue along Jaeger’s lines without begging the question as to the origin of the common books. For, if these books are common to the two works, which is what Harlfinger is commonly taken to have shown,13 they can hardly be used to settle the question of the two ethics in the way Jaeger intended to do. At this point, it became clear that two questions had to be faced by scholars of Aristotle’ ethics: why did Aristotle write two ethical treatises which cover the same ground? Where do the common books belong, in the EE or the EN, and why?
The next chapter of the debate around the two ethics is inextricably linked to the name of Anthony Kenny. In 1978, Kenny suggested that the question of the relationship between Aristotle’s EE and EN and the question of the common books could not be handled independently: the answer to the first will in large part depend on the answer to the latter. In his 1978 book, and in a series of later re-evaluations, Kenny made a case for associating the common books with the EE. His proposal has been discussed for more than 40 years, and it would be a lengthy enterprise to summarize the debate which has resulted from it.14 What I propose to do instead is to sum up the impact of Kenny’s work on current Aristotelian studies.
First, a quasi-consensus view on the question of the books common to the two ethics has emerged. In view of Kenny’s general argument, and above all of his stylistic investigations of Aristotle’s EE and EN,15 most scholars today accept the idea that the books common to Aristotle’s ethics have originated in the EE.16 Now, this is only part of what Kenny had argued for, for his argument was more ambitious and consisted in the idea that not only did the common books originate in the EE, but they also belonged with that work, in the sense of having close affinity with it from a number of points of view (doctrine, cross-references, style, etc.). Since, as we have seen, for Kenny the question of the relative chronology of Aristotle’s ethical writings will depend in large part on the proper home of the common books, he also intended to show that, once the common books were restored to it, the EE lays claim to being the later work.17 Nevertheless, the majority of scholars today follow Kenny only with regard to the question of the origin of the common books but are reluctant to accept Kenny’s stronger conclusion. Typically, they do so by means of a revision hypothesis to the effect that, whatever their origin, the books common to Aristotle’s ethics have been revised for insertion into the EN.18 As for the envisaged revision, the idea is that it may have been carried out by Aristotle himself, or alternatively by the editor(s) of his ethical writings. However that may be, what matters for present purposes is that a different picture of the status of the common books has emerged as a result of Kenny’s work and its reception among scholars. In brief, in contemporary scholarship the common books seem to be “mobile,”19 so to speak, in that they can be read as part of either work depending on the nature and scope of the investigation each time carried out by interpreters. This practice has also been facilitated by the fact that a number of new editions of the EE include the common books, which allows readers to judge for themselves to what extent they fit in with that work as a whole.20 This, by and large, seems to be the current state of the art with regard to the question of the common books, although some scholars remain opposed to it.21
It should be clear that this understanding of the position of the common books within Aristotle’s ethics leaves room for scholars to adopt different stances to the question of the two ethics. Much will depend on the relative chronology adopted: although the quasi-consensus view presented above suggests that the EE is the early work and the EN the later one, for this would quite naturally explain why the common books were transferred from the former into the latter work, as we have seen, this has not been the only approach to the issues involved. Kenny, for one, believed that the question of the relative chronology of the two ethics depends on the answer given to the question of the common books: once the common books are assigned to the EE, the latter will have a claim to being considered the later work. But this has remained a minority view accepted by few only.22 Thus, more often than not the quasi-consensus view outlined above with regard to the question of the common books goes hand in hand with the idea that the EE is the early and the EN the late treatise, the common books having been transferred from the former into the latter, and perhaps revised for that purpose.
This raises the question as to whether a narrative can be attained capable of explaining the divergences between the two works and provide an intelligible account of Aristotle’s trajectory in ethics. But on the whole it has been harder for scholars to come up with overarching narratives capable of explaining the divergences between the two works in terms of chronology. One such attempt deserves special mention. It is sometimes noted that there is a divergence between the EE and the EN significantly more important than others as it involves a general feature of Aristotle’s ethics, namely the close link between ethics and politics, apparent in the EN. Interpreters at times speak of “a political frame”23 to refer to the EN’s characteristic way of presenting the connection between ethics and politics both at the beginning (EN I 2) as well as at the end of the treatise (EN X 9), where the baton is passed on to the other discipline. While this is no doubt worth pointing out and reflecting on, it is not clear whether this amounts to more than a difference of emphasis between the two treatises. Our evidence seems compatible with the idea that in the EE, Aristotle is simply assuming the connection between ethics and politics without ever stating this explicitly. This would account for the way politics is occasionally and abruptly brought into Aristotle’s discussion in the EE.24 In fact, it has been argued that at times the EE may well be considered more markedly political in its examinations, for instance in the way it goes about motivating the investigation of friendship.25 It is, then, far from obvious that only in the EN did Aristotle conceive of ethics as a discipline subordinate to politics. Other overarching explanations for Aristotle’s trajectory in ethics have been few and far between.26 As a result, nowadays scholars are more likely to be content with pointing out a list of divergences between the EE and the EN.27
Of course, in order to draw up a list of divergences between the two works, one would have to determine what is to count as a difference. The risk is to mistake for a difference between the two works what might in actual fact be a mere peculiarity of either treatise or an emphasis of either on a particular topic or problem. Still, without any claim to comprehensiveness a few of these prima facie divergences between the EE and the EN can be readily mentioned: for instance, the role to be attributed to, and the nature of, pleasure. From the very beginning, the EE comes across as more open to endorsing some qualified form of “hedonism” in so far as happiness is immediately characterized, among other things, as the pleasantest thing there is (1214a7–8). In view of there being two separate examinations of pleasure, i.e. EN VII 11–14 = EE VI 11–14, and EN X 1–5, this issue naturally invites the question whether, as some have thought, the first treatise of pleasure contained in the third common book may be proprietary to the EE. This is a clear case in which the question of the two ethics and the issue of the common books intersect quite naturally. With regard to the nature of happiness, the EE is more inclined to conceive of it in terms of its parts and to think of its most complete form as including precisely all of its parts (1219a35–39). This has been taken to mean that the EE is more amenable to an inclusivist reading of happiness, while the same issue, as is well known, is still strongly disputed when it comes to the EN. Further, Aristotle’s catalogue of character virtues is not exactly the same in the two works: some of the “social virtues” of the EN are conceived of as mere praiseworthy character traits falling short of being virtues in the EE. While barely mentioned in the EN, the notion of kalokagathia makes a prominent appearance at the end of the EE in a way which suggests that it might be of crucial importance to the overarching argument of that work. Many prima facie differences between the two ethics, however, are less conspicuous than this. The respective examinations of voluntariness and prohairesis in the EE and the EN show considerable independence combined with equal philosophical sophistication in a way that resists simple assessments. Somewhat similar is the case of the ergon arguments advanced in EE II 1 and EN I 7: subtle differences between them stand out and invite several thought-provoking questions. Other divergences between the two works are slightly harder to assess, for in many cases the EN is simply lengthier and, more often than not, devotes more space to its examinations of the same topics; thus, for instance it is hard to tell whether, in comparison to the EN, the EE is just very brief on the topic of habituation or substantially different from it. Similarly, both the EE and the EN begin their enquiry with a proem, but while some of the questions dealt with in these opening sections are the same, for instance with regard to the method to be employed in the ensuing investigation, others are strikingly different (e.g. the issues considered in EE I 5).
Before concluding this brief overview, it will be necessary to mention another possible strategy scholars have suggested in order to tackle the question of the two ethics. The thought is that, instead of being characterized by doctrinal differences, the two ethics might have been targeted at different audiences. This approach comes with a number of consequences. To begin with, if that idea were correct, the relative chronology of the two works would become a less pressing question. Neither treatise would be meant to replace the other as they would rather be complementary to one another. To spell out this idea further, scholars standardly point to the EE’s greater technicality, which suggests a philosophically more sophisticated audience already trained in Aristotle’s Analytics (1217a17; 1222b38; 1227a10) and works of natural philosophy (1214a27–28; EE II 6). The EN, by contrast, would be a work intended for a broader audience, or, at any rate, for less philosophically minded people.28 So, on this view, it would be possible to explain divergences between Aristotle’s EE and EN by considering their respective audience. There is no reason to resist the idea that this view may be, at least locally, explanatory useful. Still, one might wonder about its viability as a general explanation of the two ethics. For example, it may be doubted whether the hypothesis of different audiences may truly be explanatory of substantial differences between the treatises rather than, say, stylistic ones. Moreover, Aristotle raises explicitly the issue of his expected audience only to advise his addressees in the EN that the young are not suitable auditors of his lecture on ethics (1095a2–13). Hence, he does not divide audiences depending on whether they have received proper philosophical training.
As we shall see in what follows, the essays gathered in the present volume reflect all of these strands of contemporary research and attempt to take stock of, and build on, the current debate.
1.2 Contents and Aims of the Volume
The present volume collects examinations of themes of Aristotle’s EE and EN. Underlying these examinations is the question of the two ethics, namely the issue posed by there being two ethical treatises of Aristotelian authorship covering similar ground; but that broad question may often remain in the background and be replaced by more specific questions, of which the following is a representative list: How does a given argument in the EE compare to its counterpart in the EN? Are the differences significant? Do they amount to a matter of exposition or to doctrinal differences? Are the peculiarities of either treatise demanded by their context? Is either work, for whatever reason, philosophically more satisfactory? Is a reconciliation between the two possible? As we have seen above, these questions quite often naturally intersect with the question of the common books, that is, the host of issues raised by EN V, VI, and VII, which are identical with EE IV, V, VI. It will depend on the specific investigation each time pursued of how, if at all, it is best to utilize these books. Some of the contributions which make up the volume are explicitly devoted to themes dealt with in the common books, and thus require us to think through the issues posed by these particularly awkward texts of Aristotle’s ethics.
The goal of the volume as a whole is to breathe new life into these issues with a view to furthering our understanding of Aristotle’s ethics. The following contributions amount to novel ways of looking at the EE and the EN in a way which intends to take stock of the current debate and make progress. Here, as often in the scholarship on similar themes, a degree of pluralism in the views presented is representative of the current status quaestionis: the contributors to the volume adopt different approaches to the question of the two ethics and the common books, and champion different perspectives. Still, the different contributions jointly contribute to showing what Kenny has recently stated crisply about the two ethics, namely that “the relationship between the two treatises can only be explained by a combination of factors.”29 That is to say, it seems unlikely that any given overarching narrative concerning Aristotle’s EE and EN will be capable of shedding light on all the relevant divergences between the two treatises we may wish to single out for investigation. Such a one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to work in the case at hand. Worse, the search for any such overarching story might make us less sensitive to the details of the text of both treatises. What is required to get clearer on the relationship between the two works is more likely to be local examinations of prominent themes of Aristotle’s ethics. It bears emphasizing that it is not at all obvious how such investigations are to be conducted, nor what the most promising strategies are, which is why this endeavour requires more work than hitherto done. There is reason to believe that such work will significantly enrich our understanding of both treatises, for instance by making stand out distinctive features of either work and prompting us to make sense of them in their respective contexts. This endeavour is the best way to appreciate fully, and make the best of, the fortunate happenstance of having two ethical treatises by Aristotle at our disposal for us to confront and from which to learn.
All this, of course, does not rule out that lines of development spanning the two works may be detected, and interpreters should remain open to that possibility; but significant preparatory work is necessary to that effect. In particular, in reading the EE we should be alive to the possibility that it might not conform to Aristotle’s familiar tenets in the EN, and we should question readings which unduly reduce the former to the latter. In fact, we should be alive to the possibility that Aristotle’s EE might have constituted an independent and self-standing ethical project in its own right, regardless of where exactly it should be positioned in his philosophical production. Sometimes, as some of the following essays bear witness to, the right reading of a given Eudemian text may well be buried under textual emendations which have accrued to it during its troublesome tradition. On the other hand, conciliatory readings of the two ethics, aimed at reducing the distance between the treatises, are also legitimate, but they should be the result of careful scrutiny of the relevant texts at hand, and not the projection of one’s own prior commitments.
As for the particular choice of topics addressed in the volume, it should be noted that some effort has been made to prioritize themes which have received less attention in the extant scholarship. Just to mention the most visible case, the volume does not include, by design, an examination of friendship as this theme has received significant attention since the first renewal of interest in the EE and continues to do so.30 The volume also seeks to pay heed to portions of the EE in their own right, for instance the last chapter of the treatise on kalokagathia and its horos (EE VIII 3), which is still the cause of significant disagreement among scholars and raises questions crucial to our understanding of that work as a whole. As for the flow of the several essays, this corresponds roughly to the order of exposition in Aristotle’s EE and EN; so, for instance, readers will find the ergon arguments discussed earlier in the volume than lack of self-control or pleasure.31
I now provide a brief presentation of the contents of the volume.
Carlo Natali carries out an investigation of the proems to Aristotle’s ethics. This is, as mentioned above, ostensibly a point of similarity between the two treatises, which nonetheless has not yet been scrutinized with care. Natali compares and contrasts Aristotle’s use of proems with that of two other 4th-century bc writers, namely Isocrates and Plato. These are important foils for getting clear about Aristotle’s own uses of proems in his philosophical writing. Stylistically speaking, the proems to Aristotle’s works are always beautifully and carefully written. For Natali, the function of Aristotle’s proems is to give the audience a hint of what is to follow in the ensuing treatise without getting into too much detail. His conclusion is that the hypothesis of there being different audiences to Aristotle’s EE and EN appears to be the best explanation for the divergences between the two treatises in this regard.
In the second contribution, Friedemann Buddensiek looks at the ergon argument in the EE and EN. It is well known that this argument plays an important role in both ethical works alike, being as it were the lynchpin of Aristotle’s examinations of happiness and virtue. As alluded to previously, this is one of the best cases of the same argument featuring in both treatises in interestingly different forms. There are a number of subtle but significant differences between the two arguments, to which Buddensiek draws attention. The focus of his essay, however, is on the function of the ergon arguments in their respective treatises: first, the EE uses the argument to prioritize the energeia or the product over the disposition, while the EN to specify the type of activity in question; second, the EE abstains from providing a criterion for the inclusion of activities, while the EN does provide such a criterion.
Marco Zingano examines the definitions of moral virtue in the EE and the EN. He starts off by looking at how these definitions are arrived at by looking at their individual components. He then restricts his attention to one notable divergence between the two definitions, namely the fact that the EE includes a reference to pleasure and pain in the very definition of moral virtue (1227b8–10), whereas the EN does not and instead refers to the reasoning of the person with practical wisdom (1106b36–1107a2). To be sure, the EN too stresses the importance of pleasure and pain for moral virtue, but, significantly, does so outside the definitional context. Zingano suggests that in the EN, Aristotle emphasizes the theme of doing virtuous action for the sake of the fine to the detriment of pleasure and pain; and that there is reason to think that this shift occurred to Aristotle whilst examining the individual character virtues. This is another case on which the two ethics seem to defend subtly different views when it comes to the role to be assigned to, and the nature of, pleasure and pain.
In “Decision in the Eudemian Ethics,” Karen Margrethe Nielsen focuses on a textual issue with far-reaching consequences. She argues that the way Aristotle explicates the meaning of the term prohairesis in the EE differs from the EN. Nielsen defends this view by rehabilitating the text of the manuscripts at 1226b8. On this reading, a prohairesis is of something for the sake of something, which she dubs “the teleological reading.” Unfortunately, this reading has been buried under a textual emendation dating back to the 16th century and since then accepted by all editors of the Greek text of the EE and translators alike. Nielsen shows that what underlies this emendation is a conciliatory approach to the two ethics, which attempts to superimpose on the EE the text of the EN. In the latter, we find a different explanation of the word prohairesis to the effect that prohairesis is of something before something. In addition to defending the MSS reading of the EE, Nielsen makes a case for interpreting Aristotle’s notion of prohairesis in light of the examination of the EE, and to this effect suggests a way in which the EN too may be defending a teleological reading of prohairesis. However, she cautiously points out that this is just a possible way of explaining the apparent divergence between the EE and the EN; it is still possible that Aristotle changed his mind on this issue.
Di Basilio considers the topic of the voluntariness of character states in the EE and the EN. As is well known, Aristotle considers the voluntary extensively in both the EE and the EN. Although these examinations share some core ideas, a number of differences between them stand out and have been pointed out by scholars. One such difference concerns the question of whether, in addition to actions, character states too are voluntary or not. While this question is explicitly addressed in EN III 5, nothing corresponds to it in the EE. Di Basilio seeks to put this idea on a firmer footing by noting, first, that the conclusion reached in EN III 5 is alluded to previously in EN III 1; most importantly, the upshot of EN III 5 represents an extension to character states of the account of voluntariness Aristotle has defended in EN III 1 for actions. To be sure, there are a number of Eudemian texts which seem to argue for a conclusion similar to EN III 5. On closer inspection, however, they are revealed to be focused on actions; if one considers closely the arguments Aristotle gives there, it becomes clear that he does not attempt to secure the conclusion that one’s having a virtuous or vicious character, or any other character trait for that matter, is voluntary.
Aristotle’s notion of phronêsis (“practical wisdom”) has been the focus of intense discussion concerning the relationship between the EE and the EN. In his essay, Christopher Rowe looks at its intellectual counterpart, namely sophia, and asks whether any conclusion can be drawn with regard to Aristotle’s EE and EN by examining how that notion appears in them. He points out that, strikingly, in the undisputed Eudemian books sophia is never used according to the technical sense given in EN VI, while the undisputed Nicomachean books make abundant use of it. For Rowe, this is a prima facie reason to associate that common book more closely with the EN. In the second part of his contribution, Rowe considers EE VIII as a whole, especially the last chapter, to ascertain whether, similar to the ending of the EN, the contemplative life of sophia may be assigned a dominant role in the EE too. He answers this question in the negative, and suggests that what we get in EE VIII 3 is a defence of the idea that we need to lead rational lives, whether it be in their practical or theoretical forms, in stark contrast to the ending of the EN.
In his contribution, Jozef Müller starts off by looking at a number of claims Aristotle makes about self-control and its lack in EE II 7–8. As is well known, self-control and the lack of it are intermediate character states examined in the first section of the third common book (EN VII = EE VI chs. 1–10). Outside of these well-known and much debated sections, Aristotle says very little about them, except for the above-mentioned chapters of the EE examined by Müller. He takes pains to lay out the claims Aristotle makes there, and argues that this is important evidence for our understanding of the kind of knowledge of the good, or lack of it, the self-controlled and the uncontrolled agent have – regardless, of course, of how they act. Müller makes a strong case for thinking that it is not the case that these agents have knowledge of the good, nor that they simply fail to apply it in particular circumstances. Rather, their behaviour betrays a commitment to goods other than the virtues and their characteristic activities in a way that disqualifies these agents from having knowledge of the good. His investigation is a felicitous example of how undivided attention to EE texts can result in very significant gains for our overall interpretation of Aristotle’s ethical views.
Dorothea Frede takes head-on the question of pleasure in Aristotle’s ethics. Pleasure has always been a core topic for discussion of Aristotle’s EE and EN in view of the fact that Aristotle’s first examination of this theme is found in the last common book, whereas EN X examines the topic anew without any hint that the two examinations were ever meant to be part of the same work. Frede is a staunch critic of the quasi-consensus view concerning the common books outlined earlier, according to which these books would be Eudemian in origin. Accordingly, in her contribution she treats these books as part of the EN. She emphasizes the extent to which Aristotle’s engagement with the topic of pleasure is far from being exhaustive (significantly, she refers to them as the first and the second “excursus” on pleasure). Several important questions, she argues, fail to receive the treatment which readers of Aristotle’s EN would expect in light of claims previously defended in the ethics. Examples of these questions are the nature of pain, whether bad pleasures are really pleasures at all, and, most importantly for Frede’s purposes, the question of the relevance of pleasure and pain for the virtues of character. In the EN, pleasure and pain are connected both to actions and to affections, but, for Frede, they can hardly be the same phenomenon in the two cases: this makes Aristotle’s failure to examine the issue conspicuous. In the second part of her essay, Frede focuses on a difference between the EE and the EN concerning pleasure, namely that in the former virtues and vices tend to be characterized only in terms of the affections involved, and not in terms of both affections and actions, like the latter does. In her view, the explanation of this lies in EE’s assignment of virtue of character to the non-rational part of the soul. More generally, the first excursus on pleasure was not meant to end up in the EE, for that examination is for the most part a record of, and response to, academic discussions with regard to the nature of pleasure. This is true of EN X as well, which leads her to the conclusion that “neither of the two are satisfactory treatments of the concept of pleasure (and pain) for the purposes of his ethics.”
Two notable features of Aristotle’s EE are the emphasis placed on the idea of complete virtue, on the one hand, and on the virtue of kalokagathia, on the other. In her essay, Giulia Bonasio argues that, by Aristotle’s lights, these two notions are one and the same. This identification ties the ending of the EE, with its emphasis on kalokagathia, to the conclusion of the ergon argument in EE II 1, according to which happiness consists in activity according to complete virtue. To show that this is the correct reading, Bonasio sets up three criteria for something to be complete virtue, and shows that kalokagathia meets all of them. Alternative candidates, such as justice, phronesis, or sophia, are considered and discounted as inadequate. Her investigation involves material coming from Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy and metaphysics. As such, it offers support to the idea that the EE may be a more philosophically minded treatise. Finally, she makes a persuasive case for thinking that, far from being a reference to traditional views about virtue, Aristotle’s use of kalokagathia is theoretically innovative. This idea emerges as the protagonist of Aristotle’s EE as a whole.
The volume rounds off with a second piece on kalokagathia. Terence Irwin considers the first part of the closing chapter of the EE, namely VIII 3, 1248b8–1249a17. Some critics have argued that in this chapter, Aristotle distinguishes between those who are good and those who, in addition to being good, also have the virtue of kalokagathia. Irwin counters this reading by arguing that, for Aristotle, it is not possible to be good without having kalokagathia as Aristotle intends the two features to pick out different properties of the same class of people. The first part of EE VIII is meant to explain why that is the case by articulating the distinction between these two notions and showing how they relate to one another. Famously, in this stretch of text Aristotle introduces a type of character, exemplified by the Spartans, according to which one should be virtuous but for the sake of the so-called natural goods. Interpreters who think Aristotle distinguishes between being good and having kalokagathia have suggested that this group exemplifies those who are good but do not have kalokagathia. By re-establishing the reading of the manuscripts at 1249a, Irwin shows that this reading should be rejected: Aristotle is not claiming that the Spartans are good, but rather that they are wild (“agrioi” instead of “agathoi”); another case in which textual emendations accrued to the EE during its troublesome tradition should be submitted to careful scrutiny. On reflection, the interpretation defended by Irwin is in keeping both with the argument of EE VIII 3 as well as with what has been argued for previously in the EE. Lastly, although the EE is unique in assigning a central role to kalokagathia and in distinguishing it from being good, the conditions for virtue accepted in the EE are the same in substance as the EN.
Notes
1. The last book-length treatment of the authorship of Aristotle’s Magna Moralia is Donini, 1965, who argues that the treatise is not by Aristotle. For similar views, see Broadie, Rowe, 2002, p. 4; Frede, 2020, p. 208. I have omitted mention of the little treatise De Virtutibus et Vitiis, on which there is a near-unanimous consensus view as to its inauthenticity; contrast, Simpson, 2013.
2. Doubts of inauthenticity are apparent in the 19th-century edition of the EE, namely Susemihl, which bears the title Eudemi Rhodii Ethica. On the authenticity of the EE, see Kapp, 1912; Dirlmeier, 1962, pp. 109–121; Rowe, 1971, pp. 9–14; Buddensiek, 1999, pp. 22–43. The only exception being Pakaluk, 1998, who argues that the EE’s egalitarianism casts doubt on its authenticity. Pakaluk’s argument is addressed in Buddensiek, 1999, pp. 30–36.
3. The tendency to think of the two ethics in parallel is embedded in Burnet 1900 commentary on Aristotle’s EN, which, in addition to the text of the EN, includes in smaller font the parallel texts of the EN below. Of note is that, in keeping with the consensus view of the 19th century, Burnet believed the EE had been written by Eudemus and to be a sort of commentary on his master’s ethical views as presented in the EN. This tendency is still present more recently in the introduction to Bodéüs, 2004, pp. 15–17.
4. For a study of these references, see Kenny, 2016, pp. 50–59 and 276–277.
5. For evidence that the treatises on friendship were originally independent treatises but were appropriately incorporated into the EE and the EN, respectively, see Kenny, 2018.
6. The structure of this book is presented in Rowe’s own contribution to this volume, see pp. xxx; it is worth mentioning that some MSS present these last sections of the EE as EE VII 13–15, see Susemihl, 1883, p. xi and 109 for more details.
7. We are forced to reference the common books by means of the standard Bekker lines as printed in the EN.
8. Rowe, 2015, p. 223.
9. Case 1910/1996, p. 26 mentioned the cases of the two redactions of Physics VII which, according to Simplicius, were early drafts of Physics VIII, as well as the other redactions of De Anima II, on this following Torstrik. In his view, both the Magna Moralia and the EE are “Aristotle’s first drafts of his ethics” (p. 30).
10. This view of the composition of Aristotle’s ethics has been advocated by Pakaluk, 2011, and more extensively by Natali, 2017. For a recent introduction to the question of the formation of the Aristotelian corpus, see Hatzimichali, 2016, pp. 81–100.
11. Jaeger, 1923 (English transl. 1948). See also Bobonich, 2006, pp. 16–18. It bears emphasizing that some of Jaeger’s seminal views had been anticipated by Thomas Case, author of an important entry for “Aristotle” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, reprinted in abridged form in Wians, 1996, pp. 1–40; cf. esp. pp. 31–32 for his view of Aristotle’s philosophical development in ethics. In the early 1970s, Rowe, 1971, p. 69 argued among lines similar to Jaeger’s while submitting the common books to close scrutiny, see also his essay in this volume.
12. Harlfinger, 1971, pp. 38–50 on the common books. As Harlfinger showed, some 11 MSS of one of the two families of the EE include the common books; see p. 40. As for the other family, the two main testimonies, namely P and C, report the title of the books as well as their incipit, see pp. 38–39. Rowe, 1971, pp. 79–89 helpfully presents an overview and assessment of the scholarly views proposed in the 19th and 20th century, until Harlfinger, with regard to the common books.
13. There is some controversy over the upshot of Harlfinger’s findings. Some scholars took him to have shown that the common books were truly common in that they were equally attested in MSS of the EE and the EN. However, most recently, Frede, 2019, pp. 88–89 has called into question this understanding of Harlfinger’s research by arguing that the status of the common books is more complicated than this: although it is true that Harlfinger argued that the common books have been handed down to us in one of the two main families of the MSS of the EE, he also suggested that they were taken from the MSS of the EN. For Frede, this does not allow scholars to claim that, from a codicological point of view, the common books are truly common. See also Frede, 2020, pp. 215–217.
14. I have found some seven or eight reviews of Kenny’s book and its sequels, some of which are quite extensive; the most important of these is arguably Rowe, 1983, especially when it comes to Kenny’s stylistic arguments.
15. It bears emphasizing that Kenny pioneered the study of stylometry by submitting to computer-based analysis the style of the EE, the common books, and the EN. Reception of this aspect of Kenny’s research has been mixed.
16. Hutchinson, 1995, p. 198; Crisp, 2000, p. 66; Bostock, 2000, p. 1; Broadie, Rowe, 2002, p. 4; Inwood, Wolf, 2013, pp. viii–ix; Bobonich, 2006, p. 15.
17. See Kenny, 2016, p. 300.
18. This view goes back to Mansion, 1927, p. 126; Dirlmeier, 1962, p. 362–363; Lorenz, 2009, p. 180; Inwood, Leigh, 2012, p. xvii; Lorenz, 2013, review of Inwood, Woolf, 2013; Jost, 2014, pp. 414–415; Irwin, 2019, p. xv.
19. Dalimier, 2013, p. 43; see also Simpson, 2013, pp. xiii–xiv.
20. Kenny, 2011 (see also Kenny, Barnes, 2014); Inwood, Woolf, 2013; Simpson, 2013.
21. Particularly vociferous among the critics of this consensus is Frede, 2019. On the other hand, Primavesi, 2007, p. 73 makes a case for the idea that the common books have been inserted into the EE at a later stage based on the numeration of its books.
22. In fact, very few have followed Kenny in arguing that the case of chronology rests for the most part on the proper home of the common books, see e.g. Jost, 1983. Others have argued for the EE’s lateness on the strength of other considerations: see Monan, 1968, pp. 37–59 and 149–156 for an argument based on moral knowledge; Schofield, 2002, who argues that the EE is the later work based on the examination of friendship in the EE; Green, 2010; Zanatta, 2012.
23. Frede, 2020, p. 215; Jost, 2014, p. 420, n. 21; Inwood, Woolf, 2013, pp. xviii–xix.
24. See, for instance, EE I 6, 1216b36–39; EE I 8, 1218a33–36; EE VII 1, 1234b22–25.
25. This is argued in Schofield, 2002; cf. also Rowe, 2015, p. 224.
26. It is well worth mentioning Donini, 2014, which argued that the EN was the fruit of Aristotle’s more mature reflection on habituation and character formation under the influence of Plato’s Laws.
27. Inwood, Wolf, 2013, pp. xxvii–xxiv list six distinctive features of the EE; see also Bobonich, 2006, pp. 24–29.
28. The idea of there being different audiences of Aristotle’s ethics has been suggested quite early in the debate by Allan, 1961. For recent statements of this view, see Simpson, 2013, pp. xii–xiii; Jost, 2014, pp. 419–420; Price, 1989, p. xi.
29. Kenny, 2016, p. 305, emphasis added.
30. Moreover, a recent volume on the EE is available, featuring no less than three contributions on friendship, namely Leigh, 2012.
31. It is well known that this is not exactly the same in the EE and the EN, but by and large divergences are negligible in this regard.
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