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Aristotle’s Ethics as First Philosophy (review)

Eve A. Browning

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 47, Number 4, October

2009, pp. 620-621 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/hph.0.0162 

For additional information about this article

  Access provided by Harvard University (29 Oct 2013 10:19 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v047/47.4.browning.html

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620  journal of the history of philosophy 47 :4  october 2009

because they are fine (206). The Stoics’ ethical theory does not depend on their idea ofa divine intelligence that orders everything for the good of the universe (291), nor doestheir claim that virtue is identical to happiness represent a major departure from Aristo-tle’s ethics (340–41). The later Christian claim that “the virtuous person does the right

actions because they are right” represents no major departure, either, for “that motive iscentral both to the Aristotelian and to the Stoic account of the virtues” (384). Might oneat least see a major departure in Aquinas’s demotion of naturally acquired moral virtuesto “virtues” only in a relative sense, and especially in his argument that all moral virtuessimpliciter are gifts of grace, infused by God together with the theological virtue of charity?

 While Irwin grants that Aquinas “introduces a Christian element” by treating charity as “anappropriate directing principle,” he emphasizes that “the directive role of moral virtue is

 Aristotelian” (528).To his credit, Irwin acknowledges at least one flaw in his grand unifying vision. If his

account of Aristotelian naturalism is correct, and if he is right to cast Aquinas as its bestexponent, why does Aquinas attribute the naturally acquired moral virtues of temperance

and courage to lower powers of the soul and only the virtue of justice to the will? Whydoes he treat temperance and courage as directed to the individual’s own good, lumpingnaturally acquired justice together with the God-given virtue of charity as higher virtues,concerned with the good of other individuals or the common good? On this issue Irwin

 ventures some rare criticism of Aquinas, along with some equally rare praise of Scotus andOckham (526–27, 543–44, 679–80, 709). But he never really answers the larger questionabout his approach to the history of ethics: how much do we lose, even philosophically , when

 we begin with our own convictions about timeless truths, then labor to find considerableagreement among moral philosophers of the past? For suggested answers readers mightneed to consult Schneewind, contributors to The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century

Philosophy , and other drudges who favor the “Cantabrigian” approach (10).

B o n n i e K e n tUniversity of California, Irvine

Claudia Baracchi. Aristotle’s Ethics as First Philosophy . Cambridge-New York: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2008. Pp. ix + 342. Cloth, $90.00.

 Aristotle’s writings contain more direct statements about priorities and rankings among the various sciences, degrees of accuracy within them, routes to knowledge from first principles,“first philosophy” and its characteristics, and the relation between sciences and practicalconcerns than almost any other philosopher we know.

 Yet taken together, Aristotle’s statements on these matters belie the apparent systematicityof his philosophical temperament. Almost every devotee of Aristotle is compelled to choosecertain texts as authoritative and relegate others to some specific topic-context in whichthey have limited validity. An only slightly shaky consensus among Aristotle’s readers hasemerged through this process over time: on that consensus, Aristotelian first philosophyequals what later came to be called metaphysics, and is characterized by its remoteness fromparticular human discourses and desires, and from the types of knowledge we connect mostdirectly with perception. First principles are also divorced from perception and are knownthrough an incompletely explained intuitive process, but remain indemonstrable. Theoreti-cal wisdom or contemplation soars above the domain of the human struggle, providinga stabilizing but distanced and abstract mode of considering the highest and most divine

matters of which we are capable of thinking.In this book, Claudia Baracchi offers a fresh way of understanding the relationship

between theoretical and practical concerns in Aristotle. She presents what could be calleda holistic interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophical project, one that links the loftiest meta-physical passages with the most intimately personal and practical texts. In this beautifully

 written, densely argued, and thoroughly delightful book, Baracchi does nothing less than

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621b ook r e v ie w s

present a new way of reading most of the key Aristotelian texts, one that places ethics andpolitics at the foundation and center, but extends their sway throughout the human philo-sophical enterprise. Though not all her interpretations will win every reader’s heart, all aremeticulously grounded in texts with ample Greek citations bracketed inside translations;

this gives her argument a degree of transparency that is literally engaging.The book is organized into an Introduction that sets out the plan; a “Prelude” taking

up issues of knowledge, wisdom, and first principles via discussion of Metaphysics  A andPosterior Analytics  B.19 (16–52); a “Main Section” interpreting the first seven books of theNicomachean Ethics  (53–219, the bulk of the book); an “Interlude” on Metaphysics  G; and a“Concluding Section” on Nicomachean Ethics  books 10–12 (260–307).

The main thesis of the book is stated as follows: “The twofold claim put forth in thisstudy, subsequently, is (1) that the science articulated in the Metaphysics  remains essentially‘architectonic’, that is to say, involved in human action and even human construction, and(2) that, conversely, the domain of ethics must be considered in its originary character, thatis to say, in its ontological priority as well as systematic comprehensiveness” (39).

Baracchi believes that, for Aristotle, the ethical/political domain of human experienceis the true source and driver for all human activities, including those typically consideredmost remote or even divorced from it, such as the various abstract sciences and metaphysics.Individual acts of knowing spring from specific human minds grounded in social circum-stances and driven by individual desires.

Thus, metaphysics is grounded in practical, ethical, and political concerns. But beyondthat, ethics is properly metaphysical. Due to the self-determining character of human life,and due also to the intrinsically open or “infinite” nature of human conversation or logos ,“it is ethics that presents properly metaphysical traits, although saying this already entails asemantic reconfiguration of the term ‘metaphysics’. It could be suggested that the ethicalreflection is ‘beyond physis ’ in the sense that it concerns what is not by  nature, not simply and

automatically determined by nature, although neither separate from nor against it” (51).Throughout the main section’s commentary on Nicomachean Ethics  1–7, Baracchi shows

how Aristotle interweaves and makes interdependent noesis  and praxis : “In other words,thought and action appear not to be related according to the former’s priority and thelatter’s derivative character, but rather to be mutually determining. For while deliberationdetermines the course of action appropriate to the end, action is implicated in the forma-tion of the virtues that, in turn, identify the end and make it visible” (123).

In the end, Baracchi gives us an Aristotle committed to “a political practice (or making)infused with intellectual insight and a speculative posture involved in ethico-political mat-ters” (306). The result is an understanding of Aristotle’s project that, paradoxically, rendersit at once less tidily schematic and more cohesively elegant. This book is a very significant

contribution to the literature on Aristotle and, more broadly, to the general human projectof harmonizing what may appear to be disparate intellectual and practical demands.

E v e A . B r o w n i n g

University of Minnesota, Duluth 

Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson. Plotinus on Intellect . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. Pp. viii + 232.Cloth, $65.00.

In Plotinus’s universe, Intellect is the first “product” of the One. Yet why and how preciselyis Intellect “produced”? What characteristics distinguish it, and its particular way of know-

ing, from its higher cause? Questions such as these will lead one deep into the metaphysicsand epistemology of the Enneads , where the operative principles that underlie particularpassages often need to be teased out carefully. Indispensable requirements for this taskare attention to philological and historical detail, and a general sensitivity to the problemsPlotinus is facing. Emilsson combines both admirably.