AN INTERPRETATION OF ARISTOTLE’S THEORY OF PLEASURE Matthew S. Strohl
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY Advisers: John M. Cooper and Hendrik Lorenz November 2008
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© Copyright by Matthew S. Strohl, 2008. All rights reserved.
iii Abstract Pleasure is a mysterious thing. It tends to accompany the experiences we consider most worthwhile. Most of us make a lot of decisions, large and small, on the basis of our desire for it. If asked what it actually is, however, hardly anyone could give an answer that would not immediately crumble under the slightest scrutiny. Most people, I take it, think that pleasure is a particular feeling. This idea seems to me to be clearly and egregiously false. There is no feeling one necessarily experiences when one takes pleasure in solving a math problem that one also necessarily experiences when one takes pleasure in swimming in a mountain lake. Contemporary philosophers rarely worry about what pleasure is. I can’t say why this is the case, but I will emphatically say that I believe the topic is as deserving as any of serious inquiry. Things were very different in antiquity. Both Plato and Aristotle theorized extensively about pleasure in most of their major ethical writings. They considered questions about the nature and value of pleasure to be absolutely central to the project of ethical inquiry. This dissertation is about Aristotle’s theory of pleasure, which I believe may very well be basically the correct theory. Aristotle rejects the ubiquitous notion that pleasure is a feeling, and so, despite its being over 2300 years old, his theory may seem quite radical to modern readers. While I do spend some time in this dissertation trying to show that Aristotle’s theory is both relevant and defensible, my central aim is not to do so, but rather is to clarify what the theory, as articulated in its final form in Nicomachean Ethics X.1-5, actually amounts to. My strategy is first to develop an interpretation of Aristotle’s account of what pleasure itself is, and then, on the basis of this interpretation, to develop corollary interpretations of other parts of his theory of pleasure. By proceeding in this way, I aim to arrive at a coherent overall interpretation that makes manifest the connections and dependencies between the theory’s parts. In Chapter One, I present my interpretation of Aristotle’s account of what pleasure is. I argue that he thinks that pleasure is a certain aspect of perfect activity of awareness, namely, its very perfection. In Chapter Two, I show how the interpretation presented in Chapter One can make sense of a number of texts that have often been taken to imply that Aristotle thought that pleasure was a full-fledged activity rather than an aspect of activity. In Chapter Three, I discuss Aristotle’s famous claim that pleasures differ in kind in virtue of differences in kind among the activities they arise in connection with. I argue for a way of understanding this claim based on the interpretation of his account of pleasure that I give in Chapter One. I also argue that Aristotle recognizes a sense in which pleasures differing in kind can be compared in degree of pleasantness. I claim that, for Aristotle, degree of pleasantness consists in degree of perfection.
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To Duma, for getting me out of bed in the morning.
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Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. vi Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Pleasure as Perfection ......................................................................................... 7 1: Perfect Activity ................................................................................................................. 9 2: Three Prominent Interpretations of Aristotle’s Account of Pleasure .............................. 22 3: Pleasure as Perfection ..................................................................................................... 28 Chapter Two: Pleasure, Process, and Activity ........................................................................ 33 1: Aristotle’s Criticisms of the Phileban Account of Pleasure ............................................ 35 2: An Interpretive Problem in Aristotle’s NE VII Discussion of Pleasure.......................... 48 3: Process and Activity in NE X.......................................................................................... 59 4: A Puzzle About Pleasure and Process ............................................................................. 71 Chapter Three: Aristotle’s Qualitativism and the Comparability of Pleasures ....................... 75 1: Aristotle’s Qualitativism ................................................................................................. 76 2: Qualitativism and Comparabilism................................................................................... 91 3: Pleasantness as Degree of Perfection .............................................................................. 96 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 109
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Acknowledgements I began thinking about Aristotle’s theory of pleasure in the fall of 2002, while an undergraduate at Cornell University. I owe a long-standing debt of gratitude to Terry Irwin, who introduced me to the topic in the context of supervising my honors thesis on Epicurean hedonism. He was an incredible advisor who held me to what seemed at the time like impossibly high standards, but who was always warmly encouraging. I doubt I would have gone on to write a dissertation in ancient philosophy had I not received his support and guidance early in my development as a student of the subject. During my time as a member of Princeton’s philosophical community, from 2003 to 2008, my philosophical outlook and my thinking about Aristotle’s ethics and his theory of pleasure in particular have taken so many twists, turns, leaps and strides forwards, backwards and sideways that I barely recognize myself as the same philosopher. Princeton’s philosophy department has given me the most rewarding graduate education I could have hoped for. I have benefited in more ways from my interactions with people there than I could possibly list. I am very fortunate to have found my way there. This project has directly benefited from conversations with Derek Baker, Lara Buchak, Bridget Clarke, Anne Eaton, David Hilbert, Des Hogan, Mark Johnstone, Colin Klein, Marco Lopez, John Maier, Connie Meinwald, Ben Morison, Jessica Moss, Jozef Müller, Paul Muench, David Sherman, and Michael Smith. I presented an early version of Chapter One in Princeton’s Dissertation Seminar, where I received very instructive comments from Tristram McPherson, Nick Stang, and others. Jill Ray, Ann Getson, Anna Faiola, and Joann Zuczek have been extremely helpful over the years, and have been a delight to work with and around. I wish to specially thank three people who I have considered mentors during my time at Princeton, and who have contributed immeasurably to the development of my thinking about this topic and countless others. Alexander Nehamas has shown me time and time again (usually by example) what it is to live a philosophical life and what the value is in doing so. He has been an endlessly fascinating interlocutor and a ready source of kind encouragement and guidance. Hendrik Lorenz has worked closely with me on nearly every bit of work I’ve done on ancient philosophy since I arrived at Princeton. His generosity, patience, rigorousness, clarity, and above all his remarkable philosophical acumen make him a truly great teacher. Every part of this dissertation has benefited in countless ways from what he has taught me. Lastly, I must acknowledge how privileged I am to have had John Cooper as an advisor. I was told before deciding to study at Princeton that when one writes a dissertation, what one needs most in an advisor is someone who will mercilessly demolish one’s bad ideas, but will also recognize and nourish the good ones lurking among the confusion and nonsense. I was also told that John is in a league of his own in this respect. He has exceeded his reputation. His searching and unfailingly acute feedback has played an absolutely crucial role in turning this project from an enthusiastic mess to a piece of work that (I hope) makes useful progress on what I consider to be an important and interesting topic.
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Josh Strohl, Alexis Strohl, and Jacob Collins have been my best friends since childhood, and have always been there to share happy times with me and to support me when I’ve needed them. Patti and Jon Strohl always gave me the freedom to be the person I want to be, and they didn’t doubt me (much) when I was a 16 year-old kid from Horseheads, NY who read some Nietzsche and decided he wanted to become a philosopher. I am deeply grateful to them. Finally, I must attempt to express my gratitude to Corinne Gartner, who has been my partner during the years I’ve spent working on this project. She listened with the patience of a saint to my endless, lightning-fast ramblings and profane outbursts of frustration and triumph as I read and reread the literature, brainstormed, felt overwhelmed, made progress, got stuck, had breakthroughs, lost and regained interest, wrote and rewrote, and—finally—completed a dissertation. She gave me helpful feedback on early drafts and helped with formatting the final version. Most importantly, she has been and continues to be a loving companion and wellspring of comfort and joy.
1 Introduction Elizabeth Anscombe famously remarked, concerning the concept ‘pleasure’: The ancients found this concept pretty baffling. It reduced Aristotle to sheer babble about ‘the bloom on the cheek of youth’ because, for good reasons, he wanted to make it out both identical with and different from the pleasurable activity. Generations of modern philosophers found this concept quite unperplexing…. The reason is simple: since Locke, pleasure was taken to be some sort of internal impression.1 Aristotle devotes a great deal of attention to issues about pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics. The text contains two long discussions of the topic: one in Book VII, chapters 11-14, and the other in Book X, chapters 1-5. These discussions are rich with remarks concerning, e.g., whether pleasure is in any way good, and whether pleasures differ in kind. But it is notoriously difficult to extract from these discussions Aristotle’s view of what pleasure itself is, an issue which he clearly means to be addressing in X.1-5, and which one might take to be crucial to the coherence of his theory of pleasure as a whole. As the above quotation from Anscombe indicates, Aristotle has often been charged with being inconsistent, confused, or impossibly equivocal about the issue of what pleasure itself is.2 Anscombe’s charge that Aristotle wanted to make pleasure out to be both identical with and different from pleasurable activity points to the central challenge that an interpreter of Aristotle on this issue faces: finding the middle ground between, on the one hand, identifying pleasure with pleasurable activity and, on the other hand, making them too distinct from each other. Aristotle writes: The pleasures in activities are more intimately related to the activities than the desires for them. For the desires are distinguished from the activities in time and in nature, but the pleasures are close to the activities, and so little 1
Elizabeth Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” 27. See, e.g., W.F.R. Hardie, Aristotle’s Ethical Theory, 314; C.C.W.Taylor, “Pleasure: Aristotle’s Response to Plato,” 19-20; David Bostock, “Pleasure and Activity,” 251.
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2 distinguished from them that disputes arise about whether the activity is the same as the pleasure. Still, pleasure would seem to be neither thought nor perception, since that would be absurd. Rather, it is because pleasure and activity are not separated that to some people they appear the same. (1175b3035)3
Here he denies that pleasure is identical to pleasant activity, but he asserts that pleasure is nevertheless not something separate from the activity it arises in connection with.4 Aristotle’s brusque argument that pleasure is not identical to pleasant activity may seem to be fallacious. He infers this conclusion from the observation that it would be “absurd” (atopon) to identify pleasure with perception or thought. One might agree, however, that pleasure in general is not the same thing as perception or thought in general (since many perceptions and thoughts fail to be pleasant), but still think that individual instances of pleasure are identical to individual activities of thought or perception. For example, one might think that when someone takes pleasure in seeing a beautiful landscape, the pleasure the person experiences is identical to the person’s activity of seeing. It is very uncharitable to think that Aristotle neglected this rather obvious alternative, however, and so it is reasonable to infer that when he denies that pleasure is either thought or perception he is not merely denying that pleasure in general is identical to thought or perception in general. I suggest that we should take him to mean that perceiving is one thing and taking pleasure in doing so is another, and likewise with thinking and taking pleasure in doing so. In a case where an activity is performed under the right conditions and is in fact pleasant, the pleasure is conceptually and psychologically
3
Translations of passages from the NE are based on Irwin’s but have sometimes been modified. Translations of passages from other works of Aristotle’s are based on the translations in The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. 4 I take it that the notion of separateness in play here is the same one introduced in Categories 2 at 1a25. If a pleasure is not separate from the activity it arises in connection with, then the pleasure cannot exist without the activity.
3 distinguishable from the activity as a whole. Aristotle thinks that this is so obvious that to deny it would be “absurd.” He acknowledges that when we theorize about what pleasure is, the inseparability of pleasure from activity of thought or perception might lead us to identify the two, but he insists that this view is clearly implausible. What sort of account does Aristotle’s contrast with when he insists that pleasure is not separate from activity? Anscombe notes that in modern times it has become commonplace to think of pleasure as an “internal impression.” She has in mind the idea that pleasure is a certain feeling that is caused by various sorts of activities but that is separate from these activities and is similar in all cases. J.C.B. Gosling gives a succinct account of this view’s central commitments in his 1969 book Pleasure and Desire: ‘Pleasure’, then, is a word used to refer to a certain sort of feeling, identified by the way it feels, not by context. Learning the word, therefore, is a matter of learning to identify this feeling and distinguish it from others. In this it resembles butterflies in the stomach. Unless a person has had such a feeling and observed its peculiar feel, he is very likely to misapply this description. Similarly, if a person has failed to note the special feel of pleasure, he will be likely to claim to enjoy things which he does not in fact enjoy at all.5 Gosling’s example of “butterflies in the stomach” is well chosen. This feeling might be caused by anticipation of public speaking, by an unexpected encounter with someone one has romantic feelings for, or by the approaching summit of a roller coaster’s first hill, but in all cases it is phenomenally similar. According to theories of pleasure in this vein, pleasure is a particular feeling that we are naturally attracted to and that we experience as a result of engaging in certain activities.6 For various reasons, it is important to Aristotle’s ethical
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J.C.B. Gosling, Pleasure and Desire: The Case for Hedonism Reviewed, 30-31. Henry Sidgwick is a paradigmatic example of a philosopher who explicitly adopts this style of view: “I propose therefore to define Pleasure—when we are considering its “strict value” for purposes of quantitative comparison—as a feeling which, when experienced by intelligent
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4 theory that pleasure is not a feeling of this or any other kind. Aristotle wants to avoid both the claim defended by anti-hedonists (he mentions his associate Speusippus) that pleasure is in no way good, and the claim defended by hedonists (he mentions Eudoxus) that all pleasure is good. He takes it to be a well-grounded popular opinion that the best life must contain pleasure (1153b14-15), and he thinks that the anti-hedonists must implausibly and unacceptably deny this fact (1154a1-6). At the same time, he denies that all pleasure is good, since pleasure that arises in connection with base activity is itself base (1175b28). He occupies middle ground between hedonism and anti-hedonism by claiming that pleasures differ from one another in kind, and thus in moral status, in accordance with the differences in kind of the activities that they arise in connection with. This view is ruled out by theories that take pleasure to be a particular feeling. According to such theories, a virtuous person who takes pleasure in helping someone and a vicious person who takes pleasure in harming someone both experience the same feeling. We might say that it is admirable to take pleasure in the one case and despicable in the other, but we cannot say that the pleasure itself has a different moral status in the one case than in the other. If the pleasure a virtuous person derives from a virtuous activity might just as well have arisen in connection with a vicious activity so far as its own nature is concerned, it could not inherit from the virtuous activity a moral status that depends on aspects of that activity in particular. I hold that, for Aristotle, pleasure is not a feeling that our activities give rise to, but rather is an aspect of the activities themselves. This is why it might seem that Aristotle makes pleasure both identical to and distinct from the activity that it arises in connection beings, is at least implicitly apprehended as desirable or—in cases of comparison— preferable.” Methods of Ethics, 7th ed., 127.
5 with: it is an integral aspect of the activity, but it is distinguishable from the activity as a whole. In Chapter One, “Pleasure as Perfection,” I develop an interpretation of Aristotle’s account of what pleasure is along these lines, on the basis of a close reading of the second half of NE X.4. I argue that, for Aristotle, pleasure is the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness. The overarching aim of the next two chapters is to develop an interpretation of central elements of Aristotle’s theory of pleasure on the basis of this interpretation of his account of what pleasure is. In Chapter Two, “Pleasure, Process, and Activity,” I address the question of the metaphysical status of pleasure. Many commentators have thought that Aristotle holds that pleasure is a kind of activity. This contrasts with the view I defend, according to which pleasure is not itself an activity, but is rather an aspect of a certain kind of activity. I try to show that the textual evidence that is often taken to support the view that pleasure is a kind of activity supports the view that pleasure is an aspect of activity at least as well, and moreover that there are some strong considerations in favor of preferring the latter view. In Chapter Three, “Aristotle’s Qualitativism and the Comparability of Pleasures,” I discuss Aristotle’s view that pleasures differ in kind in virtue of the differences in kind among the activities they arise in connection with, which I call his ‘Qualitativism’. I suggest an interpretation of this idea according to which the way that pleasures differ in kind is explained by their nature as the perfection of the activities they arise in connection with. I argue that this interpretation is preferable to the strongest alternative interpretation on philosophical and textual grounds. In this chapter I also consider an issue that has been of great concern to modern ethical thinkers: the question of whether pleasures can be compared in degree of pleasantness. On the prevailing modern view that I’ve mentioned already,
6 according to which pleasure is a kind of feeling, it is relatively unproblematic to make comparisons in degree of pleasantness. On the other hand, modern views that have some kinship with Aristotle’s Qualitativism, particularly the views defended by John Stuart Mill, face serious difficulties on this front. If pleasures differ in kind, they may not all fall on a single quantitative scale on which they can be compared, and yet there is strong motivation for thinking that there must be some legitimate way to compare them. I argue that Aristotle’s theory is able to resolve this difficulty. I suggest that, for Aristotle, degree of pleasantness consists in degree of perfection. I also argue that this view is a deliberate revision of common views about the matter, and that this being the case we should not expect it to cohere with all of our ordinary intuitions, but that it does satisfy the core intuition that pleasures can in some sense be compared in degree of pleasantness.
7 Chapter One: Pleasure as Perfection I hold that there is exactly one place in the NE where Aristotle means to give an account of what pleasure itself is, namely, the second half of Book X, chapter 4 (particularly 1174b14-1175a3).7 In this passage, Aristotle gives an account of what it is for an activity to be perfect, and says that pleasure is what in some sense perfects a perfect activity. This discussion culminates in the passage Anscombe calls “sheer babble,” the notorious simile of the bloom: Pleasure perfects [teleioi] the activity—not, however, as the state does, by being present in (the activity), but as a sort of supervenient perfection [epigenomenon ti telos], like the bloom on those in the prime of youth. (1174b31-33)8 Although it is difficult to see what Aristotle means in this passage, I think that if it is interpreted in connection with a close examination of the immediate context it is possible to extract from it an account of what pleasure itself is that allows it to be distinct from pleasant activity, and yet does not make it out to be something separate from such activity. As I will argue, Aristotle implicitly restricts the class of activities that can be pleasant to activities of
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One might think that he gives another account in VII.12, where he writes, “[Pleasure] should instead be called an activity of the natural state, and should be called not perceived, but unimpeded (1153a14-15).” I argue in Chapter 2 that in this context Aristotle is not talking about pleasure itself, but rather about that which is pleasant. 8 Irwin translates ‘teleioi’ as ‘completes’ and ‘telos’ as ‘end’. I substitute ‘perfects’ for ‘completes’ because Irwin translates other words in the passage related to ‘telos’ as ‘perfect’ rather than ‘complete’, and I do not see any reason to translate the word in two different ways in this context. Also, although ‘perfection’ is admittedly a weighted translation of ‘telos’, ‘end’ is also quite weighted. If ‘telos’ is understood as ‘end’, the passage heavily favors the view that for Aristotle pleasure is the final cause of an activity (a view that Irwin endorses in his note on this passage). The word ‘telos’ does not always mean 'end' or ‘goal’; it can also mean ‘completion’, ‘fulfillment’, or ‘perfection’, and, as I will argue in section 3 of this chapter, it seems that in this context Aristotle uses it to mean ‘perfection’.
8 awareness, that is, to exercises of capacities for awareness.9 An activity of awareness is perfect when the capacity being activated is in a good condition and is active in relation to a fine object. The view I will ultimately defend is that for Aristotle pleasure is an aspect of perfect activity of awareness, namely, its very perfection. That is, pleasure is the character that a perfect activity of awareness has in virtue of the good condition of the capacity being activated and the fineness of the object that this capacity is active in relation to. Spelling this view out further will require a detailed examination of the passage that precedes the simile of the bloom. This chapter will proceed from here in three sections. First, I will reconstruct Aristotle’s account of what it is for an activity to be perfect, and I will defend this account against the objection that it implausibly excludes many activities that we ordinarily think are pleasant. Second, I will discuss the three ways of interpreting Aristotle’s account of pleasure that past commentators have favored, and I will discuss the analogy Aristotle draws concerning pleasure and health, which is a central piece of evidence for two
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It is perhaps controversial to say that Aristotle would recognize such things as ‘activities of awareness’. As we see in De Anima I.1, at 403a26ff, Aristotle thinks that mental phenomena such as anger have physiological underpinnings (in the case of anger, the boiling of the blood around the heart). An activity of perception or thought, one might think, is not an activity of awareness, but rather is an activity involving both awareness and various physiological processes. Hendrik Lorenz argues on pg. 213 of his paper “The Assimilation of Sense to Sense-Object in Aristotle” that it is reasonable to apply to activities of perception the familiar Aristotelian principle that “terms which in one of their uses denote a form-matter composite can also be used to denote the form, or matter, of the thing in question” (cf., On Generation and Corruption I.5, 321b20-23; Metaphysics Η.3, 1043a29-36). Conscious perception stands to the physiological processes that underlie it as form to matter, and so ‘perception’ can be used to refer to the mental dimension of perception in abstraction from its physiological underpinnings. I agree with Lorenz that this application of the principle is reasonable, and I suggest that it is also reasonable to apply the principle to other activities, such as thought. The idea would be, then, that while activities of thought or perception do have physiological underpinnings, it is in line with Aristotelian principles to use the term ‘activities of awareness’ to pick out the mental dimension of such activities in abstraction from the material dimension.
9 of the three views. Third, I will present and defend my interpretation of the simile of the bloom and of Aristotle’s account of what pleasure itself is.
1: Perfect Activity In the passage beginning at 1174b14, Aristotle explains what it means for an activity to be perfect. He writes: Every perceptual capacity is active in relation to its perceptible object, and perfectly active when it is in good condition in relation to the finest of its perceptual objects. For this above all seems to be the character of perfect activity, and it doesn’t matter if we ascribe it to the capacity or to the subject that has it. Hence for each capacity the best activity is the activity of the subject in the best condition in relation to the best object of the capacity. This activity will be the most perfect and the most pleasant. (1174b14-20) We can see from this passage that when Aristotle speaks of “perfect activities,” he means activities that involve the perfect activation of a capacity. In order for a capacity to be perfectly activated, the capacity must be in the best condition, and must be active in relation to the finest type of object that it by nature engages with. There must be, as it were, a “fit” between object and capacity, such that when a capacity in such a condition is active in relation to such an object, the resultant activity will involve the fullest possible exercise of the capacity.10 Take, for example, the activity of listening to music. In the most perfect case,
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It is not entirely clear how Aristotle accounts for the phenomenon of distraction in a case where a capacity in the best condition is active in relation to a fine object. He writes at 1175b3-6, “For lovers of flutes, for instance, cannot pay attention to a conversation if they catch the sound of someone playing the flute, because they enjoy flute playing more than their present activity; and so the pleasure proper to flute playing destroys the activity of conversation.” The idea might be that when Aristotle gives his account of perfect activity he does not make explicit the condition that the subject who performs the activity must do so with attention and must not be engaged in a competing activity. Alternatively, the idea might be that part of what it is for a capacity to be in a good condition is that its exercise must not be impeded by lack of attention or by a competing activity. The former interpretation is supported by the consideration that it would be strange to think that when we are engaged in
10 the listener will be someone with flawless hearing who has had a great deal of practice listening to complicated pieces and whose capacities for listening have been perfected thereby. The piece of music that serves as the object of her activity of listening will be among the finest things to hear, and therefore will be such as to make full use of her perfectly developed capacities for listening when they are active in relation to it. There are very good grounds for thinking that Aristotle means to restrict this account of perfect activity to activities of awareness. A strong piece of evidence is 1175b30-35, which I quoted and discussed above. Aristotle says, “disputes arise about whether the activity is the same as the pleasure,” and then says, clearly meaning to comment on these disputes, “pleasure would seem to be neither thought (dianoia) nor perception (aesthêsis).” This substitution of ‘thought or perception’ for ‘activity’ indicates that Aristotle treats thought and perception, which are activities of awareness, either to be exhaustive of the types of activities that can be pleasant, or to be two paradigm cases of types of activities that can be pleasant. Following 1174b20-23 (quoted above), he writes: For every perceptual capacity (aesthêsis) and every sort of thought (dianoia) and study (theôria) has its pleasure; the most pleasant activity is the most perfect; and the most perfect is the activity of the subject in good condition in relation to the most excellent object of the capacity. (1174b20-23)
one activity and become distracted by another one this distraction somehow constitutes a new deficiency in the capacity exercised by the first activity. The latter interpretation is supported by the consideration that it allows us to take Aristotle to mean exactly what he says when he writes, “Every perceptual capacity is… perfectly active when it is in good condition in relation to the finest of its perceptual objects.” I am inclined to favor the latter interpretation. In De Sensu 7, Aristotle characterizes the soul’s faculties of awareness as in a way constituting a unity. When the exercise of one faculty impedes the exercise of another, this impediment can be thought of as a deficiency in the condition of the impeded faculty, insofar as the condition of the impeded faculty is partly constituted by its relations to the other faculties with which it forms a unity. I return to this issue in section 1 of Chapter Three.
11 Here Aristotle makes it clear that he means for his account to apply to activities of perception, thought and study, and so it would seem dianoia and aesthêsis are not exhaustive. Study, or theôria, however, is also an activity of awareness, and there is no textual or philosophical reason to think that Aristotle’s account of perfect activity extends to activities besides activities of awareness. 11 It might in the context seem strange that Aristotle says that a perfect activity results when a capacity in the best condition (or at least a good condition) is active in relation to the finest or best of its objects. When we think of occasions when we experience pleasure, many involve capacities in an unremarkable condition engaged with less than exceptional objects, like a cup of diner coffee or a movie about pirates. Moreover, there are clearly many cases where people whose capacities are in a thoroughly bad condition take pleasure in something in no way fine. Gerd Van Riel, in his book Pleasure and the Good Life, objects to Aristotle’s theory along these lines: On the other hand, it is not clear why only a perfectly performed activity can yield pleasure. Pleasure can have the opposite effect: it can bring (short) relief from the impediments that prevent a perfect performance of an activity. My activity of listening does not have to be perfect in order for me to be able to enjoy music. Even if my ear is affected by a serious disease and I can hardly hear, I can still enjoy music. (77) Aristotle’s account of what pleasure itself is focuses on the case of maximally perfect activity, which is presumably what leads Van Riel to think that Aristotle holds that only such 11
Aristotle clearly also thinks that emotions can be pleasant, and so this tripartite division may still not be exhaustive. In Book 2 of the Rhetoric he writes: “The emotions are all those affections that so change men as to affect their judgments, and that are also attended by pain or pleasure (1378a20-23).” There is no need to enter into the debate about precisely what sorts of things Aristotle thinks the emotions are. Regardless of whether or not they fall under the classification scheme of perception, thought, and study, Aristotle clearly thinks they involve some kind of activity of awareness, and so their case does not provide any reason to doubt that Aristotle means to restrict the class of activities that can be pleasant to activities of awareness.
12 activity is pleasant, but, as I will argue, Aristotle thinks that perfection comes in degrees, and that a less perfect activity can be pleasant. His account of what pleasure itself is focuses on maximally perfect activity because, as we will see, he thinks that the most fully human pleasures will arise in connection with such activity. He holds that less perfect activities cannot give rise to fully human pleasures, not that they cannot give rise to any pleasures at all. Before elaborating further, it will be worthwhile to say more about why Aristotle thinks that a maximally perfect activity requires “the best condition” and “the finest object.” This will help to show why Aristotle focuses on the case of maximally perfect activity in his account of what pleasure itself is. I have characterized a perfect activity as one where a capacity in the best condition is active in relation to the finest of its objects and is thereby fully exercised. The fact that an activity involves the full exercise of a capacity is not, however, sufficient for the activity to be perfect. This is vital to the plausibility of Aristotle’s account, since all sorts of activities “max out” various capacities but fail to be pleasant. It might take just as much listening acumen to sort out the sounds in a crowded restaurant as it does to digest a Mozart composition, and it might be just as complicated a task to discern the flavors of a pile of rotting leftovers as it is to savor a gourmet meal. As Anthony Kenny put it, “The most sensitive nose in the world put in front of the most powerfully smelling manure in the world will not necessarily find the experience pleasant.”12 It is one of the central tenets of Aristotle’s ethics that human beings have an essential nature and that some activities count as proper realizations of it while others do not. Aristotle thinks that a correlative claim holds for pleasure:
12
Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will, 149.
13 Each animal seems to have its own proper pleasure just as it has its own proper characteristic activity; for the proper pleasure will be the one that corresponds to its activity. (1176a3-4) When Aristotle says, “Every perceptual capacity… is completely active when it is in good condition in relation to the finest of its perceptible objects,” he means that the capacity is in an appropriate condition for some aspect of the proper realization of human nature, and that the object, in virtue of being fine, is apt to facilitate the full exercise of a capacity in such a condition. A perfect activity is not merely one that fully exercises a capacity; it is an activity that fully exercises a capacity so as to achieve the proper realization of the capacity’s nature as the capacity that it is and as a part of human nature more broadly. Why does Aristotle think that a capacity must be active relative to the finest of its objects to achieve a proper realization of its nature? What exactly ‘the fine’ means in Aristotle’s ethical writings is an extremely complex and controversial issue, but I can say a few things that will help to elucidate the role that fineness plays in NE X.4. The Greek word for fine, ‘kalon’, is often translated as either ‘beautiful’ or ‘noble’. ‘Fine’ is a good common ground between these translations, as it captures both the aesthetic and the moral connotations of the term. In Metaphysics M.7, in the context of claiming that the mathematical sciences say and prove things about the fine, Aristotle writes, “The chief forms of fineness are order and symmetry and definiteness (1078a36-b1).” Aristotle thinks that in cases of perfect activity, the suitability of an object to fully activate the relevant capacity is linked with its order, symmetry and definiteness. Aristotle famously claims in NE I.7 that excellent performance of the human characteristic activity consists in activity of the soul expressing virtue. In II.6 he gives a characterization of virtue:
14 Virtue, then, is a state that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the practically wise person would define it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. (1106b36-a3) The proper realization of human nature involves a certain kind of proportionality and orderliness. It lies in finding the mean between excess and deficiency in all areas of human life. In the practical domain, the proper realization of human nature involves an agent, e.g., placing proportionate import on the various demands that weigh upon her in a set of circumstances. The capacities of the virtuous person are in a condition such that they require fine objects—ones that have the right kind of order, symmetry and definiteness—for their full activation. This suggests a connection between virtue and taking pleasure in the fine. Aristotle makes this connection explicit in NE I.8: Now the things that please most people conflict, because they are not pleasant by nature, whereas the things that please lovers of the fine [i.e., virtuous people] are pleasant by nature. Actions in accord with virtue are pleasant by nature, so that they both please lovers of the fine and are pleasant in their own right. (1099a12-15) The practically virtuous agent expresses her practical wisdom by reasoning about fine actions and outcomes, and takes pleasure in doing so. There are also virtues of the theoretical intellect and virtues of character (i.e., of non-rational desires and feelings), and these are similarly related to fineness. The fullest realization of human nature requires that the practical, theoretical, and non-rational aspects of a person’s soul be in a virtuous condition, such that their full activation requires engagement with the finest objects. One might worry that while the picture I have been developing makes sense in application to pleasures that involve refined taste and judgment, it does not seem apt for simple pleasures, such as the pleasure of appreciating the flavor of a candy bar. It would seem bizarre to think that candy preferences will track fineness in the case of a virtuous
15 person. Suppose an especially virtuous person enjoys Twix bars but is not especially fond of Snickers bars, and a non-virtuous person has the opposite preference. Is the pleasure the former takes in eating a Twix bar somehow more proper to humans than the pleasure the latter takes in eating a Snickers bar? I take it that what Aristotle would say here is that there is a fairly wide range of ways one’s taste for such simple pleasures could develop that are compatible with being a well-developed human being. Aristotle writes: Sight differs from touch in purity, as hearing and smell do from taste; hence the pleasures also differ in the same way. So also do the pleasures of thought differ from these; and both sorts have different kinds within them. (1175b36a3) Peter Hadreas has argued—I believe correctly—that this ranking of sense modalities and other forms of cognition in purity is based on the extent to which each apprehends order.13 The class of objects appropriate to properly engage a virtuous person’s capacities is more determinate for purer sense modalities and forms of cognition than for less pure ones. There is not much order and definiteness to be had for simple activities of touch and ingestion of foods, and so the greater affinity that virtuous people have for fineness will not distance them very much from non-virtuous people with respect to such pleasures. The salient difference between a virtuous and a non-virtuous person with respect to such pleasures is not as to which ones the person prefers, but rather as to the way in which the person partakes of them. The virtuous person will partake of Twix bars in a moderate way, and indeed will take pleasure in awareness of the moderate character of his activity in addition to the pleasure he takes in the activity itself. The pleasure the virtuous person takes in the moderate way he enjoys his Twix bar is what separates him from the non-virtuous
13
Peter Hadreas, “The Functions of Pleasure in Nicomachean Ethics x 4-5,” 161-163. I revisit and expand on this idea in section 3 of Chapter Three.
16 person (the non-virtuous person will not enjoy this pleasure at all), and he might as well be eating a Snickers bar rather than a Twix bar as far as this other pleasure goes. Aristotle writes: In fact, however, the pleasures differ quite a lot, in human beings at any rate. For the same things delight some people, and cause pain to others; and while some find them painful and hateful, others find them pleasant and loveable…. But in all such cases it seems right that what is really so is what appears so to the excellent person. If this is right, as it seems to be, and virtue, i.e., the good person insofar as he is good, is the measure of each thing, then what appear pleasures to him will also really be pleasures and what is pleasant will be what he enjoys. And if what he finds objectionable appears pleasant to someone, that is not at all surprising; for human beings suffer many sorts of corruption and damage. It is not pleasant, however, except to these people in these conditions. Clearly, then, we should say that the pleasures agreed to be shameful are not pleasures at all, except to corrupted people. But what about those pleasures that seem to be decent? Of these, which kind, or which particular pleasure, should we take to be the pleasure of a human being? Surely it will be clear from the activities, since the pleasures are consequences of these. Hence the pleasures that perfect the activities of the perfect and blessedly happy man, whether he has one activity or more than one, will be called the fully human pleasures to the fullest extent. The other pleasures will be human in secondary, or even more remote ways, corresponding to the character of the activities. (1176a10-29)
In this passage Aristotle makes two important distinctions. He distinguishes between activities that are pleasant without qualification and activities that are pleasant in a qualified way, and he distinguishes between fully human pleasures and pleasures that are human in a secondary (or even more remote) way. The activity or activities of the perfect and blessedly happy person constitute the fullest possible realization of human nature (which is precisely why the person counts as perfect and blessedly happy), and so the pleasures that arise in connection with the activity or activities of such a person are the most fully human pleasures. I suggest in light of this passage that Aristotle’s account of what pleasure itself is focuses on maximally perfect activity because the most fully human activity or activities are maximally
17 perfect.14 They involve the exercise of capacities in the best condition in relation to the finest objects. We must bear in mind that Aristotle’s account of pleasure is given in the context of a work about the human good, and that his primary concern in giving an account of pleasure is to give an account of the most fully human kind of pleasure. He makes it clear that he does not mean to deny that activities of awareness that are less than maximally perfect can be pleasant. Recall that he uses superlatives in his account of perfect activity: “Hence for each capacity the best activity is the activity of the subject in the best condition in relation to the best object of the capacity. This activity will be the most perfect and the most pleasant (1174b18-20).” Aristotle says that maximally perfect activity is the most pleasant activity, but there is no reason to interpret him as saying that it is the only pleasant activity.15 He allows that activities that are in some way inferior to maximally perfect activities can attain some degree of perfection. The most perfect activity will be the most pleasant activity, but all of the activities that Aristotle delineates in the passage quoted above as those that “seem to be decent” are pleasant in a straightforward, unproblematic sense. If a person’s capacity for listening is in a good condition (but not the best one) and is active in relation to a piece of music that is only moderately fine, but that is apt to fully exercise the person’s capacity in the condition that it is in, that person’s activity of listening is perfect and therefore pleasant. It also could of course happen that a person whose capacity for listening is in the very best condition listens to a piece of music that is fine, but not among the finest. In such cases 14
This is not to say that all maximally perfect activities are fully human. It is clear from Metaphysics Λ.7 that the activity of God is maximally perfect, but obviously it is not a human activity. Also, there might be maximally perfect activities that are human in a secondary way. For instance, it might be the case that a maximally perfect activity of the sense of touch (e.g., the world’s finest backrub received when one is most able to appreciate it) is not one of the activities that make up a blessedly happy life, and so is not fully human. 15 I discuss the connection between an activity’s degree of perfection and its degree of pleasantness in the second chapter of my dissertation.
18 the object is not apt to fully activate the person’s capacity, but it is apt to activate it to a high degree. In such cases the fit between object and capacity is imprecise and the activity is less pleasant than it would be if the object were better suited to fully exercise the capacity. It might happen that when an object fails to fully engage a capacity a person becomes bored and her attention becomes lax, and this lapse of attention constitutes an impediment to the exercise of the capacity and thus puts the capacity in a worse condition. The object may be apt to fully exercise the capacity in this worse condition. Take, for example, a case where a very astute fan of movies goes to see a film that turns out to be mediocre. The person may initially be bored by the film, but may end up enjoying it as a piece of light entertainment watched with a relaxed attitude and not with the focus and concentration with which she would watch a better film. Aristotle also distinguishes in 1176a10-29, quoted above, between activity that is pleasant without qualification and activity that is pleasant in a qualified way. I expressed the concern earlier that it may seem as though Aristotle is committed to denying that the activities of someone whose capacities are in a bad condition and are active in relation to objects that are in no way fine could pleasant. This would be a wildly implausible position. Some vicious activities, such as gorging on fast food or committing adultery, are clearly sometimes pleasant for the people who engage in them. It may seem as though Aristotle is denying this when he writes, “Clearly, then, we should say that the pleasures agreed to be shameful are not pleasures at all, except to corrupted people.” When Aristotle says that shameful pleasures are not pleasures at all, he does not mean that there is no sense whatsoever in which they are pleasures. After all, he says in this very sentence that they are pleasures for corrupted people. Aristotle often says that X is not Y when he really means that
19 X is not Y without qualification.16 His remark here should be understood in this way. He is saying that shameful pleasures are not pleasures without qualification, but that they are pleasures for corrupted people. He illustrates his point at 1173b22-24: For we should not suppose if things are pleasant to people in a bad condition that they are pleasant, except to these people, just as if things are healthy or sweet or bitter to sick people we should not suppose that they are healthy, sweet or bitter except to them. Take, for example, chemotherapy. The drug treatments in chemotherapy are not healthy for a person in a normal condition. What is healthy for a person in a normal condition provides the standard of what is healthy without qualification, and so the drug treatments in chemotherapy are not healthy without qualification. For some people with cancer, however, these drug treatments are healthy, and so it is correct to say that they can be healthy for someone with cancer. In the case of pleasure, a shameful activity that is pleasant for a vicious person but is not pleasant for human beings who have developed in the natural way is only pleasant for the vicious person. The qualification “for the vicious person” must be added when we call such an activity pleasant, and so the activity is not pleasant without qualification. It is not immediately clear, however, from what Aristotle says in this passage how it could be that base activities are pleasant even for the vicious person, given that such activities involve capacities that are in defective conditions being exercised in relation to non-fine objects. It might seem that such activities fail to be perfect to any extent whatsoever. I suggest that although he does not explicitly say so, it is reasonable to speculate that Aristotle does in fact think that certain base activities are perfect in a way. They are perfect in the sense that they 16
A good example is NE VII.4, where Aristotle says that someone who is akratic about spirit or wealth is not akratic, when what he means is that such people are not akratic without qualification.
20 bear a certain resemblance by analogy to activities that are perfect in the primary sense. In Metaphysics ∆.16, Aristotle writes: And thus we transfer the word ‘perfect’ to bad things, and speak of a perfect scandal-monger and a perfect thief. (1021b17-19) Things, then, that are called perfect in virtue of their own nature are so called in all these senses, some because they lack nothing in respect of goodness and cannot be excelled and no proper part of them is found outside, others in general because they cannot be exceeded in their several classes and no part proper to them is outside; the others are called perfect in virtue of these first two kinds, because they either make or have something of the sort or are adapted to it or in some way or other are referred to the things that are called perfect in the primary sense. (1021b30-1022a3) Perfect activities involve a “fit” between a capacity in the best condition and the finest of objects, such that the capacity is perfectly exercised. There may also be a fit in cases of shameful activity, but the fit will be between a capacity in a corrupted condition and an object that is apt to fully exercise a capacity in such a condition. A thief who is superlatively good at thievery can rightly be called a perfect thief. He is not a perfect thief in the primary sense of perfect, since his thieving ability is not strictly speaking good, but he is a perfect thief insofar as his thieving ability stands to the art of thievery in a way that resembles by analogy the way that, e.g., a perfect doctor’s medical abilities stand to the art of medicine. Likewise, an activity that involves the full exercise of a capacity in a corrupted condition can rightly be called a perfect activity even though it is not perfect in the primary sense, since it resembles by analogy activity that is perfect in the primary sense. Aristotle’s account of perfect activity can therefore be extended to the case of shameful activity. This is not to say that Aristotle counts certain shameful activities as pleasant merely because they are in some respects analogous to pleasant activities. Just as chemotherapy can be genuinely healthy for a person with cancer, shameful activities can be genuinely pleasant for a person in a corrupt
21 condition. The term ‘perfection’ is extended to such activities by analogy, but the activities involve a character of awareness that the person who performs them finds attractive, just as activities that are perfect in the primary sense do. A shameful activity can indeed be genuinely pleasant for the person who performs it, but the pleasantness of such an activity depends on the corrupted condition of the capacity it activates, just as the healthiness of chemotherapy for someone with cancer depends on the person’s illness, and so shameful activity is not pleasant without qualification, just as chemotherapy is not healthy without qualification.17 It seems clear that this is enough to answer Van Riel’s objection that Aristotle’s account does not allow that some activities that we intuitively consider to be pleasant are in fact pleasant. Aristotle does not claim that only maximally perfect activity is pleasant, he just focuses—for clear and understandable reasons—on this type of pleasure in his main account of what pleasure itself is. A decent activity that is perfect to some degree but not maximally perfect is pleasant without qualification; it is just not one of the quintessentially human pleasures. A shameful activity is not pleasant without qualification, but may be pleasant for the person who performs it.
17
My interpretation of Aristotle on this point contrasts with an interpretation suggested by Julia Annas in her paper “Aristotle on Pleasure and Goodness”: “For Aristotle, one cannot pursue pleasure regardless of the moral worth of the actions that are one’s means to getting it. Rather it is the other way round: it is one’s conception of the good life which determines what counts for one as being pleasant (288).” I disagree with Annas that what counts for one as being pleasant is determined primarily by one’s conception of the good life. In many cases, the condition of non-rational aspects of one’s soul plays the primary role in determining what counts as pleasant for one. This is especially evident in cases where an agent exhibits akrasia, or lack of self-control. In such cases, what one takes pleasure in is directly at odds with one’s conception of the good life. Annas thinks that the possibility of akrasia creates a serious difficulty for Aristotle’s theory of pleasure (294). This “difficulty” is easily resolved if one accepts the interpretation of this part of Aristotle’s theory of pleasure that I propose.
22 2: Three Prominent Interpretations of Aristotle’s Account of Pleasure Following the account of perfect activity of awareness that I have been discussing, Aristotle gives his most direct statement in NE X.1-5 of what pleasure itself is: Pleasure perfects the activity—not, however, as the state does, by being present in (the activity), but as a sort of supervenient perfection [epigenomenon ti telos], like the bloom on those in the prime of youth. (1174b31-33)
Gosling and Taylor outline the three ways the view expressed in this passage has traditionally been interpreted: Here there have been three styles of view. First, that of the majority of commentators holds that pleasure is the formal cause of actualization; secondly, not always distinguished from this or the following has been the view that pleasure is some subtle extra perfection added to the perfection of actualization; and thirdly, there is the view adopted by Gauthier and Jolif themselves, that pleasure is the final cause of (perfect) actualization.18 I hold that all three of these ways of interpreting Aristotle’s view are unpromising. The second type of interpretation, according to which Aristotle sees pleasure as an “extra perfection,” over and above the perfection of the pleasant activity, relies heavily on Aristotle’s statement that pleasure is a “supervenient perfection.” I believe that this statement can be understood in a different, better way, however, and given that this type of view is unattractive for independent reasons, it seems best to do so. 19 Proponents of this type of view will find themselves hard pressed to clarify what precisely the “subtle extra perfection” in question is, given that Aristotle himself does not explicitly describe any such thing. Gosling and Taylor indicate at 11.3.12-19 that proponents of this type of interpretation
18
J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure, 241-242. I give my own interpretation of what Aristotle means when he calls pleasure a “supervenient perfection” in section 3 below. 19
23 typically make pleasure out to be some kind of feeling or fuzzy glow that perfect activity gives rise to. Gerd Van Riel endorses a version of this view: Pleasure is of this kind: it is not the intrinsic perfection of an activity, but rather a surplus, a quality that supervenes on it. Aristotle thus clearly acknowledges that activity and pleasure are not identical. Pleasure may be an extremely desirable and gratifying surplus, which makes us perform an activity even more ardently but the activity as such can be performed without the pleasure. (58) Van Riel concludes from his interpretation that Aristotle, by his own lights, should maintain that a perfect activity can fail to be pleasant. He thinks that Aristotle should say that pleasure is a surplus quality that may normally be caused by the perfection of an activity but that, given its discrete psychological existence, sometimes might not be (74-5). Aristotle in fact rejects this claim and maintains that perfect activity of awareness is necessarily pleasant (1174b29-31). Van Riel thinks that Aristotle has failed to follow his account of pleasure to its final consequences and so has gotten this point wrong. It seems to me that this consequence of Van Riel’s interpretation, rather than leading us to conclude that Aristotle misunderstood the ramifications of his own view, should be taken to indicate that the interpretation itself is incorrect. Indeed, this issue highlights what is wrong with any interpretation of Aristotle’s account according to which pleasure is taken to be something like a “subtle extra perfection” or “surplus quality”: such interpretations fail to appreciate Aristotle’s insistence that pleasure is not something separate from activity. Pleasure is not a feeling or quality of our awareness that is independent of the activity that it arises in connection with. Rather, as I will argue, it is an aspect of perfect activity of awareness, and so cannot exist separately from such activity. Moreover, it is an essential aspect, and thus if one engages in a perfect activity of awareness then ipso facto one experiences pleasure.
24 The first and third types of interpretation that Gosling and Taylor summarize are based on different ways of understanding an analogy Aristotle draws that is usually taken to compare pleasure to health. After giving the account of perfect activity that I discussed in section 1, Aristotle goes on to write: Pleasure perfects the activity. But the way in which pleasure perfects the activity is not the way in which the perceptible object and the perceptual capacity perfect it when they are both excellent—just as health and the doctor are not the cause of being healthy in the same way. (1174b23-26)
This analogy has often been understood as part of Aristotle’s positive account of what pleasure itself is. The Greek word ‘aition’, translated as ‘cause’, has a broader meaning than the English word. An aition is something that can be referred to as an explanation. Aristotle discusses four types of aitia in Physics II.3: formal, final, material, and moving.20 In the passage quoted above, the doctor should be understood as the moving cause of being healthy, in that he contributes to bringing it about that a patient is healthy by intervening to make changes in the patient’s body. Health has been understood as either the formal or the final cause of being healthy.21 Most commentators think that Aristotle means to claim in this
20
Very roughly, something’s moving cause is the source of its internal principles of change and rest, its material cause is that which it is composed of, its final cause is its goal or purpose, and its formal cause is its essence, i.e., the set of features it has in virtue of which it is the thing that it is. 21 The idea that health is the final cause of being healthy (i.e., that the condition of being healthy has as the goal it aims at by nature the good of health) is very strange, and it is hard to believe that this is what Aristotle has in mind, but Gauthier and Jolif, Aristote: l'Ethique à Nicomaque, argue that the analogy should be interpreted in this way (839-841). The evidence they adduce is unimpressive. They point to two places in the NE where Aristotle refers to health as a final cause, namely, 1094a8 and 1145a7-9. In both of these places, Aristotle says that health is the end aimed at by the art of medicine. The art of medicine is the art of bringing it about that people become healthy, and so it does aim at health as its goal. This clearly does not imply that health is the end or goal of being healthy. Irwin holds that pleasure is the final cause of perfect activity, but concedes that in this analogy health should be understood as a formal rather than a final cause (305-306). He does not attempt to
25 passage that the capacity being activated and the object it is active in relation to, taken together, stand to pleasant activity as the doctor stands to being healthy, whereas pleasure stands to pleasant activity as health stands to being healthy. Commentators who favor the first type of interpretation outlined by Gosling and Taylor think that Aristotle’s point is that pleasure perfects a perfect activity not by bringing about or contributing to its perfection, but rather by being its formal cause. Commentators who favor the third type of interpretation interpret the passage similarly, but think that the way in which pleasure perfects a perfect activity is by being its final cause. I disagree with both of these ways of interpreting the passage. It is not obligatory to infer from the analogy Aristotle draws between pleasure and health that Aristotle thinks that pleasure is in any way a cause.22 Indeed, it is not obligatory to understand the analogy as part of Aristotle’s positive account of what pleasure is. It is more natural to understand the point being made as a purely negative one, given that Aristotle says that the way in which pleasure perfects the activity is not the way in which the capacity and object perfect it, and then says that “health and the doctor are not the cause of being healthy in the same way” to elucidate what he means by this. A doctor is the cause of being healthy by making changes in a person’s body that help to bring it about that the person be healthy. Health is a cause of being healthy as well, but not by helping to bring it about that a person be healthy. Likewise, the capacity and object perfect an activity by contributing to or helping to bring about its perfection. Pleasure perfects the activity, not by contributing to or helping to bring about its
reconcile the way he understands this analogy with his overall interpretation of the second half of X.4. 22 Here I am in agreement with Van Riel, Pleasure and the Good Life, 55-56, and Hardie, 313.
26 perfection, but rather in some otherwise unspecified way. There need be no implication that this other way involves being a different kind of cause. On this more natural way of reading the passage, Aristotle’s point is not that pleasure stands to pleasant activity as health stands to being healthy, and so there is no reason to infer that Aristotle thinks of pleasure as a cause. This is an attractive result, as both the view that pleasure is a final cause and the view that it is a formal cause face serious difficulties. The final cause of an activity is its end or goal. Even if we were to grant that in all cases pleasure is a goal of perfect activity (which is not obvious), characterizing pleasure as a goal of perfect activity does not tell us anything about what pleasure itself is. It merely gives us a relation that it bears to perfect activity in all cases. Aristotle begins the chapter by saying, “What pleasure is, or what kind of thing it is will become clearer if we take it up again from the beginning (1174a13-14).” His aim is clearly to give an account of what pleasure itself is, and not merely to give an account of its relation to activity. Moreover, at 1175a15-17 Aristotle writes: Pleasure perfects [people’s] activities, and hence perfects life, which they desire. It is reasonable to think, then, that they also aim at pleasure, since it completes each person’s life for him, and life is choiceworthy. Proponents of the view that Aristotle’s account of pleasure at 1174b14-1175a3 makes it out to be a final cause interpret the simile of the bloom as saying that pleasure perfects activity by being an end or goal of such activity.23 That is to say, they think that the way in which pleasure perfects an activity is by being among its goals. The passage I have just quoted, however, indicates that this is not right. Aristotle says there that pleasure is a goal because it
23
Irwin, notes, 306; Gauthier and Jolif, Aristote: l'Ethique à Nicomaque, 842.
27 perfects activity, which is unacceptably circular if the way in which pleasure perfects activity is by being among its goals. The view that Aristotle thinks that pleasure is the formal cause of perfect activity is also unattractive. The formal cause of an activity is something like the set of features of the activity that make it the activity that it is. Aristotle makes at least one remark in Book X that indicates that he does not think of pleasure in this way. He writes: For nothing human is capable of continuous activity, and hence no continuous pleasure arises either, since pleasure follows (hepetai) the activity. (1175a46) In this passage Aristotle speaks of pleasure as “following” activity. It is not immediately clear exactly how he understands ‘follow’ here, but 1175b30-33 makes it clear that he thinks that pleasure is not temporally distinguished from activity, and so he cannot mean that pleasure follows activity in the sense that it comes after it in time. The thought seems to be that pleasure follows activity in the sense that it depends on activity for its being, such that one cannot experience pleasure if one is not engaged in activity. This way of understanding ‘follows’ makes the inference Aristotle is making clear: continuous pleasure is impossible because pleasure cannot occur without activity and continuous activity is impossible. Aristotle’s choice of words would be very strange if his view were that pleasure is the form of pleasant activity. The form of an activity is what makes it the activity that it is in the first place; it would be strange to speak of it as following the activity or as depending on the activity for its being. The interpretation I favor, which I am about to spell out in detail, is much better equipped to accommodate the sense in which Aristotle thinks that pleasure “follows” activity. Pleasure, on my interpretation, is a particular aspect that an activity of awareness has when it is performed under certain conditions. It does not come after the
28 activity in time, but it depends on the activity for its being, and so it can rightly be described as “following” the activity.
3: Pleasure as Perfection All three types of interpretations of Aristotle’s account of pleasure that past commentators have favored are unattractive, and none of them, it seems, are supported by conclusive evidence. My own view is that, for Aristotle, pleasure is simply the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness, the very perfection that is brought about by the good condition of the capacity activated and the fine object it is active in relation to. Sarah Broadie briefly considers this interpretation, but notes that most commentators think that the simile of the bloom rules it out.24 It is worth quoting the passage containing the simile yet again: Pleasure perfects the activity—not, however, as the state does, by being present in (the activity), but as a sort of supervenient perfection [epigenomenon ti telos], like the bloom on those in the prime of youth. (1174b31-33) The phrase that Broadie identifies as the major obstacle to the interpretation I favor is ‘epigenomenon ti telos’, translated here as ‘a sort of supervenient perfection’. Many interpreters think that Aristotle means to say that pleasure is something that supervenes on the activity that it arises in connection with, and therefore that it cannot be the perfection of that very activity, but must be some extra perfection. As I argued in section 2, however, interpretations along these lines face problems of their own. I suggest that there is an alternative way of understanding this passage that supports the interpretation I favor.
24
Sarah Broadie, Ethics With Aristotle, 336-337.
29 The word ‘epigenomenon’ is usually translated as ‘supervenient’, which is not a bad translation, although it may be somewhat misleading. The word literally means ‘coming to be in addition’, or, even more precisely, ‘coming to be on top’. As Broadie notes, many readers take Aristotle to be saying that pleasure is something that comes to be in addition to perfect activity, and they think that the point of the simile of the bloom is that the bloom is some extra quality that people come to have at the prime of their youth, just as pleasure is an extra quality an activity has when it is perfected. She says in a footnote that if one wants to resist this interpretation the only viable alternative she can see is to say that pleasure supervenes on the underlying state.25 Her reason for thinking this seems to be that the only two candidates explicitly mentioned in the sentence are the activity and the state, so that if pleasure is not taken to supervene on the activity, it must be taken to supervene on the state. She also says that if we understand pleasure as supervening on the state, pleasure would seem to be identical to perfect activity, which is clearly not Aristotle’s view. I am not convinced that taking pleasure to supervene on the state compels us to identify pleasure with perfect activity, since one might think that even if Broadie is right to say that perfect activity supervenes on the state, something else could supervene on it as well. In any case, it seems that Broadie has neglected an alternative way of reading the passage. When Aristotle says, “perfects… as the state does, by being present in (the activity),” he is giving one example of something that perfects activity by contributing to or helping to bring about its perfection. As I discussed in section 1 of this chapter, it is clear from the passage preceding the simile that both the state of the capacity and the object that it is active in relation to perfect activity
25
Ibid., 364.
30 in this way.26 I do not think that Aristotle means to say that pleasure comes to be in addition to the activity or (merely) the state. Rather, I think he means that it comes to be on top of the perfecting contributions of the state and object. Pleasure perfects a perfect activity of awareness by being the very perfection that it has in virtue of the goodness of the state of the capacity being activated and the fineness of the object that it is active in relation to. I would paraphrase the passage containing the simile of the bloom as follows: Pleasure perfects the activity—not, however, as the state and object do, by contributing to its perfection as causes or constitutive conditions of its perfection, but rather as a perfection that arises on top of these things that contribute to its perfection, like the bloom on those in the prime of youth. I take it that the point of the simile of the bloom is to elucidate what Aristotle means by ‘a perfection that arises on top’. The bloom is the aspect of youthfulness that a person has in the prime of youth, when they have reached the stage in their development where their maturation from childhood to young adulthood is complete, and when their sexual attractiveness is thereby perfected.27 It is not merely the set of features they have in virtue of
26
One might worry that the language of ‘being present in the activity’ cannot apply to the object in the way it can to the state, since the object is something external. I do not think this poses a problem for my reading, since Aristotle makes it clear in De Anima II.5 that perception and (we can justifiably infer) other forms of awareness involve the assimilation of a faculty of awareness to an object. Because of this assimilation, it is correct to say that the object of an activity of awareness is in a way internal to the activity. 27 The word translated as ‘bloom’, ‘hôra’, is usually linked with a young person’s sexual attractiveness. Aristotle uses the word in this way at 1157a8. Van Riel, Pleasure and the Good Life, 57, and Hadreas, “Aristotle’s Simile of Pleasure at NE 1174b33,” 371-3, think that the simile of the bloom does not in fact refer to the bloom that young people have, but rather to a bloom that comes much later in life. The basis of this claim is that the word translated as ‘those in the prime of youth’ is ‘akmaioi’, and the akmê (or prime) of life is, according to Aristotle, something that is reached much later. They think that the hôra is the condition that people at their prime are in, in virtue of being at their prime. Van Riel and Hadreas may be right, but I do not think that the evidence they offer is conclusive. The word ‘hôra’ is used in the passage I’ve just pointed to to refer to the bloom of youthfulness, and at 1118b11 in the NE Aristotle quotes a passage from Homer where ‘akmazôn’, related to akmaioi, clearly means ‘being in the prime of youth’. Even if Van Riel and Hadreas are
31 which they count as being in the prime of youth (rosy cheeks, the beginnings of a beard, etc.); it is the overall result of the juxtaposition and interaction of these features. It is not an extra quality that arises in addition to these features, but rather is the cumulative effect that arises, as it were, on top of them. Likewise, pleasure is the character that an activity of awareness has in virtue of the interplay between the goodness of the capacity being activated and the fineness of the object it is active in relation to. It is the cumulative result of these two perfecting contributions. Another way to put the view I’m suggesting is that the features that contribute to an activity’s perfection are lower order features of the activity, while pleasure is a higher order feature. An activity has the feature of being pleasant in virtue of its lower order features and the relations among them. I have argued in this chapter that, for Aristotle, pleasure is the perfection that is brought about in an activity of awareness when the capacity being activated is in a good condition and is active in relation to a fine object. It is the way we experience the fit between object and capacity. Take, for example, the case of going for a swim on a hot day. This involves an activity of touch as the swimmer’s hot skin comes in contact with the cool water. The water is an object that is well-suited to perfectly activate the swimmer’s over-heated organ of touch. The pleasure that the swimmer experiences when he jumps into the water is the cumulative effect of the condition of his capacity and the aptness of the water to perfectly activate it. Take also the case of reading a mystery novel. If a person takes pleasure in reading the novel, it is because the person’s cognitive faculties are in a good condition for, e.g., puzzling over clues. The pleasure he takes in reading the novel is the result of the correct, it is still possible to interpret the passage in much the same way as I have suggested. The bloom would be understood as a perfection arising on top of the features in virtue of which a person at the prime of life (rather than at some younger age) counts as being in their prime.
32 novel’s aptness to engage faculties in such a condition. In these examples, the pleasure the subject experiences is an aspect of awareness, but it is not some feeling over and above the pleasant activity. It is rather the character the activity gains in virtue of the fit between the condition of the capacity being activated and the object that it is active in relation to.
33 Chapter Two: Pleasure, Process, and Activity I argued in Chapter One that Aristotle thinks that pleasure is a certain aspect of perfect activity of awareness, namely, its very perfection. This interpretation contrasts sharply with the often accepted view that Aristotle thinks that pleasure is an activity all of its own, of a special type, that accompanies the activity that it is taken in. For convenience, I will call the view that for Aristotle pleasure itself is an activity the Activity View. My ultimate aim in this chapter will be to further expand and defend my interpretation by showing that certain crucial considerations that might seem to support the Activity View do not in fact have to be taken to do so. I will argue that the interpretation I favor can make sense of the texts that have led people to adopt the Activity View at least as well as the Activity View can. In the course of making this case, I will discuss in detail some of Aristotle’s arguments against a strain of anti-hedonism that is based on the theory of pleasure that Plato develops in the Philebus. The discussions of pleasure in NE VII and X include many clear references to the Philebus, and contain several arguments opposing the theory of pleasure found in that dialogue. In the Philebus, Plato has Socrates argue (or favorably consider) that pleasure is the perceived restoration of one’s natural physical harmony.28 In giving this account of pleasure, Plato does not distinguish between that which is pleasant and pleasure itself. Plato’s account of pleasure as a perceived restoration entails that pleasure is what Aristotle calls a process (kinêsis). For Aristotle, a process is a change that can be divided
28
‘Perceived’ here should be understood broadly, as including non-sensory forms of awareness, since Plato clearly thought that, e.g., learning can be pleasant. I am translating by ‘perceived’ forms of the Greek verb aisthanesthai, and while that verb is, by Plato’s time and in Plato’s writings, often used specifically to indicate sense perception, its basic meaning is that of “being aware” or “conscious.” See LSJ and, e.g., Apology 22c.
34 into parts and that progresses towards some end, such that as more of its parts come to pass it comes progressively closer to arriving at its end. Aristotle argues in NE VII that pleasure is not a process, but is rather an activity (energeia), but does he also not explicitly distinguish between pleasure itself and that which is pleasant. In NE X, as I discussed in section 1 of Chapter One, he does distinguish between pleasure itself and that which is pleasant, and, as I interpret him, argues for the view that while that which is pleasant is an activity of awareness, pleasure itself is something quite different in nature from an activity. This chapter will proceed in four sections. In the first section, I will discuss the Phileban theory of pleasure, and the criticisms of this theory that Aristotle gives in NE VII. His argument for the claim that pleasure is an activity rather than a process is imbedded in these criticisms; it is, notably, not set out either in this discussion or on its own as a theory of what pleasure is. I will develop an interpretation of the NE VII discussion according to which when Aristotle claims (in so many words) that pleasure is an activity, he is not claiming—if we speak in terms of the neglected distinction—that pleasure itself is an activity. In the second section, I will examine in greater detail the question of what Aristotle means when he says that pleasure is an unimpeded activity of the natural state, particularly in cases where we take pleasure in connection with a process of restoration. I will argue that, contrary to what many commentators have thought, there is no need to suppose that Aristotle had worked out a determinate theory of pleasure when he wrote Book VII. I will suggest that we should instead attribute to him a view that is relatively inchoate and indeterminate, but that can plausibly be taken as an earlier stage in the development of the view that he held
35 when he wrote Book X.29 In the third section, I will discuss arguments Aristotle makes in NE X.3-4 that one might take to be arguments for the Activity View, especially if one understands the connection between the Book VII and Book X discussions in a certain way (different from the way I will propose that it should be understood). I will make the case that, contrary to what is often thought, the argument in X.3 is actually for a very different claim than the one in X.4. I will argue for an interpretation of the argument in X.4 according to which it does not entail that pleasure is an activity, but rather that pleasure is complete in the same sense that activity is. I will claim that this way of understanding the argument fits well with the interpretation of Aristotle’s account of what pleasure is that I defended in Chapter One and is at least as well motivated as the way of understanding it that favors the Activity View. In the fourth section, I will consider a puzzle that my interpretation gives rise to. If, for Aristotle, that which is pleasant is perfect activity of awareness, and pleasure itself is an aspect of such activity, then how can processes such as listening to a piece of music unfold over time or doing a crossword puzzle be pleasant? I will argue that in these cases, the proper specification of what the agent takes pleasure in connection with is not a process but is in fact an activity.
1: Aristotle’s Criticisms of the Phileban Account of Pleasure Early in his discussion of pleasure in NE VII, Aristotle gives a brief statement of the Phileban account of pleasure that he will go on to criticize, namely that “Every pleasure is a
29
This, along with the fact that it includes discussions of topics not treated in the NE X discussion of pleasure, could be part of the reason that Aristotle (or a later editor) chose to include VII.11-14 in the NE.
36 perceived becoming towards a natural state (1152b13).”30 It is worth noting, first of all, that this formulation uses the term ‘becoming’ (‘genesis’) rather than process (‘kinêsis’). It seems that Aristotle shifts to the term ‘genesis’ in NE VII because he means in particular to address the views of the “subtle thinkers” Plato refers to at 53c in the Philebus, or other thinkers who took up their views: Socrates: But what about the following point? Have we not been told that pleasure is always a process of becoming (genesis), and that there is no being at all of pleasure? There are some subtle thinkers who have tried to pass on this doctrine to us, and we ought to be grateful to them.31 For Aristotle, a becoming (genesis) is a type of process (kinêsis). A process is any change progressing towards some end. A becoming is a process where the relevant end is the coming into being of a substantial individual, whereas other types of processes have as their ends changes in the incidental features of substantial individuals. Plato did not make the same distinction, no doubt in part because he did not recognize a robust metaphysical distinction between perceptible substantial individuals and their non-substantial features. According to Plato’s subtle thinkers, pleasure is the coming into being of natural harmony.
30
I will remain neutral on the question of whether a ‘perceived becoming’ or ‘perceived restoration’ in NE VII or in the Philebus means ‘a becoming/restoration that is perceived’ or ‘the perceiving of a becoming/restoration’. I believe that, at least in the Philebus, the latter is most likely the correct construal, but this is controversial and does not matter for my purposes in this chapter. Note that if Aristotle does construe Plato to mean the latter, one might worry that he is stacking the deck against the Phileban view, since he himself thinks that perception is an activity rather than a process or becoming. This need not be the case however, since Plato in the Philebus clearly thinks of perception as a process that a subject undergoes. 31 The “subtle thinkers” he means to refer to are no doubt Platonists. It is not clear whether Plato is slyly referring to himself and his followers or whether he has some other particular individual or individuals in mind. Translations of passages from the Philebus are taken from Dorothea Frede’s translation, found in Plato: Complete Works, edited by John Cooper, but may be slightly adjusted in some places.
37 After the passage quoted above from the Philebus, Plato has Socrates go on to argue that pleasure cannot be good if it is a becoming: Socrates: But that for the sake of which what comes to be for something comes to be in each case, ought to be put into the class of the things good in themselves, while that which comes to be for the sake of something else belongs to another class, my friend. Protarchus: Undeniably. Socrates: But if pleasure really is a kind of generation, will we be placing it correctly, if we put it in a class different from that of the good? Protarchus: That too is undeniable. (54c-d) Plato accepts the general principle that if something is a becoming, it cannot itself be good. This principle serves as the groundwork for a certain strain of anti-hedonism that at least some Platonists championed.32 It seems, then, that in the formulation of the Phileban view that Aristotle gives in NE VII, he uses the term ‘becoming’ because he means to criticize the argument from Philebus 54c-d that I’ve just pointed to and the style of anti-hedonism that emerges from it. It will be useful to make a further clarification concerning Aristotle’s statement of the Phileban account of pleasure. As I discussed in Chapter One, Aristotle is very careful in Book X to distinguish between that which is pleasant and pleasure itself. I interpret him as claiming in Book X that that which is pleasant is in all cases perfect activity of awareness, and that pleasure itself is the perfection of such activity. Aristotle makes no such explicit distinction in Book VII, but many commentators have thought that he must have one or the other notion in mind when he says that pleasure is a perceived becoming. One could interpret him as saying that pleasure itself is a perceived becoming, or as saying that a perceived becoming is what is pleasant in all cases where we experience pleasure. Take, for instance, the pleasure of eating and becoming sated when one is hungry. The Phileban view Aristotle 32
Aristotle names Speusippus as one such Platonist in NE VII.
38 refers to could either be that the pleasure one experiences when one eats just is the perceived becoming of satiety, or it could be that whatever pleasure itself actually is, what gives rise to it when one eats is the perceived becoming of satiety. I suggest that it is not necessary to suppose that Aristotle had this distinction actively in mind when he wrote NE VII. I do not mean to imply that he was probably unaware of or confused about it. His primary purpose in the Book VII discussion of pleasure is to refute a certain strain of anti-hedonism. His opponents do not recognize this distinction, and while it would be open to Aristotle to object to their views on the basis of considerations that depend on the distinction, this is not what he in fact does. The arguments he makes do not explicitly trade on the distinction, and so he may just not have thought it would be of any use to mention or employ it when he wrote the discussion. These arguments can, however, be most plausibly interpreted under the supposition that—deliberately or not—Aristotle treats the question ‘what is pleasure?’ as interchangeable with the question ‘when we experience pleasure, what is it that happens in us that is pleasant?’ That is, I think that what Aristotle in fact does in Book VII is to give an account of that which is pleasant, even though he may not be thinking of it in these terms. I will support this claim by developing an interpretation under the supposition that it is true. If supposing this claim to be true yields an interpretation with independent textual and philosophical merit, this is a consideration in favor of accepting it. Aristotle gives several arguments in NE VII against the view that pleasure cannot be good. I will primarily be concerned with two connected arguments that together constitute a refutation of the Phileban theory of pleasure that the type of anti-hedonism he is concerned
39 with is based on. I will quote the long passage containing both arguments at this point, inserting a space to mark the transition between the two arguments:
Further, since one sort of good is an activity and another sort is a state, the processes that restore us to our natural state are pleasant incidentally. The activity when we are experiencing appetite belongs to the rest of our state and nature. For there are also pleasures without pain and appetite such as the pleasures of contemplating, those in which our nature lacks nothing. A sign of this is the fact that we do not enjoy the same thing when our nature is being refilled as we enjoy when it is eventually fully restored. When it is fully restored, we enjoy things that are pleasant without qualification, but when it is being refilled, we enjoy even the contrary things. For we even enjoy sharp or bitter things, though none of these is pleasant by nature or pleasant without qualification. Hence [these pleasures] are not pleasures [without qualification] either; for as pleasant things differ from one another, so the pleasures arising from them differ too. Further, it is not necessary for something else to be better than pleasure, as the end, some say, is better than the becoming. For pleasures are not becomings, nor do they all even involve a becoming. They are activities and an end, and arise when we exercise [a capacity], not when we are coming to be [in some state]. And not all pleasures have something else as their end, but only those in people who are being led toward the completion of their nature. That is why it is a mistake to call pleasure a perceived becoming. It should instead be called an activity of the natural state, and should be called not perceived, but unimpeded. (1152b33-1153a15)
Each argument is a response to one of the legomena from VII.11. The first seems to be directed towards the one at 1152b12-15: “The reasons for thinking [pleasure] is in no way good are these. Every pleasure is a perceived becoming toward nature, but no becoming is the same kind of thing as its end—for instance, no [process of] building is of the same kind as a house.” The second is clearly a response to the one at 1152b22-23: “To show that the best good is not pleasure, people say that pleasure is not an end, but a becoming.” The first of these two legomena states an argument for the claim that no pleasure is in any way good, whereas the second states an argument for the weaker claim that pleasure is
40 not the best good. The first argument is very similar to the argument in the passage from Philebus 54c-d, quoted above. The argument is based on the principle that that for the sake of which something comes to be is in the class of goods, whereas the something that comes to be for the sake of that thing is not. In the first of the two legomena, this principle is deployed (just as it is in the Philebus passage) to show that since every pleasure is a coming to be of a natural state (and therefore is for the sake of that state), pleasures cannot be in the class of goods. The second argument is a weaker version of the same basic argument. It does not require that that which comes to be for the sake of something cannot be at all good, it just requires that that which comes to be for the sake of something is not as good as that which it comes to be for the sake of. It seems that the two responses Aristotle gives to these legomena in the passage at 1152b33-1153a15, quoted above, should be taken together. In the first argument, he suggests an alternative account of pleasure that he thinks can make sense of all the cases that the Phileban account can make sense of, and argues that there are additional cases of pleasure (he specifically mentions contemplation as one such case) that constitute counterexamples to the Phileban account, and that his own account can accommodate them. He then gives a further reason for thinking that there are such counterexamples, and moreover for thinking that they extend beyond contemplation. The second argument is essentially just a more developed statement of the alternative account Aristotle suggests in the first argument, coupled with a brief argument that on this account, the argument from the second legomenon for the claim that pleasure cannot be the best good fails. One can see, then, why the two should be taken together. The former does not tell us very much about what the alternative account actually
41 amounts to, whereas the latter does not give us reasons to prefer the alternative account to the Phileban account. The alternative account that Aristotle suggests is that pleasure is activity rather than process (as before, I take him to be treating ‘pleasure’ as interchangeable with ‘that which is pleasant’). He introduces the first argument by distinguishing between two types of goods, states and activities, because he wants to show that the fact that pleasure is not a state does not establish that it cannot be good: it could also be an activity. He then writes, at 1152b3436, “…the processes that restore us to our natural state are pleasant incidentally. Here the activity when we are experiencing appetite belongs to the rest of our state and nature.” Aristotle does not deny (as the Phileban account maintains) that the processes that restore us to a natural state are pleasant. He proposes, however, that they can only be pleasant incidentally, whereas activities can be pleasant in their own right. He claims that a process of restoration is pleasant only insofar as it forms an incidental unity with a pleasant activity. He further clarifies this idea below, in VII.14: By incidentally pleasant things I mean pleasant things that are curative; for the [process of] being cured happens along with some action of the part of us that remains healthy, and hence undergoing a cure seems to be pleasant. (1154b17-19) Aristotle claims here that when we are being restored, the actual restoration merely seems to be the seat of the pleasure we experience. In fact, he claims, what is pleasant is some action or other in the part of us that remains healthy, and the restoration is rightly called pleasant only in the sense that it happens in close conjunction with the pleasant activity. It may well be Aristotle’s view that the activity is caused by or in some other way bound up with the restoration, and so the connection between the two may be tighter than the mere fact that they happen at the same time. I will postpone discussing this issue for now, since the question of
42 what precisely the pleasant activity is in such cases is very controversial. The crucial point at this juncture is that Aristotle thinks that his account of pleasure as activity can make sense of the pleasures connected with restoration without saying that processes of restoration are pleasant in their own right, as the Phileban theory takes them to be. If Aristotle’s alternative account can in fact make sense of the pleasures connected with restoration at least as plausibly as the Phileban account can, this shows that there is no reason to prefer the Phileban account, but does not yet give us a positive reason to prefer Aristotle’s. The first positive reason to prefer his account that Aristotle offers is that there is a counterexample to Plato’s account that he thinks his own account can make sense of— namely, contemplation, that is, thinking about theoretical matters in such a way as to be exercising one’s knowledge of them. He claims that contemplation can be a pleasure, but that it does not depend on a prior lack and is not a process. To see why this is the case, it is helpful to contrast contemplation with learning. Plato writes in the Philebus: Protarchus: But, Socrates, what are the kinds of pleasures that one could rightly regard as true? Socrates: Those that are related to so-called pure colors and to shapes and to most smells and sounds and in general all those that are based on imperceptible and painless lacks, while their fulfillments are perceptible and pleasant. (51b) Socrates: Then let us add to [our list of true pleasures] the pleasures of learning, if indeed we are agreed that there is no such thing as hunger for learning connected with them, nor any pains that have their source in a hunger for learning. Protarchus: Here too, then I agree with you. Socrates: Well, then, if after such filling with knowledge, people lose it again through forgetting, do you notice any kinds of pain? Protarchus: None that could be called inherent by nature, but in our reflections on this loss when we need it, we experience it as a painful loss. Socrates: But, my dear, we are here concerned only with the natural affections themselves, apart from reflection on them. Protarchus: Then you are right in saying that the lapse of knowledge never causes us any pain. (51e-52b)
43
Plato thinks that there is some lack in our nature that is filled when we learn something, and therefore that the pleasure of learning fits the account of pleasure as a perceived becoming towards a natural state. He does not consider, however, a case where we have some item of knowledge but are not actively contemplating this article of knowledge, and then come to actively contemplate it. He discusses forgetting and then relearning in the passage quoted above, but it would be implausible to claim that each time we stop actively attending to some article of knowledge what is in fact happening is that we are forgetting it, and then when we come to attend to it again we are relearning it. I know, for instance, that polar bears have four legs. I rarely attend to this piece of knowledge, but when I do I can do so instantly, without undergoing any kind of process that could plausibly be described as learning. Aristotle thinks of the transition from merely knowing something to actively contemplating it as a transition from first to second actuality. He introduces this idea in De Anima II.1 and then discusses it at length in II.5. The basic idea is that having knowledge of something is an actuality in the sense that it is a realization of the human potential to know, but it is also in another way a potentiality, since having knowledge amounts to having the capacity to actively contemplate what one knows. It is wrong, however, to describe the condition of having knowledge but not attending to it as a lack in our nature that comes to be filled when we contemplate. Having knowledge is rather an actuality of our nature that underlies the further actuality of active contemplation. We see, then, why Aristotle thinks that contemplation is a counterexample to the Phileban account of pleasure. The transition from knowing to contemplating cannot be a process restoring a lack and leading us to a natural state, since the condition of knowing is already a natural state. Contemplating is an
44 activity of this natural state. That is, it is an exercise of a capacity that we have in virtue of our soul being in the natural state of having knowledge. The state itself is not changed in virtue of this exercise, unlike in the case of drinking when one is thirsty, when the restorative process of hydration changes the state of the relevant aspects of our constitution.33 After giving this counterexample, Aristotle writes: A sign of this is the fact that we do not enjoy the same thing when our nature is being refilled as we enjoy when it is eventually fully restored. When it is fully restored, we enjoy things that are pleasant without qualification, but when it is being refilled, we enjoy even the contrary things. For we even enjoy sharp or bitter things, though none of these is pleasant by nature or pleasant without qualification. Hence [these pleasures] are not pleasures [without qualification] either; for as pleasant things differ from one another, so the pleasures arising from them differ too. (1153a2-7) It is somewhat ambiguous what Aristotle is referring to when he says ‘a sign of this’, but it seems that he must be referring to the claim made in the previous sentence, that “there are also pleasures without pain and appetite, such as the pleasures of contemplating, those in which our nature lacks nothing.” I say this because what he goes on to do is to argue that once we have been restored, we take pleasure in different things than we do while we are being restored—things that are pleasant without qualification, in the sense that taking pleasure in them does not presuppose any lack or deficiency in our nature.34 I do not see how this could be taken as an argument for any of the other claims made in the previous portion of the passage, but it is clear how this argument could be taken to support the claim that I’ve suggested it is meant to support.
33
It is beyond the scope of this discussion to fully elaborate the metaphysical status of the transition from knowing to contemplating. See Lorenz, “Assimilation” for an illuminating discussion of this issue. 34 See section 1 of Chapter One for a detailed discussion of Aristotle’s distinction between something being pleasant without qualification and being pleasant in a derivative way.
45 Take the case of having a sore throat. While one is in this condition, one might take pleasure in sucking on very strong lozenges, because they soothe one’s throat. Once one recovers from this condition, however, one no longer enjoys the strong lozenges, and instead takes pleasure in sucking on candy, which would not have been pleasant when one had the sore throat. Aristotle’s point is that the fact that we enjoy the lozenges when we are being restored and the candy afterwards indicates that enjoyment we take in the lozenges depends on the presence of pain and lack, whereas the enjoyment we take in the candy does not. This is not meant to be a decisive argument, it is just supposed to be a sign supporting Aristotle’s claim that there are such pleasures, which is more than adequate in the context. The counterexample of contemplation is a powerful consideration on its own; this further argument just helps us see that contemplation is not a special case, and that there are a wide variety of counterexamples to the Phileban theory. As I discuss above, Aristotle next gives his response to the argument that pleasure cannot be the best good, since that which comes to be for the sake of something cannot be as good as that for which it comes to be for the sake of. His response is that this argument fails because, as he has just argued, “pleasures are not becomings, nor do they all even involve a becoming (1153a9-10).” He then restates his account of pleasure as activity rather than becoming, but this time he elaborates further. He writes: [Pleasures] are activities and an end, and arise when we exercise [a capacity], not when we are coming to be [in some state]. And not all pleasures have something else as their end, but only those in people who are being led toward the completion of their nature. That is why it is a mistake to call pleasure a perceived becoming. It should instead be called an activity of the natural state, and should be called not perceived, but unimpeded. (1153a10-15) It might seem that Aristotle’s implication that pleasures in people who are being led toward the completion of their nature have something else as their end is in tension with his claim
46 that pleasures are not becomings. I take it that when he implies that some pleasures have something else as their end, he is including incidental pleasures. We have seen that he thinks that restorative processes are incidentally pleasant. They are pleasant insofar as they form an incidental unity with an activity that is pleasant in its own right. When he claims that pleasures are not becomings, however, he must be excluding incidental pleasures and speaking strictly about that which is pleasant in its own right. This passage adds two elements to his account of pleasure as activity. First, he makes it clear that by ‘activity’ he means the exercise of a capacity. Second, he adds the condition to his account that a pleasant activity of the natural state must be unimpeded. He indicates that this condition is analogous to the condition in the Phileban account that a pleasant becoming towards a natural state must be perceived. In the Phileban case, the idea is that a becoming towards a natural state is a pleasure provided that it is perceived, so it would seem that Aristotle’s idea is that an activity of a natural state is a pleasure provided that it is unimpeded.35 Aristotle gives a brief indication in VII.13 of how he understands the ‘unimpeded’ condition: That is why we all think the happy life is pleasant and weave pleasure into happiness (eudaimonia), quite reasonably. For no activity is perfect if it is 35
Plato explains why this condition is required at Timaeus 64b, as translated by Donald Zeyl in Plato: Complete Works: “When even a minor disturbance affects that which is easily moved by nature [e.g., eyes or the eardrum], the disturbance is passed on in a chain reaction with some parts affecting others in the same way as they were affected, until it reaches the center of consciousness and reports the property that produced the reaction. On the other hand, something that is hard to move [e.g., bones or hair] remains fixed and merely experiences the disturbance without passing it on in any chain reaction.” There are disturbances or restorations that take place in parts of the body that are insensate, and these restorations should not be counted as pleasures. Similarly, Socrates says at Philebus 43a-c that some restorations are too slight to reach our awareness, and so they should not be counted as pleasures.
47 impeded, and happiness is something perfect. That is why the happy person needs to have goods of the body and external goods added [to good activities], and needs fortune also, so that he will not be impeded in these ways. Some maintain, on the contrary, that we are happy when we are broken on the wheel, or fall into terrible misfortunes, provided that we are good. Whether they mean to or not, these people are talking nonsense. (1153b14-21) His idea seems to be that external goods are required for eudaimonia because their absence impedes the performance of the activity or activities that constitute it. The account of eudaimonia he gives in I.7 states that eudaimonia is activity of the soul expressing virtue. If one falls into terrible misfortune or is strung up on the wheel, one cannot perform such activity, or at least cannot perform it with an adequate degree of perfection. One might still have the relevant virtue, and so might be “good” in the sense that one’s soul is in a good state, but eudaimonia is not a matter of possessing goodness, it is a matter of expressing it in one’s activities. Extending this model to other examples of pleasant activity, take a case where one listens to a concert, but is surrounded by people who are eating popcorn. One’s capacity for listening may well be in its natural state, but one’s activity of listening will be impeded by all the distracting sounds competing with the music. One will not be able to perfectly exercise the capacity, and so, Aristotle thinks, one’s activity of listening will not be pleasant. Take also a case where one has a terrible foot pain and goes out for a gourmet meal. Even if the food is very much the sort of food the person usually enjoys, and his capacities for eating and discerning flavors are in their natural state, the person may well not take pleasure in eating, since the pain he feels in his foot may impede the exercise of these capacities. He may not be able to focus in the usual way on the flavor of the food he’s eating since he is constantly at least partly attending to the intense pain he feels.
48 2: An Interpretive Problem in Aristotle’s NE VII Discussion of Pleasure Aristotle’s view, then, is that pleasure is the activity of a capacity in its natural state, provided that activity is not in some way impeded. I will now address the question of what precisely counts as the pleasant activity when we experience pleasure. Aristotle makes it clear that in the case of contemplation, the pleasant activity is just the activity of contemplating. Likewise, the pleasure of eating a tasty meal when in a healthy natural state just is the activity of tasting and eating. It is very difficult, however, to see what the pleasant activity is in cases where one takes pleasure in connection with a restoration—the cases Aristotle calls ‘incidental pleasures’. There has been a good deal of debate about this issue among modern commentators, and it is best to begin consideration of it by discussing the more prominent interpretations. I will discuss the views suggested by G.E.L. Owen, J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor, and David Bostock. My own view, briefly, is that there is no need to think that Aristotle had a fully worked-out positive theory in mind when he wrote the Book VII discussion of pleasure. All the text justifies us in saying is that, for Aristotle when he wrote the discussion, when we experience pleasure in connection with a process of restoration, the primary seat of the pleasure is not the restoration, but rather is rather an unimpeded, awareness-involving activity of some element or other of our constitution that remains in its natural state despite the disruption that creates the need for a restoration. We must bear in mind that Aristotle’s primary aim in this section of the text is not to give a theory of pleasure, but rather is to respond to various related strains of anti-hedonism. To achieve this aim, it is not necessary for him to offer a fully worked-out alternative theory. It is sufficient if he establishes that whatever precisely pleasure is, it is of a type such that the arguments of the anti-hedonists do not apply to it.
49 G.E.L. Owen writes: Very well, even in convalescence there is a pleasure which is valuable by [the Platonists’] standards, for the real pleasure is, as he will shortly put it (1153a14), “an activity of the natural state”; not the trudge back to health but the exercise of actual health. But where is this healthy activity to be found in convalescence?... He is claiming, I take it, that any actual pleasure associated with convalescence consists in the proper functioning of the healthy residue of the patient.36 Owen’s view is that when I am pleased in connection with recovery from an illness, the pleasant activity is the functioning of the parts of my body that are not afflicted with the illness.37 This interpretation is unattractive. It immediately faces a severe difficulty when we consider that we experience a certain pleasure when we are convalescing that we stop experiencing once we have recovered. If Owen were right and the pleasure of convalescing were the functioning of the parts of us that are healthy, then, one would think, we should be able to continue to experience this pleasure once we recover, and moreover we should experience additional pleasure due to the functioning of the parts of us that have been restored. One could defend Owen’s view against this kind of objection by saying that we do in fact continue to experience the pleasure we experience while convalescing after we have recovered, but that the pleasure is no longer intense, due to the fact that it is no longer mixed with pain, so that we do not notice it. This strategy is unpromising, given that Aristotle says: Further, bodily pleasures are pursued because they are intense, by people who are incapable of enjoying other pleasures. Certainly, these people induce some kinds of thirst in themselves. What they do is not a matter for reproach, whenever [the pleasures] are harmless, but it is base whenever they are harmful. These people do this because they enjoy nothing else, and many
36
G.E.L. Owen, “Aristotelian Pleasures,” 141. A similar interpretation is suggested by Gerd Van Riel at 130-131 in “Aristotle’s Definition of Pleasure: A Refutation of the Platonic Account.”
37
50 people’s natural constitution makes the neutral condition painful to them. (1154b2-6) He acknowledges such a thing as a ‘neutral condition’ (‘mêdeteron’), which is presumably a condition which for normally functioning people is neither pleasant nor painful. He implies that people sometimes induce thirst in themselves because the neutral condition is painful to them. He must mean that due to impatience, addiction, or some other feature of their constitution, the absence of bodily pleasure and pain is itself for some people painful. It seems that Aristotle would not say this if he held the view Owen attributes to him. If his view were that we continue to experience pleasure once we have finished convalescing, except without the intensity caused by mixture with pain, then he would not say that the neutral condition is painful for the class of people in question, but rather would say that the condition of experiencing non-intense pleasure, or pleasure unmixed with pain, is painful for them. Indeed, the very fact that Aristotle recognizes such a thing as a neutral condition spells trouble for Owen’s view. The neutral condition must be something like the normal, unremarkable functioning of the body. On Owen’s view, Aristotle would think that this counts as pleasure.38 Another problem with Owen’s interpretation is that it has difficulty explaining why Aristotle does away with the condition from the Phileban account that the relevant bodily activity must be perceived. If there is some aspect of our body’s normal functioning that does not in any way affect our awareness, it is clearly wrong to say that such functioning is pleasant. At the very least, if one were to defend a view according to which there can be 38
One might worry that the relevant neutral condition is not the condition between pleasure and pain, but rather is the absence of desire. This does not seem possible. The word ‘neutral’ (‘mêdeteron’), implies that there are two alternative conditions, and that the condition in question is neither of them. The absence of desire would not be called a neutral condition in this context.
51 pleasures that do not enter into our awareness, one would have to say a good deal to justify such a drastic revision of our intuitive conception of pleasure. Aristotle does no such thing, but given that he explicitly addresses the fact that the Phileban account holds that restorations must be perceived, he is clearly aware of the reasons for adding such a condition. Owen would have to say that the ‘unimpeded’ condition implies or contains the ‘perceived’ condition. This is not completely impossible, though it is very implausible. One could make the case that one way an activity can be impeded is for it to fail to enter into one’s awareness. There are some cases, however, such as the growth of hair and fingernails, where the normal functioning of the body simply cannot enter into our awareness, and it seems obviously wrong to say that this is because these “activities” are always impeded. Moreover, even if it were possible to make an account along these lines seem plausible, it is still a huge stretch to say that such an account should be attributed to Aristotle, given that he explicitly says that we should replace the ‘perceived’ condition with the ‘unimpeded’ condition, and says nothing whatsoever to indicate that the ‘perceived’ condition is implied by or contained in the ‘unimpeded’ condition. It is far more plausible to think that Aristotle replaced the one condition with the other because he only counts activities that involve awareness as ‘activities of the natural state’.39 I will develop this idea further below, in connection with my discussion of Bostock. First, I will say a few things about the view suggested by Gosling and Taylor. Gosling and Taylor write: When Aristotle argues that pleasure is not a process of change by in effect showing that it is a kind of actualization, which of the two contrasts just 39
This strategy is not as viable for Owen, given that (it seems) he includes activities of the nutritive soul as being among the pleasant activities that accompany convalescence, and, as I will discuss below, such activities do not necessarily involve awareness.
52 distinguished is he trying to make? If it is the contrast between change and actualization as such (sometimes referred to subsequently as ‘the weaker contrast’) then his point must be that what constitutes enjoying something is not undergoing some change, but realizing some potentiality. It would not, of course, follow that the event described was not also an instance of a process of change. (309-10) Hence it would surely have to be admitted that the standard exercise of musical capacity is the playing of a piece, and of chess-playing capacity the playing of a game. But those activities are kinêseis. It appears, therefore, that Aristotle can both recognize such serial activities as music as pleasures and insist that the enjoyments of those activities are not kinêseis only if he is upholding the weaker of the two contrasts which we have distinguished. (314) They point out that for Aristotle, processes such as drinking and building a house are themselves activities, in the sense that they are exercises of capacities, and they are pleasant qua activities rather than qua processes. In the Book X discussion of pleasure, as I will discuss in section 3 of this chapter, Aristotle clearly uses ‘activity’ to mean something much more specific than mere exercises of capacities, but it is possible that he did not have this special use in mind when he wrote Book VII, so Gosling and Taylor’s view is worth taking seriously. A big problem for this interpretation is that it has a very hard time making sense of the passage discussed above, where Aristotle clarifies what it means to say that restorative processes are pleasant incidentally: By incidentally pleasant things I mean pleasant things that are curative; for the [process of] being cured happens along with some action of the part of us that remains healthy, and hence undergoing a cure seems to be pleasant. (1154b17-19) Gosling and Taylor have to say that in cases where we experience pleasure in connection with a restoration, the restorative process qua activity is pleasant in its own right, whereas the restorative process qua process is pleasant incidentally. This requires that the unity of the
53 process qua activity and the process qua process is only incidental. First of all, it seems very odd to think that Aristotle would say that this unity is incidental. Even if we accept this idea, however, their interpretation is unacceptable. Aristotle explicitly says that when we undergo curative processes, the pleasure we experience is an activity of the part of us that remains healthy, which is a different part of us than the part that is being restored. It does not seem plausible to think that the process of undergoing the cure qua activity is an activity of a different part of us than the process of undergoing the cure qua process, and it is clear that the latter happens in the part that is being restored. It seems, then, that the process of undergoing a cure qua activity cannot be understood as an activity of the part of us that remains healthy. Moreover, Aristotle says that what is pleasant in its own right is an activity of the part of us that remains healthy, and that undergoing the cure merely seems to be what is pleasant in its own right, but on Gosling and Taylor’s view, undergoing a cure is what is pleasant in its own right, albeit qua activity. On the basis of these considerations, it seems that we can rule out Gosling and Taylor’s interpretation. There is a problem left, indicated in the passage expressing their view that I quoted above, about how Aristotle can make sense of the pleasure we take in processes like doing a crossword puzzle or listening to a piece of music. Gosling and Taylor’s primary motivation for their view is that it has an easy time making sense of these cases. I will discuss in section 4 of this chapter a way of solving this problem that does not require us to allow that in this context Aristotle counts the exercise of any capacity whatsoever as an activity. At this point I will discuss the interpretation suggested by Bostock, which I am very sympathetic to, though I think that it can be strengthened by making some subtle adjustments. Bostock writes:
54 The doctrine, then, that there is an activity in some unimpaired part of us, which is what is really pleasant, is certainly meant to apply to ordinary cases of eating when hungry and drinking when thirsty, and it is very plausible to suppose that it was evolved mainly with these cases in mind. But what is this activity? Well, let us recall the argument from book X, chapter 3. The pleasure cannot just be the replenishment, for the replenishment takes place in the body, whereas we do not say that it is the body that is pleased (1173b911). The pleasure, then, does not take place in the body. So where does it take place? The obvious answer is ‘in the mind’. And what is it that goes on in the mind when one’s body is replenished, and one is pleased by this? Evidently, the perception of this replenishment. In the standard case, my perceiving faculties will not be at all impaired, and I can taste, touch, and feel perfectly well when I am not thirsty. So the thought is that what I enjoy is not, as we loosely say, the drinking, but rather the taste of the drink, its cooling touch in my throat as it goes down, and very possibly the bodily feeling that I have, which can only be described as feeling that the drink is doing me good, as my thirst disappears. These are perceptions, and perception is certainly something that Aristotle counts as an activity, of the kind that can be (or be completed by) a pleasure, whereas the drinking itself is a process. My suggestion, then, is that in a so-called ‘pleasure of replenishment’ Aristotle’s view is that the pleasure is to be found not in the replenishment itself but in the perception of it. It is this perception that is the associated activity of an unimpaired part of us.40 This view is in most respects very attractive. It makes excellent sense of why Aristotle replaces the ‘perceived’ condition with the ‘unimpeded’ condition. If the relevant activity is a perception, there is certainly no need to add the condition that it needs to be perceived. 41 It also yields a picture of Book VII that fits well with what Aristotle says in Book X. As I argued in Chapter One, in that discussion Aristotle defines pleasure itself as the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness. If, as I have suggested, we understand Aristotle in Book VII to be talking about that which is pleasant (but without being self-conscious about insisting on this), and we accept Bostock’s view, then the Book VII and Book X discussions fit together very neatly. We could read Aristotle in Book VII as saying that that which is pleasant is in 40
David Bostock, “Pleasure and Activity,” 268-9. Bostock, “Pleasure and Activity,” uses the term ‘perception’ to narrowly refer to sense perception (as opposed to the broader usage discussed in footnote 28 at the beginning of this chapter, where it refers to any form of awareness). 41
55 every case an unimpeded activity of awareness, i.e., a perception or thought, and then in Book X as replacing the ‘unimpeded’ condition with the similar but perhaps more demanding ‘perfect’ condition and saying that pleasure itself is the perfection of perfect activities of awareness.42 I think that this is approximately the right thing to say, with the qualifications that Bostock slightly over-interprets Book VII and that the relationship between VII and X is not quite so seamless. Throughout his essay, Bostock treats the Book VII and Book X discussions as though they were written for inclusion in a single work, freely appealing to passages from Book X to support his interpretation of VII. This is not exegetically sound, however. Nearly all commentators agree that Book VII was originally written as part of the Eudemian Ethics, whereas Book X was written for the Nicomachean Ethics later in Aristotle’s life.43 As I have suggested, it seems that there is no good reason to think that Aristotle in fact had fully worked-out the theory of pleasure he presents in NE X when he wrote NE VII. We cannot rule out the possibility that he had in fact worked out this theory, but if he did, then he did not see the need to spell it out so as to make the points that he wanted to make. We can make very good sense of the arguments in Book VII without saying anything as determinate as what Bostock suggests we should say about the theory of pleasure that underlies them. We do need to say that something is left unsaid in Aristotle’s account if we
42
‘Perfect’ may be more demanding than ‘unimpeded’ in the sense that it may be taken to require not just the lack of impediments, but also the presence of various positive, facilitating conditions. C.C.W. Taylor, in footnote 17 in his paper “Pleasure: Aristotle’s Response to Plato,” indicates that he understands ‘impeded’ in VII to mean the same thing as ‘perfect’ does in X, but does not give any justification for holding this view. 43 A notable exception is Kenny, who argues in The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle that the EE is later.
56 are to make sense of his replacement of the ‘perceived’ condition with the ‘unimpeded’ condition, but it seems that there is a reasonable story to tell here that is more conservative than Bostock’s. Aristotle writes: That is why it is a mistake to call pleasure a perceived becoming. It should instead be called an activity of the natural state, and should be called not perceived, but unimpeded. (1153a12-15) The reason the Phileban account requires the ‘perceived’ condition is that there are some becomings towards a natural state that do not affect our awareness. The simplest explanation of why Aristotle leaves this condition out of his own account is that he thinks of an activity of the relevant natural state as something that by its very nature involves in some way an alteration of our awareness. I cannot say conclusively why he fails to explicitly mention this, but I can offer some speculation. For Aristotle, in this context, ‘activity of the natural state’ does not denote the exercise of any natural capacity whatsoever, but rather only conscious activity of a human subject. Aristotle writes in NE I.13: Consider the nonrational [aspect of the soul]. One [aspect] of it, i.e., the cause of nutrition and growth, would seem to be plantlike and shared [with all living things]; for we can ascribe this capacity of the soul to everything that is nourished, including embryos, and the same capacity to full-grown living things, since this is more reasonable than to ascribe another capacity to them. Hence the virtue of this capacity is apparently shared, not [specifically] human. For this part and this capacity more than others seem to be active in sleep, and here the good and the bad person are least distinct; hence happy people are said to be no better than miserable people for half their lives. This lack of distinction is not surprising, since sleep is inactivity of the soul insofar as it is called excellent or base, unless to some small extent some movements penetrate [to our awareness], and in this way the decent person comes to have better images [in dreams] than just any random person has. Enough about this, and let us leave aside the nutritive part, since by nature it has no share in human virtue. (1102a32-b12)
57 And he writes in EE 2.1: We also neglect any other part of the soul that there may be, e.g., the nutritive, for the above-mentioned parts are peculiar to the human soul; therefore the excellences of the nutritive part and that concerned with growth are not those of man. For if we speak of him qua man, he must have the power of reasoning with respect to his governing principle and action…. (1219b37-41) Early on in both of these ethical works, he explicitly mentions the nutritive soul and says that it will not be a concern of the treatise. He is concerned with the human good, and activities that do not in some way involve awareness are not relevant to this good, except insofar as they are conditions of possibility for it (that is, insofar as they are external goods). Aristotle says at the beginning of the NE VII discussion of pleasure: Pleasure and pain are proper subjects of study for the political philosopher, since he is the ruling craftsman of the end that we refer to in calling something bad or good without qualification. Further, we must also examine them because we have laid it down that virtue and vice of character are about pains and pleasures, and because most people think happiness involves pleasure— that is why they also call the blessed person by that name (makarios) from enjoyment (chairein). (1152b1-8) Pleasure is taken to be relevant to the human good (and there is no indication that this is just because it is an external good), which would not be the case if it were not something that figures in our awareness. When Aristotle comes around to stating his view that pleasure is an unimpeded activity of the natural state, it can be assumed that he is excluding the activities of the nutritive soul. The only activities that are relevant to the human good are ones that exercise aspects of the soul that in some way involve awareness. This explains why he then replaces the Phileban ‘perceived’ condition with his ‘unimpeded’ condition. Unlike processes of restoration, there is no risk that an activity of the natural state will fail to affect one’s awareness. If we understand ‘perception’ more broadly than Bostock does, as encompassing not just sense perception, but all modes of awareness, then I do think that
58 Aristotle’s view in VII is that what is pleasant when one undergoes a restoration is an activity of perceiving, since all activities of the non-nutritive soul involve awareness and so are in this broad sense activities of perceiving.44 There is not sufficient evidence, however, for thinking, as Bostock does, that when Aristotle implied in Book VII that what is pleasant when we undergo a process of restoration is the perception of that process, this was on the grounds of the worked-out theory of pleasure presented in Book X. His arguments against the anti-hedonists merely require that what is pleasant in such cases is an unimpeded activity of the natural state, which we can assume means an activity of the natural state of some aspect of the soul other than the nutritive. I take it, then, that we are not entitled to conclude that the connection between the Book VII and Book X discussions of pleasure is that they spell out two different parts of a unified theory belonging equally to both, the former giving his account of that which is pleasant and the latter giving his account of what pleasure itself is.45 What we should say instead is that in Book VII, in the course of arguing against Phileban anti-hedonism, Aristotle employed ideas that indicate that he had made significant progress in developing the view he held when he wrote Book X that that which is pleasant is in all cases a perfect activity of awareness, even though he may not yet have arrived at the final version of this view or worked out the arguments and analyses found in X that to his satisfaction establish it as true.
44
For all Aristotle says in Book VII, he may have thought, for instance, that in some cases of restoration what is pleasant is an emotional mode of awareness, and he may not have held a determinate view about whether emotions are activities of thought, sense perception, or something else. 45 C.C.W. Taylor tentatively endorses this type of view in “Pleasure: Aristotle’s Response to Plato,” where he retreats from the view he and Gosling defended in The Greeks on Pleasure and acknowledges that he finds Bostock’s interpretation of Book VII persuasive.
59 3: Process and Activity in NE X In NE X, Aristotle explicitly addresses the question of what pleasure itself is. I argued in Chapter One that he thinks it is the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness. A difficulty this interpretation faces is that there are passages in X.3-4 which one might think are most naturally read as implying that pleasure itself is an activity. I will first discuss a passage from X.3, and argue that the standard way of interpreting the passage is untenable. On a more plausible interpretation, the passage does not imply that pleasure itself is an activity. I will then discuss two connected passages from X.4, and argue that although at this point he is in fact talking about pleasure itself, the argument he gives should not be taken to imply that pleasure itself is an activity, but rather should be taken as an argument for the claim that pleasure itself is complete in the same way as a certain type of activity is. Aristotle writes in X.3: They hold that what is good is complete/final (teleion), whereas processes and becomings are incomplete, and they try to show that pleasure is a process and a becoming. It would seem, however, that they are wrong, and pleasure is not even a process. For quickness and slowness seem to be proper to every process—if not in itself (as, for instance, with the universe), then in relation to something else. But neither of these is true of pleasure. For though certainly it is possible to become pleased quickly, as it is possible to become angry quickly, it is not possible to be pleased quickly, even in relation to something else, whereas this is possible for walking and growing and all such things [i.e., for processes]. It is possible, then, to pass quickly or slowly into pleasure, but not possible to be in the activity of pleasure quickly [or slowly], i.e., to be pleased [quickly or slowly]. (1173a29-b4)
At the end of this passage, Aristotle speaks of ‘being in the activity of pleasure’ (‘energein kat’ autên’, where ‘autên’ refers to ‘hêdonên’). Given that it is very clear that in X.4-5 Aristotle means to give an account of pleasure itself, one might naturally think that this is his concern throughout X.1-5. One might therefore think that when Aristotle speaks of being in
60 the activity of pleasure in this passage, he is implying that pleasure itself is an activity. One might think that his argument is that it is impossible to be in the activity that is pleasure quickly or slowly. I do not think that this is right. I will argue that all Aristotle means when he speaks in this passage of ‘being in the activity of pleasure’ is being actively, as opposed to potentially, pleased. At this point in Book X, Aristotle has not yet started to give his account of what pleasure itself is. He turns to this inquiry at the beginning of X.4, when he says “What, then, or what kind of thing, is pleasure? This will become clearer if we take it up again from the beginning (1174a13-14).” In X.2-3, he is responding to various legomena, just as he is in VII.12, except that here he addresses the views of hedonists as well as anti-hedonists. In the passage quoted above from X.3, I take it that Aristotle means to be arguing against the same anti-hedonist argument that he argued against in VII.12 by claiming that that which is pleasant is an activity rather than a process. It may seem that he is addressing a different argument here, since here the argument he attributes to his opponent is that pleasure cannot be good because it is not “teleion”, which is usually translated as ‘complete’ in this context, whereas in VII.11 the argument he attributes to his opponent is that pleasure cannot be good because it is the becoming of a good and no becoming is itself good. It seems, however, that on the most plausible way of understanding what he means by ‘teleion’ in the X.3 passage, the anti-hedonist argument turns out to be very similar to the one he refers to in VII.11. I take it that in X.3 the word ‘teleion’ should be translated as ‘final’ rather than ‘complete’. Something is final in the relevant sense if it is pursued for its own sake.46 If
46
Cf. NE 1.7, 1097a25-28: “Since there are apparently many ends, and we choose some of them (for instance, wealth, flutes, and, in general, instruments) because of something else, it is clear that not all ends are final.”
61 something is pursued for the sake of some further end, and one would have no reason to pursue it if it did not promote that end, then one does not consider this thing a good. If one pursues something for its own sake, however, one does consider it a good. We can see, then, that if the relevant meaning of ‘teleion’ is ‘final’, the anti-hedonist argument is very similar to the one Aristotle introduces in VII.11. The argument in VII.11 rests on the principle that if something is for the sake of some good, then it is not itself good, which is very similar to the principle that if something is not final, then it is not good. The only difference is that the VII.11 principle implies that something cannot be pursued both for the sake of something else and for its own sake. Moreover, as John Cooper has argued, Plato did employ this notion of finality in the Philebus, and so it is not at all a stretch to think that an anti-hedonist argument based on the theory developed in the Philebus would involve the notion of finality.47 At Philebus 20d, Socrates asks, “whether the good is necessarily bound to be final (teleon) or not final,” and Protarchus replies in the affirmative.48 Cooper argues that ‘teleon’ should be construed as ‘final’ here rather than ‘complete’ because when Plato actually gives an account of the good, it is not something ‘complete’ in the sense of containing all the goods. Also, the argument at Philebus 54c-d, discussed in section 1 of this chapter, can be plausibly understood as an application of the criterion that the good must be final, especially since it is immediately followed in the text by arguments that can be understood as applications of the other criteria for goodness Socrates lays out at 20d and following.49 At any rate, even if this is not how Plato meant to be using the word ‘teleon’, this is very likely how Aristotle understood him to 47
John Cooper, “Plato and Aristotle on ‘Finality’ and ‘(Self)-Sufficiency’.” Note that ‘teleon’ is a variant spelling of ‘teleion’, not a different word. 49 I mean that the argument in 54e-55b can be interpreted as an application of the criteria that the good must be ‘choice-worthy’ and ‘sufficient’. 48
62 be using it, since Aristotle clearly has the relevant passage from the Philebus in mind when he spells out his criteria for the specification of the good in NE I.7. I won’t argue for this further here; it is sufficient to say that it is plausible to think that Aristotle understood Plato as having a notion of finality that he employed in connection with his examination of pleasure in the Philebus. The X.3 passage in question has usually been understood very differently. Most commentators think that ‘teleion’ in this context means complete in form. The passage has presumably been understood in this way because the argument Aristotle gives in it bears a certain similarity to arguments that he gives in X.4 where he clearly means to be saying that pleasure is complete in form.50 A passage from Metaphysics Θ.6 helps elucidate what is meant by ‘complete in form’: Since of the actions which have a limit none is an end but all are relative to the end, e.g., the process or making thin is of this sort, and the things themselves, when one is making them thin are in movement in this way (i.e. without being already that at which the process aims), this is not an action or at least not a complete one (for it is not an end); but that in which the end is present is an action. E.g., at the same time we are seeing and have seen, are understanding and have understood, are thinking and have thought: but it is not true that at the same time we are learning and have learnt, or are being cured and have been cured. At the same time we are living well and have lived well, and are happy and have been happy. If not, the process would have had some time to cease, as the process of making thin ceases: but, as it is, it does not cease; we are living and have lived. Of these, then, we must call one set processes and the other activities. (1048b18-28)51
50
E.g., Owen lumps the X.3 argument in with the arguments from X.4 on pg. 149. Gosling and Taylor do the same on pp. 310-11. 51 N.B., Myles Burnyeat suggests, in “De Anima II 5,” 43, that Aristotle may have written this passage for inclusion in an ethical work.
63 Here Aristotle gives us what is known as the “perfect-tense test” for determining whether an action52 is a process or activity. An action is an activity if the truth of a present tense ascription of it to an agent implies the truth of a perfect tense ascription, and it is a process if it doesn’t. For instance, ‘X is seeing’ implies ‘X has seen’, and so seeing is an activity, but ‘X is building a house’ does not imply ‘X has built a house’, and so building a house is a process. This test tracks whether or not an action is essentially a progression towards some end. If it is, then while one is performing the action one has not yet reached the end, and so one cannot yet have performed the action, in the sense of having completed it. If an action is an activity, on the other hand, it is not essentially a progression towards an end. If one does any amount of seeing at all, one has completed some seeing, and so one has seen. If I were looking at something and suddenly the room went dark before I had stopped looking, it would not be correct to say that I hadn’t looked at the thing. If, on the other hand, I were tying my shoes and the light went out before I was finished and had to stop, it would be correct to say that I hadn’t tied my shoes. Activities are complete in form in the sense that while they are being performed they do not lack anything that would be required for them to count as the activities that they are. Any amount of seeing is fully an activity of seeing. Processes, on the other hand, are not complete in form. While a process of house-building is going on, it does not yet count as a complete process of house-building. The end has to be reached before this can be the case. It is clear why one might think that the meaning of ‘teleion’ in the NE X.3 passage is the same as in the Metaphysics Θ.6 passage. Asking whether something can be done more
52
‘Actions’ translates the Greek word ‘praxeis’. In this context, the term does not have any special or technical meaning, as it does in other contexts. It should just be taken to mean ‘things that subjects do’.
64 quickly or more slowly is another way of testing whether it is a progression, since only progressions admit of quickness and slowness. This is true because quickness and slowness are measures of the number of units of change that occur per unit of time.53 If an action cannot be broken down into units of change, then it does not admit of quickness and slowness. Take the cases of house-building and seeing. House-building can be divided into, among other units, that of setting up walls. If a given process of house-building requires putting up four walls, then the house-building proceeds more quickly if two walls are put up in an hour than it does if only one wall is put up in an hour. Seeing, on the other hand, cannot be divided up in an analogous way.54 It has no units that could proceed at a faster or slower rate, and so it is not a progression and therefore not a process. This test could be seen as another way of testing whether an action is complete in form. If we look at the passage more closely, however, this interpretation doesn’t hold up. The passage begins, “They hold that what is good is complete, whereas processes and becomings are incomplete, and they try to show that pleasure is a process and a becoming” (1173a29-31). The ‘they’ here are the anti-hedonists who took up the arguments of the “subtle thinkers” from the Philebus (or perhaps who were these subtle thinkers). The reference to ‘becomings’ makes this clear, as does the immediate context of the passage. As I discussed, construing ‘complete’ as ‘final’ makes it easy to see how the argument Aristotle is replying to can be understood as an argument these anti-hedonists would have made. It is not at all easy to see how this could have been an argument made by these anti-hedonists if
53
This is in fact somewhat more complicated for Aristotle, given his idiosyncratic conception of time, but what I say here is adequate for my purposes. 54 Some commentators have objected that at least in some cases, seeing and other actions that Aristotle counts as activities can be similarly divided up. I will address this worry in section 4 of this chapter.
65 ‘complete’ is construed as ‘complete in form’. For one thing, it is not at all clear why Aristotle would think that the anti-hedonists even had a notion of completeness in form (whereas, as I say above, it is very clear why he would think they had a notion of finality). This notion comes into play for Aristotle because it is what distinguishes processes from activities, but the anti-hedonists he is responding to don’t recognize the process/activity distinction. In VII.12, part of Aristotle’s reply to them is that they only recognize states as goods, but that there are in fact two kinds of goods, states and activities. If one thinks that the sense of ‘teleion’ in X.3 is ‘complete in form’, one must think that for whatever reason Aristotle chose to recast one of the anti-hedonists’ arguments in terms of a notion they did not recognize. This still does not work, however, since it is not at all clear what argument he could be recasting. The arguments they give revolve around the theme that pleasure is the becoming of a natural state, and so the state is what is good, not the becoming of the state. A state cannot be understood as complete in form in the Meta. Θ.6 sense, since it is not an action. Neither the perfect-tense test nor the quickness and slowness test can be applied to states. I take it, then, that the X.3 passage quoted above should not be lumped together with the X.4 passages, and should instead be construed as responding to the same legomenon that Aristotle responds to in VII.12 by arguing that that which is pleasant is an activity rather than a process (i.e., the one introduced at 1152b12-15). The argument he gives in the X.3 passage does bear some resemblance to the Meta. Θ.6 argument, as well as to the arguments in X.4 that pleasure is complete in form, but this is to be expected. He is responding in X.3 to the argument that pleasure cannot be good because it is a process and processes are not final. His reply is that pleasure is not in fact a process, and so it is not surprising that the argument
66 he gives relies on a test for determining what does and what does not count as a process. This argument is very different from the one he gives in VII.12, where he argues that the activity model for pleasure can make sense of all the cases that the process model can make sense of, and can also make sense of cases such as contemplation that the process model cannot make sense of. That argument may be thought to be somewhat weak, since it does not strictly rule out the possibility that the process model correctly describes some pleasures while the activity model correctly describes others. In the X.3 passage, he gives a more robust argument that (if it is sound) does show that no pleasure could be a process. The conclusion of the argument is: “It is possible, then, to pass quickly or slowly into pleasure, but not possible to be in the activity of pleasure quickly [or slowly], i.e., to be pleased [quickly or slowly] (1173b2-4).” I suggest that when Aristotle says ‘energein kat’ autên’, translated as ‘being in the activity of pleasure’, this should not be understood to imply the technical Θ.6 notion of activity, but rather just the more common notion of activity where it is opposed to potentiality. ‘Being in the activity of pleasure’ just means being actively pleased. I take this suggestion to be supported by the fact that immediately after Aristotle uses the phrase ‘energein kat’ autên’, he says ‘legô d’hêdesthai’, translated above as ‘i.e., to be pleased’. The force of the ‘legô’ can be taken to be ‘I just mean’, such that the point of the phrase ‘legô d’hêdesthai’ is to clarify that when he speaks of ‘being in the activity of pleasure’, he just means ‘being pleased’, and not anything more specific or technical that would imply that pleasure itself is an activity in the Θ.6 sense. The conclusion of the argument, on this reading, is that it is possible to transition from being potentially pleased to being actively pleased quickly or slowly, but that it is not possible to be actively pleased quickly or slowly. Understood in this way, the argument establishes what Aristotle aims to
67 establish in this passage: that pleasure is not a process, and thus that the anti-hedonist argument in question fails. I see no textual or philosophical reason to prefer a reading of the passage that entails that pleasure is an activity in the Θ.6 sense. I take it, then, that the X.3 passage should not be taken as evidence in favor of preferring the Activity View to the interpretation I argued for in Chapter One. I will now turn to the arguments Aristotle gives in X.4 for the claim that pleasure itself is complete in form. These arguments are often taken to indicate that Aristotle thinks that pleasure itself is an activity.55 An important motivation for interpreting X.4 in this way is that completeness in form is the criterion Aristotle uses in Meta. Θ.6 to distinguish processes from activities. One might think that if he argues at length in X.4 for the claim that pleasure is complete in form, it must be because he thinks that pleasure is an activity. I will argue first that there is a plausible alternative to this interpretation, and second that it is at least as well-motivated as this interpretation is. I will quote only the beginning of the long passage where Aristotle discusses this claim, since this part captures the main point, and most of the remainder of the passage is spent making more fine-grained points that are peripheral to my concerns: What, then, or what kind of thing, is pleasure? This will become clearer if we take it up again from the beginning. For seeing seems to be complete at any time, since it has no need for anything else to complete its form by coming to be at a later time. And pleasure is also like this, since it is some sort of whole, and no pleasure is to be found at any time that will have its form completed by coming to be for a longer time. That is why pleasure is not a process either. For every process, such as constructing a building, takes time, and aims at some end, and is complete when it produces the product it seeks, or [in other words, is complete] in this whole span of time [that it takes]. (1174a13-21)
55
E.g. Irwin, in Notes, pp. 304-5; J.O. Urmson “Aristotle on Pleasure,” 333.
68 First, I want to draw attention to the first two sentences of the passage. As I mentioned earlier, I take this to be a clear indication that Aristotle means to be discussing pleasure itself as opposed to that which is pleasant. I say this because X.4-5 appears to be a unified discussion, and it is very clear for reasons I discussed in Chapter One that in the second half of X.4 and in X.5 he means to be discussing pleasure itself, as explicitly distinguished from that which is pleasant. It would be unacceptably ad hoc to claim that in the first half of X.4 he uses the term ‘pleasure’ to mean that which is pleasant and then shifts to the other usage unannounced. With this in mind, I take this passage to express an argument for the claim that pleasure itself is complete in form, and therefore is not a process. He is no longer responding to legomena at this point; he is giving a positive account of pleasure. Still, part of the reason it is important to him to emphasize that pleasure itself is not a process is no doubt that he means to be distancing his own view from the Phileban theory in this respect. The Platonists did not distinguish between pleasure itself and that which is pleasant, but it still makes sense that Aristotle, in having and insisting on that distinction, would consider the view that pleasure itself is a process to be a salient alternative to his own view. I have claimed that his own view is that pleasure itself is the perfection of perfect activity of awareness. It seems clear that this view is at least compatible with the passage from X.4 quoted above. If we plug the account of what pleasure itself is that I claim we should attribute to him into this passage, we get: “No [perfection of a perfect activity of awareness] is to be found at any time that will have its form completed by coming to be for a longer time.”56 Perfection is an aspect that a
56
I do not mean to imply that at this point in the discussion Aristotle means for pleasure to be understood as the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness. My point is just that the
69 perfect activity of awareness has in virtue of its being performed under certain conditions that either do or do not obtain. If the conditions obtain even for an instant, the activity is perfect for that instant, and its perfection cannot be made more complete in form (more a case of that perfection) by any progression that is spread out over time.57 These conditions may, however, obtain to a greater or lesser extent, and so an activity of awareness can become more perfect. Becoming more perfect is indeed a progression, but this does not entail that being perfect is a progression. I take it, then, that it is not necessary to take the X.4 passage quoted above to imply that pleasure itself is an activity. The argument can be made sense of under the supposition that he is thinking of pleasure itself as an aspect of activity. I will now turn to the question of how well-motivated my reading of the passage is in comparison with the reading that supports the Activity View. As I have discussed, Aristotle says in Meta. Θ.6 that completeness in form is what distinguishes activities from processes. This naturally inclines one to think that when he says in NE X.4 that pleasure is not a process because it is complete in form, he means to imply that it is an activity. This inclination is compounded if one rejects my suggestion that in VII.12, when Aristotle says that pleasure is an activity rather than a process, he is giving an account of that which is pleasant. If one thinks that he saying that pleasure itself is an activity in VII.12, then one would naturally think that he is repeating this idea here. In X.5, at 1175b30-35, Aristotle unambiguously rules out the view that pleasure is identical to the activity that it arises in connection with, and so if one reads the beginning of argument he gives here is compatible with the account of pleasure that (I claim) he spells out later on in X.4. 57 I should add the qualification, which I will discuss in section 4 of this chapter, that the conditions may depend on the occurrence of a progression. This does not imply that the perfection that arises when the activity is performed under these conditions is made more complete in form by the progression.
70 X.4 as saying that pleasure is an activity, one has to say that his view in Book X is that pleasure is a further activity over an above the activity that it arises in connection with. I take it that this gives us strong reason to prefer my reading. It is hard to see what the further activity could be, but presumably the idea is that it is the activity of enjoying a perfect activity of awareness. As I discussed in my introduction, a central feature of Aristotle’s account is that he thinks that pleasure is not something separate from the activity it arises in connection with. This is not a decisive consideration, but I find it hard to see how the view that pleasure is a further activity over and above the activity it arises in connection with does not entail that it is separate from this activity. If being a different activity from a given activity does not make something separate from that activity, then there must be a complicated story about the relationship between the two activities. There is no passage in the context that can be plausibly construed as explaining what this relationship amounts to, and so proponents of the Activity View have to say that Aristotle leaves this very crucial part of his view unstated.58 I claim, then, that while it may seem that the most natural way to read the first part of X.4 is to take Aristotle to be arguing there that pleasure itself is an activity, there are strong reasons for thinking that this is not in fact how it should be read. I want now to draw particular attention to the fact that he does not at any point in this passage say that pleasure is an activity. He says that its form is complete. If he means to imply that pleasure is an
58
Perhaps one could try to construe the “bloom of youth” passage as spelling out what this relationship is, but I cannot even begin to see how this would go, and at any rate, one would have to do some elaborate interpretive acrobatics that one could avoid if one takes what I take to be the simpler and more plausible route of rejecting the Activity View. Irwin endorses the Activity View, but reads the bloom passage as saying that pleasure is a final cause of perfect activity (306).
71 activity, it would be very easy for him to just come out and say this. He says it over and over again in Book VII where, I claim, he is not using ‘pleasure’ to refer to pleasure itself. There is only one place in the whole of X.1-5 where a word related to the word for pleasure and a word related to the word for activity are associated with each other, and that is the passage in X.3, discussed above, where he says, “It is possible, then, to pass quickly or slowly into pleasure, but not possible to be in the activity of pleasure [quickly or slowly], i.e., to be pleased quickly [or slowly] (1173b2-4).” As I have argued, this passage certainly does not have to be taken to imply that pleasure itself is an activity. Judging by appearances, Aristotle is being very careful not to say that pleasure is an activity. In fact, I take the only legitimate consideration in favor of reading the beginning of X.4 in a way that implies the Activity View is that this reading fits more neatly with the Meta. Θ.6 passage. This is a weak consideration, however, since the Metaphysics passage does not imply that only activities are complete in form. It merely implies that no action that is not an activity is complete in form. I take it, then, that the interpretation I suggest is at least compatible with the Metaphysics passage, since I take that passage not to exclude the possibility that an aspect of an activity can be complete in form.
4: A Puzzle About Pleasure and Process I would like to conclude by thinking a little about a puzzle that I alluded to earlier: if Aristotle thinks that that which is pleasant is perfect activity of awareness and pleasure itself is the perfection of such activity, how does he make sense of the pleasure we take in doing things like listening to musical performances and doing crossword puzzles that seem to be processes?
72 Owen offers one solution: “So if I find working at cross-word puzzles more enjoyable than contemplating their solutions, that is surely because for me the puzzling has the form of a self-contained activity like juggling, not that of an end-directed operation like recovering one’s stamina or building a house. At any moment that I say I am working at such a puzzle I can say I have worked at it (cf. Met 1048b18-35), and that use of the perfect would not be open to me if I described myself as solving the puzzle.” (143) He suggests that when I enjoy working on a crossword puzzle, what I enjoy is being engaged in working on it, not the process of progressing step-by-step towards finishing it. This is a good start, but things are somewhat more complicated. Bostock articulates the difficulty that remains: Upon my account, Aristotle’s explanation of a ‘pleasure of replenishment’ involves the ability to perceive a process, and many of the examples he cites himself are the perceptions of processes, e.g., listening to a piece of music (1175a14) or watching a play (1175b12). But perceiving a process would seem to be itself a process, i.e., something whose form (which identifies it as the perception that it is, say, a hearing of Beethoven’s Ninth) is not completely realized at any time at which it is going on. This, however, appears to be a point that he has simply overlooked. (272) Listening to a piece of music does involve a kind of progression. One of the conditions that must be in place for an activity of awareness to count as perfect is that the capacity being exercised must be active in relation to a fine object. In the case of listening to music, the fine object is a fine musical performance. A fine musical performance, however, is a progression. Its fineness depends in part on how well its sequential parts fit together. One might think that listening to a musical performance must therefore be understood as a progression, in which case listening turns out to be a process rather than an activity. I do not think that we need to say this. An activity of awareness is perfect when it is the activation of a capacity in good condition in relation to a fine object. The fineness of the object can depend on its being a progression without the activity of perceiving it being a
73 progression. To make this intuitive, consider a case where I am enjoying a concert when suddenly a swarm of killer bees invades the theater and the performers are forced to stop playing before they finish the piece of music they are performing. If we say that what I was enjoying was ‘listening to such and such a piece of music’, then the perfect-tense test from Meta. Θ.6 fails. It is not true that I listened to the piece of music. But why think that this is what I was enjoying? It seems bizarre to say that the killer bee invasion retroactively made it true that I had not been experiencing pleasure. If someone had asked me in the middle of the concert whether I was experiencing pleasure at that point in time, it would not have made sense to say that I wouldn’t be able to answer until I found out whether the performers would be able to finish the piece. It seems that what I am enjoying is ‘listening to music’, where ‘music’ is understood not as a complete piece of music, but rather as what I am hearing moment by moment. It may be true that what I am hearing moment by moment must have a certain connection with what preceded it and with what I expect to follow it in order for me to enjoy listening to it, but this does not imply that at each moment I am enjoying the entire piece of music and not simply what I am hearing at that moment. I am in sharp disagreement with Gosling and Taylor: Thus while one may indeed enjoy every move in a chess game, it is likely to be essential to one’s enjoyment that one sees each move as contributing to the development of the game from start to finish, and if the game is left unfinished, one’s enjoyment is no less curtailed than the game itself. (313)
Even if the pleasure one takes in playing chess depends on thinking of each move in a chess game as part of a progression that one thinks of as careening towards the completion of the game, it does not follow that one has not taken pleasure in playing chess if the game does not end up being completed. The complexities of the progression that each move is imbedded in
74 are what make it a fine object for thought and are what make it apt to fully activate the relevant capacity. What I am actually enjoying at each moment is not the progression of the game, but rather the thinking I am doing at that moment, the object of which might be a move that is pleasant to think about only in the context of the progression of the game. Perhaps there is some further pleasure one can experience at the conclusion of a chess game when one contemplates the game as a whole, but this is different from the pleasure one experiences in direct connection with the actual playing of the game. I take it, then, that the pleasure we take in connection with things like listening to a piece of music and solving a crossword puzzle can be made sense of on the interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of pleasure that I have proposed. Although the objects of these activities are essentially progressions and thus are incomplete in form while they are going on, the activities themselves are complete in form at any time while we engage in them.
75 Chapter Three: Aristotle’s Qualitativism and the Comparability of Pleasures Aristotle famously claims that pleasures differ from one another in kind in virtue of the differences in kind among the activities they arise in connection with.59 I will call this view ‘Qualitativism’ about pleasure.60 Qualitativism might seem difficult to make sense of, in part because it cuts sharply against the prevailing modern conception of pleasure as a single kind of feeling. My central aim in this chapter is to elaborate what Aristotle’s Qualitativism amounts to and what his reasons are for holding it. I will also make a case that it is a far more plausible position than it might initially seem, and that it is compatible with many of our ordinary intuitions about pleasure. In the course of making this case, I will discuss modern versions of Qualitativism and difficulties they face and I will argue that although Aristotle does not explicitly address these difficulties, his theory provides sufficient resources to resolve them. An important issue I will be concerned with is that Qualitativism might seem to imply that some pleasures cannot be compared to each other with respect to their degree of pleasantness, since differences in kind between pleasures might seem to render such comparisons impossible. I will call the claim that some pleasures cannot be compared with one another in pleasantness ‘Incomparabilism’, and the denial of this claim ‘Comparabilism’. Intuitively, Incomparabilism is difficult to accept. We often choose to do one activity rather than another because we think that it would be more pleasant, even when we are choosing between activities that differ markedly in kind. For instance, we might decide to skip a fancy meal to
59
Throughout this chapter I use ‘pleasure’ to refer to pleasure itself as opposed to that which is pleasant. 60 My choice of this term is due to the connection between this view of Aristotle’s and the view held by John Stuart Mill that pleasures differ in quality as opposed to merely in quantity. This connection is discussed in the second and third sections of this chapter.
76 attend a lecture entirely because we think that we would enjoy the lecture more than we would enjoy the meal. In section 1 of this chapter, I will discuss Aristotle’s Qualitativism and the arguments that he gives in support of it in NE X.5. I will suggest an interpretation of his Qualitativism that is based on the interpretation of NE X.4 that I defended in Chapter One, according to which pleasure is the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness. In section 2, I will discuss the tension between Comparabilism and Qualitativism, paying some attention to modern views. In section 3, I will adduce evidence for attributing a version of Comparabilism to Aristotle, and propose a way of reconciling it with his Qualitativism.
1: Aristotle’s Qualitativism I argued in Chapter One that, for Aristotle, pleasure is the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness. A perfect activity of awareness is one where a capacity for awareness that is in good condition is active in relation to a fine object of the kind naturally suited to be an object of that mode of awareness. Aristotle allows for instances of derivative perfection, where a capacity may fail to be in a good condition and the object that it is active in relation to may fail to be fine, provided that there is a certain type of fit between the object and the condition of the capacity that is being activated. In such cases, the object that a capacity is active in relation to must be apt to facilitate the full exercise of the capacity, given the condition that the capacity is in at the time and under the given circumstances. Pleasure is the character that such an activity has in virtue of the fit that exists between the object and the condition of the capacity.
77 This picture naturally suggests a way of understanding Aristotle’s Qualitativism, which I will discuss shortly. First, however, it will be useful to consider the interpretation of Aristotle’s Qualitativism that would be suggested by the Activity View, which I objected to in Chapter Two. The Activity View is the view that, for Aristotle, pleasure itself is an activity, distinct from whatever activity of awareness is being enjoyed. T.H. Irwin, who accepts the Activity View, briefly states the way he understands Aristotle’s Qualitativism: Aristotle’s way of distinguishing pleasures shows that he does not think pleasure is some introspectively uniform state, or that its different sources (‘pleasant things’) are merely different and interchangeable instrumental means to the same end. The pleasure of dice playing, for instance, sunbathing, and music are different in kind, not merely in origin.61 Irwin thinks that when Aristotle says that pleasures differ in kind in virtue of the differences in kind among the activities they arise in connection with, he means that for each kind of activity of awareness, there is a kind of pleasure-activity (an activity that is a pleasure) peculiar to it. When someone takes pleasure in listening to a song, that person engages in a certain pleasure-activity that is different in kind from the pleasure-activity one engages in when one takes pleasure in tasting a strawberry. I find this way of interpreting Aristotle’s Qualitativism difficult to understand. Upon introspection, it does not seem to me that when I enjoy tasting a strawberry I do something different than when I enjoy listening to a song, except insofar as I am engaged in a different kind of activity of awareness. Even if we grant that a sensible story about what it means for two pleasure-activities to differ in kind can be told, the covariance in kind of activities of awareness and the pleasure-activities that arise in connection with them is still very mysterious. There must be taken to be some important relation between the two that
61
Irwin, Glossary, 342.
78 Aristotle has left unexplained. The core difficulty a proponent of the Activity View faces in interpreting Aristotle’s Qualitativism, I take it, is that if pleasure is a distinct activity from the activity it arises in connection with, pleasure and activity lack the kind of tight connection that would provide a ready explanation of their covariance in kind. I will now argue that on the interpretation of Aristotle’s account of pleasure I propose in Chapter One, according to which pleasure is the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness, it turns out that pleasure and activity are connected in a way that entails their covariance in kind. The capacity that is activated when, e.g., we study philosophy is different in kind from the capacity being activated when we eat something sweet. Likewise, the objects that we think about when we study philosophy are different in kind from the objects that we perceive when we eat something sweet. It seems to follow naturally that the character that an activity of studying philosophy has in virtue of the fit between the condition of a capacity for thought and its object would be different in kind from the character that an activity of tasting something sweet has in virtue of the fit between the condition of a capacity for perception and its object. Aristotle does not explicitly state that this is what he means when he says that pleasures differ in kind, but this seems to me to be a very plausible outline of what he has in mind, both because it makes good sense in conjunction other views that I take him to hold about the nature of pleasure, and because it fits well with what he does say in his discussion of Qualitativism. I will proceed in this section of the chapter to go through some of the arguments Aristotle gives in NE X.5, with a view to developing an interpretation of his Qualitativism along the lines that I’ve just suggested. X.5 begins: Hence pleasures also seem to differ in kind. For we suppose that things that differ in kind are perfected by things that differ in kind. That is how it
79 appears, both with natural things and with artifacts—for instance, with animals, trees, a painting, a statue, a house, or an implement. Similarly, activities that differ in kind are also perfected by things that differ in kind. Now activities of thought differ in kind from activities of the capacities for perception, and so do these from each other; so also, then, do the pleasures that perfect them. 1175a21-28 This passage is difficult to interpret, since Aristotle does not spell out the sense in which natural things and artifacts that differ in kind are perfected by things that differ in kind. It will be helpful to revisit a passage from Metaphysics ∆.16 that I discussed in Chapter One: Things, then, that are called perfect in virtue of their own nature are so called… [in some cases] because they lack nothing in respect of goodness and cannot be excelled and no proper part of them is found outside, [and in other cases] in general because they cannot be exceeded in their several classes and no part proper to them is outside. (1021b30-1022a1) Take the case of an artifact, such as a bed. A perfect bed is one that cannot be exceeded in goodness as a bed, or at least that lacks nothing required for it to be a good bed and that does not lack any element that is proper to it as a bed.62 A bed with a comfortable mattress that is missing one leg would fall short of being perfect, as would a perfectly functional bed that is too soft to promote good posture while sleeping. A bed is perfected by having all the features that are necessary for it to serve its purpose, and by having features that are sufficient for it to be unable to be exceeded in goodness, or at least to lack nothing required for goodness. It is tempting to infer that when Aristotle says in NE X.5 that things that are different in kind are perfected by different things he means that the features that are necessary and
62
I take it that the condition ‘unable to be exceeded in goodness’ corresponds to the notion of a maximally perfect activity that I discussed in my first chapter, whereas the weaker condition ‘lacking nothing required for goodness’ corresponds to the notion of a (merely) perfect activity.
80 sufficient for their perfection are different in kind. But this cannot be right. Aristotle has said in X.4: Pleasure perfects the activity. But the way in which pleasure perfects the activity is not the way in which the perceptible object and the perceptual capacity perfect it when they are both excellent—just as health and the doctor are not the cause of being healthy in the same way. (1174b23-26) I argued in Chapter One that we should interpret this passage as saying that pleasure perfects an activity not in the way that the object and the condition of the capacity do, by contributing to or helping to bring about its perfection, but rather in some as yet unspecified way. On my reading, this way turns out to be that pleasure perfects an activity by being its very perfection; that is, by being the character that the activity has in virtue of the perfecting contributions of the object and the condition of the capacity. If I am right about this, then the argument Aristotle gives in the passage from X.5 quoted above does not work if that which perfects an artifact is understood as the features of the artifact that contribute to its perfection, since this is not the sense in which Aristotle thinks of pleasure as perfecting an activity. The idea must instead be that what perfects an artifact is understood as its very perfection, that is, as the character that it has in virtue and as a result of the perfecting contributions of its features. One might worry that all of an artifact’s features contribute to its perfection, and thus that cordoning off its perfection from its character in general is a vacuous enterprise. It seems to me that this worry can be dissolved if we distinguish between positive and negative ways of contributing to a thing’s perfection. In the passage from Metaphysics ∆.16 quoted above, Aristotle says that in order to count as perfect a thing must be either unable to be exceeded in goodness, or at least lacking nothing required for goodness, and also must have no part that is proper to it outside of it. In order for the latter condition not to be redundant, it
81 must mean something different from ‘lacking nothing required for goodness’. The idea seems to be that the condition that no part proper to a thing can be outside of it if it is to be perfect states the negative condition that is required for a thing to be perfect, whereas the condition that it must be lacking nothing required for goodness states the positive condition that is required. That is to say, the condition that no part proper to a thing can be outside it merely establishes that the thing must not have a serious defect or missing essential element; this condition establishes that for a bed to be perfect, it must first be a normally functioning bed. The condition that a thing must be lacking nothing required for goodness establishes that the thing must have the positive contributions necessary for it to be good or fine, as opposed to merely functional; it establishes that for a bed to be perfect, it must be very comfortable, offer excellent back support, etc. In this context, then, saying that what perfects an artifact or natural thing is its very perfection should be understood as meaning that what perfects an artifact is the character that it has in virtue of the features that make a positive contribution to its perfection. We need to bear this in mind when we interpret Aristotle’s claim that the things that perfect artifacts that differ in kind themselves differ in kind. It is helpful to think about particular examples. Take, for instance, a perfect bed as opposed to a perfect cat (Aristotle explicitly lists animals as an example in the X.5 passage quoted above). A perfect bed is one that is an optimal thing to sleep on. For it even to count as a bed it must of course have four legs, a mattress, be able to support the weight of a human being, etc. These features make a negative contribution to its perfection, in that they are the minimal conditions that must be met for it to be a normally functioning member of its kind. For a bed to be perfect, it must in addition be soft enough to be comfortable and must also offer appropriate support to the back. These features make a
82 positive contribution to its perfection. It is important to clarify that its perfection is not merely the sum of this latter set of features, but rather is the overall effect of their compresence and interplay. It is the bed’s character of being optimal to sleep on, abstracted from its character of being merely something that it is possible to sleep on. A perfect tiger, on the other hand, is one that (let’s suppose) is maximally good with respect to its ability to survive and reproduce. It must first of all be a tiger, and so must have stripes, teeth shaped for tearing into prey, etc. For it to be a perfect tiger, it must have stripes that camouflage it well and are attractive to tigers of the opposite sex, and its teeth must be sharp and strong enough to be well-suited for tearing into prey. The tiger’s perfection is not merely the set of features that make such positive contributions to its perfection, but rather is the overall result of the compresence and interplay of these features. It does not seem at all mysterious that Aristotle would count this as something different in kind from a dog’s character of being a perfect hunting companion for humans, and certainly not that he would count it as different in kind from bed’s character of being optimal to sleep on. This character of a bed seems, evidently, to be something peculiar to beds, as perfect, distinct from whatever corresponds as the perfect character of an animal or an artifact of a different kind. It is a character deriving from the interplay and relationship among a specific set of relevant contributing conditions; since these differ in kind from one type of thing to another, the perfect character to which they give rise differs as well. Aristotle’s point is that the same holds true for activities. The features that make positive contributions to the perfection of an activity of studying philosophy are different in kind from the features that make positive contributions to the perfection of an activity of tasting something sweet, and the overall result of the compresence and interplay of these
83 features is different in kind as well. The pleasure derived from studying philosophy is a perfection of that particular activity, and therefore it is a perfection peculiar to it. It necessarily differs in kind from the perfection of an activity of tasting something sweet. The basic form of this argument, then, is that things that are different in kind are perfected by things that differ in kind (which can be seen clearly to hold in cases of artifacts and natural things), and that this principle holds for activities of awareness. Aristotle goes on in X.5 to fortify this argument by offering a series of considerations in favor of Qualitativism based on empirical observations about pleasure. He writes: This is also apparent from the way each pleasure is proper to (sunôikeiôsthai) the activity that it perfects. For the proper (oikeia) pleasure increases the activity; for we judge each thing better and more exactly when our activity involves pleasure. If, for instance, we enjoy doing geometry, we become better geometers, and understand each question better; and similarly lovers of music, building, and so on improve at their proper characteristic activity when they enjoy it. Each pleasure increases the activity, and what increases it is proper to it; and since the activities are different in kind, what is proper to them is also different in kind. (1175a29-b1) When Aristotle says that each pleasure is proper to the activity that it perfects, I take him to mean that each pleasure bears a certain relation to the particular activity that it perfects and to that activity only. The word translated as ‘proper’, ‘oikeia’, has the connotations of ‘akin to’ and ‘intimately connected with’, which may indicate that the relation in question has to do with the close connection between the character of a pleasure and the character of the activity that it arises in connection with. Aristotle points to the phenomenon of pleasure “increasing” the activity that it arises in connection with. All else being equal, when one takes pleasure in performing an activity, this leads one to perform it for a longer period of time, more adeptly, with more enthusiasm, etc. If one enjoys thinking about a math problem, one will think about it with greater focus and persistence than one would if one did not enjoy thinking about
84 it. Aristotle gives a somewhat opaque argument for Qualitativism on the basis of this phenomenon: “Each pleasure increases the activity, and what increases it is proper to it; and since the activities are different in kind, what is proper to them is also different in kind.” The idea here, I take it, is that the fact that pleasure increases the particular activity that it arises in connection with indicates that it bears a special relation to this activity. This relation entails that the pleasure differs in kind from pleasures that are connected with activities that differ in kind from the activity that it itself is connected with. That is, the relation is such that if A bears it to B, and C bears it to D, and B and D differ in kind, it follows that A and C differ in kind. It seems to me that the interpretation of Aristotle’s Qualitativism that I have been defending can help to make sense of what this relation is and how this argument is supposed to work. Before spelling this out, it will be helpful to look at the next argument that Aristotle makes in NE X.5, since it makes a connected point: This is even more apparent from the way some activities are impeded by pleasures from others. For lovers of flutes, for instance, cannot pay attention to a conversation if they catch the sound of someone playing the flute, because they enjoy flute playing more than their present activity; and so the pleasure proper to flute playing destroys the activity of conversation. The same is true in other cases also, whenever we are engaged in two activities at once. For the more pleasant activity pushes out the other one, all the more if it is much more pleasant, so that we no longer even engage in the other activity. Hence if we are enjoying one thing intensely, we do not do another very much. It is when we are only mildly pleased that we do something else; for instance, people who eat nuts in theaters do this most when the actors are bad. (1175b1-13) This is not a new line of argument. It is meant to support the claims that pleasures are proper to the activities they are connected with, and that this entails that they vary in kind along with the activities. Aristotle points to a case where someone who is a lover of flute music is engaged in a conversation, but then hears flute music, and stops paying attention to the
85 conversation as she takes pleasure in connection with listening to the flute music. This empirical observation may seem false, especially in so far as we think that some pleasures synergize with each other. For instance, one may find that they enjoy smoking a cigar while they listen to music, so that they take the two pleasures to enhance rather than detract from each other. Aristotle does not address this worry, but it does seem that there is a plausible story for him to tell. If I think about why smoking a cigar increases my enjoyment of listening to music, it seems that it is because smoking relaxes me, and helps me to stop running through the events of the day or thinking about what I need to do the next day, and instead focus on the music. One of the conditions that must be in place for an activity to be pleasant is that the capacity being activated must be in a good condition. In this case, smoking actually improves the condition of my capacity for listening by relaxing me and thereby removing various conditions that would otherwise impede my capacity for listening. It could also be that focusing on music contributes further to my degree of relaxation and that this enables me to enjoy smoking more than I would if I were sitting in silence. Aristotle could say, then, that the synergy between the two pleasures exists not because each directly increases the activity that the other is connected with, but rather because each creates conditions that are conducive to the good performance of the activity that the other is connected with. It seems plausible to think that an Aristotelian theory of pleasure could explain in this manner all such cases of synergy between pleasures. In the next section of X.5, Aristotle explains how this phenomenon supports his argument: Since, then, the proper pleasure makes an activity more exact, longer, and better, whereas an alien pleasure damages it, clearly the two pleasures differ widely. For an alien pleasure does virtually what a proper pain does. The proper pain destroys activity, so that if, for instance, writing or rational
86 calculation has no pleasure and is in fact painful for us, we do not write or calculate, since the action is painful. Hence the proper pleasures and pains have contrary effects on an activity; and the proper ones are those that arise in connection with (epi) the activity in its own right. And as we have said, the effect of alien pleasures is similar to the effect of pain, since they ruin the activity, though not in the same way as pain. (1175b13-24) This passage helps a great deal to illuminate how Aristotle understood the sense in which a pleasure is “proper to” the activity it is connected with. It will be helpful to return to the example of hearing flute music while one is engaged in conversation. Suppose I enjoy conversation, but I absolutely adore flute music. I am engaged in conversation, and I experience pleasure in connection with this activity. Suddenly, I catch the sound of flute music in the distance, and I begin to listen to it. As I begin to take pleasure in listening to it, this pleasure increases my activity of listening, and I start focusing on it more and more intensely. Meanwhile, I am increasingly distracted from the conversation, to the point where my capacity for conversing is in a bad condition, and I stop taking pleasure in connection with the conversation. Aristotle’s point is that there must be something about the character of the pleasure I take in listening to the flute music that increases my activity of listening rather than my activity of conversing. Both activities are going on at the same time, and at least at the beginning I am experiencing pleasure in connection with both. If the pleasures connected with the two activities were the same in kind (as would be the case if, e.g., pleasure were a single feeling), there would be no explanation as to why the pleasure connected with my activity of listening increases that activity but impedes my activity of conversing. The pleasure of listening must be the kind of thing that increases the activity of
87 listening but impedes the activity of conversing, and so must be different in kind from the pleasure of conversing, which is the kind of thing that increases the activity of conversing.63 Aristotle may seem to have neglected an alternative explanation of this phenomenon. If one thinks that pleasure is a single feeling, one might think that instances of this feeling bear certain causal relations exclusively to the activities they are connected with. On this view, if I am enjoying listening to flute music and conversing at the same time, I experience two instances of the same feeling that have distinct sets of causal relations. The pleasure connected with listening to flute music may be related to the activity of listening in such a way that it increases it, but be related to the activity of conversing in such a way that it impedes it. This view is somewhat plausible, but it does not fit well with the phenomena. It does not seem right to think that when I take pleasure in two different activities simultaneously I experience two instances of the same feeling. I don’t even understand what it would be to experience two instances of the same feeling at the same time. It is not clear to me how this would be phenomenally different from experiencing one instance of the feeling.
63
Aristotle says in the passage under discussion that an alien pleasure does virtually what a proper pain does. Aristotle does not give an account of pain in NE X.1-5, but one might reasonably infer that just as pleasure is the character an activity has when there is a good fit between capacity and object, pain is the character an activity has when there is a poor fit between capacity and object. Take, for instance, someone has been working on a philosophy article for twelve hours and decides to stop and rest. The person is mentally exhausted, and so if she is later compelled to think about a philosophical problem to answer an email from a student, she will have difficulty focusing and her activity of thinking about the problem will be impeded in various ways. The impeded condition of her activity of thinking, on the suggestion being considered, counts as pain. The pain the person experiences will cause her to do a progressively worse job thinking about the problem; it will do virtually the same thing an alien pleasure has been seen to do. This seems like a much more plausible account of pain than the one naturally suggested by the Activity View, according to which pain is an activity distinct from the activity that gives rise to it. It seems very odd to say that pain is something one does that is separate from a painful activity. Pain would seem to be something that happens to a subject when a subject does something, not something a subject does.
88 The interpretation of Aristotle’s Qualitativism that I’ve proposed fits well with this line of argument. If pleasure is the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness, then it is easy to see the sense in which pleasure is proper to the activity it is connected with. The pleasure of listening to flute music is the character that the activity of listening has in virtue of the interplay between the fineness of the flute music being listened to and the good condition of one’s capacity for listening. The relation between a pleasure and the activity it arises in connection with is a very close one, and is clearly a relation that a pleasure can bear only to that activity. It is also easy to see why pleasure, understood in the way I suggest, would increase the activity it arises in connection with. Take a case where I have just had my morning coffee and am feeling prepared to concentrate and in the mood to read. I pick up a good book and quickly start to take pleasure in reading it. The fit between the condition of my capacity for reading and the quality of the book causes me to become increasingly focused as I read and to read more quickly and with greater attention to detail. Suppose in the course of reading the book in this focused way I come to a realization about something I had not understood previously, and I begin to think about the book in a deeper way than I was capable of when I began to read. The condition of my capacity for reading is now in an even better condition and I begin to enjoy the book even more and thus read it with even greater focus. This strikes me as a very plausible way of explaining the phenomena surrounding the pleasure of reading. The same basic story can be told about even, e.g., the pleasure of sitting in the sun. The warm feeling of the sun leads us to continue to sit in the sun and to focus on the pleasant sensation of the sun’s warmth more attentively. The example of hearing flute music during a conversation can be understood in a similar way. The fit between the music and the person’s capacity for listening leads him to focus his
89 attention on the music, which in turn puts his capacity for conversation in a worse condition, and so the person stops enjoying the conversation. These, then, are the four main arguments Aristotle gives in favor of Qualitativism. I have suggested a way of interpreting his overarching view and have tried to show that it fits well with the relevant texts. I don’t claim to have given conclusive evidence in support of the view I suggest, but I hope that I have shown that the view is in some respects very attractive (at least more so than the interpretation naturally suggested by the Activity View). I also hope that the neatness with which this interpretation of Aristotle’s Qualitativism fits with the interpretation of his account of pleasure that I defended in Chapter One lends additional plausibility to both views. Before turning to the issue of Comparabilism, I will expand the interpretation of Aristotle’s Qualitativism that I have suggested by briefly discussing a particularly vexed related issue, namely, the way pleasures vary in moral status along with the activities they arise in connection with. Aristotle writes in X.5: Since activities differ in degree of decency and badness, and some are choiceworthy, some to be avoided, some neither, the same is true of pleasures; for each activity has its own proper pleasure. Hence the pleasure proper to an excellent activity is decent, and the one proper to a base activity is vicious; for, similarly, appetites for fine things are praiseworthy and appetites for shameful things are blameworthy. And in fact the pleasure in an activity is more proper to it than the desire for it. For the desire is distinguished from it in time and in nature; but the pleasure is close to the activity, and so little distinguished from it that disputes arise about whether the activity is the same as the pleasure. (1175b24-33) As I mentioned in Chapter One, Aristotle’s view that pleasures differ in kind enables him to occupy middle ground between hedonism and anti-hedonism. He thinks that some pleasures are good and others are bad, and that their goodness or badness correlates with the goodness or badness of the activities they arise in connection with. He thinks that this follows from the
90 fact that pleasure is proper to the activity it is connected with. He briefly supports this claim by arguing that since desire to engage in an activity is either good or bad depending on the activity’s moral status, a fortiori this is true of the pleasure that is taken in connection with an activity, since pleasure is more proper to an activity than desire for it. The interpretation of Aristotle’s Qualitativism that I’ve suggested is again helpful. Consider two cases where a person must watch a child being tortured. In one case, the person is appalled by what she sees and experiences great discomfort. In another, the person is very amused by the torture and takes pleasure in watching it. The two activities of watching have the same object, but in the latter case the person’s capacities for watching are in a condition such that the sight of a child being tortured is a suitable object to engage them. There is a “fit” between the condition of the person’s capacities and the scene of the child being tortured. In the other case, the person’s capacities are not corrupted in this respect and so the person does not experience pleasure at the sight. The activity of watching that involves pleasure is morally bad, whereas the one that doesn’t is not. Notice that what differentiates the two is that in the one case there is a fit between object and capacity, whereas in the other case the person’s soul is in a different condition and so there is no such fit. If pleasure just is the aspect that the activity has in virtue of the fit between object and capacity, it is clear why the pleasure the person takes in connection with her bad activity of watching would itself be something bad. It is the very aspect of the activity that differentiates it from the non-bad activity of the person who does not take pleasure in watching the same scene.64
64
A remark Aristotle makes at 1099a17-20 in NE I.8 may be taken to corroborate this interpretation: “For besides the reasons already given, someone who does not enjoy fine actions is not good; for no one would call a person just, for instance, if he did not enjoy doing
91
2: Qualitativism and Comparabilism Qualitativism has important ramifications for quantitative hedonism, the view that one ought to act so as to maximize the pleasure one experiences, and quantitative hedonistic utilitarianism, the view that one ought to act so as to maximize the total amount pleasure experienced by the members of one’s community. These positions have depended on the idea of a “hedonic calculus,” that is, a method of determining which of a set of possible outcomes would contain the most pleasure for an agent or group of agents. Such a calculus may be possible if pleasure is assumed to be a single feeling or kind of feeling. Pleasures could be measured by calculating the product of their intensity and duration, and then a calculus could be used to add up the total value of the pleasure contained in a given outcome, and then alternative outcomes could be compared in terms of their total values. Jeremy Bentham developed a classic version of the hedonic calculus: To a person considered by himself, the value of a pleasure or pain considered by itself, will be greater or less, according to the four following circumstances: 1. Its intensity. 2. Its duration. 3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness.65
Bentham’s calculus depends on the idea that all instances of pleasure are feelings of a single kind that can be measured in intensity and other quantities according to a universal scale. According to Qualitativism, however, pleasures differ from one another in kind. One might reasonably suppose that it is impossible to compare pleasures differing in kind on a single just actions, or generous if he did not enjoy generous actions, and similarly for the other virtues.” This passage implies that taking pleasure in fine actions is in some sense essential to being good, which is accounted for by the interpretation of X.5 that I propose. 65 Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation, 28.
92 numerical scale. Suppose I am faced with a choice between listening to music or eating a steak. How can I determine which would be more pleasant if the pleasure I get from listening to music is a different kind of thing from the pleasure I get from eating a steak? As I said at the beginning of this chapter, I call the view that some pleasures cannot be compared with respect to their degree of pleasantness ‘Incomparabilism’ and the denial of this view ‘Comparabilism’. The worry quantitative hedonism and hedonistic utilitarianism faces, then, is that Qualitativism may imply Incomparabilism, and Incomparabilism renders a thoroughgoing hedonic calculus impossible. John Stuart Mill famously tried to rescue hedonistic utilitarianism from this worry by devising a non-quantitative version of it, which I’ll call ‘qualitative hedonistic utilitarianism’. He writes: It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others.66 Mill thinks that the pleasure of reading a good book, for instance, is simply a better and more desirable thing to experience than the pleasure of playing darts. An obvious worry with qualitative hedonistic utilitarianism is that it seems that what is being pursued is no longer the maximization of pleasure, but rather the maximization of some other value that pleasures are ranked according to. It might seem that one would need to replace the hedonic calculus with a way of calculating whatever the value is that makes one pleasure better and more desirable than another. F.H. Bradley objected to qualitative hedonistic utilitarianism along these lines: If you are to prefer a higher pleasure to a lower without reference to quantity… [y]ou have no standard to estimate by, no measure to make comparisons with. Given a certain small quantity of higher pleasure in 66
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays, 138.
93 collision with a certain large quantity of lower, how can you decide between them? To work the sum you must reduce the data to the same denomination. You must go to quantity or nothing; you decline to go to quantity and hence you can not get any result. But if you refuse to work the sum, you abandon the greatest amount of pleasure principle.67 Bradley thinks there is a fundamental contradiction in Mill’s style of utilitarianism. Calling a theory “utilitarian” means that it holds that we should aim at maximizing something or other. In order to maximize something, there must be a way of determining which of a set of alternative outcomes would have the maximum quantity of it. Bradley thinks that the only way this is possible is if there is a scale measuring the quantity of some value that all outcomes can be placed on. If one wants to deny that the value is something other than pleasantness, one must say that superiority in quality is reducible to superiority in quantity of pleasantness. Mill’s theory therefore seems to face a dilemma, since it holds that some pleasures are more desirable than others, but denies that there is a quantitative scale on which their desirability can be ranked. He does seem aware of this difficulty, and attempts to explain how alternative outcomes can be compared without reference to a quantitative scale by adopting what I will call ‘Best Judge Comparabilism’. He writes: If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account. (139) 67
F.H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 119.
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I do not think that Best Judge Comparabilism has promise as a way to respond to Bradley’s objection.68 The idea behind it is that if there are two judges, one who has experienced the pleasures of reading and playing darts and the other who has experienced only the pleasure of playing darts, we all ought to defer the judgment of which pleasure is more desirable to the one who has experienced both. This is reasonable enough, but it seems implausible to think that this is what the desirability of pleasure actually consists in. It seems that the preferences of the Best Judge couldn’t just be arbitrary if we are to grant them this kind of normative authority; they must be taken to track some characteristic of the pleasures being judged. Whatever this characteristic turns out to be would seem to be what desirability actually consists in, and the degree of desirability a pleasure has would seem to reduce to the degree to which it has this characteristic or the quantity of it that it has.69 The “Best Judge” test just gives us a way to measure the quantity of a pleasure’s desirability. It seems, then, that Best Judge Comparabilism fails in its aim of offering a way to choose between pleasures on the basis of their desirability as pleasures without collapsing into a quantitative version of Comparabilism. The question, then, is whether one should simply abandon Comparabilism if one thinks that Qualitativism is true. It was not open to
68
N.B., Mill likely derived this view from thinking about Rep. IX, 583a ff., where Plato has Socrates argue that certain pleasures are more pleasant than others on the basis of the fact that experienced judges prefer them. Aristotle briefly rehashes this argument at EE 1235b31 ff. Both Plato and Aristotle treat the preferences of experienced judges as indications that some activities are superior to others pleasantness. Mill, as I go on to discuss in this section of the chapter, does not follow their lead in this respect. He is apparently committed to the idea—suggested by neither Plato nor Aristotle—that degree of pleasantness in some sense consists in or reduces to the preferences of experienced judges. 69 Bradley makes a similar objection, on page 119 of Ethical Studies: “We find higher pleasure means nothing but the pleasure which those who have experienced both it and others do as a fact choose in preference. Higher then, as we saw above, has no meaning at all, unless we go to something outside pleasure, for we may not go to quantity of pleasure.”
95 Mill to do this, since he was trying to construct a theory of hedonistic utilitarianism, which must be able to accommodate Comparabilism. Aristotle, however, did not hold a normative theory that fundamentally requires a commitment to Comparabilism, and so the question remains of whether he was or might have been an Incomparabilist. Incomparabilism is sharply at odds with common intuitions about pleasure. We often think and act in ways that presuppose that two activities that are wildly different in kind can be compared as to their degree of pleasantness. I may, for instance, face a decision between visiting an art museum and playing football. There may, of course, be many sorts of considerations that I may weigh in making my decision, including the value of what I may learn at the museum, the instrumental value of the exercise I will get if I play football, etc. One of these considerations may be the degree of pleasantness I expect that each alternative will have. I may even decide entirely on the basis of this consideration. I may think, for instance, that since it is my one day off that week I should do whatever I would enjoy the most, regardless of any other considerations about the value of the two options. It may be very difficult to make a comparison, given how different the pleasures one is choosing between are, but we still often think that there is a way in which the pleasures can at least in principle be compared. Cases of this sort seem to be so ubiquitous that any Incomparabilist theory faces an uphill battle. Even if it is compatible with our intuitions to think that in some very extreme cases two pleasures are so different that they cannot be compared, there are clearly an abundance of cases where two activities that are different in kind seem to be comparable as to their degree of pleasantness. Given that the principal motivation for Incomparabilism is Qualitativism, it is hard to see how one could construct an Incomparabilist theory that allows
96 comparison in most cases but excludes comparison in very extreme cases. Incomparability should come hand and hand with difference in kind. I do not think that Incomparabilism should be attributed to Aristotle. In addition to the fact that Incomparabilism faces intuitive difficulties, I think there are good textual reasons for thinking that Aristotle was committed to a version of Comparabilism. Given that there is a tension between Comparabilism and Qualitativism, however, it would be uncharitable to attribute both views to him without telling a story about how his theory is equipped to reconcile them. In section 3 of this chapter, I will make the case that we should in fact attribute a version of Comparabilism to Aristotle, and also propose a way of reconciling it with his Qualitativism.
3: Pleasantness as Degree of Perfection I discussed the following passage from NE X.4 at length in Chapter One: Hence for each capacity the best activity is the activity of the subject in the best condition in relation to the best object of the capacity. This activity will be the most perfect and the most pleasant. For every perceptual capacity and every sort of thought and study has its pleasure; the most pleasant activity is the most perfect; and the most perfect is the activity of the subject in good condition in relation to the most excellent object of the capacity. (1174b18-20) In this passage, Aristotle indicates that he recognizes that there is a sense in which some activities are more pleasant than others. This does not imply Comparabilism, since it does not imply that all pleasures can be compared in pleasantness, but it does indicate that Aristotle should not be taken to accept a stronger version of Incomparabilism, according to which no pleasures can be compared in pleasantness. This is not a trivial point. Given that Aristotle does not think that pleasure is a feeling, it is not open to him to give a straightforward analysis of degree of pleasantness in terms of its intensity and duration. He
97 does not explicitly give an alternative analysis, but the passage just quoted provides sufficient motivation for attempting to reconstruct one. In 1174b18-20, quoted above, Aristotle states what it is for an activity to be the most perfect of its kind (i.e., the most perfect way of exercising the relevant capacity), and then states without further explanation or argument that such an activity will also be the most pleasant of its kind. I suggest that we should take Aristotle’s view to be that an activity’s degree of pleasantness consists in its degree of perfection. This interpretation renders the inference in question unproblematic, and moreover fits well with the overall interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of pleasure that I’ve been developing. If pleasure is taken to be the perfection of a perfect activity of awareness, it seems prima facie reasonable to say that an activity that is more perfect is thereby more pleasant. Another important piece of evidence is found in NE I.8: Happiness, then, is best, finest, and most pleasant, and the Delian inscription is wrong to distinguish these things: ‘What is most just is finest; being healthy is most beneficial; but it is most pleasant to win our heart’s desire’. For all three features are found in the best activities, and we say happiness is these activities, or one of them, the best one. (1099a24-31) I take it that the fineness of an activity of awareness corresponds to the fineness of its object. 1174b18-20 makes it clear that one of the conditions that determine an activity’s degree of perfection is its object’s degree of fineness. Taken in conjunction with these two points, the passage just quoted corroborates the interpretation that I’ve suggested. It implies that degree of pleasantness correlates with degree of fineness, and we have seen that degree of perfection also correlates with degree of fineness. The simplest and (it seems to me) most plausible explanation of the correlation between these features of an activity is that an activity’s degree of pleasantness just is its degree of perfection.
98 There are, however, further complications. A passage from X.7, where Aristotle discusses the connection between contemplation (theôria) and happiness (eudaimonia), is relevant: Besides, we think pleasure must be mixed into happiness; and it is agreed that the activity in accord with wisdom is the most pleasant of the activities in accord with virtue. Certainly, philosophy seems to have remarkably pure (kathareiotêti) and firm pleasures, and it is reasonable for those who have knowledge to spend their lives more pleasantly than those who seek it. (1177a22-27) This passage makes it clear that Aristotle thinks that pleasures that differ in kind can be compared in pleasantness. He says here that activity in accord with wisdom, by which he means excellent theoretical contemplation, is the most pleasant of the activities in accord with virtue. Excellent theoretical contemplation is not the same kind of activity as, e.g., activity in accord with the virtue of temperance. The comparison Aristotle makes in this passage between excellent theoretical contemplation and other virtuous activity therefore implies that he thinks that activities that differ in kind can be compared in pleasantness. This does not strictly imply Comparabilism, but it indicates that unless there is some principled reason for him to allow that some activities differing in kind but not others can be compared in pleasantness, he is committed to Comparabilism. I do not think that there is such a reason. I cannot argue directly for this negative claim, but I will attempt to strengthen the case for attributing Comparabilism to Aristotle by elaborating what it means to say that degree of pleasantness consists in degree of perfection and adducing further textual evidence for taking this to be Aristotle’s view. I will first discuss the notion of ‘purity’ introduced in this passage, which I take to be crucial to understanding what it means to say that pleasantness consists in degree of perfection. Once I have done this, I will give an account of the way in which pleasures that differ in kind can be compared in pleasantness on Aristotle’s theory.
99 In NE X.5, Aristotle uses purity as an example of a way that pleasures can differ in kind: Sight differs from touch in purity, as hearing and smell do from taste; hence the pleasures also differ in the same way. So also do the pleasures of thought differ from these [pleasures of sense]; and both sorts have different kinds within them. (1175b36-a3)
I take it that in saying that sight differs from touch in purity, he means to imply that sight is purer than touch. I also take him to be implying that hearing and smell are purer than taste, and that pleasures of thought are purer than pleasures of sense. The overall ranking would place thought first, followed by sight, followed by hearing and smell (probably hearing is ranked above smell), followed by taste, followed by touch. One reason for thinking this is that 1177a22-27, quoted above, implies that the pleasure of theoretical contemplation is among the purest pleasures. Another reason is that this ranking roughly corresponds to the informal ranking of pleasures that Aristotle gives in NE III.10, in the context of discussing temperance. He does not explicitly mention purity in that discussion, but he does imply that the pleasures he ranks higher are more appropriate to human beings as such. Whatever precisely purity is, it is clearly linked with fineness and virtue, and therefore with appropriateness for human beings as such. Francisco Gonzalez has argued that in NE discussion of pleasure, ‘purity’ should be taken to mean degree of formal identity between a sense or faculty of thought and its object. He writes: In saying, however, that one kind of sensation is purer than another, Aristotle is implying that the identity of a sensation with its object allows of some variation. Though the senses of touch and taste do not involve a material identity with their objects, they nevertheless, through the need of physical contact, involve the matter of their objects in a way which is not the case in seeing and hearing. Because taste and touch come into contact with the matter
100 as well as the form of the object, they cannot be identified with the object to the extent that sight can.70 The suggestion which can now be made is that for Aristotle an activity is most pleasurable according, not to the amount of pleasure it possesses, but to the way in which it is pleasurable. Some activities contain pleasure in themselves while in the case of others pleasure, though originating in the activity itself, is directed towards or dependant on something distinct from the activity. To the degree that an activity is its own object it will be pleasurable in itself.71 This is an interesting view, and I think the part of it expressed in the first of these two quotations, where Gonzalez suggests that the purity of a sensation has to do with the degree of assimilation between sense and sense-object, is on the right track. The suggestion made in the second quotation, on the other hand, that when Aristotle speaks of one activity as being more pleasant than another he means that it is less dependant on something distinct from itself, seems incorrect. If this were Aristotle’s meaning in using comparative and superlative forms of the word for pleasant, he would be using these terms in a very non-standard way that he could not possibly expect a reader to decode without explicit clarification. I will revise and expand on Gonzalez’s proposal that the purity of an activity of awareness consists in the degree of assimilation between the capacity being activated and the object it is active in relation to, and then connect this view with the suggestion I have made that degree of pleasantness consists in degree of perfection. First, though, it is crucially important to consider evidence from Plato’s Philebus, which Gonzalez neglects. As I argued in Chapter Two, Aristotle responds to views from the Philebus in both the NE VII and X discussions of pleasure. Plato uses the word ‘pure’ (‘katharos’, related to ‘kathareiotês’) several times in the dialogue. It is very likely that when Aristotle talks about the purity of pleasures in NE X, the notion he has in mind is connected in some way with the 70 71
Francisco Gonzalez, “Aristotle on Pleasure and Perfection,” 155. Ibid., 157.
101 notion of purity found in the Philebus. Plato has Socrates state a general account of purity, using whiteness as an example, and connects this account with the Phileban theory of pleasure: Socrates: Let us take whiteness first, if you have no objection. Protarchus: That is fine with me. Socrates: Now, how can there be purity in the case of whiteness, and what sort of thing is it? Is it the greatest quantity or amount, or is it rather the complete lack of any admixture, that is, where there is not the slightest part of any other kind contained in this color? Protarchus: It will obviously be the perfectly unadulterated color. Socrates: Right. But shall we not also agree that this is the truest and most beautiful of all instances of white, rather than what is greatest in quantity or amount? Protarchus: Certainly. Socrates: So we are perfectly justified if we say that a small portion of pure white is to be regarded as whiter than a larger quantity of an impure whiteness, and at the same time more beautiful and possessed of more truth? Protarchus: Perfectly justified. Socrates: Well, now, we don’t need to run through many more examples to justify our account of pleasure, too, every small and insignificant pleasure that is unadulterated by pain will turn out to be pleasanter, truer, and more beautiful than a greater quantity and amount of the impure kind. (53a-c) ‘Pure’ is used here to mean lack of admixture. This is a non-technical, ordinary usage of the term. Socrates says in this passage that pure pleasures are ones that are not mixed with any pain. I do not think that Aristotle takes up this view of what it is for a pleasure to be pure, since he does not accept the theory of pleasure that underlies it, but this passage from the Philebus is nevertheless very helpful. On the theory of pleasure expressed in the Philebus, pleasure is the perceived restoration of a disruption of one’s natural harmony. In order for one to experience pleasure, one’s natural harmony must be disrupted in some way, so that there is something to be restored. If the disruption is perceptible, it is a pain. Some disruptions, such as forgetting a piece of knowledge, are imperceptible and therefore painless, but others, such as hunger, are perceptible and painful. The pleasure of eating (for
102 sustenance) is, on the Phileban theory of pleasure, the perceived restoration of hunger. In order to experience this pleasure, one must still be hungry to some degree while one is eating; otherwise there is no disruption to be restored. The pleasure of eating is therefore necessarily mixed with the pain of hunger. A pure pleasure is one where the disruption it is conditioned by is painless, while an impure pleasure is one where the disruption is painful. Aristotle does not seem to equate the purity of pleasure with its lack of admixture with pain. He ranks the pleasures of thought above the pleasures of sight in purity, even though the pleasures of sight may, on his theory, be completely free of admixture with pain. I have argued that Aristotle thinks that pleasure is the perfection of a perfect activity. I suggest that when he speaks of the purity of pleasure, he means lack of admixture with imperfection. As I argued in Chapter One, section 1, Aristotle thinks that perfection comes in degrees. The more perfect an activity is, the freer it is from imperfection, and the purer the pleasure that arises in connection with it will be. This suggests a way of making sense of the connection between degree of purity, degree of perfection, and degree of pleasantness. Plato suggests in Philebus 53a-c, quoted above, that a small amount of pure whiteness is whiter than a large amount of impure whiteness, and that a small amount of pure pleasure is more pleasant than a large amount of an impure pleasure. Aristotle may have thought of degree of pleasantness along similar lines. It is necessary to make a further clarification. In NE 1175b36-a3, the passage from X.5 discussed earlier in this section of the chapter, Aristotle uses purity as an example of a way that pleasures differ in kind in accordance with differences in kind of the activities they arise in connection with. Pleasures that are more pure arise in connection with activities that are more pure. A plausible interpretation of what Aristotle thinks the purity of a pleasure
103 consists in should be able to say what the purity of an activity consists in, and be able to explain why and how the degree of purity of a pleasure corresponds to the degree of purity of the activity it arises in connection with. This is a difficult point, but I think the rough outline of what one should say is fairly clear. The most obvious candidate for what the purity of an activity consists in is lack of admixture with potentiality. Although he does not use any term related to ‘pure’ in the context, in Metaphysics Λ Aristotle gives an account of God as activity completely free from potentiality that I take to be relevant. Moreover, he directly connects this account with his account of pleasure. He writes:
But if there is something which is capable of moving things or acting on them, but is not actually doing so, there will not be movement; for that which has a capacity need not exercise it…. Further, even if it acts, this will not be enough, if its substance is potentiality; for there will not be eternal movement; for that which is potentially may possibly not be. There must, then, be such a principle, whose very substance is activity. (1071b12-20) And thought in itself deals with that which is best in the fullest sense. And thought thinks itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought; for it becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with and thinking its objects, so that thought and object of thought are the same. For that which is capable of receiving the object of thought, i.e., the substance, is thought. And it is active when it possesses this object. Therefore the latter rather than the former is the divine element which thought seems to contain, and the act of contemplation is what is most pleasant and best. If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better state this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. (1072b18-26) We see in these passages that if we make the reasonable supposition that Aristotle would describe the activity that is God as pure (indeed the purest of all activities), then Gonzalez’s suggestion about what the purity of an activity consists in is very much on the right track.72
72
The fact that Aristotle considers excellent theoretical contemplation the purest activity available to human beings suggests that he considers the activity that is God to be the purest
104 He suggests that the extent to which an activity of awareness is pure depends on the degree of assimilation between the relevant sense or faculty of thought and its object. These passages from Meta. Λ indicate that this is true, not for precisely the reason Gonzalez suggests, but because the more thoroughgoing such assimilation is, the less admixed with potentiality the resultant activity will be. A sense or faculty of thought is potentially an object of the relevant kind, in the sense that the sense or faculty of thought has the potential to be assimilated to that object. When a sense or faculty of thought is assimilated to an object more fully, this potentiality is more fully activated and so the resultant activity is less admixed with potentiality. These passages from Metaphysics Λ strongly indicate that the conditions under which an activity is more pure are connected with the conditions spelled out in NE X.4 under which an activity is more perfect. In X.4, Aristotle says that an activity is more perfect just in case the capacity being activated is in a better condition, and the object that the capacity is active in relation to is a finer member of the relevant class of objects. The connection between these conditions and the conditions under which an activity is more pure is not straightforward. A fully pure activity—the activity that is God—is not an activation of any capacity at all. What one should say, I take it, is that the goodness of the condition of a capacity consists in the degree to which the capacity is in a condition such that it is ready to be activated in way that fully realizes its nature as the capacity that it is. Aristotle says at Meta. Λ 1072b18-20, quoted above, “And thought in itself deals with that which is best in itself, and that which is thought in the fullest sense with that which is best in the fullest sense.” A capacity for thought or perception is by nature a capacity for apprehending the activity of all, since excellent theoretical contemplation is the closest approximation of the activity that is God that humans can attain. Cf. NE 1177b26-1178a2.
105 best object of the kind that it is a capacity to apprehend, where ‘best’ means finest, most orderly, and most akin to the nature of God. This being the case, a capacity for thought or perception is most fully activated—and the resultant activity is thus least admixed with potentiality—when it is engaged with the best object. An activity’s degree of purity and its degree of perfection thus come hand in hand with each other. An activity is least admixed with potentiality (i.e., most pure) when it involves the fullest possible exercise of the relevant capacity, and a capacity is most fully exercised when it is in the best condition and active in relation to the finest object of the relevant kind (i.e., when it is exercised most perfectly). We can now see why the degree of purity of a pleasure correlates with the degree of purity of the activity it arises in connection with. When an activity is more pure it is more perfect, which entails that the pleasure that arises in connection with it is less admixed with imperfection, and so is more pure. The fact that Aristotle links the purity of an activity with its degree of pleasantness can thus be taken to corroborate the interpretation I suggest, according to which an activity’s degree of pleasantness consists in its degree of perfection. Now I will return to the question of whether Aristotle accepted a version Comparabilism. The passage from Philebus 53a-c, discussed above, is a useful starting point. There Socrates suggests that a small amount of pure white is whiter than a large amount of impure white, and similarly that a small amount of pure pleasure is more pleasant than a large amount of impure pleasure. The suggestion that, for Aristotle, an activity’s degree of pleasantness consists in its degree of perfection can elaborated along similar lines. Comparabilism is the view that any two activities can be compared in pleasantness. Since all activities have a definite degree of perfection, Comparabilism follows from the view that degree of pleasantness consists in degree of perfection. One might object, however, that this
106 view is so distant from ordinary beliefs about what pleasantness consists in—namely, that it has to do with intensity—that it fails to satisfy the intuitions that motivate Comparabilism. It seems that Aristotle’s theory is equipped to answer this objection. His theory, as I’ve reconstructed it, is certainly very distant from ordinary beliefs about what pleasantness is and which activities are most pleasant, but it can satisfy the intuitions that motivate these ordinary beliefs and moreover explain why these beliefs are so widely held even though they are false. Aristotle says in NE VII.14 that many people become attached to certain bodily pleasures because their juxtaposition with pain creates a feeling of intensity, which they mistake for pleasantness. This leads such people to mistakenly believe that these bodily pleasures are more pleasant than non-intense pleasures, such as the pleasure of theoretical study. Immoderate indulgence in bodily pleasures destroys one’s character over time, and puts one in a condition where one is incapable of enjoying the pleasures that a virtuous person enjoys. Intense pleasures are most pleasant for a person in a corrupt condition, and this is true because they arise in connection with the fullest possible activation of such a person’s capacities given the condition they are in. Even for people in a corrupt condition, pleasantness corresponds to degree of perfection.73 Aristotle’s view, I take it, is that the activities that are pleasant for people in a corrupt condition are less perfect and so less pleasant than the pleasures of a virtuous person, even though a person in a corrupt condition, perhaps because of this very condition, may not believe this to be true. The common opinion
73
For a given individual in a given corrupt condition, an activity is more pleasant if it is more perfect in the derivate sense discussed in section 1 of Chapter One. The maximum degree of pleasantness that an activity engaged in by a person in a corrupt condition can attain depends on how corrupt the person’s condition is. A person is more corrupt if the objects their capacities are in a condition to be fully activated by are more shameful (where ‘shameful’ (‘aischron’) is the opposite of ‘fine’ (‘kalon’). The less corrupt a person is, the more perfect the most perfect activity the person can engage in will be.
107 that pleasantness corresponds to intensity can be attributed to widespread excessive attachment to bodily pleasures. Activities can be ranked in pleasantness on an objective scale by degree of purity/perfection. This scale disregards quantities like duration. Any amount of a more pure activity ranks above any amount of a less pure one. This may seem inadequate to explain ordinary cases where one compares pleasures that differ in kind and chooses between them. Isn’t it more tempting to choose an hour of watching horse races over 30 minutes at the museum than to choose 30 minutes of horse races over an hour at the museum? I take it that Aristotle can say two things about such cases. The first is that when considerations like duration come into play, one is no longer choosing purely on the basis of which activity will be more pleasant, but is also weighing practical considerations about, e.g., how to minimize down time. The second is that figuring quantities like duration into choices between pleasures can reflect a misunderstanding of the nature of pleasure and a corruption of one’s character. People may often choose between pleasures on the basis of duration, but this may be based on a systematic mistake and may have the result that in many cases the people in question unwittingly choose a less pleasant activity over a more pleasant one. I take it, then, that Aristotle is committed to a version of Comparabilism. Aristotle’s Comparabilism, as I’ve reconstructed it, is very different from Mill’s Best Judge Comparabilism. Aristotle’s theory holds that pleasantness reduces to a quantifiable feature that activities have in their own right: degree of perfection. This theory may not accommodate a universal hedonic calculus of the sort that Bentham and others thought a theory of pleasure should accommodate, but this is to be expected, given that the utilitarian
108 idea of a hedonic calculus is bound up with the conception of pleasure as a feeling, a conception that Aristotle forcefully, and in my view correctly, rejects.
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