Ethics Resource Center

Published: September 22, 2008

Guest Column By George L. Procter-Smith, Ph.D.

"Straightening Sticks That Are Bent"

The ancient Greeks, the “pre-Socratics,” were little interested in ethics.  Rather, early Greek philosophers like Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Anaximander and Anaximenes were what we today would call natural scientists.  They were interested in eclipses, earthquakes, what things are made of, and other kinds of natural phenomena.

Beginning with Socrates of Athens (470-399 B.C. E.), however, the Greek philosophical interest began to turn inward toward questions of wisdom (Sophia) and virtue (arête).  Virtue, Socrates thought, had to do with the knowledge of justice and the right way to live.  Socrates’ greatest student, Plato (427-347 B.C. E.), and Plato’s greatest student, Aristotle (384-322 B.C. E.), each elaborated this fundamental idea of Socrates in his own way.
Both Plato and Aristotle wrote prolifically, so in the interest of clarity and brevity I will narrow my focus down to two works: Books 6 and 7 of Plato’s Republic; and Books 1 and 2 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

Plato: The Republic

Do you believe:
-- in the immortality of the soul?
--  that there is an immaterial (spiritual) reality, and that it is more important than material reality?
--  that logic and math are the best ways to arrive at certain truth?
--  that virtue is its own reward?
--  that you should control your feelings with your reason?

If you answered any or all of these questions “yes,” then you are living off Plato’s intellectual legacy to some extent, because these are all ideas that Plato wrestled with in The Republic.

Plato’s ethics depends on his metaphysics, and his metaphysics is called “dualistic” because he thought reality could be divided into two radically different parts: the reality of matter, which is characterized by change or “becoming”; and the reality of Ideas, which is characterized by permanence or “being.”  “Being” is immaterial, and of greater importance than the material, which is constantly changing.

This theory, in turn, depends on Plato’s theory of Ideas.  What is an Idea? An Idea is a mental picture we have of something, such as a chair, for example.  How can you look at a lawn chair, a kitchen chair, a recliner, and a rocking chair and say that they are all “chairs?”  They are all different, yet our minds tell us they are all “chairs.”  How do we know they are all chairs?  Because, Plato says, you have the Idea of a chair.  And he goes on to add that the Idea Chair exists independently of individual chairs.  That is, for Plato Ideas exist independently of the minds that think them.

In Books 6 and 7 of The Republic, Plato turns to the question of who should rule the ideal state, which is a republic.  He argues that just as reason should rule the individual person, so the “lovers of wisdom” (i.e., the philosophers) should rule the ideal state.  This means that the rulers—the philosophers—need to know the Idea of The Good, and to know that they have to be properly educated.

Plato admits that he cannot define The Good directly.  Therefore, he turns to three different analogies for The Good.  In the first analogy (Book 6), he compares The Good to the sun.  “What The Good itself is in the world of thought in relation to the intelligence and things known, the sun is in the visible world, in relation to sight and things seen.”  In the second analogy (Book 6), called the simile of the divided line, Plato compares opinion (which comes from our sensory perceptions, and is therefore inferior) with knowledge (which comes from using our reason and understanding to reflect directly on The Good, and is therefore superior).

In his third analogy (Book 7), the famous “allegory of the cave,” Plato compares the true philosopher to a prisoner who has escaped from a cave (i.e., the material world) and “seen the light” of the Idea world.  It’s a little like coming out of a movie theatre after a matinee. At first the escapee is blinded by the pure light of The Good, but gradually his eyes adjust and he hurries back in to the cave to tell the other prisoners what he has seen.  He tells them that they’re just watching a movie, but he has seen the real (i.e., Idea) world.  The others, still sitting chained in darkness, try to kill him for talking nonsense, and they fail in killing him only because they cannot figure out how to get loose from their chains.

Thus, for Plato, The Good could not be identified with anything in the material world.  Only the philosopher (he who had broken his chains and struggled out of the cave of the material world) could see The Good.  This qualified the philosopher (alone) to govern the ideal state, but it also meant that its citizens would probably try to kill him.  Of course, Plato had witnessed the good citizens of Athens try, convict, and execute his own teacher, Socrates—a messy business which he detailed in The Apology and the Crito.

Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics

Plato thought of The Good as an otherworldly Idea.  Aristotle thought about ethics in a very different way.  His ideas on the subject were written for his 15-year-old son Nicomachus, and although his work has survived through the ages as one of the classics of Western moral philosophy it still has the tenor of a dad talking to his teenage son.

Aristotle’s thought is always teleological, that is, it always points toward the telos, or the finish line of the race.  He thinks that the best way to explain anything is to understand where it’s going.  Why did you get on Delta Flight #615?  Because that was the flight going to Atlanta, and Atlanta was where you wanted to go.  If you had wanted to go to Tokyo, Delta Flight #615 would have been the wrong airplane to get on.

So the key to understanding Aristotle on the subject of ethics is to ask: Where does Aristotle think people are trying to get to in their lives?  And the answer Aristotle gives is one word: eudaimonia (sometimes translated as “happiness,” but with overtones of “flourishing” or “fulfillment”).  Aristotle thinks that your life is just like your flight to Atlanta—it’s a long trip and you won’t know whether you’ve achieved fulfillment in your life or not until you actually land.

Aristotle says that people normally go through three major periods in their moral development.  In the first stage, people prefer pleasure, and define that as happiness.  But this soon becomes boring to humans because pleasure can also be experienced by animals with very small brains. 

Most people move on to the next stage in their search for eudaimonia, and now identify happiness with honor.  They seek careers in business or politics or the military. This gets one closer to eudaimonia, but not all the way there because honor is not within our control.  It is both bestowed and removed by others.  And therefore, the refined and thoughtful person will eventually move on to the third stage, which is meditation and contemplation.  This final stage of moral development will carry us all the way to our deathbed (the telos for us all), where we can finally look back over our entire life and know that we have achieved (or not) eudaimonia.

Aristotle says (Book I) that the thing that most distinguishes happiness in the moral life is that it’s the one thing pursued for its own sake, and not in order to get to something else.  We seek pleasure.  Why?  So we can be happy.  We seek money.  Why?  So we can be happy.  We seek health.  Why?  So we can be happy.  We seek friends. Why?   So we can be happy.  But if we say we seek happiness and ask “why?” the only answer can be “so that we can be happy.”  And therefore, eudaimonia must be the telos—it must be the end point of the moral life.

But, Aristotle says (Book I), we still haven’t said very much about what happiness actually is.  We’ve established that it’s the goal we’re all shooting for, but what actually is happiness?  In order to know this, we have to establish what the function of man is.  A carpenter has a function—to build with wood; a flute player has a function—to play the flute.  And we say that a “good” carpenter builds well with wood, and a “good” flute player plays the flute well.  So, then, if we can establish what the function of man is, then we’ll know when we see somebody doing it well.  And now Aristotle tells us (still Book I) what he thinks the function of man is: “the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational principle.”  In other words, human beings are rational animals.  That’s what sets us apart as a species: this big bulb on the end of our spinal cord, and the enormous brain inside it.  And so a good human being—a happy human being—is a person who is using that big bulb to its full potential.  But, Aristotle adds (still Book I), “for a complete life.  For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day, and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed or happy.”  He continues: “It is natural, then, that we call neither ox nor horse nor any other of the animals happy; for none of them is capable of sharing in such activity.  And for this reason also a boy is not happy; for he is not yet capable of such acts owing to his age; and boys who are called happy are being congratulated by reason of the hopes we have for them.”

All right.  The goal of human life is happiness.  And in order to achieve this happiness we have to reason well over a complete lifetime.  How do we do that?  By following the virtues.

Aristotle says (Book II) that there are two kinds of virtue.  Intellectual virtue can be developed through teaching, but this does not concern us in the moral life.  Moral virtue (ethike) is developed through habit (ethos), and that is what does concern us.

We are born, Aristotle says, with the capacity to do virtuous acts.  But that does not guarantee that we will develop that capacity.  Most of us are also born with the capacity to bench-press 220 pounds, but how many of us actualize that potential?  Aristotle writes (Book II): “The virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well.  For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g., men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”  And he adds: “It [therefore] makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather, all the difference.”

Most of the time, Aristotle continues (Book II), moral virtue involves finding the mean or middle ground between two vices.  For example, with regard to the two vices of fear and overconfidence, the virtuous middle ground would be courage.  The man who is overconfident we call “rash”; the man who gives in to fear, we call “cowardly.”  With regard to money, the virtuous middle ground would be liberality.  The man who takes more than he gives, we call “miserly”; the man who gives more than he takes, we call “prodigal.”  With regard to honor, the virtuous middle ground is “proper pride.”  The man who thinks too highly of himself we call “vain”; the man who thinks too little of himself we call “unduly humble.”  With regard to anger, the virtuous middle ground is good temper.  The man who lets his anger run away with him we call “irascible,” and the man who never lets himself feel angry we call “inirascible.”

Aristotle is careful to point out (Book II) that virtue does not always lie in the middle ground.  There can be no such thing as just the right amount of spite, envy, adultery, theft, or murder.  All these things are bad in and of themselves, so “it is not possible, then, ever to be right with regard to them; one must always be wrong.”

Most of the time, though, most of us will find virtue, and thus the path to happiness, by hitting the mean.  Alas, says Aristotle, that is easy to say, but very hard to do.  “It is,” he says (Book II), “no easy task to be good.  For in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not for everyone but for him who knows; so, too, anyone can get angry—that is easy—or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.”

And since being good, finding and following the virtuous middle ground on our way to happiness is so hard, Aristotle concludes Book II with a little tip for Nicomachus—and for you and me.  “We must,” he says, “consider the things towards which we ourselves also are easily carried away; for some of us tend to one thing, some to another; and this will be recognizable from the pleasure and pain we feel.  We must drag ourselves away to the contrary extreme; for we shall get into the intermediate state by drawing well away from error, as people do in straightening sticks that are bent.”

George L. Procter-Smith holds a Ph.D. in church history from the University of Chicago.  He teaches ethics and philosophy at Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas.

In This Issue

• "Straightening Sticks That Are Bent": Guest Column by George L. Procter-Smith, Ph.D.
• Please Don’t Shrink the Ethics: Column By Patricia J. Harned, Ph.D. President, ERC
• The Policy Report By Paula J. Desio, ERC Chair on Ethics Policy:
  Ethics Programs: Will Prosecutors Be Impressed?
• Book Review: The Difference Makers by Sandra Waddock.