Someone might be wondering: But what about the disparity in how Aristotle and Plato classify key goods such as pleasure and happiness? Doesn't this suggest that their classifications are different?
Let's recap. What is at issue is whether Aristotle's classification of goods into three classes in NE 1.7 was understood by him as based upon, derived from, or in some way a development of Plato's apparently similar classification in Rep. 2. (Why is this important? I'll explain in a later post. For the moment, let's assume that it is.)
The common view is yes; Lear gives plausible arguments that no.
Lear's arguments are of two sorts. Let's call them formal and material. Her formal argument is that, from what Plato says about the classification (sc. has his characters say about it), we can see that the basis or nature of Plato's classification is different from Aristotle's. We looked at this argument in yesterday's post and saw that it was inconclusive.
The material argument is precisely the observation that Plato and Aristotle differ in how they place important goods in the three classes--which suggests that they viewed their classifications differently (rather than differed on how to make use of a classification understood in the same way). So the task today is to consider this material argument.
For the sake of efficiency, not to beg any questions, let's assume for the moment that we are dealing with a single classification, which might roughly be explained as follows:
Class I: goods valuable in their own right (which should be loved for that reason)
Class II: goods valuable in their own right and for what they lead to (which should be loved for both of those reasons)
Class III: goods valuable only for what they lead to (which should be loved only for that reason)
What are the relevant disparities between Plato and Aristotle?
- Plato places what he regards as a low level good (pleasure) in Class I, but Aristotle puts only the highest good in that class (happiness).
- Plato does not place happiness in any class.
- Plato seems to regard Class II goods as the highest: at any rate, Socrates refers to this class as the 'finest' (kalliston) of the three.
1. Aristotle and Plato would apparently agree on what things to place in Class III.
2. Aristotle would presumably agree with Plato that thinking (to phronein), seeing (to horan), and being healthy (to ugiainein) belong in the second class (generally so, but perhaps some kinds of thinking he would not wish to place there). He would presumably also wish to place the virtue of justice there.
Thus, everything hinges on what things to include in Class I, and on the ranking of the classes.
Consider these disparities as 'data', and there are two explanations:
Hypothesis 1 (Lear): Plato and Aristotle differ in how they regard the basis or nature of these classes.
Hypothesis 2 : Aristotle agrees with Plato on the basis or nature of these classes, but he disagrees about which goods should be placed in them.
Which hypothesis explains the data better?
Hypothesis 2 really needs to be given this specific form: The character of Aristotle's argument in NE is precisely what one might expect, if he were taking the classification from Plato, but disputing how goods are to be classified within Class I, and how the classes are to be ranked.
In support of Hypothesis 2, thus recast:
Plato puts happiness nowhere: Aristotle argues at length in 1.7 that happiness, rather, goes in Class I.
Plato regards Class II goods as the 'finest': but Aristotle's almost heavy-handed argument in 1.7.1097a30-34 is that Class I goods, if described with the right qualifications, should be ranked higher.
Plato puts both 'joy' (to chairein) and 'all non-harmful pleasures' (hosai ablabeis) in Class I: Aristotle argues in 10.6 that the latter in fact belong in Class II (they prepare us for more work) and in 10.1-5 that the former belong in Class I (even when that class is correctly ranked as the best).
In sum: Isn't it as good an explanation of the disparities between Plato and Aristotle, then, that Aristotle very much had Plato's division in mind; that he regarded himself as appropriating it; but that he needed to make important adjustments (which he argues for deliberately)?
Of course, someone might now object, "Look, it's a distinction without a difference: that Aristotle ranks the classes differently, and classifies important goods so differently, shows that he views the classification in a very different way. Whether we call this a 'formal' or 'material' difference of viewpoint is irrelevant."
Perhaps... but maybe already the important point has been conceded. (More later.)
5 comments:
I just thought I'd comment briefly on Lear's account of the reasons why Glaucon would be dissatisfied with the defense of justice in Republic I. Here's what Lear says:
"Glaucon claims to be unsatisfied with Socrates’ argument. Why? We might think the problem is that, while Socrates and Thrasymachus had been debating the profitability of justice/injustice, Glaucon wanted to know whether one or the other was valuable in itself. But that doesn’t seem quite right. (a) In Book I Glaucon himself seemed to think the issue was one of the profitability of justice; (b) Glaucon presents his argument as a continuation of Thrasymachus’, as if Thrasymachus’ own position as stated in Book I had not been adequately refuted."
It seems pretty clear to me that (at the beginning of Republic II) Glaucon wants to see justice praised, not only for what it leads to, but also for itself. With respect to whether justice is something to be loved for what it brings, Glaucon thinks that the arguments of Book I are unsatisfying. There are two reasons for this. The first is that none of these arguments starts from an account of what justice IS, an account of its NATURE. (Socrates will remedy this by providing an account of justice's nature in Book IV.) The second is that these arguments rely on false intellectualist assumptions (such as the assumption that justice is a kind of knowledge). (That intellectualism is false will become clear in Book IV.) What Plato provides in the rest of the Republic is a defense of justice as something to be loved for its own sake (Book IV) and something to be loved for the pleasure it brings (Book IX), where the argument for each of these claims is based on an account of justice's nature.
As I see it, this account of Glaucon's dissatisfaction with the arguments of Book I and the way Socrates remedies the problem in the rest of the Republic dovetails rather nicely with Michael's account of the threefold division of goods at the beginning of Book II.
I'd like to respond to some of Gabriel Lear's points, and ask some questions too. I'll do these in separate comments, for ease of reading.
I begin by quoting the same remarks that Sam Rickless had drawn attention to. Lear wrote:
"We might think the problem is that, while Socrates and Thrasymachus had been debating the profitability of justice/injustice, Glaucon wanted to know whether one or the other was valuable in itself. But that doesn’t seem quite right. (a) In Book I Glaucon himself seemed to think the issue was one of the profitability of justice; (b) Glaucon presents his argument as a continuation of Thrasymachus’, as if Thrasymachus’ own position as stated in Book I had not been adequately refuted."
Point (a) does not seem relevant. Socrates concedes at the end of book I that the argument had changed its course (in response to Thrasymachus' claims). We can allow then that Glaucon too changes his concerns from book I to book II.
As regards (b): Thrasymachus argued in book I that justice was the sort of thing that could reasonably be sought only for its profitability, and yet justice wasn't even profitable. Glaucon in book II can be seen as continuing this by pointing out that Socrates had addressed only the second part of this claim. Thrasymachus 'gave up before he had to' because he might have insisted strongly on the first part of it (as Glaucon does).
I think Lear's point that Thrasymachus praises injustice as if it were a virtue is very interesting and helpful.
But it seems mistaken to say:
"Thus, in order to refute Thrasymachus successfully, Socrates needs to show “what power (dunamis) [justice] has itself by itself on its own in the soul” rather than show-casing its rewards in the sense of ulterior results (358b4-7)."
In fact the three closing arguments of book I don't 'show-case the rewards of justice in the sense of ulterior results'.
-Justice itself implies strength, because it involves harmony and unity of elements.
-Justice itself amounts to a kind of knowledge.
-Justice itself enables the soul to rule and therefore live well. (Do we really think the Function Argument shows that virtue is instrumentally productive of happiness?)
But Glaucon might reasonably complain that the language of 'profitability', used by all the interlocutors (following Thrasymachus) to describe these results, left it ambiguous as to whether justice itself led to these things.
Lear asks:
"Why, if a person is going to be happy in the future, is it important that he love these goods now for both reasons?"
I think the future can in this idiom express a hypothetical necessity, or a condition (cp. the interestingly parallel expression at NE 9.9.1170b18-19). It's as in English: "You won't be at peace unless you confirm that" means confirmation is a condition of being at peace.
Lear writes in her second comment:
"I explained above why I think this interpretation fits with Book I. Briefly: everyone in Book I wants to know which of justice and injustice is more profitable, but whereas Thrasymachus claims that tyrannical injustice, by itself, makes a person happy as well as being beneficial for its rewards, Socrates shows only that justice is beneficial for its rewards."
But Thrasymachus claims that injustice makes people smarter and stronger, as well as happier. He's not concerned solely with its relationship to happiness. But, if so, neither should we understand the classification in book II in that way.
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