Levels of Argument

This marvelous comparative study of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to a single point of comparison—namely, the question whether ethics rests on metaphysics and, if so, whether the proper study of ethics requires understanding its metaphysical basis.Scott writes, “It is striking that, in their different ways, both Plato and Aristotle base their practical philosophies on claims about human psychology, our place in nature, and, more broadly still, the nature of reality. So, when engaging in practical philosophy in this way, do they require a rigorous and systematic investigation into metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology? Or does it suffice to rely on a less precise grasp of our underlying assumptions in these areas?” (2).The answer he defends is (a) that in the Republic Plato presents a shorter route to ethical truth (bypassing the metaphysics and epistemology of the central books), while insisting that a more rigorous and precise longer route, grounded in the world of Forms and especially in the Form of the Good, is needed; (b) but that, according to Aristotle, although it is possible to ground ethics and politics on metaphysical principles pertaining to soul, form, and nature, it is inappropriate to do so, because of the practical nature of ethics and politics. For Plato but not for Aristotle, the longer route—passing through metaphysics in order to arrive at ethical understanding—is best.To reach this conclusion, Scott takes the reader through some of the most fundamental interpretive questions about the methodology of the Republic and the Nicomachean Ethics. This is familiar territory, already explored by many scholars. It is a great merit of Scott's book that it sheds much new light on both works by bringing them into relation to each other. Although the interpretation he offers is controversial, it is supported by arguments constructed with great care and subtlety and expressed with admirable clarity. The reader is made aware of alternative readings defended by other scholars, but the book is not burdened by detail and is accessible to nonspecialists.Scott holds that the main outline of the Republic's defense of justice is contained in books 2 through 4. It goes as follows: the three parts of the soul of a just person are in perfect harmony. In such individuals, reason recognizes what is in their best interest, and their emotions and appetites are in complete accord with their rational decisions. They have no need to take advantage of others (what Plato calls pleonexia), for their well-being is constituted by each part of their soul doing its own job—not in domination over others or physical pleasure.This somewhat indeterminate picture of the psychology of the just person becomes more determinate in books 8 and 9, where the distinction between necessary and unnecessary appetites is drawn and put to use. A noteworthy feature of this argument is that although the epistemology and other-worldly metaphysics of the Republic are expounded in the interval between its initial presentation (in books 3 and 4) and its elaboration (in books 8 and 9), that material plays no essential role in securing the conclusion that the just person is far happier than the unjust person. Or, to be more precise, the ontology of the Forms is invoked in only one brief argument in book 9—the one that purports to show that “lower” pleasures are not fully real (583b–88a). The three other arguments found in book 9 stand on their own: they are elaborations on the psychology of book 4 and bypass the metaphysics defended in books 5 through 7.Scott does not mean to say that for Plato there is little to be gained from the metaphysics of the Forms for the project of understanding the value of justice. Plato makes it quite clear to his readers that there is much more to be learned about how we should live than is made explicit in the Republic. Because the Form of the Good is the ultimate explanation for the value of the virtues, a full understanding of why one should be just must flow from a hard-won insight into the nature of that highest Form. But what Scott insists upon is that the nature of the Good does not play a role in any of the arguments that are presented in the Republic.Aristotle, as Scott reads him, differs in precisely this respect from Plato. There is, for Aristotle, nothing to be gained in ethical understanding (or, as Aristotle might put it, in “practical truth”) by undertaking a full-scale inquiry into the nature of the soul, or the nature of being and substance. In the well-known words of the Nicomachean Ethics, “Our discussion would be adequate if we attained a level of clarity appropriate to the underlying subject matter. Precision should not be sought in all subjects alike” (1094b11–12, Scott's translation, 124). Of course, Aristotle should not be taken to mean that one must never inquire into the nature of the soul, or the distinction between activities and states, or other topics of first philosophy. Rather, the point is that one would in that case not be enhancing one's understanding of the subject matter of the Ethics—which is practical, not theoretical.In a brief concluding chapter, Scott asks what explains this difference between our two authors. Why does Plato think that as a practical matter we ought ideally to ground our valuation of ethical virtue in the nature of reality, whereas Aristotle views such a project as the abandonment of practical inquiry in favor of theoretical activity? Scott replies that Aristotle, unlike Plato, had “confidence in the reliability of (considered) human judgment” (214). Plato, in other words, is more moved by skeptical doubts than Aristotle. Representing Plato, he writes, “How are we to know that the assumptions we take for granted . . . are true? How can we defend ourselves from skeptical attack? Surely the only way is to attempt what Plato recommends in the Republic—to go back as far as we can, i.e. to bedrock principles. . . . The quest for precision is not to be characterized as an intellectually indulgent interest in the truth per se, but as something ultimately practical” (214).Why did Aristotle not also think in these terms? Scott's answer, as I would put it, is that well-trained ethical agents already have all the warrant they need for assuming that their ethical starting points are correct. That is, they already have enough for practical purposes.Scott does not press the issue dividing Plato and Aristotle beyond this point. But there seems to be an inherent instability in the view he attributes to Aristotle. According to Scott's Aristotle, ethical agents should have some degree of justification for the actions that they undertake and for the general conduct of their lives—but there is also a higher degree of justification that they do not need. The problem is this: if it is important, as a practical matter, not only to engage in a correct form of behavior but to understand why it is best to act that way, then why is it not worthwhile, as a practical matter, to grasp, as fully as one can, the metaphysical principles that the conduct of one's life rests upon—even when one has no reason to doubt that one's decisions are correct? If further reasoning could raise the level of warrant for living as one does, on what basis can one say that one already has reason enough? The idea that it is of practical value to have some reason, but no longer of practical value to have full reason, might appeal to those for whom living in accordance with reason is just one value to be weighed against many. But Aristotle cannot accept this idea. For him—as Scott would surely agree—the more fully a life accords with reason, the better a life it is.Scott's most controversial claim about the Republic is that the material in the central books plays only a minor role in its defense of justice. Here is what I believe is problematic about this interpretation: (a) Plato's project is to compare the paradigm of a just person with the paradigm of an unjust person, in terms of their well-being. (b) Plato holds that complete justice requires wisdom, and that it is only philosophers in the strict sense (lovers of otherworldly Forms) who are completely just. From these two premises, it follows that Plato's project involves comparing the soul of the philosopher and the soul of a tyrant. And this simply cannot be done without the central books of the Republic, because that is where Plato's portrait of the philosopher is found. So, Plato is inviting his readers to ask: who are these philosophers, and what is it about them that makes their lives so worthwhile, whether they live in the ideal city or not, and whether they are tortured on the rack or not? Surely one of the essential features of these intellectuals is that they are lovers of Forms. And once we have reached this conclusion, it is not far-fetched to take Plato to be saying that dwelling among the Forms is precisely what makes the life of a paradigmatically just person so worthwhile.One aspect of Aristotle's methodology that receives close attention from Scott is contained in his “race course analogy.” The familiar passage reads (in Scott's translation): “But we should not forget that there is a difference between arguments from starting points and arguments to them. For Plato, too, was right when he used to puzzle about this and ask whether the journey was from starting points or to them, just as on a race course one can ask whether the journey goes from the judges to the turning points or back again” (1095a30–b1).Scott argues that “almost all of the NE is concerned with just one of the journeys described in the race course analogy. The path towards principles is essentially a matter of specifying the goal and its component parts, and most of the NE is exhausted on this project” (173). But what of the return journey, the one that takes us from principles (“the goal and its component parts”) back to where we began? Scott proposes that the “downward explanatory movement implied by the race course analogy” (177) is to be found in the Politics. “We started with a good upbringing, inculcated by habits . . . , and we shall end up discussing them: the final item on the list of things to be done at the end of X.9 is to reflect on the habits appropriate to the best state” (177).An alternative that I prefer is to take the “downward explanatory movement” to consist, to a large extent, in all of the deliberations of the ethical agent that proceed from a conception of eudaimonia as the excellent activity of reason to concrete conclusions about how to act here and now. This is perhaps what Aristotle has in mind when he says (10.9 1179a18–19) that “the truth in practical matters must be judged from deeds and from life” (ek tôn ergôn kai tou biou; my translation). We test a theory of happiness by its applicability to concrete circumstances.There is much more in Scott's book than I have mentioned—illuminating discussions of the Line and the Cave, and of Aristotle's “endoxic method,” for example. But it should be clear from my remarks that this is a book that scholars and students of Plato and Aristotle cannot afford to ignore

Argument (complex analysis) · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Political science · Politics · Soul · The Republic · Chemistry · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy

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