Michael of Ephesus: On Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 10 with Themistius: On Virtue

James Wilberding, Julia Trompeter, Alberto Rigolio, James Wilberding, Julia Trompeter, Alberto Rigolio

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781350170919
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350085091
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

The two texts translated in this volume of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series both compare the happiness of the practical life, which is subject to the hazards of fortune, with the happiness of the life of philosophical contemplation, which is subject to fewer needs.

The first is Michael of Ephesus' 12th-century commentary on Book 10 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, written (alongside his commentaries on Books 5 and 9) to fill gaps in the Neoplatonists' commentaries from the 6th century. He recognizes that lives of practicality and philosophy may be combined, and gives his own account of the superiority of the contemplative.

The second is Themistius' text On Virtue, written in the 4th century AD. He was an important teacher and commentator on Aristotle, an orator and leading civil servant in Constantinople. His philosophical oration is here argued to be written in support of the Emperor Julian's insistence against the misuse of free speech by a Cynic Heraclius, who had satirised him. Julian had previously criticised Themistius but here he combines his political and philosophical roles in seeking to mend relations with his former pupil.

Michael of Ephesus

On Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics 10

Translation

Michael of Ephesus on Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics 10

529,1 [Michael of Ephesus] on book 10 (K) of the same Ethics.¹

The present book, which is the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics and customarily labelled by the Peripatetics with [the Greek letter] kappa, is the final book of this particular treatise. For the inspired Aristotle completed the 5 present philosophical project in ten books. In this book he expounds who the true human being is and what the life (zôê) is that is fitting to him, namely that it is the way of life in accordance with intellect, which could also be called happiness in the strictest sense. For the happy man is two-fold:² There is both the political man, who stands in need of goods deriving from chance, too, if his activity is to be unimpeded,³ and the man who devotes himself especially to the contemplation of the real Beings.⁴ But [Aristotle] has already said a great deal 10 about the happy political man,⁵ and in the present book [he discusses] the contemplative man. Now given that political happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue over a complete life with pleasure or not without pleasure, as we have learned,⁶ what should we suppose about the happiness connected to contemplation? Is it the case that some pleasure accompanies this intellectual life and our stretching upwards⁷ towards the things that 15 are always the same and unchanging,⁸ or is it full of agitation and disturbance and filled with unpleasantness? It is simply not permitted to think that the life in accordance with intellect is unpleasant. Therefore, it is with pleasure or not without pleasure. For if pleasure accompanies our noble practical actions, this is much more the case when it comes to the best of the activities, namely the intellect’s occupying itself with the intelligible, and the pleasure that follows upon this activity will also be nobler to whatever extent that 20 contemplation is itself more valuable than practical action. Since, then, this activity of intellect is even with pleasure – and those who have been engaged in this kind of activity know what sort of pleasure this is, as Plotinus says⁹ – pleasure, what it is and what sort of thing it is,¹⁰ must necessarily be examined beforehand, both for this reason and for the other reasons that Aristotle is going to introduce, and then we must go through the present [statements].

530,1 1172a19 What comes next after these things is perhaps to discuss pleasure.

Either it is due to philosophical caution that Aristotle said ‘perhaps’, or it is because he is showing [the contingency of the topic’s relevance]: if, on the one hand, pleasure is a part of virtue, in the same way as non-rationality is a part of horse, then one does not ‘perhaps’ discuss pleasure, rather one must necessarily discuss it; for it is necessary for those who want a correct understanding of what exactly the whole is to know the parts 5 of which the whole is composed; if, on the other hand, [pleasure] is not a part but, as it were, a kind of symptom and shadow¹¹ that happen to supervene on the most noble activities, then one should say ‘perhaps’ about [discussing] pleasure. Why ‘perhaps’? Because it is possible to come to understand the things that such symptoms accompany even apart from what happens to supervene [on them]. For it is possible to know a three-day fever’s nature 10 even without the symptoms that accompany it (vomiting bile, perspiration, etc.), and it is possible to know the substance of happiness apart from knowing what pleasure is, if pleasure is not a part of happiness but one of the accidents that belong to it.

‘For [pleasure] seems most of all to be properly connected to our kind’ (1172a19–20). Through these words it appears that it was due to caution that Aristotle put down the word ‘perhaps’. For what he should have said is: ‘After these things it is 15 necessary [to discuss] pleasure’. For Aristotle was wary of the masses’ contempt [for pleasure],¹² and on account of this caution he put down ‘perhaps’ instead of ‘necessarily’. That it is necessary for the one who is discussing the virtues – both those of the non-rational part of the soul and those of the rational part – to speak about pleasure is clear to those who are paying attention to what is being said.¹³ For if [pleasure] is proper to our nature and we all 20 choose it and pursue it because it is proper, then it is no matter of ‘perhaps’; rather, it is necessary for us to know what exactly this is that is properly connected to our kind and is most proper to us in the sense that it is pursued and loved by us more than the other things that are properly connected to us. And thanks to this proper connection to and love of pleasure we hasten to educate our young by ‘steering [them] by pleasure and pain’ (1172a20–1), and ‘steering’ here means the same as 25 ‘setting a course and navigating’. For just as ships are preserved by being turned around by means of their tillers towards their harbours and in this way set on the right course, so too are the young [preserved] in the virtues as if in a harbour by the means of pleasure. For getting them habituated to experience pleasure in what they should enjoy and to experience pain if they do not do what they should do is navigating them to harbour, that is, to virtue.¹⁴ Just as 30 enjoying and being pained by things one shouldn’t is the road to vice, Aristotle says that ‘enjoying the things one should is most important to the virtue of character’ (1172a21–2), and by ‘virtue of character’ he means virtue itself, just as if he had said: ‘Enjoying the things one should and fleeing the things one should appear to contribute the most towards the acquisition of virtue of character’. And this has been shown earlier in the treatise.¹⁵

The statement ‘For these things extend throughout the whole life’ (1172a23) is 35 equivalent to ‘These things, that is pleasure and pain, are coextensive with our life’. For it is not the case that we experience pleasure and pain in our childhood, let’s say, while in the other stages of life we are in a state of quiet, living out our lives without pain and without pleasure. Surely not this! Rather, as long as we are in the 531,1 ‘perforated pot’,¹⁶ viz. the body, we partake in pleasure and pain, and it is necessary to examine what they are and not to skip over contemplating these things.

‘For these things extend throughout the whole life, having a pull and power towards virtue’ (1172a23–4).¹⁷ The expression ‘having power’ gives us the meaning of the expression 5 ‘having a pull’. For the noblest of the pleasures, as well as the pains associated with not performing noble practical actions, these have the force to pull and to impel the life and way of life that leads to virtue and happiness. And if this is so, then we must know which of the pleasant and painful things turn out to contribute to virtue and which are impediments to it, and we must not irrationally hasten to 10 everything pleasant and flee everything painful, as happens nowadays when men go after pleasant things and flee painful things and thereby act without any discrimination.

1172a27 Especially as they are the subject of great dissent.

Aristotle says that it is necessary to consider pleasure both for the reasons mentioned and especially because of the dissenting arguments that arrive at contrary conclusions about 15 it. For Eudoxus thought that pleasure is the same as the Good.¹⁸ For he posited [pleasure] as a formal principle and cause of all the goods in the same manner that those who champion the Forms [posit] the Living Thing Itself [as the formal principle and cause] of living things, Being Itself for beings, Human Being Itself for human beings, and Beauty Itself for beautiful things, yet others have maintained that pleasure is, on the contrary, most base. And those who maintain that pleasure is the same as the 20 good have asserted that it is such because they have been convinced by certain arguments, and the following are some of the arguments in question.

Everything seeks pleasure, and what everything seeks is good; therefore, pleasure is good. [Here is the same argument] again: What all things seek and aim at for its own sake and not for the sake of something else is good, and [everything]¹⁹ aims at pleasure itself for its own sake; therefore, pleasure is good. For one chooses wealth for the sake of something else, e.g. as an instrument to engage in noble activities 25 without impediment,²⁰ but one also chooses surgery, cauterization and consuming medicine for the sake of health, and walls and a house for the sake of protection and shelter, but one chooses pleasure for its own sake. Therefore, pleasure is an end of the most final variety, and the end of all ends and the most final of these is the Good. Therefore, pleasure is the Good. There are many other arguments that plausibly establish that pleasure is the same as 30 the Good Itself, and Aristotle will set out these arguments below.

By contrast, those who maintain that pleasure is most base have maintained this without having been convinced by plausible arguments. Rather, it is because they have seen the masses sinking into pleasure and neglecting the most noble [activities] and because they wish to lead the masses away from the unchecked charge and advance (phora) into pleasure that they make pleasure appear to be one of the most base things, even if it is not most base. 35 For it is necessary, they maintained, to lead bad men away from pleasure to its contrary, just as it is necessary to lead the over-bold towards cowardice and the avaricious to 532,1 refusing all gains and all of the others who exceed the mean and the harmonius measure. For in this way [the bad men] would reach the mean, that is, the harmonius measure. For when lovers of pleasure are led towards a total abstention from enjoyment they should reach the mean, which is to enjoy and take pleasure in the things one should; and when the over-bold are drawn towards cowardice they should 5 reach the mean, viz. courage, and the avaricious similarly will reach justice. But it would be impossible for anyone to lead the lover of pleasure away from pleasure or the avaricious away from gain without making pleasure or gain or over-boldness appear as a thing most ba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Conventions
• Michael of Ephesus: On Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Textual Emendations
• Translation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• English-Greek Glossary
• Greek-English Index
• Subject Index
• Themistius: On Virtue
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Textual Emendations
• Translation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• English-Syriac-Greek Glossary
• Syriac-English Index
• Subject Index
• Copyright