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Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics VIII.9, 1160a14–30
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
This difficult and evidently corrupt text of Aristotle has given rise to a variety of differing readings among the commentators. I shall propose a new and conservative emendation of the text, which, I believe, resolves all of the difficulties. But it is helpful first to take stock of those difficulties, in order to see what is required of a solution.
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References
1 See his ‘Aristotelia, III’, Journal of Philology, 17 (1885), 69–71.Google Scholar
2 Bywater marks a lacuna.
3 The right-hand equivalent does not in fact occur in the text, though something like it is implied.
4 Cp. Pol. 1260a24.
5 Cp. EN 1141a13.
6 Op. cit., 70–1; cf. also his apparatus criticus of the OCT EN, ad loc.
7 Stewart, J. A., Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (Oxford, 1892), ad loc.Google Scholar
8 Burnet, J., The Ethics of Aristotle, (London, 1900), ad loc.Google Scholar
9 Dirlmeier, F., Aristoteles: Nikomachische Ethik (Darmstadt, 1969), 526.Google Scholar
10 Wilson, J. Cook, ‘On Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII, xiv.2 and xii.2’, Classical Review 16 (1902), 23–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He says, of 1160a14ff: ‘There is another place of great difficulty in N. Eth. Bk. VIII.ix where a coherent context is produced by leaving out a passage,’ p. 28.
11 Gauthier, R. A. and Jolif, J. Y., L'Éthiqe à Nicomaque (Louvain, 1970), 698.Google Scholar
12 Michelet, C. L., ed., Aristotelis Ethicorum Nicomacheorum libri decem (Berlin, 1829, 2nd ed. 1848) ad loc.Google Scholar
13 Ostwald, M., trans. Nicomachean Ethics (New York, 1962), 232.Google Scholar
14 Grant, A., The Ethics of Aristotle Illustrated with Essays and Notes, 4th edition revised (London, 1885), ad loc.Google Scholar
15 Fritzsche, A. T. H., ed. Aριστοτλες. Περ ϕιλας. Aristotelis Ethicorum Nicomacheorum liber octavus et nonus (Giessen, 1847), ad loc.Google Scholar
16 Price, A. W., Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1989), 195nGoogle Scholar: ‘I would prefer to follow a proposal that D. J. Allan pencilled into his text: that we bracket, presumably as a gloss, thusiâs in 23 to hêdonês in 25.’ Price has indicated in correspondence that he has since come to see this suggestion as implausible.
17 Cf. Burnet's remark ad loc.
18 The artificial character of this ranking is conceded. Nevertheless, it is useful to order the suggestions and to have a rough sense of how these suggestions ‘save the phenomena’ to a greater or lesser degree.
19 This is the only difficulty in Bywater's view which is avoided by Burnet's suggestion that CD be omitted. Dirlmeier's view is no better off. If, with Dirlmeier, we place CD within parentheses, then the reference of πâσαι δ᾽ αὑται becomes indeterminate. Presumably it should refer back to A, but in that case B becomes essentially a dislocation, and we have Bywater's opinion in essence.
20 See note 3 above.
21 The phrase, ‘the men are (or have come about) for the sake of sacrifice and fellowship,’ if proposed without qualification, would naturally be read as equivalent to its reduplicative form, viz. ‘the men qua men are (or have come about) for the sake of sacrifice and fellowship’, which is absurd. It would not be absurd to claim, with a qualification, that ᾑ κοινωνο the men are (or have come about) θυσας ἕνεκα κα συνουσας, but nothing like this is in the text, and it would not be suggested by οὑτοι.
22 Grant and Fritzsche's view has additional difficulties. It is odd to place D but not C in parentheses, since D gives the reason for C and thus should have the same degree of salience. Furthermore, it is awkward to read E—as would be required—as depending upon C: if E were to follow directly upon B, then the participles of E might possibly be taken to refer back to an earlier and implied κοινωνο, but this becomes implausible if πασαι δ՚ αὑται intervenes.
23 After examining some 446 occurrences of μοως δ κα in genuine works of Aristotle, it seems to me that four usages of that phrase can be distinguished. It is used: (i) as an expository connective, to lead the reader into a discussion of a new point which has some (perhaps slight) connection to what has preceded (cf. e.g. Met. 1085b27, Meteor. 349b2); (ii) to introduce a case which corresponds by some scheme of classification to the case or cases just considered (cf. e.g. EN 1106b23, 1115b10, 1155b23; Poet. 1451a29); (iii) to introduce a conclusion which is drawn on the basis of an analogy (cf. e.g. EN 1104a16, Pol. 1326b2, De An. 406a25); and (iv) to conclude a list of examples, perhaps introduced by οἱον, which illustrate a general principle. This last usage divides into two: (a) where no actual final example is given to conclude the list, but rather a general phrase such as π των ἄλλων is used to indicate broadly that other cases admit to similar treatment (cf. e.g. EN 1159b29, 1160a2); and (b) where a final example is provided, but it is not explained or elaborated as were the preceding examples (cf. e.g. EN 1113a28, EE 1221b23, Pol. 1255b22, 1296b30, Top. 106a26, 107a8, De Gen. An. 768a21). EN 1160a18 seems to be an instance of (iv.b).
24 See Mikalson, J. D., ‘Religion in the Attic Demes’, AJP 98 (1977), 424–35.Google Scholar
25 The various magistracies of a deme included only one with a religious character: stewards secretaries, recorders, accountants, assessors, estimators, advocates, heralds, and finally, sacristans. See Osborne, R., ‘The Demos and its Divisions in Classical Athens’, in Murray, O. and Price, S., edd. The Greek City: From Homer to Alexander (Oxford, 1990), 270.Google Scholar
26 The remark of Christiana Sourvinou-Inwood, that ‘The polis anchored, legitimated, and mediated all religious activity’, applies in particular to demes and tribes. Cf. her essay, ‘What is Polis Religion?’ in Murray and Price, p. 297. But this would not be true, in the same sense, of θασος or ἔρανος: cf. Osborne, op. cit., 272–3.
27 That some of these groups even had a subversive character is pointed out by Osborne, op. cit., 277.
28 A full stop is to be placed after a23, βον.
29 That the political community aims at a complete and comprehensive good is of course argued for at length in Pol. I, cp. esp. 1251b1–8, 1252b28–1253a1, 1253a19–29. The principle in premise (4) appears to be a τπος.
30 I have not been able to find any principle with the exact form of (4), but some close analogues may be found at Top. 114a14–16, 147a25–8, 150a14–18, 153b36–154a3.
31 κοινωνα may of course be rendered by both ‘association’ and ‘community’.
32 A clear but brief example in EN is his explanations of the origin of money, 1133a19–20. Etiologies in Aristotle are typically introduced by ὅθεν; he seems fond of revealing the purpose of proverbs and sayings in this manner, e.g. 1155a34.
33 There can be no doubt that Aristotle is concerned about the apparently conventional character of θασοι and ἔρανοι, and that he therefore wishes to show that these too are somehow rooted in nature. This point can be made vivid by developing the analogy with sleep. Consider a world in which artificial lighting has become so widespread that the natural distinction between day and evening no longer holds sway, and people sleep whenever they wish, with some perhaps taking only brief naps scattered throughout the day. In such a society the purpose of sleep would be less apparent, and some might even argue that it was solely a diversion or a pleasant distraction. One might argue against this misapprehension in two steps, first, by claiming that all periods of sleep (even naps), are to be treated as a uniform class, and second, by arguing that the character of a member of this class may be discerned by looking to the ‘most ancient way of sleeping’, viz. sleeping after sunset, when people needed rest and there was the occasion for it.
34 Burnet cites Pol. 1278b23ff. in his commentary on EN 1160a11–12 and remarks: ‘We see from this that τ συμϕρον includes τ εὐ ζην as well as τ ζην.’
35 George A. Kennedy explains 1.6 in this way: ‘Since deliberative rhetoric aims at what is beneficial and since the beneficial is “good”, a speaker needs to grasp the topics of the good…’. See Aristotle On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse (New York, 1991), 16.Google Scholar
36 Kennedy (ibid.) gives Rhet. 1.7 the heading ‘How to Argue that Something Is a Greater Good.’
37 It is an interesting question, why Aristotle considers it necessary to count pleasure as a good in EN VIII.4. I discuss a possible reason for this in Aristotle's Theory of Friendship (Harvard diss., 1988), 90–2Google Scholar; cf. also my ‘Friendship and the Comparison of Goods’, Phronesis 27 (1992), 129.Google Scholar
38 Price acknowledges that his attempt to apply the three-fold scheme of EN VIII.2–4 to political or civic friendship is a project of reconstruction: ‘What makes civic friendship an elusive topic in Aristotle is that the Politics, which alone spells out an adequately generous view of a city's goals, mentions it (at 4.11.1295b23–4) without ever attempting even to characterize it; the interpreter has to proceed, unsatisfactorily, by applying to the concept of the city in the Politics the concepts of friendship in the Ethics. Hence my reconstruction of civic friendship now will in part be more speculative than any of my earlier treatments of friendship in the Ethics' (Price, op. cit., 29 n. 21). What Price says about the Politics in relation to the Ethics might with justice also be said about EN VIII.9–12 in relation to 2–4.
39 I excluded Judaic and ecclesiastical writers, for whom θυσας might bear a very different sense, and also sources past 4th C. The proportion is similar for both B.c. and A.d. sources: 13 of 27 sources dated B.c. use the middle/passive deponent form. Examples from near-contemporary and contemporary sources would be: ποιεîσθαι τς θυσας, Anaximenes, Ars rhet. 2.3.8; τῳ θ. πεποιησθαι, Demosthenes, De. Cor. 86.5; θ. ποιεσθαι, Herodotus, 1.132.16; θ. ποισασθαι, Isocrates, orat. 6.31.10; θ. ποιουμνους, Ibid., 96.3; and θ. ποιεîσθαι, Lysias, In Nicomachum, 18.6.
40 Again, Judaic and ecclesiastical sources were omitted. Unfortunately, there were in this case only 3 B.c. sources (all using the middle/passive deponent).
41 I should like to thank Anthony Price, Jeffrey Wills, Paul Plass, and an anonymous reader for helpful comments on earlier drafts. In preparing this paper, I have made extensive use of the TLG on CD-ROM with the Pandora search program.