As I teach Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (along with the thought of Epicurus and Epictetus), I’m struck by just how much our ethical discourse has changed. This is attested to by what is absent in these discourses as much as by what is present. What’s so striking in Aristotle, is that the question of ethics is one of eudaimonia, happiness, or human flourishing. How ought we live our lives in order to attain human flourishing or happiness, he asks? Similarly, in the case of the Epicureans and stoics, the question is one of ataraxia, peace of mind, or tranquility. For these thinkers there is a clear telos to ethical thought and action: happiness and tranquility.
Such questions seem thoroughly absent from the ethical thought of the last couple hundred years. Ethics instead seems to become a question of how to determine the rules that should govern behavior and that would allow us to assign praise and blame, a discourse about remaining committed to a particular cause when everything suggests it will fail (Badiou), or a particular encounter with the Other (Levinas). Of these three I find Levinas the most baffling, for while I find his work deeply beautiful, I just don’t see how you can get a robust ethical philosophy out of a contingent encounter that one might or might not have.
In the case of Aristotle and Epicurus, we also see the question of ethics deeply intertwined with the question of the polis. Aristotle opens the Nichomachean Ethics arguing that every science (body of knowledge) aims at a good and that if we aren’t to fall into an infinite regress, there must be a highest science that investigates that good that is valued for its own sake rather than for the sake of something else. In other words, there must be a “science” of happiness. Much to the reader’s surprise, Aristotle declares that this highest science, this science of happiness, is political science. I suspect that Aristotle was presupposing that we are inherently social beings, such that not only are our relations to others a condition for our happiness (he devotes two chapters to friendship), but also if we don’t live in the proper way others will rebound back upon us diminishing our possibilities of human flourishing. In the work of the Epicureans we find a similar preoccupation with our social being. It’s necessary, for example, to the proper sort of community– “The Garden” –to achieve ataraxia, for if we have no control over our social world it will be very difficult to achieve peace of mind. Likewise, there are remarks about the necessity of friendship scattered throughout Epicurus’s writings.
read on!
Now before the critical animal theorists jump all over me, denouncing these points as anthropocentric and having no place for “the animal”, I think it’s worth pointing out that we don’t really know what a polis is. There’s an empirical dimension to the thought of ethical thinkers such as Aristotle and Epicurus, requiring us to have knowledge of both our own being and the being of things such as the social world. Thus, for example, if we can show that a polis is not simply composed of human beings, but includes a variety of other animate and inanimate questions, we’ll have to modify our conceptions of happiness, peace of mind, virtue, and right action accordingly. The rejoinder is similar in the case of Lacan. Lacan can tell us all he wants that happiness is impossible because of the structure of desire. However, this changes nothing with regard to question pertaining to the good and bad life, peace of mind and a troubled mind. Rather, it just means that we have to take this dimension of our being into account. Jonathan Lear is good on these points. Here I think it’s worth recalling that the term “ethos” has etymological relations not only to hexis or habit, but also perhaps oikos or dwelling. In it’s earlier formulations perhaps ethics was a meditation on how best to dwell.
What’s even more striking in these works is the absence of certain sorts of questions as worthy of ethical reflection. Questions of murder, theft, lying, rape, breaking contracts, and so on hardly appear in the works of these sorts of ethical thinkers at all. It seems that it was obvious to these thinkers that these things belong to the bad life and therefore fall outside of ethics. Epicurus, for example, shows more concern about the types of foods we ought to eat, while Aristotle is preoccupied with what sorts of friendships we ought to have.
With the exception of the stoics, the predominant tenor of these sorts of ethical philosophies is a deep awareness and appreciation both of how we are embedded in a broader world and therefore how questions of our good are bound up with questions of how to navigate this world, but also a profound sense of our embodiment. This seems to disappear in ethical thought around the time of Kant– though vestiges of it can still be found in Mill’s unjustly maligned utilitarianism –as if we are no longer thought as embodied and ecologically situated. Ethics gets de-sutured from questions of happiness and flourishing, and becomes incredibly abstract, as if its no longer a question of living amongst our human and nonhuman others. As I say this I’m sure some irritating person will come along and say “what about this contemporary ethical theory and that contemporary ethical theory and that?” However, statistically or in terms of what dominates in popular discourses, I think we clearly see this phenomenon. Why has this happened, I wonder? What shift in the nature of our existence allowed this to take place? Why do we now primarily think of ethics in terms of rules for action and assigning praise and blame, rather than as bound up in questions of flourishing. I can’t help but think that this shift is a symptom of deep alienation, indicating a disappearance of the ecology of the social world, marking a shift to a conception of self as independent of all human and nonhuman others.
Larval Subjects . 
September 16, 2013 at 5:23 pm
Great post. Thanks!
September 16, 2013 at 5:40 pm
This is a brilliant post. Were I to dare to add to it, I would say the seeds for the “deep alienation” you talk about were planted by folks like the ancient Greeks themselves–Aristotle, with his arête, and the stoics with their concentric circles of concern (not unlike Confucius and Mencius)–who at times gave lip service to, but in truth failed to factor-in the ethical significance of an active awareness of human commonalities.
September 16, 2013 at 5:52 pm
“Now before the critical animal theorists jump all over me, denouncing these points as anthropocentric and having no place for “the animal”, I think it’s worth pointing out that we don’t really know what a polis is.”
I think we know that. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis is one of the most popular books in animal studies right now.
But, I am glad you understand the polis outside of an anthropocentric register.
As to the content of your post, I am general agreement. Part of the shift, no doubt, is the fact that the ethical has become divorced from ethos, from habit and habitat. So, therefore, the ethical becomes a question principally of reflection (is this action here or there ethical) rather than one of building a habit of being. There are, of course, contemporary thinkers who share your understanding of ethics (Foucault, for one; Hannah Arendt, for another), but I freely give you that in the type of ethics that is usually understood as ethics (utilitarianism and deontology for Anglo-American philosophy, and a certain reading of Levinas and Derrida for continental philosophy) we see a discourse of ethics closer to what you are critiquing.
September 16, 2013 at 7:10 pm
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September 16, 2013 at 8:22 pm
Scott,
In addition to ideas, I think we should also look at what was taking place socially with these shifts. I suspect that growth in urban population sizes coupled with the rise of capitalism played a key role in these shifts in how we think about ethics. In both cases you get a rise of anonymous socials relations where interpersonal forms of relating become occluded. It seems obvious to Aristotle that you don’t do certain things because it would demolish your place in the polis. This is why, for him, arete is a site of the ethical life. He’s wondering, in part, what would lead others to esteem us as the high regard enhances our chances of flourishing. When I’m introducing arete or virtue in my classes, me and the students first make a list of what would be excellent in our own lives and then what we find excellent in other people. The differences in these lists drives home why virtue or excellence might be a component of a life of Hyman flourishing and how it’s bound up with the polis
September 16, 2013 at 8:33 pm
Excellent point. Thank you.
September 16, 2013 at 9:45 pm
Kant’s Kingdom of Ends could be seen to include a broader sense of fulfillment. I often think that Kant’s ethics are reduced to a simplistic understanding of the Categorical Imperative as a set of rules when the Kingdom is the real basis. Funnily enough, I think it arguable that Kant does this himself, so maybe it’s an expansion on my part, rather than a reduction by others.
September 16, 2013 at 10:12 pm
Aristotle touches on this elsewhere, but the Latin “mores” is very much about praise and blame. It isn’t about rules per se, as Latin rhetoric is generally epideictic – demonstrative in some sense rather than deductive. So, the praise and blame framework is as old as Isocrates. Perhaps one of the real reasons for its revival in the 19th century was the resurgence of interest in the Renaissance (for which praise and blame as ethical / moral discourse was of the highest importance). And then again the Latin-centered Classical education of the British academies, followed as well by the Americans. Just another way of looking at the transitions that you describe.
September 16, 2013 at 10:15 pm
And, you’re quite correct, Aristotle did find human beings to be social animals, or more precisely, zoon politikon. This was very heavily argued back and forth in Renaissance philosophy as well. That’s also when increased attention turned to the “civitas” as the locus of what it meant to be most human (which isn’t a biological category at all). It’s really a very interesting Renaissance debate in ethics and moraes.
September 17, 2013 at 3:00 am
I needn’t remind anyone here that Aristotle etc were never talking about all people, just about male aristocrats who depended on slavery to free them from labor so they could be free to pursue their eudaemonia / ataraxia. More recent ethicists (you mention Badiou and Levinas) obviously can’t operate from that position. But the one thing I want to ask is this: when you talk about Levinas, you describe contact with the other as contingent. I don’t understand that, especially because, as I understand it, the other with whom Levinas is really concerned is God, for whom everyone we meet is more or less just a stand-in.
September 17, 2013 at 3:11 am
John,
My point is that when we think of ethics we think of some rationally articulable model or set of rules. Levinas talks about an experience someone MIGHT or might not have. That’s why it’s not really an ethics and why it’s contingent. Great, you experience the face of the Other. The slave owner didn’t. Does he therefore have anything to contribute about discussions of the justice of slavery or slaughtering animals? Not much that I can see beyond tiresome preaching to the choir.
September 17, 2013 at 3:17 am
At least Hume recognizes that the question is one of how to extend your sympathies beyond those in your village through fictions. With the Levinasians we get a highly dishonest tirade about how we OUGHT to be open to the Other (veiled Kantianism) while being told this is an experience or an encounter (and therefore immune to oughts). Useless fro. An ethical point of view where an important dimension is grounds and persuasion. Great, you see the face of a seal. The trappers don’t. What now. It’s trite from the standpoint of the real issues and questions. How do you GET another person to appreciate the dignity of a seal when they DON’T have this sort of encounter?
September 17, 2013 at 3:23 am
I would like to read more about Levinas (who I hadn’t heard of before). Could you recommend a good, accessible book for me? (I’m an autodidact where philosophy and ethics are concerned. I’m extremely interested in this post and the comments of others.)
September 17, 2013 at 4:25 am
Great observations, Patrick. I wonder why these things suddenly became important in the Rennaissance.
September 17, 2013 at 3:48 pm
I’m just confused how you would label any post-classical ethics as atelic. Surely utilitarianism has a telos — the maximization of utility. Deontology may be a bit tougher, but I would a hazard a guess that decision making based purely on reason would come close to its end. And postmodern ethics is even more obviously based on a telos. Whether it’s the libertarianism of Nozick or the more middle of the road ideas of Sen, there is most assuredly an end to these ethics. No?
September 17, 2013 at 3:52 pm
Curtis,
I’m not sure where I’ve suggested that modern ethics is not relic. I’ve said that happiness and peace of mind are not the tells of much modern ethics. Kant is quite clear on this. These are commands of reason that are unconditional and are to be obeyed even if they cause great personal and social misery.
September 18, 2013 at 5:25 pm
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September 18, 2013 at 8:21 pm
I assumed you thought contemporary ethics were atelic based on the part I’m quoting. Wish it was easier to refer back to the article . . .
“or these thinkers there is a clear telos to ethical thought and action: happiness and tranquility.
Such questions seem thoroughly absent from the ethical thought of the last couple hundred years.”
September 18, 2013 at 9:06 pm
Yes, questions of the good life and happiness seem absent from contemporary ethical thought. That’s not equivalent to claiming there aren’t different teloi of contemporary ethical thought. My point is pretty clear given the context of the post, I think.
September 22, 2013 at 4:23 am
Do you think that the problem of universality plays a role in the phenomenon you’re describing? Aristotle’s ethics is concerned with a community of the initiated or soon-to-be-initialted, and there’s no problem if that community makes use of slaves and so on. But the discourse on ethics from Kant to Badiou is concerned with all of humanity. For historical reasons Aristotle isn’t able to take into account the unfortunate etc.
Another point – I never feel I quite understand when people say that Kant’s ethics don’t take into account happiness or flourishing. Yes, he insists on obedience to the categorical imperative even and especially when it goes against one’s own desires and interests. But it seems obvious to me that he’s implying that there is an ascesis involved in the practice of this ethics resulting in a state of detachment that produces the feelings of love, joy and fulfillment that Christians and Buddhists are always talking about etc.
To combine these two points – isn’t it a question of the difference between paganism and christianity?
September 22, 2013 at 9:05 pm
Hi Hunter,
Things are quite different in Kant. While he indeed argues that happiness is a duty (in cases of debilitating depression, for example), happiness is not the goal or tells of ethics. For him we are obligated to do our duties even if doing so causes misery for us and others. This is radically different than greco-Roman ethical thought.
I’m cautious about referring to ideas to account for these changes (the references to Badiou). Instead I think we should ask what changed societally to give rise to these ideas. One shift, I think, is the rise of capitalism which, as Marx argued, is universalist in scope. With capitalism we also get the decline of small communities common in Greece and Rome. I think this is part of the reason that things like contract keeping and truth telling become ethical issues in the modern world, whereas in antiquity its obvious you tell the truth and keep contracts because people know you and will remember. This is why many of the questions of contemporary ethics are indicative of a communal sickness and alienation, in my view.
September 23, 2013 at 4:23 am
My own prejudice finds me objecting to the phrase “what changed societally to give rise to these ideas.” Where the human ethical paradigm(s) is(are) concerned, I think examining societal change can be a useful window into the dynamic forces (ideas, spawned by the paradigm) that shaped the changes; however, I don’t think the changes you’re referring to– manifestations–predate, or can be said to “give rise” to the paradigm(s) itself (themselves). The paradigm that underpins all of the various ethical theories (including the “ethics” of capitalism, if you lean that direction) is the view that human ethical commitments can be formulated on the basis of “difference awareness” alone. Approbation/disapprobation, meritocracy, “earning” the respect and approbation of others, are all examples.
September 29, 2013 at 9:13 am
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October 1, 2013 at 6:47 am
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October 12, 2013 at 1:54 pm
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October 12, 2013 at 1:55 pm
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October 12, 2013 at 5:36 pm
“Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment of the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:35-40
A humanist translation of the “Great Commandment” might go like this: “Love good. And love good for others as you love it for yourself. All other rules derive from these two.”
Although the lawyer in the story was asking about ethics. Jesus explained morality.
The reason for ethics is morality.
Ethics are about rules. There are many kinds of rule systems, including customs, manners, principles, ethics, rights and law. An ethical person tries to do what he feels he ought to do as defined by one or more rule systems.
Morality is about good, that which improves our well-being and the well-being of others. A moral person seeks good for others as well as for himself.
The point of Jesus’s answer to the lawyer was that ethics serve morality. We judge rules and laws by how well they reduce harm and improve good for ourselves and others.
The goal of Morality is “the best possible good for everyone”. The goal of Ethics is the best rules. The criteria for judging all laws, rules, and rights is how well they improve good (or reduce harm) for everyone
October 12, 2013 at 6:09 pm
The problem is that reference to Jesus necessarily leads us to an authoritarian framework because of how his claims are grounded. Unlike the philosopher that grounds claims in publicly available reasons, Jesus’s claims are treated as true because of his divinity. He could say something completely nuts, and he often does, and the believer would treat it as something true. Given that what he says here isn’t particularly new, and the horrific, genocidal, repressive, murderous history of dominant/mainstream Christianity, why not go with a figure that argues through publicly available reason rather than revelation?
October 12, 2013 at 8:13 pm
Actually, that quote escapes the authoritarian framework of the OT, effectively opening it up to moral reasoning. That’s what was happening in the New Testament. The kingdom of Good was opened up to everyone, not just the Jews, Paul was able to dismiss circumcision, and all rules were placed on the table of review by moral judgment rather than commandment, Jesus was actually quoting something from Deuteronomy, I think.
In any case, it is a moral insight that rules are adaptable rather than eternal and fixed.
October 12, 2013 at 8:36 pm
Marvin,
Untrue. The authoritarianism arises from the reasoning the believer appeals to to establish the truth of what Jesus is saying: that he is god and therefore ANYTHING he says is true. This is a priori authoritarian. Only where ethical truths are grounded on reason and experience do we escape this patriarchal, authoritarian STRUCTURE. This is why any ethics based on theistic theology, no matter how seemingly benign, is intrinsically authoritarian and conservative. The only way around this lies in arguing that Jesus is just an ordinary man, had no divinity, performed no miracles, and was just another philosopher. However then one wonders why anyone would appeal to such poorly written works with such a dark history when far better works that say similar things in a better grounded way can be found in Plato, the stoics, the epicureans, etc.
October 12, 2013 at 8:41 pm
In short, it’s the appeal to divinity that’s the problem, not the content. Additionally, as every Christian conservative will tell you, Jesus came to fulfill the old testament law, not erase it. Since we’re dealing with interpretations that can’t be decided, there’s no reason to treat your reading as any more valid than theirs as there’s no rational decision making procedure that would decide between them. Indeed, I think the conservative likely has the more accurate reading. As Reza Aslan points out, the love your neighbor bit referred to fellow Jews alone and it’s wishful thinking/fantasy to think it extended to gentiles.
October 12, 2013 at 10:19 pm
As a Humanist, I view Jesus also as a humanist, not as a god. And as a Unitarian Universalist, I am open to wisdom from many sources, so long as I can confirm that wisdom in moral reality.
October 12, 2013 at 10:23 pm
“Jesus came to fulfill the old testament law, not erase it”
I’d say neither. He came to explain how law is to be judged.
What are your thoughts on how a law is to be judged as good or bad law?