Greg Malivuk
Philosophy 361
Section 004
Second Paper Assignment
(Aristotle vs. Mill)
A
significant portion of the ethics of both Aristotle and Mill concerns what sort
of life it is best for a person to live.
In Mill’s view, the good life consists in seeking pleasure and freedom
from pain as ends in themselves. For “pleasure,
and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all
desirable things…are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves,
or as means to the promotion of pleasure or the prevention of pain” (Utilitarianism II. 2). In Aristotle’s view, the good life consists
in the excellent or “good and noble performance” of man’s function, which is
“an activity of the soul which follows or implies a rational principle” (
Mill
defines happiness as “pleasure, and the absence of pain” (Util. II. 2). So certainly a
life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain is a life with
happiness as its goal. From his
reasoning that “the general happiness is desirable,” Mill concludes that this
is the only proof “it is possible to require that happiness is a good” (Util. IV. 3). In drawing this conclusion, he equates being
desirable with being good, and it is a short distance from here to concluding
that happiness, being the only thing
desirable as an end in itself, is the chief or primary good. Aristotle defines the chief good as the “end
of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being
desired for the sake of this” (N.E.
I. 2.1). He points out that there is
general agreement that this good is happiness, and that living and faring well
are identified with being happy (
If happiness is the only thing desired for its own sake, and pigs are generally quite happy to spend all their time eating and sleeping, then what’s to say this shouldn’t be the goal of human life? Mill replies to this objection by saying a pig’s happiness should not be the goal of human life “precisely because a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conception of happiness” (Util. II. 4). Implicit in this seemingly unproblematic statement, and made explicit later in the same paragraph, is the claim that some kinds of pleasures are intrinsically better than others. In particular, the best pleasures are those that employ the “higher faculties” to the greatest degree. Mill justifies the qualitative nature of his hedonism by appealing to a “sense of dignity” human beings possess in some “proportion to their higher faculties.” This dignity is “so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be…an object of desire to them” (Util. II. 6). Aristotle, too, sees that pleasures “differ in kind; for those derived from noble sources are different from those derived from base sources, and one cannot get the pleasure of the just man without being just” (N.E. X. 3.5).
Mill and Aristotle additionally seem to have a kind of ideal judgement theory about how we can know which pleasures are properly desired over others. In chapter 5 of book X of the Ethics, Aristotle discusses the differences between what animals find pleasurable and what people find to be so, and he goes on to state that pleasures can also differ considerably from one person to the next. Some people like things that others despise, and some find painful things that others associate with a great deal of pleasure. When such disagreement exists, “that which appears to the good man is thought to be really so” (paragraph 5). At the end of the chapter, Aristotle makes the stronger statement that “the pleasures that perfect” the activities of “the perfect and supremely happy man” “will be said in the strict sense to be pleasures proper to man, and the rest will be so in a secondary and fractional way.” In Utilitarianism, Mill states that, “on a question of which is the best worth having of two pleasures,…the judgement of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final” (Util. II. 8).
A third obvious parallel between Mill and Aristotle is in their treatment of virtue as something desirable for its own sake. After bringing up the potential objection that utilitarianism denies that people desire virtue, Mill counters that, on the contrary, utilitarian moralists would hold “that the mind is…not in a state conformable to Utility…unless it does love virtue…as a thing desirable in itself” (Util. IV. 5). Rather than being something separate from happiness, and as such something not desired for its own sake but only instrumentally, he asserts that virtue is actually a part of the end of happiness. While it may at first be desired as a means to attaining happiness, virtue comes to be desired for its own sake, and in doing so, is “desired as part of happiness” (IV. 6). In a sense, then, Mill sees virtue as originally not desired as an end, but becoming part of happiness through the habit of desiring it as a means. Aristotle argues explicitly that not “by nature…do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit” (N.E. II.1.1). Just as for Mill virtue can be a thing desirable in itself, and thus good for its own sake, Aristotle states that virtue “will be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well” (II 6.1). Doing his own work well, as described above, means fulfilling his function well, which is by definition an essential part of happiness, the chief good.
Alongside each of these three general similarities between the accounts Mill and Aristotle give of the good human life, there are significant underlying differences. While Mill sees happiness as the end to which human activity should strive, Aristotle understands it as the activity in which human beings should engage. Pleasure and pain are both states of mind, and so happiness, which for Mill is the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain, must also be a state of mind. Happiness consists in “moments of [rapture], in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures,…and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing” (Util. II 12). Thus happiness for Mill appears to be a state a person can be in, rather than something in which a person engages. Aristotle, on the other hand, says quite plainly that happiness “is not a state; for if it were it might belong to someone who was asleep throughout his life.” (Mill would likely think that a sleeping person could be happy, though not as happy as someone employing his higher faculties.) Rather, “happiness must be placed among those [activities] desirable in themselves” (N.E. X. 6.1).
As an activity or way of life, happiness is thus independent to some degree from mental states of pleasure or pain. Aristotle goes on to say that “even a slave can enjoy the bodily pleasures no less than the best man; but no one assigns to a slave a share in happiness” (X. 6.3). In sharp distinction to Mill, Aristotle later goes so far as stating, “neither is pleasure the good nor is all pleasure desirable” (N.E. X. 3.6). But for Mill, taking pleasure in something and desiring it are equivalent:
Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable,…two different modes of naming the same psychological fact: that to think of an object as desirable, and to think of it as pleasant, are one and the same thing; and that to desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility. (Util. IV. 10)
Mill additionally believes that it is precisely in virtue of the pleasure it brings (and the pain it avoids) that we should engage in such things as virtuous activities. For Aristotle, though, pleasure is a consequence or side effect of a good and virtuous life, rather than the reason it is considered the good life. “Pleasure completes the activities” that make up life, at which “all men aim” (N.E. X. 4.5). But the reason we ought to “aim at life” is because living a life characterized by the excellent use of our distinctively human faculties is the function or purpose of a good person, not because such a life brings pleasure. (In the same paragraph he does ask whether people “choose life for the sake of pleasure,” rather than “pleasure for the sake of life,” but given his discussion elsewhere it seems clear that Aristotle isn’t really suggesting that pleasure is the ultimate goal at which we ought to aim.)
A final particular difference, which perhaps most clearly illustrates the underlying metaphysical disagreement between Mill and Aristotle, is in the details of each philosopher’s account of some pleasures being intrinsically higher or better than others. Characteristic of his overall empirical outlook, Mill argues that the superiority of one kind of pleasure over another actually consists in its being preferred by people who have knowledge of both kinds. “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure” (Util. II. 5). It is not that through the preference of knowledgeable judges we can know which pleasure is better, but rather that their preference is actually what makes it the better pleasure. In keeping with his own teleological view, on the other hand, Aristotle thinks some pleasures are better than others because they are more characteristic of the “good and noble performance” of our distinctively human function. For Mill, we might say it just happens that pleasures involving the higher faculties are preferred by knowledgeable judges, and are thus better. But for Aristotle, these pleasures are better because they are more in accordance with “activity of soul exhibiting excellence”. The baser pleasures available even to animals are intrinsically worse (for human beings) than nobler pleasures not because certain people prefer the nobler ones, but because they are not distinctly human, and therefore not involved with best fulfilling the function of human beings. When Aristotle says the pleasures that perfect a happy man “will be said in the strict sense to be pleasures proper to man” (N.E. X. 5.5), he may mean something merely epistemological. By looking at what pleasures a perfect and happy man prefers, we can perhaps come to know which pleasures are “proper”. He may alternatively, or additionally, mean that a person who excellently exercises distinctive human faculties, such as a supremely happy man, is one whose pleasures are intrinsically better for human beings than the pleasures of someone who doesn’t fulfill the function of a human being as well. In this case, the statement becomes less like an ideal judgement theory and more a conclusion that follows analytically from the meaning of the terms, “supremely happy man” and “proper pleasures”.
As a matter of fact, all three main differences discussed above (different reasons for describing some pleasures as better than others, pleasurable as desirable versus pleasure as a consequence or side effect of virtue, and happiness as a state of mind versus an activity) can be explained by the fundamental difference in the metaphysics of Mill and Aristotle. Mill believes differences in the qualities of pleasures consist in differences of the preferences of knowledgeable people, because for his empirical view, the only thing differences in the desirability of pleasures could consist in is differences in what is actually desired. Aristotle believes kinds of pleasures are different because the extent to which they involve distinctively human faculties, and thus the extent to which they fulfill the unique function of human beings, is different. And for his teleological view, the only thing that could explain such differences in the value of pleasures is a difference in how the pleasures relate to function and purpose.
Mill believes pleasure and the absence of pain can be the only intrinsically desirable thing because (he thinks) it is the only thing people actually do intrinsically desire, and for an empiricist, there doesn’t appear to be any other way to account for desirability. Similarly, Mill sees the chief good, happiness, as a particular state of mind, because pleasure and being free of pain are states of mind, pleasure and being free of pain are the only things we intrinsically desire, and so it is this state of mind that is intrinsically desirable and thus good for its own sake. Aristotle seems to agree that intrinsic desirability corresponds to being intrinsically good, but due to his teleological metaphysics, he believes that the only thing intrinsically good is excellently fulfilling one’s purpose. Because pleasure is something animals can have, while human beings have as their purpose something distinctly human, human good cannot consist in merely achieving pleasure (or avoiding pain, as this is also something animals can do). Similarly, Aristotle sees the chief good, which for him is still happiness, as an activity rather than a state of being, because fulfilling your purpose is something you do, not some state that you’re in.
Thus it looks as if the primary differences, or at least the few discussed here, between Mill’s and Aristotle’s accounts of the good life for human beings can be explained by means of their differing metaphysical views. A promising topic for further inquiry, then, would be to ask whether there is any way to reconcile an empirical metaphysics with Aristotelian metaphysics. As teleology has fallen largely out of fashion, the direction of any such reconciliation would likely have to account for views like Aristotle’s without appealing to some innate purpose or function human beings have. Perhaps through an evolutionary account of function, for instance, we could say that the function of an organism is to survive and reproduce within its particular ecological niche. While it is made clear in Aristotle’s work that human beings’ function cannot be simply to survive and reproduce, this being something all life seeks to do, our particular ecological niche is uniquely human. We are the only organisms, for instance, that live in social groups large enough and complex enough to practically require certain individuals to have knowledge of sociology and political science for those social groups to survive. Our social systems also allow for forms of reproduction other than in the strictly biological sense, which is not an opportunity afforded to any other species. More generally, the niche we now inhabit generally compels us to use our higher faculties in order to survive and “reproduce” (in the sense of spreading ideas as well as genes). Therefore, it could legitimately be said that our function, as human beings, is to exercise these distinctively human faculties to the best of our ability. Once we can be said to have a function, it is a comparatively small leap to say that the most valuable thing we can do is fulfill that function as well as possible. From here, Aristotle’s ethical views follow almost in their entirety.
Sorry if this last paragraph
seems somewhat superfluous. I just
couldn’t leave unchallenged Darwall’s apparently cursory dismissal of teleology
as at least a currently tenable viewpoint in Philosophical Ethics.