Living without Why
Meister Eckhart’s Critique of the
Medieval Concept of Will
J O H N M . CO N N O L LY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Connolly, John M.
Living without why : Meister Eckhart’s critique of the medieval concept of will / John M. Connolly. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–935978–3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Eckhart, Meister, –1327. 2. Will—History—To 1500. I. Title.
B765.E34C67 2014 233’.7—dc23
2013043048
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
to
four great teachers of history and philosophy who opened the minds of many
to the beauty, the excitement, and the lasting importance
of medieval thought:
W. Norris Clarke, S.J. Robert J. O’Connell, S.J.
Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan Ernst Konrad Specht
Hæte der mensche niht mȇ ze tuonne mit gote, dan daz er dankbære ist, ez wære genuoc.
vii
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1. The Will as “Rational Appetite” 5
2. Aristotle’s Teleological Eudaimonism 17
3. Augustine’s Christian Conception of Will 42
4. Aquinas on Happiness and the Will 86
5. Meister Eckhart, Living on Two Levels 129
6. Meister Eckhart, Living without Will 168
7. Living without Why, Conclusion 206
Bibliography 219
ix
These are heady days for scholars and lay readers interested in the thought of Meister Eckhart. Since the 700th anniversary of his birth in 1960 there has been an upswell of interest in his writings, and these have become ever more available through the efforts of (mainly German) scholars and able translators. But during my years of university study in the 1960s, Eckhart was still a decidedly marginal and esoteric figure, even (perhaps especially) in Catholic circles. Ewert Cousins, who taught me theology at Fordham University, mentioned him with some ad-miration, but we were never introduced to his writings.
For me that introduction had to wait until around 1980, when I was living in Germany with my family. My wife, herself German and an interfaith minister, gave me a copy of Josef Quint’s very useful one-volume edition of Eckhart’s German sermons and treatises. But my initial attempts to befriend these writings hit a road block on the very first page, where the early Talks of Instruction begin with high praise of obedience: “Oh no,” I thought, “another Catholic disciplinar-ian!” A colossal misunderstanding on my part, no doubt, but the book went promptly onto the shelf.
Fortunately it did not stay there too long. By the later 1980s I was reading the German sermons with great interest. Ironically, the most fascinating idea for me—Eckhart’s advice to “live without why (or will)”—is itself intimately con-nected to his decidedly original notion of obedience. Indeed, the second
para-graph of the Talks links the two in these words: “Whenever a man in obedience
conceptions of the good life and certain Christian ideals of selflessness and ser-vice. Was this clash what Eckhart was talking about?
Other themes in Eckhart’s work fascinated me too. One, of course, was de-tachment (abegescheidenheit), which in the Eckhart lexicon is a synonym for obe-dience. I had become interested in Buddhism in the 1980s and was intrigued to learn that Japanese Buddhist philosophers such as Keiji Nishitani found deep affinities to Buddhism in Eckhart’s thought. On a practical level, as well, Eckhar-tian detachment became important to me as spiritual sustenance during the chal-lenging decade I spent during the 1990s in the administration at Smith College. My personal admiration for the fourteenth-century philosopher, theologian, and administrator of his Dominican order grew during this period, as did my interest in his striking hermeneutical methods in his sermons. This led to a first publication on Eckhart as a biblical interpreter.
When I returned to the Smith philosophy faculty in 2002, I was determined to devote my research efforts to the Meister’s work, and at the top of the agenda would be an investigation of his admonition to live without why. But I was by then advanced in my career, very late for an entrant into the complex and dy-namic field of medieval philosophy and theology. My earlier work had been de-voted to contemporary issues: the philosophy of human action, philosophical hermeneutics, and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Nonetheless I was greatly aided by two fortunate circumstances: first, that my targeted aspect of Eckhart’s thought—his ideas on how we should live—dovetailed nicely with my previous philosophical research; and second, that I found a number of colleagues in the profession who greatly aided my fledgling attempts to build on what I had learned earlier of medieval thought. Tobias Hoffmann of the Catholic Univer-sity was an enormous aid along these lines, and through him I became acquainted with a number of other helpful colleagues, including Theo Kobusch at the Uni-versity of Bonn and other German members of the crucially important Meister-Eckhart-Gesellschaft (the British Meister Eckhart Society has also been a bless-ing). But I owe a still greater debt to the dean of American Eckhart scholars, Bernard McGinn of the University of Chicago. His advice, friendship, and en-couragement have played a major role in my ability to produce this book.
in this book. In addition, she has helped me revise the manuscript. To her I owe the greatest debt.
Smith College, a truly nurturing institution of learning, was extraordi-narily generous in providing research support for this project. Many former students helped me at various points to clarify my thinking and proof my texts. These include Claire Serafin, Lilith Dornhuber deBellesiles, Rosemary Gerstner, Maria-Fátima Santos, Caitlin Liss, Erin Caitlin Desetti, and espe-cially Sofia Walker. Finally I am in debt to the anonymous reviewers for
Oxford University Press and for the journal Faith and Philosophy for helpful
criticisms of my work on the topics dealt with here.
If this book can in any way contribute to the recent renaissance of interest in Eckhart’s thought, my efforts will have been richly rewarded. But then again, as Eckhart taught, work properly undertaken—i.e., without why—is its own reward.
xiii
Eckhart’s works were long scattered, surviving piecemeal in various archives, and some in one collection from the early fourteenth century, the Paradisus anime in-telligentis (which also contained works by other contemporaries). Eckhart’s sur-viving writings are available in a variety of forms today. For scholarly purposes, such as in this book, the standard (“critical”) edition is that produced since 1936 under the aegis of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft:
Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke (Stuttgart/Berlin: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1936–).
Ten (of the eleven foreseen) volumes have been published, five each for the Latin (LW) and the Middle High German (DW) writings. Texts are cited here by volume, section number (where applicable), page number, and line number;
so, for instance, In Ioh. n.226, LW 3:189, 8–12, refers to the Commentary on
John, section 226, in volume 3 of the Latin writings, page 189, lines 8 to 12.
Eckhart’s various treatises and sermons have also been numbered by the edi-tors, and also have numbered paragraphs. Following this convention, the Latin sermons (Sermones, all in LW 4) will be given as, e.g., ‘S. XXV’, and the
para-graphs or sections will be indicated by ‘n.’ or ‘nn.’, thus: “S. XXV, n.264, LW
4:230, 3–4” for Sermo XXV, section number 264, in volume 4 of the Latin works,
page 230, lines 3 and 4. The Middle High German sermons (Predigten) are
ren-dered thus: Pr. 6 (DW 1:102, 4–5) stands for German sermon 6, in volume 1 of
Latin Works
In Eccli. Sermones et Lectiones super Ecclesiastici ch. 24:23–31 (LW
2:229–300), Sermons and Lectures on Ecclesiasticus ch. 24: 23–31
In Ex. Expositio Libri Exodi (LW 2:1–227), Commentary on the Book of Exodus
In Gen.I Expositio Libri Genesis (LW 1:185–444), Commentary on the Book ofGenesis
In Gen.II Liber Parabolarum Genesis (LW 1:447–702), Book of the Para-bles ofGenesis
In Ioh. Expositio sancti Evangelii secundum Iohannem (LW 3), Commen-tary onJohn
In Sap. Expositio Libri Sapientiae (LW 2:303–643), Commentary on the Book ofWisdom
Prol.gen. Prologus generalis in Opus tripartitum (LW 1:129–65), General Prologue to the Tripartite Work
Prol.op.expos. Prologus in Opus expositionum (LW 1:183–84), Prologue to the Work ofCommentaries
Prol. op. prop. Prologus in Opus propositionum (LW 1:166–82), Prologue to the Work ofPropositions
Qu. Par. Quaetiones Parisienses (LW 1/2:37–83), Parisian Questions
Sermo die Sermo die beati Augustini Parisius habitus (LW 5:89–99), Pari-sianSermon on the Feast of St. Augustine
German Works
BgT Daz buoch der goetlichen troestunge (DW 5:1–105), Book of Divine Consolation
RdU Die rede der underscheidunge (DW 5:137–376), Talks of Instruction
Translations
Many of the Latin translations in this volume are mine. However, where a pub-lished English version is available, I have generally used it. Most of Eckhart’s Middle High German works have been translated into English by M. O’C. Walshe on the basis of the critical edition, and I have generally used the Walshe translations. Originally in three volumes, these are now happily collected into a single version, which is the one cited in this book. But those with access only to the three-volume version can find the sermons I have cited (using their numbers from the official, German critical edition, which Walshe calls “Quint” or “Q”) by consulting the concordance in his third volume.
Essential Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, tr. and introd. by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., and Ber-nard McGinn (New York: Paulist Press, 1981)
Teacher Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, ed. Bernard McGinn with the collaboration of Frank Tobin and Elvira Borgstadt (New York: Paulist Press, 1986)
Largier Meister Eckhart Werke, 2 vols., ed. and comm. Niklaus Largier (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 1993)
Lectura LECTURA ECKHARDI: Predigten Meister Eckharts von Fachgeleh-rten gelesen und gedeutet, ed. Georg Steer and Loris Sturlese, 3 vols. (Berlin/Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1998, 2003, 2009)
Parisian Parisian Questions and Prologues, ed. and trans. Armand Maurer, C.S.B. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1974
Walshe The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, tr. and ed. Mau-rice O’C. Walshe, rev. Bernard McGinn (New York: Crossroad Publ. Co., 2009)
Other Works cited
Aristotle
The Greek texts of Aristotle used in this book are from the online Perseus Digital Library.
The English versions are all taken from The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed.
Jonathan Barnes, two vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, 1994).
CAT Categories
Met. Metaphysics NE NicomacheanEthics
Augustine
The Latin texts of Augustine used in this volume are, unless otherwise noted, from the online S. Aurelii Augustini opera omnia. A number of the translations, as
noted below, are from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 4, ed.
Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publ. Co., 1887), hereafter
Nicene. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www. newadvent.org/fathers/1401.htm.
Ad Simp. De diversis questionibus ad Simplicianum, To Simplician—On Vari-ous Questions. Translation, John H. S. Burleigh, Augustine: Earlier Writings, Volume VI of the Library of Christian Classics (Phila-delphia: The Westminster Press, 1953)
Contra duas Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorum, Against Two Letters of the Pela-gians. Translation, Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis,
re-vised by Benjamin B. Warfield. In Nicene.
Conf. Confessiones, Confessions. Translation, Maria Boulding, O.S.B.,
Saint Augustine: The Confessions (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997)
DCD De civitate Dei, City of God. Translation, Marcus Dods (New York: Modern Library, 1950)
DDC De doctrina christiana, On Christian Doctrine. Translation, James Shaw, Dover Philosophical Classics (Mineola NY: Dover Publish-ing, 2009)
DLA De libero arbitrio, On Free Choice of the Will. Translation, Thomas Williams, Augustine: On Free Choice of the Will (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publ. Co., 1993)
De mor. De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus manichaeorum, On the Life-Style of the Catholic Church. Translation, Richard Stothert. In
Nicene.
De Spir. De spiritu et litera, On the Spirit and the Letter. Translation, Peter
Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis. In Nicene.
De Trin. De Trinitate, On the Holy Trinity. Translation, Arthur West Haddan. In Nicene.
Gen. litt. De Genesi ad litteram, Literal Meaning of Genesis. Translation, John Hammond Taylor (New York: Newman Press, 1982)
Translation, D. L. Mosher (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univer-sity of America Press, 1982/2002).
Retr. Retractationes, Reconsiderations
Church Fathers
PG Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne, 161 vols. (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1857–66)
Thomas Aquinas
The Latin texts of St. Thomas used in this volume are from the online Corpus
Thomisticum. Some of the translations are my own.
DVir. Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus, On the Virtues DVer. Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, On Truth
DReg. De Regimine Principorum, On the Government of Rulers. Transla-tion, James M. Blythe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
QDA Quaestiones disputatae de anima, Disputed Questions on the Soul SCG Summa contra gentiles, Contra Gentiles, Translation, Vernon
Bourke (New York: Hanover House, 1955–57, online edition http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles.htm)
SENT Scriptum super Sententiis, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
SLE Sententia libri ethicorum, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Translation, C.J. Litzinger, O.P. (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993.)
1
Introduction
In the spring of 1329 Pope John XXII, the second (and longest reigning: 1316–1334) of the Avignon popes, issued a bull condemning twenty-eight propositions attributed to the German Dominican philosopher and theologian Meister Eckhart von Hochheim. Among the censured propositions were a sub-stantial number expressing Eckhart’s views on how we should live, including this one based on one of his German sermons:
The eighth article [of the bull]. Those who seek nothing, neither honor nor profit nor inwardness nor holiness nor reward nor heaven, but who have renounced all, including what is their own—in such persons is
God honored.1
The pope’s point of view might well seem justified: did Eckhart really want to
imply in this passage that God is not honored by those who seek “holiness,”
“reward,” or “heaven”? Was he, in a back-handed way, condemning those who failed to renounce “all, including what is their own,” a point of special sensitiv-ity at the splendid papal court?2 What we certainly have in this eighth article is
the Pope’s emphatic rejection of a teaching found in many of Eckhart’s works,
1Octavus articulus. Qui non intendunt res nec honores nec utilitarem nec devotionem internam nec
sanctitatem nec premium nec regnum celorum, sed omnibus hiis renuntiaverunt, etiam quod suum est, in illis hominibus honoratur Deus. (Emphasis in the translation added. In agro dominico, LW V:596–600, here 598). The Latin text of In agro dominico is also available at this web address: http://www.eck-hart.de/ (under Texte). An English version is in Edmund Colledge, O.S.A, and Bernard McGinn,
Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981).
2 This particular condemned phrase perhaps suggested the highly charged position on “Apostolic
i.e., that we should “live without why” (or “without will”).3 The suggestion of
goallessness as an ideal seems at first glance bewildering, the more so in that Eck-hart was himself a highly motivated and successful academic and administrator. Furthermore, he was working in a tradition of Christian ethics and spirituality that, as we will see, was premised on a pervasive teleology, the very opposite of goallessness. In the context of late medieval ethics “why” implies a specific kind of teleological or goal-oriented approach4 inherited from classical moral
philos-ophy and brilliantly welded—by Thomas Aquinas and others in the thirteenth century—into a monumental edifice that located ethics within a structure of the-ology, metaphysics, psychthe-ology, and political theory.
What may have made Eckhart seem the more dangerous was that he was not some wild-eyed outsider, nor was he basing his views on unheard-of teachings from alien or long-rejected traditions. Instead he was himself a learned scholar, deeply acquainted with Aristotle, the most teleological of thinkers, and a close reader of Augustine and Aquinas; he was commenting on the same Chris-tian scriptures as they, all the while citing them as authorities. The perceived danger may have been that these central sources of Christian doctrine—the scriptures, Augustine, Thomas, and among the philosophers Aristotle and the Neoplatonists—could be interpreted to yield conclusions so uncongenial to the worried church authorities. Indeed, the fact that Eckhart came to what are at first glance such radical and unusual conclusions should spark the curiosity not only of those interested in the history of Western moral philosophy, but also of anyone who thinks that an ethic that has detachment as its central concept cannot have been conceived in Christian medieval Europe.
The papal bull was meant to put an end not only to the influence of Eckhart, but in particular to a trial against him, begun in Cologne in 1326 by the local and powerful archbishop, that had dragged on for three years. The bull’s focus was primarily theological (though questions of ecclesiastical and political power were certainly also involved), but it is interesting to find among the indicted teachings several propositions attributed to Eckhart that continue to be debated in ethics and the philosophy of human action today:
The sixteenth article. God does not properly command an exte-rior act.
The seventeenth article. The exterior act is not properly good or divine, and God does not produce it or give birth to it in the proper sense.
3 E.g., “Now whoever dwells in the goodness of his nature, dwells in God’s love; but love is
with-out why.” [Wer nu� wonet in der güete sîner natu�re, der wonet in gotes minne, und diu minne enhȃt kein warumbe] (Pr. 28, DW 2:59, 6–7; Walshe, 129).
4 In particular, a teleological eudaimonism, an ethic whose point is so to live as to secure one’s
The eighteenth article. Let us bring forth the fruit not of exterior acts, which do not make us good, but of interior acts, which the Father who abides in us makes and produces.
The nineteenth article. God loves souls, not the exterior work.5
Eckhart was not denying the goodness of external acts altogether, but he stressed instead the importance of the attitude or motivation of the agent. Here he was following Aristotle (and anticipating Kant), and his teaching—which obviously aroused the Inquisitors’ ire—is, as we will see, closely connected to his coun-sel to “live without why (or will).” It represents a particular position in the age-old controversy over the role of “works” in our quest to live the good life (or find salvation), which came to be one of the principal points of contention in the Reformation, and which echoes still in the disputes between Kantians and consequentialists.
As central as these last—and similar—condemned articles are for this study, Eckhart’s continuing notoriety (and in some quarters, popularity) rests more on the immediately succeeding one:
The twentieth article. That the good man is the Only-Begotten Son of God.6
This seemingly audacious claim, like most others made by Eckhart (including those concerning the will), is not really understandable outside the context of
what one modern philosopher has called his “extraordinary metaphysic.”7 Given
its peculiarity and difficulty, it is not surprising that Eckhart has been either
5Sextusdecimus articulus. Deus proprie non precipit actum exteriorem. Decimusseptimus articulus.
Actus exterior non est proprie bonus nec divinus, nec operatur ipsum Deus proprie nec parit. Decimusocta-vus articulus. Afferamus fructum actuum non exteriorum, qui nos bonos non faciunt, sed actuum interio-rum, quos pater in nobis manens facit et operatur. Decimusnonus articulus. Deus animas amat, non opus extra. (LW 5:598–99)
6Vicesimus articulus. Quod bonus homo est unigenitus filius Dei (LW 5: 599). In what is most likely
the source of this article Eckhart actually wrote: “Thus in very truth, for the son of God, a good man insofar as he is God’s son, suffering for God’s sake, working for God is his being, his life, his work, his felicity.” [Alsȏ wærliche: dem gotes sune, einem guoten menschen, sȏ vil er gotes sun ist, durch got lȋden,
durch got würken ist sȋn wesen, sȋn leben, sȋn würken, sȋn sælicheit] (In BgT, DW 5:44, 16–19; Walshe, 543). It is noteworthy that the bull omits the crucial phrase, “insofar as he is God’s son,” a sign that the inquisitors did not understand, or chose to ignore, the complexity of Eckhart’s teaching.
7 Jan Aertsen, “Meister Eckhart: Eine ausserordentliche Metaphysik,” Recherches de Théologie et
misunderstood or else ignored by friends as well as enemies. But it is only from the standpoint of that metaphysic that one can grasp what Eckhart was trying to say with claims such as this last one, or for that matter see how it is related to his teaching on the will.
In this book I try to decipher the meaning of Eckhart’s “live without why” by placing the claim in its historical and metaphysical context. Given that context, what does it mean, and—equally important, perhaps—not mean? How did it arise in a very “why”-oriented tradition of Western philosophy and theology? In particular, how could it flow from the pen of a Dominican confrère of Thomas Aquinas, whose own teachings were initially controversial (for their reliance on Aristotle), but whose reputation had subsequently been so successfully re-stored by the efforts of the Dominican order that the same Pope John XXII who condemned Eckhart in 1329 had canonized Thomas in 1323? And what are the consequences of Eckhart’s teaching for other notions involving the concept of
will, such as motivation or intention? Perhaps most importantly, how does one
actually live a “life without will”? Is it possible outside a hermit’s cell? This last question brings us face to face with the question of happiness or human fulfill-ment, in which the role of will has—from its vague beginnings in Aristotle— been prominent. This classical place of origin is where our own investigation has its roots.
5
The Will as “Rational Appetite”
Composed at the summit of his career in the years around 1270, Thomas
Aqui-nas’s Summa Theologiae, epic in scope and epoch-making in its effects, begins
with a discussion of its central topic, “sacred doctrine.” Although Thomas de-fends the view that this field of study “is speculative rather than practical because it is more concerned with divine things than with human acts,” he immediately adds that “it does treat even of these latter, inasmuch as man is ordained by them to the perfect knowledge of God in which consists eternal bliss.”1 In other words,
inquiry into the nature of God leads one to seek “the perfect knowledge of God,” but this can only be attained in the afterlife (“eternal bliss”), the path to which consists in the performance of the right sort of “human acts.” In the introduction to the second main part of the work, Thomas wrote:
Since, as Damascene states (John of Damascus, De Fide Orthod. ii. 12),
man is said to be made to God’s image, in so far as the image implies an intelligent being endowed with free-choice and self-movement: now
that we have treated [in part one of the Summa] of the exemplar, i.e.,
God, and of those things which came forth from the power of God in accordance with His will; it remains for us to treat of His image, i.e.,
man, inasmuch as he too is the principle of his actions, as having free
choice and control of his actions.2
(STh IaIIae, Prologue, emphasis added)
1Sacra autem doctrina est principaliter de Deo, cuius magis homines sunt opera. Non ergo est scientia
practica, sed magis speculativa . . . de quibus agit secundum quod per eos ordinatur homo ad perfectam Dei cognitionem, in qua aeterna beatitudo consistit. The Summa Theologiae (STh) will be cited, hereafter in the text, in the standard fashion, i.e., by part, question, article, and section of article. Here Ia,1,4,s.c. I gener-ally use the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (2nd and rev. ed., 1920), which is available in several online formats, e.g., at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.html.
2Quia, sicut Damascenus dicit, homo factus ad imaginem Dei dicitur, secundum quod per imaginem
Thomas signals here the general framework within which he will go on to con-sider questions of the greatest concern to human beings, “the ultimate end of human life and . . . the means by which human beings can reach this end, or devi-ate from it”3 (STh IaIIae, 1, preface). The trope of humans as the “image of God,”
or “made to the image of God” (Genesis 1:26) was a commonplace among Christian thinkers, and it will occupy an important place in this study (even in Aristotle there is something similar). As we will see, the notion of “image” can be understood in several ways. For Thomas, in this context—where the focus is on how we humans must live if we are to reach happiness, i.e., the ultimate fulfillment possible to us—the crucial elements of the comparison between the divine and the human are intellect, power, and will. Just as God created the entire world, the macrocosm, through the divine intellect and will, so we humans must fashion our lives, the microcosm, through the use of our human
intellect and will. The path to the happiness (beatitudo) appropriate to beings
“made to God’s image” is principally through right action, the key to which is having the right will.
A bit further along in the Summa, at the start of the Treatise on Human Acts
(IaIIae, 6–21), Thomas claims:
Since therefore Happiness is to be gained by means of certain acts, we must in due sequence consider human acts, in order to know by what acts we may obtain happiness, and by what acts we are prevented from obtaining it . . . And since those acts are properly called human which are voluntary, because the will is the rational appetite, which is proper to man; we must consider acts in so far as they are voluntary.4
(IaIIae, 6, Prologue, emphases added)
By taking this approach Thomas is not only focusing on a concept much at-tended to by Christian thinkers since the time of Augustine, but he takes him-self to be also emulating Aristotle, “the Philosopher,” whose major works had become newly available in Latin translation by the mid-thirteenth century.
3Ubi primo considerandum occurrit de ultimo fine humanae vitae; et deinde de his per quae homo ad
hunc finem pervenire potest, vel ab eo deviare . . .
4Quia igitur ad beatitudinem per actus aliquos necesse est pervenire, oportet consequenter de humanis
actibus considerare, ut sciamus quibus actibus perveniatur ad beatitudinem, vel impediatur beatitudinis via . . . Cum autem actus humani proprie dicantur qui sunt voluntarii, eo quod voluntas est rationalis ap-petitus, qui est proprius hominis; oportet considerare de actibus inquantum sunt voluntarii.
Their arrival on the university scene was a sensation, and they provoked some-thing of a crisis in the intellectual circles of Western Christendom. Traditional-ists, generally Augustinian in orientation, were skeptical about their use; the most extreme wanted them banned altogether. Their hand was strengthened by the strong and heterodox enthusiasm shown for Aristotle by some thirteenth-century philosophers, largely in the arts faculty at the University of Paris. But a different party of philosophically oriented theologians—to which Thomas and his teacher, Albert the Great, belonged—soberly embraced Aristotle’s works and wanted to show their compatibility with the Christian faith. One place where this challenge was considerable was the attempt to harmonize
Aristo-tle’s this-worldly, pagan ethic with a decidedly other-worldly Christian
Welt-anschauung.5 The form in which Thomas carried out this effort confirmed the
central position of the will—understood in a certain way—in Christian moral thought, a position it had earlier attained in the work of St. Augustine, as I will attempt to show.
The central question in this book concerns why Meister Eckhart, himself a student of Aristotle and a successor to Thomas on the Dominican chair of theology in Paris, claimed we should “live without why” (or “will” in a certain sense of the term). What could such a claim mean? How could it arise in the broadly Christian/Aristotelian, will-centered tradition in which Eckhart was schooled? And what would it mean for Christian ethics to be based not on the will, but on detachment from it? Our path to addressing these questions will begin at a principal source, Aristotle’s main treatise of moral philosophy, the
Nicomachean Ethics, by asking what role the notion of will played in Aristotle’s construction of the good life. Then we will look at how a fuller, Christianized conception of will arose in the life and writings of St. Augustine (354–430), before returning to Aquinas for a more detailed examination of his teachings on the role of the will in the Christian path to salvation. Only then will we have the materials needed for understanding Eckhart’s distinctly different approach to the trope of the likeness between God and humans, as in this citation from his Commentary on Exodus (where “why” is closely connected to will in the traditional sense):
It is proper to God that he has no “why” outside or beyond himself.
Therefore, every work that has a “why” as such is not a divine work or
done for God. “He works all things for his own sake” (Prov. 16:4). There will be no divine work if a person does something that is not for
5 This task was the more difficult because of St. Augustine’s harsh critique of pagan ethics. Cf.
God’s sake, because it will have a “why,” something that is foreign to
God and far from God. It is not God or godly.6
(In Ex., n.247, LW 2:201,7–11, emphasis added)
This is a radical claim. “Divine” or “godly,” i.e., truly virtuous, works play a central role in the human quest for happiness or beatitude, for Augustine and Aquinas of course, but also—mutatis mutandis—for Aristotle. Although there are major differences among the ethical theories of these three thinkers, each assigns a cen-tral place to the virtues;7 and, as we will see, central to the virtues is the will,
and hence a “why.” This is the natural and appealing idea that only through the regular practice of voluntary actions aimed at what we most naturally and deeply want can we reach our fulfillment. Thus, to say, as Eckhart did, that “every work that has a ‘why’ as such is not a divine work” seems to imply either that will plays no part in the virtues, or else that virtue is not central to the attainment of beati-tude. One can understand the Pope’s shock.
The virtue ethics of Aristotle and Thomas are of course related, Aquinas having incorporated into his moral theology substantial elements of Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics. Their roles in our lively contemporary discussion show that both of these related ethical systems continue to inspire philosophers, and to exercise, in Thomas’s case, truly substantial influence beyond the academy, since much Christian (especially Catholic) moral teaching and preaching is based on his writings (and hence, if indirectly, on Aristotle’s).8 Aquinas was also deeply
influenced by Augustine, who in turn was also an important inspiration for some of the Protestant Reformers. Obviously, many today—Catholics, Protestants, and others—continue to feel the attraction of the idea that at the heart of ethics is a deep connection between the quality of the life we lead, as measured by our virtues and vices, and the fulfillment or happiness that each of us can attain.
7 Indeed, recent interest among both philosophers and the wider public in the tradition of virtue
ethics often takes its inspiration from one or more of these thinkers. Virtue ethics has been a very active field in moral philosophy in recent decades, while William Bennett’s Book of the Virtues (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996) was a top bestseller in the United States during the 1990s. Cf. Ro-salind Hursthouse, Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). But see also the caution in Martha Nussbaum, “Virtue Ethics: A Misleading Category?” Journal of Ethics 3: 3 (1999): 163–201.
8 Recent Catholic reliance on Thomas is sketched in Anthony Kenny’s “The Thomism of John
Paul II,” (1999), reprinted in his Essays on the Aristotelian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). The lasting influence of Augustine’s thought in both Catholic and Protestant circles is also beyond question.
6[p]roprium est deo, ut non habeat quare extra se aut praeter se. Igitur omne opus habent quare ipsum
Even Kant, apparently the most antiteleological of moral philosophers, felt that the moral life would be crippled without the belief in a link between virtue and divine reward.
But nowhere do Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas, and Eckhart differ more strik-ingly than over the nature of this fulfillment. Aristotle’s eudaimonism is the view that our happiness or perfection, that is, the objectively most desirable form of life, consists in the active practice of the virtues, especially the intellectual vir-tues.9 While large stretches of Thomas’s writings on ethics (e.g., his analysis of
human action) are plainly Aristotelian, other and non-Aristotelian elements—
many derived from St. Augustine (and even Plato10)—dominate at times.
Au-gustine’s influence is seen, among other places, where core Christian notions (grace, salvation, charity, etc., but also the will) replace Aristotle’s pagan this-worldliness. The result is a hybrid that on crucial points concerning the nature of both the virtues and happiness is thoroughly un-Aristotelian. That two thinkers from such different religious milieus should diverge on the content of happiness is not surprising. One consequence of that difference, I will contend, is Aquinas’s tendency toward a moral instrumentalism—the view that moral behavior is pri-marily a means to a more highly valued end—that is alien in spirit to Aristotle’s ethics. Furthermore, I will suggest that this tendency may be rooted in a deeper incoherence in Augustine’s and Thomas’s respective attempts to construct a moral theology within the teleological framework inherited from classical ethics that is also faithful to the Christian gospel: that particular marriage may in fact not work.
In the generation following St. Thomas, some thinkers, including John Duns Scotus, took issue with eudaimonism altogether, arguing that our deepest ethi-cal impulse, the inclination to justice, ethi-calls on us to do what is right for its own sake, regardless of its impact on our happiness. At first glance, Eckhart, who was Scotus’s contemporary, seems to be echoing this view when he advises his audi-ence to “live without why,” i.e., without a will or goal. But I will argue that Eck-hart is actually a kind of eudaimonist. While no less rooted in Christian thought than his fellow Dominican Thomas, his ethical views owe much more to Neopla-tonism than do Thomas’s; but paradoxically they are in a way more faithful than Aquinas’s to the spirit of Aristotle.
It will be helpful to have at the start a characterization of will, and I will use that of Aquinas, widely recognized for its comprehensive and definitive char-acter. As we saw, Thomas says in the Summa Theologiae that will is the “rational
9 More fully: the active practice of those virtues in a life not unduly beset with maladies,
catastro-phes, hunger, and the like. In insisting on a modicum of amenities and good fortune Aristotle was less radical than other ancient champions of the virtues such as Socrates and the Stoics.
appetite, which is proper to man” (IaIIae, 6, Prologue), and that “the object of the will is the end and the good” (IaIae, 1, 1, c.).11 He adds in the Prologue:
First, then, we must consider the voluntary and involuntary in general; secondly, those acts which are voluntary, as being elicited by the will, and as issuing from the will immediately; thirdly, those acts which are voluntary, as being commanded by the will, which issue from the will
through the medium of the other powers.12
Still later, when discussing the notion of the voluntary he says,
The fact that man is master [dominus] of his actions, is due to his being able to deliberate about them: for since the deliberating reason is indif-ferently disposed to opposite things, the will can be inclined to either.13
(IaIIae, 6, 2, ad 2)
Finally, he tells us that “the act of will is simply a kind of inclination proceeding from the interior knowing principle”14 (IaIIae, 6, 4, c.). As vague as these
state-ments may seem, they bring out a number of essential features of the will, in Thomas’s understanding of it:
• First, as “rational appetite” (rationalis appetitus) the will always aims at what the intellect discerns as good, and thus will combines both cognitive and co-native elements. It is not merely one or the other, not simply a kind of desire, nor an opinion of any ordinary sort. Aquinas takes himself to be following
12Primo ergo considerandum est de voluntario et involuntario in communi; secundo, de actibus qui
sunt voluntarii quasi ab ipsa voluntate eliciti, ut immediate ipsius voluntatis existentes; tertio, de actibus qui sunt voluntarii quasi a voluntate imperati, qui sunt ipsius voluntatis mediantibus aliis potentiis. Thomas assumes that actions are called “voluntary” (voluntarius) because of the presence in them of will ( vol-untas). As we will see, this is a prime example of an accidental etymology having a substantive philo-sophical consequence. Cf. STh, IaIae, 6, 2, 1 and ad 1.
13Ex hoc contingit quod homo est dominus sui actus, quod habet deliberationem de suis actibus, ex hoc
enim quod ratio deliberans se habet ad opposita, voluntas in utrumque potest.
14Actus voluntatis nihil est aliud quam inclinatio quaedam procedens ab interiori principio cognoscente. 11Obiectum autem voluntatis est finis et bonum. David Gallagher gives a useful anatomy of
Aristotle on this, for whom will (or wish, boulêsis) was, in J. O. Urmson’s words, the “desire for what on the basis of rational calculation is seen to serve one’s best interest in the long run.”15 In this way will is a kind of compass that
keeps one on the path that, by one’s own lights, leads to what one wants most of all, i.e., happiness. Further, when Thomas calls the will “rational appetite,” he means—in at least one central usage—more than a desire the agent judges to be sensible or in line with her long-term goals; he also means it is what the agent resolves to pursue.16 He says, “It is from willing the end, that man is
moved to take counsel in regard to the means”17 (IaIae, 14, 1, ad 1);
• Second, Thomas connects the will (voluntas) to actions that are voluntary
(voluntarie), an association that seems obvious, since it is manifest in the very Latin terms (though not in Aristotle’s Greek, where the parallel terms were etymologically unrelated to each other18). Further, by speaking in the plural
of “acts which are voluntary, as being elicited by the will, and as issuing from the will immediately”—he is referring here to intention, choice, consent, etc., each of which he goes on to discuss separately—Thomas alludes to the fact that the concept of will covers a variety of what one could call “action- oriented psychological (or propositional) attitudes.” Like “mind,” it is a con-cept standing for a genus, and indeed a genus much wider than what Aristotle had in mind;
• Third, Thomas ties will closely to the capacity to deliberate—an act of practical reason—about what we should do in a given situation. In whatever ways our desires may be disposed, the will of a free agent—i.e., of one who is neither coerced nor addicted—is by definition “indifferently disposed to opposite things;” it exercises a kind of judicial function. Terence Irwin calls it “rational choice;” Davidson identifies it with the agent’s “better judgment;”19
15 J. O. Urmson, Aristotle’s Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 40.
16 “Resolves” is not quite right, since in many “willed” actions the agent simply acts, with no
sepa-rate step of forming a resolution. Her behavior, one might say, expresses the categorical or uncon-ditional judgment, “This action is desirable” tout court, as Donald Davidson put it. Interestingly, Davidson was initially a skeptic about the will, thinking that human action could be analyzed solely in terms of ordinary desires, beliefs and (event-) causation. His change of mind is described in the In-troduction and Essays 2 and 5 of Essays on Actions & Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). He credits Aquinas on pp. 33 and 36. The quoted phrase is on p. 98.
17[H]omo vult finem, movetur ad consiliandum de his quae sunt ad finem.
18 Thomas says: “A thing is called ‘voluntary’ from ‘voluntas’ (will)” [Voluntarium enim a voluntate
dicitur] (IaIIae, 6, 2, obj. 1; cf. also ibid., ad 1). Since for Aristotle the acts of animals and children, who lack will or wish (boulêsis), can be voluntary (hekousion), not every voluntary action involves will. It is an etymological accident that Latin writers came to render hekousion with voluntarius, thus laying the basis for the opposed view, i.e., that every voluntary action is willed.
19 Cf. Terence Irwin, “Who Discovered the Will?” in Philosophical Perspectives 6: Ethics, ed. James
• Fourth, Thomas associates will with an “interior knowing principle.” Here he plainly seems to have in mind Aristotle’s placement of boulêsis “in the
ratio-nal part” of the soul (DA, III, 9, 432b 3), as proceeding from—or perhaps
constituting—the mind’s assessment about how best to live.20 But Thomas
may also well have in mind here the role of will in practical knowledge, i.e., the knowledge that brings about a certain particular result; it is “the cause of things thought of.”21 (IaIIae, 3, 5, obj. 1) He does not think of the will—
whether in its boulêsis-function of identifying the right way to live, or in its specific manifestation as choice, the selection among alternatives of the right action to perform here and now—as entirely autonomous (as did, say, Scotus and other “voluntarists”), but as dependent on practical reason: “The will tends to its object, according to the order of reason, since the apprehensive power presents the object to the appetite”22 (IaIIae, 13, 1, c.). In adopting
an intention or making a choice of some means to an end we have selected, we come to know through practical reason what we will do (or make—the
builder knows the house in her mind before her designs and deeds bring it
about in fact);23 and
• Fifth, Thomas includes among “acts of will” those “acts which are
volun-tary, as being commanded by the will, which issue from the will through the
medium of the other powers.” These would include ordinary human actions involving bodily movements, such as speaking, walking, typing, cooking, etc., and more complex activities such as raising children, embarking on a career, caring for a disabled loved one, and the like. In other words, voluntary actions are themselves “acts of will.”
Looking at these principal features of the will as Thomas identified them, we can see at once how well they fit the ethical approach of teleological eudai-monism: the will (as rational desire or boulêsis) identifies or determines the goal or telos, that state or condition in which our happiness consists. Notwithstand-ing their differences, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas agree that happiness can only be attained if we become human agents of a certain kind, i.e., people who live the life of the virtues. Virtuous living requires that we deliberate about what
23 Or so argued G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957). E.g.: “[I]t is the
agent’s (practical) knowledge of what he is doing that gives the descriptions under which what is going on is the execution of an intention,” 87. Donald Davidson countered that the notion of knowl-edge is not the right one for the analysis of intention (cf. “Intending,” Actions, 91–96). Be that as it may, Anscombe seems to have been reporting Aquinas’s view accurately.
20 ἔν τε τῷ λογιστικῷ γὰρ ἡ βούλησις γίνεται. 21causa rerum intellectarum.
22[V]oluntas in suum obiectum tendit secundum ordinem rationis, eo quod vis apprehensiva appetitivae
actions to perform in the various circumstances of life, choosing the ones that will lead to our goal, and then performing them voluntarily and indeed inten-tionally. Will and eudaimonism, at least of the teleological variety, seem made for each other.
Let me now illustrate the features of will we have seen thus far, showing in an example how they are manifested in a relatively simple case of moral conflict.
Louise is a successful executive, having risen from modest circumstances to the post of vice president of her firm. No puritan, she has always en-joyed a glass of wine or beer with her meals. Recently the stresses of her job and her ever more complicated personal finances have led her to look for ways to keep calm and focused. Her older brother, a freelance entrepreneur, recommended she take a drink of aquavit when she feels the pressure mounting: “That’s what I do,” he told her. “You toss down a delicious, ice-cold shot and it works great.” But despite her affection for him—and her liking for aquavit—her own sense of how she wants to live (“a life of sobriety and integrity,” is how she formulates it) and the counsel of her best friend have persuaded her to avoid the alcohol, and instead practice yoga-stretching or Daoist breathing. So when, one Tuesday just before a meeting at which she will have to give a particu-larly gloomy sales report for the preceding quarter, she feels the pressure mounting, she decides it is time to regain her composure. Dismissing the thought of having a drink, she turns off her computer, and decid-ing against yoga so as to remain seated, she closes her eyes, and starts to breathe deeply; soon she begins to feel a loosening of the tension . . .
As described here, Louise’s behavior illustrates a version of what Aristotle
called the virtue of temperance (sôphrosunê), the habit of moderation in the
fulfillment of bodily needs and desires. What makes this a virtue, for Aristotle, is that it is a character trait guided by reason that governs desires, a trait that expresses a mean—not too much, not too little—and one that Louise has devel-oped out of her sense (a correct one, he would say) of how one should live. It is in
actions such as these that one attains an important kind of human happiness.24
An alternative narrative, one in which Louise weakens under temptation and gives in to the desire for a drink of aquavit, would illustrate another important
24 As we will see, the precise weighting in Aristotle of the roles played by the virtues of the intellect
feature of will, the character flaw Aristotle labeled akrasia (incontinence, ungov-ernedness, often called weakness of will).
Our modern concept of will has many faces, which are everywhere in our nar-ratives of Louise. Take the action of her beginning Daoist breathing. The notion of will is involved in this deed in a number of ways:
1. Since her action is self-initiated, Louise acted voluntarily: she knew what she was doing, was not coerced, did not mistake Daoist breathing for kundalini yoga, etc.
2. She did it intentionally, i.e., she acted on the basis of her reason for the deed, here: she wants to settle her nerves and relax by means of using this breath-ing technique.
3. She is exercising choice, e.g., to resort to the breathing exercise (rather than alcohol), and to Daoist breathing (rather than yoga).
4. The root cause (or “principle”) of her action is her goal or rational desire to lead a certain kind of life. For Louise, undertaking this exercise expresses
what Aristotle called her boulêsis (wish, will) and Thomas her voluntas
(will), i.e., her “rational desire for the good” or her conception of how best to live: avoiding alcohol during work, and particularly when under stress, is part of her conception of the good life.
5. The various manifestations of will here are linked in what has been called a “practical syllogism,” i.e., a form of reasoning that connects some goal (often the agent’s boulêsis) to something she decides or chooses to do voluntarily here and now.
6. Louise is here reacting to unpleasant sensations and the need for relaxation, but she reacts rationally, i.e., after deliberating about what is the best way to deal with it.
7. Louise enjoys the Daoist breathing, both in the medieval sense of attaining
and resting in the object of her will, and in the modern sense of experienc-ing the pleasant effects.
8. Louise’s action, some would say, shows free will, i.e., is self-determined, and thus she is responsible for her deeds (for Aristotle and Aquinas, she is “master” of them).
9. In the first tale Louise exhibits will power: she knows what she should do to conform to her own conception of how to live, and manages to ignore or overcome any temptation. If she experiences no temptation, Aristotle would say she is (thus far) temperate, i.e., virtuous; if she feels tempted but resists, he would call her behavior “continent.”
10. Were she to give in to the temptation, Aristotle would say she is akratic.
According to Augustine, Aquinas, and other Christian thinkers, she would
she should act; so her action would be an expression of a perverted (or dis-ordered) will (which, as we shall see, is claimed by these thinkers to be a universal condition among humankind in the absence of grace).
11. For John Duns Scotus there would be “nothing contradictory” in her akratic behavior. She would not thereby commit a logical blunder.
12. In Meister Eckhart’s view, such a misstep would be the result of “creaturely” worry, and thus expresses a sense of possessiveness (eigenschaft) toward her finite, material constitution; as such it would be a sign of her ignorance of her true nature, i.e., of who and what she really is.25
13. The advice of Louise’s friend is an example of good will or benevolence (one of the earliest senses of the Latin term for will, voluntas); its contrary is ill will or malevolence.
14. Actions that are performed freely though to some extent reluctantly are sometimes called “unwilling.” Some have proposed that akratic deeds are of this type.
15. But there is an important complexity here in Aristotle’s conception of ac-tions. As we shall see, he distinguished between two aspects of action, praxis
and poiêsis, roughly doing and making or producing. The same deed typi-cally has both aspects. In our example, Louise’s efforts to calm her nerves are a form of poiêsis: the criterion of success lies beyond the deed itself in its effects. Aristotle would regard Louise’s deed as praxis only if it (a) results
from deliberation about what her boulêsis demands of her, and (b) is done
“for its own sake.” This latter requirement may seem to conflict with the pur-posive, means-end character of the act as poiêsis, but what it shows is that
there are two separate “why?” questions about the same deed: first, “Why,
i.e., what result is she aiming at?” (“She wants to calm herself”), and second, “Why, i.e., in what way does she think this act contributes to or constitutes her happiness?” (“She regards this act as temperate, and her rational desire is to live a temperate/virtuous life”). In praxis, goal and doing are identical:
performing the breathing technique (rather than taking a drink) constitutes
(a part of) living temperately; and thus, as a case of what Louise regards as living well, the doing is for its own sake, i.e., it is itself living well or virtu-ously. I will argue that Meister Eckhart’s controversial advice to live without why concerns this second (or praxis) sense of why.26
25 Eckhart’s view relies on something like the Stoic conception of oikeiôsis, a kind of self- possession
in which we either instinctively or by choice possess and “hold together” those characteristics that distinguish us from others make us what we are.
26 There are other senses of what has been called “will” not shown in these particular cases, for
16. Aquinas would discern additional “acts of will” in her behavior: in addition to the simple act of willing the end (happiness as Louise conceives it) and intending the end through an acceptable means in the circumstances (e.g., Daoist breathing), as well as to her choice of that means, Thomas points out her consent (in principle) to several means (yoga as well as Daoism), and her
use of the bodily means to carry out the decision.27
I suggest, following Aquinas and such modern writers as Kahn, Sorabji, and Irwin, that “our” notion of will includes all these (and perhaps other) elements,
which are related in intricate and unpredictable ways.28 The terms “free will,”
“good will,” and “will power,” for example, draw on the notion of will in simi-lar yet distinct ways. The first, for instance, connotes autonomy in acting, the second fondness and concern in dealing with someone or something, and the third a capacity to stick to one’s resolve in spite of obstacles. There is a palpable relatedness here in the connection of all three to action, but these notions could clearly have been expressed by distinct words with no verbal or etymological similarity (as they were in classical Greek). So the family of terms seems to be held together principally by the links of its members to voluntary human action, without any systematic ordering. One upshot is this: in trying to say what Meis-ter Eckhart meant by “living without ‘why” (or will),” we must be very careful to determine just which of the manifold senses of “will” is/are in question. To live “without will” may not—indeed, does not—mean one should dispense with good will, or intentions, and so on. With that caveat in mind we turn now to a brief account of Aristotle’s views on the will and happiness.
27 These facets of an intentional action are discussed by Thomas in STh, IaIae 8–17. They are
interwoven in his analysis with parallel acts of (practical) intellect, e.g., deliberation and judgment. A discussion and a useful chart of these acts of intellect and will are given by Denis Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 341. A more critical take is offered by Alan Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” in The Cam-bridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, eds. N. Kretzman, A. Kenny, J. Pinborg, with E. Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 642–54.
28 Charles Kahn, “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to Augustine,” in The Question of
17
Aristotle’s Teleological
Eudaimonism
Aristotle is a resolutely teleological thinker, in physics and biology, in meta-physics, in ethics, and in politics. For him the basic physical elements them-selves—air, water, etc.—and all substances have built-in goals that are a function of their respective natures. Air seeks to rise above earth and water because that is where its natural place is. An oak tree strives to grow and produce acorns, not apples, because that is its nature, it is what the oak is for, its “why” in the sense of its “final” (goal, telos) cause. The natural is also normative, most clearly in the domain of ethics and politics: what we humans are by nature determines what our natural fulfillment or end—our good—is, and hence specifies the sort of
life we should lead. At the beginning of his epoch-making Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle writes:
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good . . . If then there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great in-fluence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be
more likely to hit upon what we should?1
(NE I.1, 1094a1–2; I.2, a18–24)
1 πᾶσα τέχνη καὶ πᾶσα μέθοδος, ὁμοίως δὲ πρᾶξίς τε καὶ προαίρεσις, ἀγαθοῦ τινὸς ἐφίεσθαι δοκεῖ . . . εἰ
Aristotle goes on to spell out in greater detail what is implicit in these lines: if there is an ultimate end, of the sort described, for human undertakings, gaining
it will be the “chief good” of human beings, our eudaimonia (happiness,
flour-ishing, fulfillment); and it will clearly be something to be attained teleologically, i.e., by our own efforts (and not, say, as a gift of the gods, a grace).
Aristotle thinks our efforts to attain eudaimonia will be successful only if they are guided by a correct notion of what it consists in, and this must be a function of our nature.2 But what is our nature? What sort of life does it prescribe for us?
Aristotle answers these questions with his “function argument” in book I, chap-ter 7. He suggests that just as craftspeople and bodily organs have functions, so
too do human beings qua human:
What can this (function) be? Life seems to be common even to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth. Next there would be a life of percep-tion, but it also seems to be common even to the horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains, then, an active life of the element that has a rational principle; of this, one part has such a principle in the sense of being obedient to one, the other in the sense of possessing one and exercising thought. And, as ‘life of the rational element’ also has two meanings, we must state that life in the sense of activity (as opposed to a mere capacity) is what we mean; for this seems to be the more proper sense of the term.3
(NE I.7, 1097b33-1098a7, emphasis added)
2 A word of caution is called for here. Since for Aristotle ethics is a practical science, i.e., one
that deals with how we should act, and thus with particulars (i.e., situations, persons, etc.) rather than universals, it cannot be in his sense deductive. So although Aristotle himself alludes to facts about human nature to establish his ethical theories, those theories cannot be deduced from such facts. That they are at least based on Aristotle’s conception of human nature, and that this approach anticipates those of Augustine and Aquinas, cf. C. J. de Vogel, “On the Character of Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Schriften zur aristotelischen Ethik, ed. Chr. Mueller-Goldingen (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1988), 273–82. Some have urged that the facts Aristotle adduces are part of a “dialectical” argument about the first truths of ethics. Cf. the overview in Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold, 233–36.
3 τί οὖν δὴ τοῦτ᾽ ἂν εἴη ποτέ; τὸ μὲν γὰρ ζῆν κοινὸν εἶναι φαίνεται καὶ τοῖς φυτοῖς, ζητεῖται δὲ τὸ ἴδιον.
ἀφοριστέον ἄρα τήν τε θρεπτικὴν καὶ τὴν αὐξητικὴν ζωήν. ἑπομένη δὲ αἰσθητική τις ἂν εἴη, φαίνεται δὲ καὶ αὐτὴ κοινὴ καὶ ἵππῳ καὶ βοῒ καὶ παντὶ ζῴῳ. λείπεται δὴ πρακτική τις τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος: τούτου δὲ τὸ μὲν ὡς ἐπιπειθὲς λόγῳ, τὸ δ᾽ ὡς ἔχον καὶ διανοούμενον. διττῶς δὲ καὶ ταύτης λεγομένης τὴν κατ᾽ ἐνέργειαν θετέον: κυριώτερον γὰρ αὕτη δοκεῖ λέγεσθαι.
The distinctively human soul has two parts or aspects: one is rooted in our emo-tions and desires, but unlike the vegetative and sensate souls is capable of obey-ing reason; the other is directly rational: its work is to think.
Aristotle immediately draws an important conclusion:
If the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational principle, and if we say “a so-and-so” and “a good so-and-so” have a function which is the same in kind, e.g., a lyre-player and a good lyre-player, and so without qualification in all cases, eminence in respect of excellence being added to the name of the function (for the function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre, and that of a good lyre-player is to do so well): if this is the case, and we state the function of man to be a cer-tain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with excellence, and if there are more than one excellence, in accordance
with the best and most complete.4
(NE I.7, 1098a7–17)
The human function is to live rationally; a person who does so actively and well, i.e., in accordance with excellence or virtue, fulfills that function and thereby, ac-cording to Aristotle, deserves to be called “happy.”
The very end of the last quoted passage says that if there are several kinds of excellences of thinking, the human good will be “in accordance with the best
and most complete.” That seems to mean, on a natural reading, that there is just
one kind of thinking activity that constitutes human happiness: call this view
“exclusivism” (or “monism”). But it seems at odds with a passage immediately preceding the function argument in book I.7:
[A]nd further we think (happiness) most desirable of all things, with-out being counted as one good thing among others—if it were so
4 εἰ δ᾽ ἐστὶν ἔργον ἀνθρώπου ψυχῆς ἐνέργεια κατὰ λόγον ἢ μὴ ἄνευ λόγου, τὸ δ᾽ αὐτό φαμεν ἔργον
counted it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods, and of goods the greater is always more desirable. Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.5
(NE I.7, 1097b16–20)
Here Aristotle seems to be saying that if there are several kinds of rational ac-tivities that constitute the human function, then even if one is better than the other(s), happiness will be a combination of excellent activity in the several forms, not just the one: call this “inclusivism.” A great deal of critical ink has been spilled in defense of one or the other of these doctrines, or even of some third hybrid, as we will see below.
But before we look at this dispute, let us first say more about Aristotle’s notion of the two kinds of rational lives in question, asking also what role, if any, there is for the concept of will in each. To begin with the part of the soul that has a rational principle “in the sense of being obedient to one,” what is at issue is a life of morally virtuous activity: acting in accord with justice, courage, temper-ance, generosity, truthfulness, and the like. The best such life will also include friendships built on virtue, as well as a healthy version of self-love, since virtuous
people wish genuine good to themselves, as they do to others (cf. NE IX.4). All
of these virtues are concerned with the regulation of our emotions and desires: justice is concerned with, among other things, our acquisitiveness; courage with our fear, etc. The virtues are states, Aristotle says, habits that we acquire by re-peated practice (NE II.1–2). Further, they not only deal with activities that are pleasurable or painful, virtuous behavior itself is a source of pleasure for the
vir-tuous person, and the absence of pleasure in the performance of virvir-tuous deeds
is a sign that the agent is not (yet) a virtuous person, i.e., one who performs such deeds in the way a virtuous person does:
The [virtuous] agent . . . must be in a certain condition when he does [virtuous deeds]; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly
his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.6
(NE II.4, 1105a30–33)
5 ἔτι δὲ πάντων αἱρετωτάτην μὴ συναριθμουμένην—συναριθμουμένην δὲ δῆλον ὡς αἱρετωτέραν
μετὰ τοῦ ἐλαχίστου τῶν ἀγαθῶν: ὑπεροχὴ γὰρ ἀγαθῶν γίνεται τὸ προστιθέμενον, ἀγαθῶν δὲ τὸ μεῖζον αἱρετώτερον ἀεί.
6 ἢ σωφρόνως πράττεται, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐὰν ὁ πράττων πῶς ἔχων πράττῃ, πρῶτον μὲν ἐὰν εἰδώς, ἔπειτ᾽
