Justice: NE 5

NE 5.1–2 distinguishes between a general sense of justice (dikaiosunē), which amounts to “lawfulness” and “complete virtue,” and particular justice, which is a virtue of character governing interactions between individuals involving resources.¹NE 5.3–5 lays out the three spheres in which particular justice operates: distributing goods (5.3), correcting wrongs (5.4), and exchanging goods (5.5).² Aristotle presents these in terms of geometric proportions, arithmetic proportions, and something he calls a “diagonal combination.”

Justice in distribution is accomplished by distributing honor, wealth, and other resources in ways that mirror the recipients’ relative worth (NE 5.3). Worth (axia), in turn, is calculated in one of three ways. Democracy holds citizenship to be a person’s mark of worth and thus assigns all citizens the same share of goods. Oligarchy holds wealth to be the marker of worth and assigns the greatest goods to the wealthy. Aristocracy, finally, assigns the greatest goods to the best (aristos) people. As we saw in Republic, “best” refers not to the inherited titles of European aristocrats—what Thomas Jefferson refers to as an unnatural aristocracy—but to virtues that can be tested and ranked through competition. Iliad’s wrestling match reflects this thinking, ranking the winner three times as valuable as the loser. Since the value of the prizes (a twelve-oxen tripod and a four-oxen woman) vary proportionately to the worth of the recipients, Aristotle calls this a geometric mean. This captures the competitive ethos we have seen at play in the person of great spirit’s striving to accomplish great deeds and put his great virtue to use.

Justice in correction is used when the proper proportion between resources and individual worth is not met. Homer does not say how Achilles handled the tie, but let us suppose that Ajax takes the tripod and Odysseus takes the woman. To remedy this injustice, Aristotle’s theory dictates that we must take the amount that Ajax exceeds the mean and give it to Odysseus. Since the tripod is worth three times what the woman is, removing one of its legs and giving it to Odysseus would make up the difference. Given that this would destroy the tripod, however, what Aristotle really means is that Ajax should give something of equivalent value—for instance, four oxen.³ Since justice here is achieved through adding and subtracting, Aristotle calls this an arithmetic mean.

Aristotle claims that justice in exchanges works by a diagonal combination (NE 5.5). I suggest we think about this in terms of the rhetorical figure chiasmus. This figure is named after the Greek letter chi, which consists of two diagonal lines: X. This is how Greeks conceptualized strings of words that fall into an abba pattern, like the famous line from President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address:

Ask not what your country can do for you

              X

      ask what you can do for your country.

Aristotle applies this thinking by imagining a housebuilder and a shoemaker coming together to exchange shoes and a house. He concludes, “As a housebuilder is to a shoemaker, so must the number of shoes be to a house” (NE 5.5). Read carefully, this expresses a chiastic pattern: housebuilder, shoemaker, shoes, house. What brings all this together is need (chreia).⁴ The carpenter’s need for shoes is small relative to the cobbler’s need for a house. What each person pays should, in turn, reflect the relative value of these goods (fig. 5).

While particular justice protects the rights of individuals, its larger goal is to promote the common good.⁵ When distributive justice ranks an individual’s worth, this worth is measured by his contribution to the common good: ruling, teaching, farming, racing, and so on. A person who embodies particular justice will be content with such judgments, since he sees how they contribute to the community as a whole, and he will not desire more than his fair share. The end result is to harmonize a competitive spirit for personal advancement with respect for others’ contributions to one’s community. In this, particular justice comes close to what we could call good sportsmanship. Those who fall short of this do so by desiring more than their fair share. This is the vice pleonexia, which we saw figuring prominently in Plato’s Republic.

While it is wrong for someone to seek more than his fair share, it is fine for him voluntarily to accept less than what he is owed. If, for example, neither Ajax nor Odysseus had four oxen or equivalent goods to bring about justice in correction, then one of them could have simply accepted the woman and allowed the other to keep the much more valuable tripod. This insight underlies NE 5.9–11’s question about whether one can be unjust to oneself.⁶ Aristotle’s answer is no, since voluntarily taking less than what one is due amounts to giving the other person a gift. It is also an instance of what Aristotle calls decency/equity (epieikeia). At NE 5.10, Aristotle explains that the purpose of the law is the common good, yet, since laws are written using universal terms, there will be particular instances when enforcing the law detracts from the common good. In those instances, the decent/equitable person will not enforce the full extent of what the law requires. Thus, by violating what the law’s authors set down, the decent person promotes what the law’s authors’ intended, the common good, in circumstances that those authors could not have reasonably foreseen.

This idea of decency/equity presents another angle of good sportsmanship, which connects to the rest of NE two ways. First, it builds on NE 4.3’s account of the great-spirited person who will overlook small honors and focus instead on large ones. This idea is elaborated in NE 8–9’s discussion of friends who will spend their resources as they compete in virtue. If justice sets minimal requirements for holding a state together, friendship sets maximal, aspirational requirements and, in some sense, makes justice irrelevant (see chapter 16). Second, in calling on individuals to interpret what legislators intended but did not write, Aristotle’s account of decency highlights the need for just individuals to think on their feet as they engage in civic life—for instance, by serving on juries. “A fully just person, then, is not merely a follower of rules, but is also a competent maker and adjudicator of the law.”⁷

We find a prime example of decency and sportsmanship in Australian runner John Landy. In the 1965 Australian Championships, Landy narrowly avoided injury during the final mile of the race. Another runner had clipped the heel of Ron Clarke, also in the race. As Clarke went down, Landy jumped to avoid collision but scraped his spikes on Clarke’s shoulder. This was clearly not Landy’s fault, and there was no rule calling on him to do anything for Clarke. If anything, the general expectation of racing is that Landy would simply keep going. Instead, he stopped, apologized to Clarke, and helped him up before returning to the race. The people who laid down the rules for this event, and the Olympic Games to which its winners would advance, never covered an instance as specific as accidently scraping an opponent to avoid collision when someone else has caused him to fall. Landy, however, broke with what was expected to uphold the spirit of the event’s rules in a situation no one had seen coming.

Thinking on One’s Feet: NE 6

Student athletes often have a leg up when applying for jobs. As many employers recognize, balancing the demands of school and sports is a huge accomplishment that requires careful time management, discipline, and stamina. These are all excellent qualities in an employee. They also embody the spirit of Aristotelian virtues: by hitting the mean in all things, the virtuous student athlete approaches life as a grand balancing act. That all sounds lovely in the abstract. Yet, as student athletes will attest, people who actually live this way often confront competing demands calling for split-second decision making. In such cases, the balancing act of life can feel more like juggling while riding a bicycle. To take a slightly more athletic image, a life of excellent activity requires a lot of “thinking on one’s feet.”

NE 6 continues the line of thought set out in NE 3.1–5’s trainer’s manual by focusing on the virtues of thought. Along the way, Aristotle responds to Socrates’s theory that all virtues are in reality forms of practical wisdom.⁸ He opens by using an athletic image: “In all the states of character we have discussed, and in others as well, there is a target (skopos) at which the person having reason aims and either tightens or loosens, and this is the standard (horos) of mean states which we say are between excess and deficiency, since they align with correct reason (orthos logos)” (NE 6.1, 1138b21–25). Loosening and tightening hearkens back to talk of the mean, which is by now familiar. What the new image adds is the idea that all of this is in reference to a particular target one is attempting to hit. Without a particular target in mind, there is no right tension. Aristotle admits, “While all that is true, it is not clear.” NE 6 thus sets out to clarify what this target is, how virtues of character relate to it, and what correct reason has to do with any of this.⁹

Aristotle’s first step, which takes up the bulk of the book, is to differentiate between the various virtues of thought (NE 6.2–11). Central to this are theoretical wisdom (sophia), which studies things that are not up to us and always the same, such as math or physics, and practical wisdom (phronēsis), which studies things that change and are within our power to bring about. Theoretical wisdom is the virtue associated with study (theoria; see discussion at NE 1.7–8 and 10.6–8). Practical wisdom is the virtue associated with deliberation (bouleusis; cf. NE 3.2). The most important object of practical wisdom’s deliberations is living well, and it operates “not in a piecemeal way, about how to bring about health or strength for instance, but about living well as a whole” (NE 6.5, 1140a27). In this, practical wisdom serves an “administrative ability,” which prioritizes and organizes one’s various activities within an ordered whole.¹⁰

At this point, practical wisdom sounds a lot like my presentation of greatness of spirit. This could be a particular problem for me, given that I have pushed against standard readings that see greatness of spirit as concerned with ordering virtues, and argued, instead, that it is primarily concerned with organizing virtuous activities into hierarchies of low-, mid-, and high-level goals. This seems to be precisely the task that NE 6 attributes to practical wisdom. So, while Aristotle must in general say “more clearly” how practical wisdom and the virtues of character fit together, clarity on the relation between practical wisdom and greatness of spirit is a particularly pressing need for my reading, which frames NE’s overall account in terms of elite performers. With this challenge in mind, let us turn to the heart of NE 6’s discussion.

NE 6.12–13 returns to NE 6.1’s demand for clarity by raising a series of puzzles about how theoretical and practical wisdom contribute to happiness. The philosophical payoff is to clarify the relationship between happiness, practical wisdom, and the virtues of character.

The first puzzle (1143b19–21) states: Theoretical wisdom is concerned with topics such as physics and math, but these seem to have nothing to do with human happiness. Aristotle’s response (1144a1–6) is fairly straightforward. In the language of NE 1, the active engagement with theoretical wisdom is study: this is a complete/final (teleion) activity and thus a component, if not the entirety, of happiness: “Theoretical wisdom produces happiness not in the way that the medical art produces health but in the way that health produces health” (1144a5–6). In other words, it is not that theoretical wisdom is the study of human happiness but that human happiness is the study of theoretical wisdom. The next two puzzles use medical and athletic imagery to question practical wisdom’s contribution to happiness.

The second puzzle states: If knowledge of medicine or gym training does not make an already healthy or fit person more healthy or fit, then practical wisdom, which is knowledge of the human good, does not make an already good person better (1143b21–28). Aristotle’s response begins, “Our work (ergon) attains its end (apoteleō) according to practical wisdom and virtue of character” (1144a6–7). This verb form of “end” (telos) hearkens back to NE 1’s idea that happiness consists in putting virtues to use.¹¹ The text continues, “For [character] virtue makes the target (skopos) correct, and practical wisdom makes the things leading to the target correct” (1144a7–9). How does this targeting work?

The third puzzle focuses not on being good but on becoming good. It states: If practical wisdom is necessary for becoming good, then it is enough for a person merely to follow the advice of others, as is the case with medicine and gym training (1143b28–33). To answer this, Aristotle responds, we must first “take a step back” (1144a11–1145a6). In NE 2’s discussion of training, Aristotle argued that we become brave by performing brave actions. One result of this is that it is possible for someone who has not yet acquired a settled condition to act bravely to perform the same kind of act that a person in such a condition would engage in. NE 6 builds on this idea by distinguishing between “natural virtue,” which is with us from birth and “full virtue,” which is a mature and settled condition. How does one move from natural virtue to full virtue? Aristotle draws another distinction. Some people are clever (deinos) at means/end reasoning. Cleverness can be used for good or ill, though in its properly developed form it constitutes an integral part of practical wisdom. Putting these two distinctions together, Aristotle argues, “we cannot be fully good [have full virtues] without practical wisdom, and we cannot have practical wisdom without virtue of character” (1144b31–32). How should we understand this chiastic yet cryptic phrase?

Socrates toyed with the idea that all virtues are simply instances of practical wisdom. This idea raises various problems, as we saw in Plato’s Laches. Aristotle responds that Socrates was half-right: virtues of character are not instances of practical wisdom, yet each requires practical wisdom. With this, Aristotle loops back to NE 6.1’s request for clarity about practical wisdom, virtue of character, and correct reason: “People say that virtue is the state aligned with correct reason. Now the correct reason is the reason aligned with practical wisdom; they all seem to believe then that the state aligned with practical wisdom is virtue” (1144b21–24). The virtues of character dispose us to act in certain ways when confronted with pleasures, pains, expenses, and social interactions. Practical wisdom allows us to act according to those dispositions successfully by setting them within a holistic understanding of the human good. This involves not only reasoning about means of pursuing various ends but also “specifying” what those ends look like in concrete situations.¹² A person may, for instance, be disposed to be generous toward a friend who needs money. Yet there are times when giving a friend money would not be in that friend’s best interest: Does he need money for drugs? Does he need money to pay off gambling debts? Would he be better off in the long run if he had to work to earn the money himself? In such instances, practical wisdom will step in and decide that giving a friend money is not the generous thing to do. Practical wisdom is a skill at reading circumstances, deciding what factors are relevant to action, and using them to adjust one’s concept of what counts as the mean in that instance. It is the ethical equivalent of the archer’s skill, which tightens and loosens for the sake of hitting a target (skopos). It is for this reason that no one may have any of the character virtues in their full form without having practical wisdom.

At the same time, we cannot have practical wisdom without having every virtue of character. As a result, it is impossible to have any virtue of character without having all of them. Why? Practical reasoning takes a holistic view of human action. In order for it to gain this holistic perspective, one needs an all-encompassing view of the human good, as is provided by the aims of the full range of the virtues of character. Because of this, practical wisdom does not emerge in its full state until fairly late in the process of moral development. This is not to say that no practical reasoning happens before then. As we saw in the trainer’s manual of NE 3.1–5, the process of training in virtues of character is not purely mechanical but involves ever more rational reflection as students mature. NE 6 calls this thinking cleverness while the process of maturation is still underway. At some point, however, the scales tip, the student comes to see how the virtues of character, all of which aim at some kalon end, may be brought together into a holistic pursuit of all this kalon. Mere cleverness gives way to practical wisdom, and natural virtues become full virtues.

In sum, Aristotle’s response to our final puzzle is no: it is not enough for a student merely to follow a trainer’s instructions. Rational thought is integral to the process of training, and one cannot attain full virtues of character without attaining practical wisdom at the same time.

Final Thoughts: NE 4–6

Having worked through NE 6’s string of puzzles, what can we say about the relationship between greatness of spirit and practical reason? If anything, the problem with my reading looks more serious, now that we can add further worries that both of these virtues are acquired only in presence of all the virtues of character, that both come at the end of the process of moral development, and that both ground the idea that one may not have any virtue of character in its full form without having all of them. Are practical wisdom and greatness of spirit simply the same thing?

To respond, I would point out that practical wisdom is intimately involved in every virtue of character. Granted, when it comes to greatness of spirit, that relationship seems to be particularly intimate. What differentiates the two, I suggest, is the concern for honor. I argued above that greatness of spirit provides the ability to keep one’s “eyes on the prize,” that is, to devote one’s efforts to high-level goals and accept or dismiss mid- and low-level goals insofar as they align with or detract from them. Practical wisdom, with the aid of cleverness, approaches these hierarchies from a rational, calculating perspective. Greatness of spirit approaches the same hierarchies from an affective perspective: through it we embrace some undertaking as clearly awesome (kalon), while not getting sidetracked by undertakings that are worthy in themselves yet pose obstacles to a life built around a singular purpose. Virtues of character in general “make the target correct.” Greatness of spirit is unique among the virtues of character insofar as it deals with targets for other targets.¹³ If we want a metaphor, greatness of spirit “crowns” the virtues not so much by sitting on top of them like a medieval monarch’s golden crown as by encircling them like an athlete’s wreath and holding them all together.¹⁴

Aristotle’s Olympic victors and Angela Duckworth’s elite performers provided prime examples of individuals who organize their lives around such singular goals. It seems possible, though, that one could have a life of full virtue and practical wisdom while holding two or three mid-level goals in balance. Duckworth, who is herself a very gritty person, admits that she cannot align her commitments to family and career under a single overarching goal.¹⁵ Perhaps greatness of spirit comes in degrees: elite performers provide the central case, while others organize their lives around a handful of mid-level goals, such as work, family, and hobbies. If I am right that greatness of spirit is a virtue for any happy person, not just the rich and powerful, then Aristotle requires us to give our lives some kind of overarching shape. This leads us to one final question.

Where should we place NE’s treatment of kalon on the scale from moral to beautiful. Here too, greatness of spirit, understood via Aristotle’s elite performers, provides an answer. It is perfectly possible for a person with character virtues to lead a life with little overarching integration of goals. Such a person would eat moderately, step up bravely when called upon, engage justly in transactions, help out friends when needed, not get unduly angry, be funny enough, and so on. By checking each of these boxes, this person leads a perfectly moral life, but there is nothing particularly awesome about it. He is like William Deresiewicz’s excellent sheep, who do everything that is expected of them but have little idea what their varied pursuits add up to. Such people do better on “resume virtues” than “eulogy virtues.”¹⁶ When it comes to summing up a person’s life, no one wants to hear that she got decent grades and paid her bills on time. Such details are compelling only if they can be situated within a larger story. I have, for instance, taught a number of nontraditional students who are the first in their family to attend college. Some of them have young children and want to show them that college is for them. On top of full-time jobs and raising children, these students commute to campus at night for three-hour classes, schedule study times weeks in advance, give up on anything like sufficient sleep, and somehow find enough hours in a day. For these people, getting good grades is an awesome accomplishment. If such people do not embody greatness of spirit, I don’t know who does. Aristotle’s point, as I take it, is that hitting the mean is not enough. Our activities need to be moderated for something. They need to fit into overarching projects that we can look back on and say: I did something awesome with my life. Duckworth talks about this in terms of grit. Aristotle talks about it in terms of greatness of spirit and calls it a kosmos of the virtues.

Existing scholarship has ignored the athletic context of NE’s use of kosmos and actively shunned Homeric/heroic resonances within NEand Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. As a result, scholars were left with the cosmetic sense of kosmos, which made goods of fortune, houses, and greatness of spirit seem like strange afterthoughts and unnecessary additions to one’s virtue. By stressing the athletic sense of kosmos, I have shown how all these pieces fit together as one’s good fortunes, house, honor, and greatness of spirit make outwardly visible one’s inner worth through a life of structured, virtuous activity. This beauty is not one imposed from without but shines forth from within and is ultimately a matter of organizing one’s life around meaningful projects and having the grit to keep one’s eyes on the prize. It is the beauty not of makeup but of a victor’s crown.