Aristotle on Courage and Revenge

Here's something I ran (back) across while looking over Aristotle's chapters on courage in Book III of Nicomachean Ethics:

Passion also is sometimes reckoned as courage; those who act from passion, like wild beasts rushing at those who have wounded them, are thought to be brave, because brave men also are passionate; for passion above all things is eager to rush on danger, and hence Homer's 'put strength into his passion' and 'aroused their spirit and passion and 'hard he breathed panting' and 'his blood boiled'. For all such expressions seem to indicate the stirring and onset of passion. Now brave men act for honour's sake, but passion aids them; while wild beasts act under the influence of pain; for they attack because they have been wounded or because they are afraid, since if they are in a forest they do not come near one. Thus they are not brave because, driven by pain and passion, they rush on danger without foreseeing any of the perils, since at that rate even asses would be brave when they are hungry; for blows will not drive them from their food; and lust also makes adulterers do many daring things. (Those creatures are not brave, then, which are driven on to danger by pain or passion.) The 'courage' that is due to passion seems to be the most natural, and to be courage if choice and motive be added.

Men, then, as well as beasts, suffer pain when they are angry, and are pleased when they exact their revenge; those who fight for these reasons, however, are pugnacious but not brave; for they do not act for honour's sake nor as the rule directs, but from strength of feeling; they have, however, something akin to courage. (NE, III, Ch. 8)

The mention of revenge is what first caught my eye, then I had to go back and re-read the first paragraph. (This discussion is of one of five "semblances" of courage Aristotle discusses.) Then I notice the line that such passionate action seems "to be courage if choice and motive is added." This would make it seem that a more pre-meditated form of "revenge"--what we might properly think of revenge, rather than an unreflective striking back--is, or at least seems, courageous.

This paper by Krisanna Scheiter is very helpful in clarifying what Aristotle means by revenge and what its function is (and that Aristotle would have thought that revenge can take immoral forms). However, she argues that the primary function of revenge (and suggests that this can be seen in Aristotle) is to "right a wrong and to ensure that we are not treated unjustly in the future" (2). I'm not sure how well this fits with Aristotle's claim above that the brave person acts "for honour's sake," since this would suggest that the brave person who engages in an act of revenge does it to restore (protect?) "honour."

Scheiter marks a clear distinction (for Aristotle) between punishment (done for the sake of the wrongdoer, to improve him) and revenge (done for the sake of the wronged, to ensure that they will not be wronged by this person again). So perhaps the idea is that revenge sends the message that one isn't to be f*cked with--and perhaps one's honor is bound up with that 'not-to-be-f*cked-with-ness'. (This would seem to suggest that revenge would only be appropriate when the wrongdoer hadn't already figured that out and/or the person remains a threat. Otherwise, there's no honor, or presumably bravery, in exacting it.)

One interesting point she makes toward the end of the paper is that, "on Aristotle's account, revenge does not have to be severe or violent in order to be effective." That makes me wonder whether there could be a form of "revenge" which, at the same time, doesn't violate Socrates' claim (in Crito) that it's wrong to wrong another, even if we have been wronged (and maybe even if it is violent). It seems this way because it seems like "revenge" here is something like preemptive self-defense. But then it doesn't exactly seem like what we might normally call revenge.

Apply to your favorite cases. Discuss.

Courage & Facing Death

A recurring point of emphasis in my teaching partner's (Helen Bennett's) discussion of Antigone (in our Honors Humanities course) was that one way in which Antigone "missed the virtuous mean" had to do with the way in which she evinced disregard for her own life. Not that her family life was great, obviously (you've heard of her dad, Oedipus, right?). But if you read the play, there's something to the idea that she's being (or speaking) a bit reckless (even though she was doing the right thing in trying to bury Polyneices).

At the end of his discussion of courage, Aristotle claims that a courageous person is properly pained by the prospect of his or her own death:

the more he [the courageous person] is possessed of excellence in its entirety and the happier he is, the more he will be pained at the thought of death; for life is best worth living for such a man, and he is knowingly losing the greatest goods [by sacrificing his life in war], and this is painful. But he is none the less brave, and perhaps all the more so, because he chooses noble deed of war at that cost. (NE Bk. III Ch. 9)

This forces Aristotle to hedge a bit on his prior claim that the exercise of virtue is always pleasant to the virtuous person, "except in so far as it reaches its end." What I found really striking here, in connection with my previous thinking about courage here, is what Aristotle then says about the "best soldiers" perhaps being people who aren't quite fully courageous (or virtuous or happy, in his sense):

But it is quite possible that the best soldiers may be not men of this sort but those who are less brave but have no other good; for these are ready to face danger, and the sell their life for trifling gains.

This isn't something you'd want to put in the recruitment literature, but given what Silke says about the background story of many suicide bombers (see p. 183 and the citation of Kushner 1996), Aristotle's remarks have some plausibility. Of course, there's also something off-putting about this (even if it is a dark truth) when one thinks about it in connection with, for example, the reasons young people might choose to go into military service. But I'm not sure what else to say now about that.

How Much Study Does a Person Need? (Aristotle & Contemplation)

In the final book of the Nicomachean Ethics (Book X), Aristotle notoriously advances the view that the happiest human life--in his sense of happiness which means to be living and faring well--will necessarily include the activity of contemplation (also translated by T. Irwin as "study"). This is because:

1. Human happiness (flourishing) must consist in virtuous (excellent) activity of the distinctively human capacities--which are the rational capacities.

2. While there are several different excellent uses to which we can put our rational capacities (politics, social justice action, and perhaps also--I would suggest--various creative activities, as well as raising good children, etc.), contemplation is the most complete and self-sufficient of these activities, because it has no further end (like the aim toward happiness itself), requires only modest external fortune, and unlike some of the other virtues, does not require an object (or other agent) which is the recipient of one's virtuous acts (you need social trouble for the practice of the social virtues, children to practice the virtues of parenting, etc.).

3. In addition to being the most complete and self-sufficient of rational activities, contemplation is also divine (a point that becomes hugely important for Aquinas). While we have all sorts of human needs, and so can only participate in divine activities to a limited extent, it's still good to strive in the direction of transcendent activity.

The last point sounds a lot like things Plato says about philosophy--that it is training that prepares one for death (and the separation of the soul from the body, and so a transition, in that respect, to a more godly state). (I just note this because Aristotle tends to give Plato a hard time in the NE.) But putting that aside, I want to reflect a little on the oft-noted observation that it's tempting to see Aristotle's move here as a typical self-congratulatory universalization of one's own preferred dominant activity as the best one. Aristotle's a philosopher, so of course he's going to think that the best life is the philosopher's life--or more specifically, the life of the philosopher who has found some truth.

(That is an important point. As Irwin notes in his translation, "study" (or contemplation) should not be confused with inquiry, or any sort of attempt to figure things out. The person who is able to engage in study has already discovered some truth and is now gazing upon it. The Greek root of the term translated as "study" (and contemplation) has this visual meaning. Thus, the wise person is something more than just any aspiring philosopher or intellectual, and such people, too, might fail to reach a point where study is possible.)

It's usually pointed out that not many people have the intelligence, formal training, or resources (including free time) to engage in contemplation of complex deductive systems. Aristotle leaves it unclear, too, just how much of our lives should be devoted to study--the point about it's divine nature would suggest that the ideal answer is, "as much as possible, and the more the better," so that the happiest person would be something like a sage living in a hole somewhere, with no interruption and near-constant attention to the beauty and magnificence of the truth, with a couple potty breaks and some modest Wittgensteinian meals. ("Hot ziggety!") The alternate picture, less austere, would be basically a rich dude with servants (or better, slaves) to cook stuff for him and so on, and a nice cozy library into which he confines himself to do the serious activity of contemplation. Either way, and so for possibly varying reasons, this has got to be where a lot of people, would get off the bus...at least if the suggestion is that this is the happiest life even in Aristotle's sense of living and faring well. Not to say that the sage isn't, but since Aristotle's apparent ideal contemplative would, by the nature of his or her activity, become withdrawn from society, it becomes a rather peculiar life.

However, given the importance of friendship for Aristotle, and also given that he allows that even the contemplative must possess the moral virtues in order to deal well with others (like his or her friends), it's probably very wrong to see the disengaged sage as Aristotle's happiest person. Importantly, this would seem to mean--since we are not gods--that there will often be very good reasons to STOP contemplating and, say, help our friends move to a new house. So, it appears--and Irwin also reads Aristotle this way--that the important thing is to MAKE TIME for contemplation/study. So, like most issues in the NE, there's not a tidy answer at all to the question, "How much contemplation?"

There are other things worth exploring here. One is whether we might challenge the (snobbish) idea that acquiring wisdom requires lots of technical training rather than something else like the experience of age and an attuned and sensitive mind. If there are ways to widen the potential objects of contemplation/study, then perhaps Aristotle's ideas can be made to seem more appealing. (The point isn't to democratize the idea, but at least to make it seem like other things besides formal logic and mathematics and analytic metaphysics can get you to the right place...)

Second, I think of Wittgenstein's claim from the Philosophical Investigations: "The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question." Once Aristotle's contemplation is understood not to be inquiry but something else, I wonder whether there might be some resonance with W's point about what a "real discovery" is. One might then combine this with a suggestion that Thomas Nagel made in his early paper, "Aristotle on Eudaimonia" in which he suggests (if I recall correctly), that contemplation of wisdom might actually be the sort of thing one can couple with many kinds of lives and maybe even do (if you're really good) while doing other things like sweeping the floor. Which often seems like the kind of thing W wanted to do instead of philosophy. (There are a lot of differences here, too, so I don't want to overstate the extent of this comparison.)

Lastly, to the extent that the objects of contemplation (or how we navigate our way to them) can be widened or reconceptualized, it would appear that unless one has the silly idea that only philosophers (or physicists or mathematicians, etc.) discover truths worth gazing upon, then a lot of "rational activities"--perhaps all of them--will be conducive to the sorts of discoveries that make contemplation a possibility: including various aesthetic and literary activities (both the creating and the consuming) and perhaps also our very relationships with others.

Thoughts? (Sorry that's a bit long for a blog.)