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Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates
What is the good life for a human being? Aristotle’s exploration of this question in the Nicomachean Ethics has established it as a founding work of Western philosophy, though its teachings have long puzzled readers and provoked spirited discussion. Adopting a radically new point of view, Ronna Burger deciphers some of the most perplexing conundrums of this influential treatise by approaching it as Aristotle’s dialogue with the Platonic Socrates.
This dialogue initially takes the shape of a debate Aristotle stages with Socrates, identified in the Ethics as a proponent of the doctrine that virtue is knowledge. Tracing the argument of the Ethics as it emerges from the debate, Burger’s careful reading shows how Aristotle represents ethical virtue from the perspective of those devoted to it while standing back to examine its assumptions and implications. Providing brilliant insights into Aristotle’s understanding of the moral life, friendship, and philosophy, Burger’s study uncovers in the speeches of the Ethics an action that proceeds in a Socratic manner to offer a Socratic answer to the question of human happiness.
This dialogue initially takes the shape of a debate Aristotle stages with Socrates, identified in the Ethics as a proponent of the doctrine that virtue is knowledge. Tracing the argument of the Ethics as it emerges from the debate, Burger’s careful reading shows how Aristotle represents ethical virtue from the perspective of those devoted to it while standing back to examine its assumptions and implications. Providing brilliant insights into Aristotle’s understanding of the moral life, friendship, and philosophy, Burger’s study uncovers in the speeches of the Ethics an action that proceeds in a Socratic manner to offer a Socratic answer to the question of human happiness.
- GenresPhilosophy
306 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 15, 2008
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About the author
Ronna Burger
16 books4 followersRonna C. Burger is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy, Catherine & Henry J. Gaisman Chair, and Sizeler Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 17, 2009
This book is exactly what the title says it is: an examination of how on nearly every page of Aristotle's ethics, he is in dialogue with Socrates. There are no opinions of Aristotle's that are not somehow related to a view proposed in Plato's works. Considering how much there was a debate, if not battle, about whether you were a Platonist or Aristotelian in the later middle ages and the Renaissance, this book is a corrective to the view that they are opposite poles. Inasmuch as they disagreed with each other, Aristotle fundamentally worked from and was deeply influenced by his teacher.
To sum up, Burger writes, 'What is the good life for a human being? is the Socratic question that the Ethics set out to address. Is it, we should now ask, a Socratic "answer" at which the inquiry arrives in the end? Plato's Socrates comes closest to making his own answer thematic at his public trial, in the context of explaining why he would not accept it if the penalty imposed on him were only the demand to remain quiet and live in silence. His reason—though he doubts the jury will be persuaded by it—is the conviction that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being (Apology 38a). Taken literally, Socrates' claim, however playful, is shockingly radical: all his fellow citizens—whom he had just likened to a sleeping horse, annoyed at the gadfly who awakens them—might as well be dead. Aristotle, who is perhaps less playful, appears more generous: "happiness" can be expanded to include a life governed by ethical virtue, albeat only as a secondary form relative to the perfect happiness of the theoretical life." (212)
The pre-Socratic philosopher, however, was limited (like many scientists today) by his view of 'distinterested' knowledge and by claiming to possess it all perfectly (or at least be capable of possessing it perfectly and fully). "But the Socratic philosopher who is characterized by his central concern with the question of what is good for a human being, is fully aware, and must be aware, of the paradoxical self-fulfillment that comes with his disinterested practice: he recognizes that the activity he engages in as en end in itself, because not in the service of any higher end, is in fact the good that makes human life worth living. He understands his own activity to be the paradigmatic expression of a natural desire, in all human beings, for possession of the good and knowledge of the good, which must be of the greatest use, if without it everything else we possess and everything else we know is useless (Republic 505a-e). Driven by a selfless and uncalculating eros of the beautiful, he discovers and embraces his own good in that very pursuit.' (213-4)
On almost every page of Aristotle's Ethics, "one can hear the echo of a discussion in the Platonic dialogues ... the action of the Ethics involves Aristotle's ongoing, if implicit, dialogue with an imagined interlocutor who is indistinguishably the Platonic Socrates or the Socratic Plato. The sharing of speeches and thoughts, through that dialogue in deed, is the activity in which Aristotle has from the start invited his reader's participation" (215).
To sum up, Burger writes, 'What is the good life for a human being? is the Socratic question that the Ethics set out to address. Is it, we should now ask, a Socratic "answer" at which the inquiry arrives in the end? Plato's Socrates comes closest to making his own answer thematic at his public trial, in the context of explaining why he would not accept it if the penalty imposed on him were only the demand to remain quiet and live in silence. His reason—though he doubts the jury will be persuaded by it—is the conviction that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being (Apology 38a). Taken literally, Socrates' claim, however playful, is shockingly radical: all his fellow citizens—whom he had just likened to a sleeping horse, annoyed at the gadfly who awakens them—might as well be dead. Aristotle, who is perhaps less playful, appears more generous: "happiness" can be expanded to include a life governed by ethical virtue, albeat only as a secondary form relative to the perfect happiness of the theoretical life." (212)
The pre-Socratic philosopher, however, was limited (like many scientists today) by his view of 'distinterested' knowledge and by claiming to possess it all perfectly (or at least be capable of possessing it perfectly and fully). "But the Socratic philosopher who is characterized by his central concern with the question of what is good for a human being, is fully aware, and must be aware, of the paradoxical self-fulfillment that comes with his disinterested practice: he recognizes that the activity he engages in as en end in itself, because not in the service of any higher end, is in fact the good that makes human life worth living. He understands his own activity to be the paradigmatic expression of a natural desire, in all human beings, for possession of the good and knowledge of the good, which must be of the greatest use, if without it everything else we possess and everything else we know is useless (Republic 505a-e). Driven by a selfless and uncalculating eros of the beautiful, he discovers and embraces his own good in that very pursuit.' (213-4)
On almost every page of Aristotle's Ethics, "one can hear the echo of a discussion in the Platonic dialogues ... the action of the Ethics involves Aristotle's ongoing, if implicit, dialogue with an imagined interlocutor who is indistinguishably the Platonic Socrates or the Socratic Plato. The sharing of speeches and thoughts, through that dialogue in deed, is the activity in which Aristotle has from the start invited his reader's participation" (215).
January 17, 2011
As of the end of the first few chapters, not very helpful.
September 8, 2013
A very dry book about human ethics and what is a good or bad person. Touched on politics and happiness. A better book than The Secret.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews