Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T13:07:53.551Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 11 - Aristotle and Socrates in the Eudemian Ethics on the Naturalness of Goodness

from Part V - The Naturalness of Goodness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Barbara M. Sattler
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Ursula Coope
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

Christopher Rowe argues that Aristotle in the Eudemian Ethics develops a naturalised account of Socrates’s divine sign: even people lacking in practical wisdom, Aristotle proposes, can act appropriately, and achieve a kind of happiness, because of something divine in them. But this ‘something divine’ is not (as it is for Socrates) a private inner voice, rather a kind of well-naturedness. For Aristotle, goodness is natural. The goodness of human nature explains how it is possible to do the appropriate things even without reasoning, and even do so reliably. This offers Aristotle an answer to a puzzle about our relation to the natural world. Humans, he holds, are good by nature, yet he also holds fully virtuous human beings to be relatively rare: two claims that are hard to reconcile, given Aristotle’s usual view that what occurs ‘by nature’ occurs ‘always or for the most part’. By allowing there to be a level of decency that is achievable through well-naturedness, even by those who lack full virtue, Aristotle can answer this puzzle. If this decency is achieved by many people, then there is, after all, a kind of good human development that occurs by nature and occurs regularly.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×