The History of Evil in Antiquity by Tom Angier Chad Meister Charles Taliaferro

Author:Tom Angier,Chad Meister,Charles Taliaferro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2018-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

The metaphysics of vice

So far, then, we have explored both the structure of vice and whether and how individual agents can be held responsible for it (where ‘vice’ picks out both vicious action and vicious character). I want now to take a brief look at Aristotle’s wider metaphysics of vice. This is not often done in contemporary scholarship, owing perhaps to a general resistance to metaphysical foundations within ethics, but more particularly to the theological aspects of Aristotle’s thought. I think it is nonetheless vital to tackle his moral metaphysics, not only because he has one but also because it will help us understand far better the problems he identifies in ‘living viciously’ (see next section).

It is clear from Aristotle’s ethical treatises that vice is a derogation from, or failure to fulfil, the human essence. Right at the start of the NE, he tells us that ‘every action and choice is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason, the good has nobly been declared that at which all things aim’ (1094a1–3). Now, though the first ‘good’ here suggests mere ‘perceived good’, the second suggests ‘real good’, since Aristotle takes it that humans desire not some illusory fulfilment but actual, real fulfilment. And, in NE I.7, he argues that this is achieved by fulfilling the human function or ergon – NB: ‘the excellence [aretē] of each thing is relative to its proper function’ (1139a16–17) – and that humans fulfil their function by living according to the virtues. As he maintains at II.6,

every virtue [aretē] both brings into good condition the thing of which it is the virtue, and makes the function of that thing be done well; e.g. the virtue of the eye makes both the eye and its function good; for it is by the virtue of the eye that we see well … Therefore … the virtue of man also will be the disposition which makes a man good, and which makes him do his own function well.

(1106a15–24)

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