Aristotle's Discovery of the Human: Piety and Politics in the "Nicomachean Ethics"

by Mary P. Nichols

Overview

Aristotle’s Discovery of the Human offers a fresh, illuminating, and accessible analysis of one of the Western philosophical tradition’s most important texts.

In Aristotle’s Discovery of the Human, noted political theorist Mary P. Nichols explores the ways in which Aristotle brings the gods and the divine into his “philosophizing about human affairs” in his Nicomachean Ethics. Her analysis shows that, for Aristotle, both piety and politics are central to a flourishing human life. Aristotle argues that piety provides us not only an awareness of our kinship to the divine, and hence elevates human life, but also an awareness of a divinity that we cannot entirely assimilate or fathom. Piety therefore supports a politics that strives for excellence at the same time that it checks excess through a recognition of human limitation.

Proceeding through each of the ten books of the Ethics, Nichols shows that this prequel to Aristotle’s Politics is as theoretical as it is practical. Its goal of improving political life and educating citizens and statesmen is inseparable from its pursuit of the truth about human beings and their relation to the divine. In the final chapter, which turns to contemporary political debate, Nichols’s suggestion of the possibility of supplementing and deepening liberalism on Aristotelian grounds is supported by the account of human nature, virtue, friendship, and community developed throughout her study of the Ethics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268205454
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	07/15/2023
Pages:	356
Sales rank:	511,538
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Mary P. Nichols is professor emerita in the Department of Political Science at Baylor University. She is the author of seven books, including Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom.

Read an Excerpt

The modern separation between church and state sought to protect civil peace from sectarian conflict and to protect religious liberty and freedom of thought from political interference. If successful, a secular politics would serve both civil life and religion and philosophy. This liberal solution nevertheless left humanity’s spiritual life, moral aspirations, and devotion to truth without any authoritative support, as individuals are allowed and even encouraged to pursue happiness as they see fit. Such permissiveness, which accepts no imposition of order or rank of goods, encourages a moral relativism that asserts that ways of life are equal, that the good is whatever we desire, and that moral distinctions are arbitrary. Liberalism has been criticized almost from its inception for the quality of life that emerges under its auspices such as Rousseau’s criticism of the bourgeois or Nietzsche’s of the “last man.” It has also come under attack more recently by theocratic regimes for its secularism and moral decadence. Aristotle offers an alternative to both liberalism and its critics, or rather support for liberal politics against the criticisms to which liberal theory leaves it open. Whether we live a good life and govern ourselves well may be “up to us,” but our very freedom for Aristotle makes us responsible for living lives consistent with that freedom. We pursue happiness as we see fit, but we must see what is fit for human beings, what distinguishes us from other beings, and therewith what sort of activity will make us happy.

For Aristotle, the challenges of political life can summon the moral and intellectual excellence of which human beings are capable, without leading to the dogmatism and even fanaticism that liberal theorists sought to avert. On one hand, a pious awareness of the distance between ourselves and the divine supports a humble toleration of different religious communities. Not the diminution of the impact of religion on civil life but reverence itself begets toleration, while holding pious citizens back from any attempt to assimilate politics to religion. On the other hand, politics, including liberal politics, cannot be traced to a godless assertion of human power over nature if the achievements of our reason are made possible, as Aristotle says, by “what is most divine in us.” For these reasons, liberal politics need not be understood as merely secular, but could be supported by a kind of piety, indeed one in which theocratic regimes that claim divine sanction are deficient. Politics, as Aristotle understands it, especially a politics that protects and encourages the pursuit of happiness, challenges us to develop and exercise our highest human capacities. Along these lines, liberalism has a high and demanding work to do, but also a defense against its critics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Our Unfinished Humanity: A Divine Gift (Book 1)

2. Ethical Virtue: Nature, Character, and Choice (Books 2-3)

3. The Virtues of Living Together (Book 4)

4. A Shrine to the Graces: Justice and Tragedy (Book 5)

5. Intellectual Virtue: Prudence, Wisdom, and Philosophy (Book 6)

6. Human Strength and Divine Perfection (Book 7)

7. Friendship: Family, Political Community, and Philosophy (Books 8-9)

8. Divine Thoughts and Political Reform (Book 10)

Conclusion: Aristotelian Piety for a Liberal Politics

Editorial Reviews

This is an outstanding book that makes an innovative and sophisticated contribution to our understanding of the Nicomachean Ethics in particular and of Aristotle’s practical philosophy in general.” —Gerald M. Mara, author of The Civic Conversations of Thucydides and Plato

“Notable for clarity, good sense, and insight, Mary Nichols’s lovely book is a delight and a treasure.” —Harvey C. Mansfield, author of Manliness

"An impressive and accomplished study of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. . . .Nichols' book is among the very best contemporary studies of Aristotle. Essential." —Choice

"Mary Nichols’s new book, Aristotle’s Discovery of the Human, despite chiefly being a reading of 2,500-year-old texts, could scarcely have come at a better time. In Nichols’s hands, these texts and their relevance to our times quickly become clear." —The New Criterion

"[S]hould the reader of the Nicomachean Ethics not pay close attention to what the philosopher has to say about the divine? Yet few recent commentators have done so, until now. In this careful, richly textured commentary, Mary P. Nichols undertakes the Aristotelian task of correcting the balance." —Interpretation

"If piety can be shown to one’s teachers 'with whom one has studied philosophy' because our debts to them, like our debts to our parents and to God, are so large that we can never repay them..., then Nichols’ book is itself a noble exercise of piety to the genius from Stagira." —Ancient Philosophy

"Nichols’s book is a masterly demonstration of how careful study of an ancient text proceeds." —Claremont Review of Books

From the Publisher