Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Book Review: Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates 3 1 9
The beautiful is first introduced as the telos of ethical virtue
(NE 1115b12-13; Burger, 49). It stands in contradistinction to phronesis,
whose telos is the good (NE 1140b20-21; Burger, 71). As Burger puts it, “the
beautiful proves to be, together with the just, the independent principles that
show up in the manifold of particular virtues and withstand their absorption
into phronesis: the beautiful and the just supply the force of resistance
against the Socratic move that would deny the autonomy of the sphere of
ethical virtue” (49). The beautiful is “independent” because it is desired for its
own sake; in contrast, phronesis, which looks to the good, appears to be only
of instrumental value.
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates offers an account that describes
the object of each individual’s eros as the god that represents the ideal or
perfection of the individual’s nature. Aristotle’s examination of the manifold
of virtues in books 3-4 suggests the same thing. “The beautiful,” therefore,
appears to be the projection of and desire for perfection and completion.
Ethical virtue, however, is limited in its origins and its scope.
After all, it is identified as the excellence of the desiring part of the soul. As
Burger puts it, “someone who looks to the beautiful as his end and chooses
his action because of itself does not understand his character formation as
a molding of passions tied to the body” (202). This would seem to suggest
that the beautiful sought by the passions and named by the ethical virtues is
not the true beautiful, the truly independent, self-sufficient one sought for its
own sake and for nothing else (199-200). True eros for the beautiful must be
the goal solely of mind. The harnessing of (ethical) virtue to phronesis ensures
that the eros or drive of the passions will be beneficial to the individual by
placing the passions under the command and guide of the good, but it does
not satisfy the longing for perfection or the ideal. Sophia, therefore, as the
excellence of (a part of) mind, not the passions, steps in to replace ethical
virtue and looks like it will be able to succeed where ethical virtue could not.
But, the introduction of sophia heralds a new division. In the moment when
phronesis reins in and unites the desires and reason, sophia divides mind into
practical reason and theoretical reason.
For a moment in book 6, Aristotle appears to unite the two.
Offering the analogy of health and medicine, he declares that “theoretical
reason produces happiness, not as medicine produces health, but as health
itself makes a person healthy” (NE 1144a3-4). Happiness is the province of