The Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics: A Study in the Development of Aristotle's Thought

By C.J. Rowe

This study deals with three distinct but related problems: the authorship of the Eudemian Ethics; the relationship between the Eudemian and the Nicomachean Ethics; and the problem of the 'common' books. It is centrally concerned with the second of these problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cambridge Philological Society
• Release date: Aug 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913701093

Book preview

Part I

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE ‘EUDEMIAN ETHICS’

CHAPTER ONE

THE HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM

Of the four extant Peripatetic ethical treatises, Schleiermacher, writing in 1817,¹ proposed to accept only one, the Magna Moralia (MM), as genuinely Aristotelian. He rejected the Eudemian Ethics (EE) and the Nίcomachean Ethics (EN) out of hand, together with the tiny De virtutibus et vitiis (VV). ‘Ihm schienen die MM am stärksten dem Bild einer modernen Ethik zu entsprechen, in der ethische Tugend und praktische Vernunft die Sittenlehre ausmachen, die theoretische Vernunft jedoch ausserhalb des spezifisch ethischen Bereiches bleiben kann.’² Whatever we may think of his judgement, it was with Schleiermacher that Aristotelian criticism in the modern sense began.³ Before him, that a work belonged traditionally to the Aristotelian corpus almost without exception guaranteed its acceptance as genuine, both in antiquity⁴ and in the Renaissance. Even VV, which is now almost universally recognised as a late Peripatetic compilation of the poorest kind,⁵ was described in the sixteenth century as ‘aureus et adamantinus (libellus)’.⁶

Like Schleiermacher, Spengel regarded EE as a late work.⁷ But he questioned his preference for MM over EN; for him, EN remained the most authentic statement of Aristotelian doctrine, and MM was far and away the inferior of the two. This assessment of EN has not seriously been challenged since;⁸ and his rejection of MM, if it has sometimes been disputed, is still generally accepted.⁹

Spengel’s grounds for rejecting EE were much stronger than Schleiermacher’s.¹⁰ Since he conceived of Aristotle’s thought as an essentially static unity, as did all his predecessors, it seemed to him a priori unlikely that Aristotle should have written more than one work on the same subject and following much the same pattern; and because EE, like MM, seemed inferior to EN in both content and construction, he quite reasonably preferred EN to it.¹

His view dominated Aristotelian criticism for the rest of the century. It was challenged only by Bendixen,² who pointed out striking correspondences between certain parts of EE and the Politics. On the strength of these, he declared himself convinced ‘dass wenn auch immer die letzte Redaktion unsrer EE aus der Feder des Eudemus mag hervorgegangen sein, dieselbe im engen Anschluss an einen Vortrag des Meisters sei abgefasst worden und nichts habe geben wollen und sollen, als eben diesen: keine Um- und Überarbeitung, keine Verbesserung oder Ergänzung, nichts mit einem Wort, welchem er zu seiner Namensüber- oder Unterschrift den Zusatz hätte beifügen mögen: ipse fecit’.³ Spengel attempted to dismiss his conclusions;⁴ and if it is true that he did so too easily, it is also true that Bendixen’s arguments in themselves were insufficient to counter his own, since it would be possible to suppose that Eudemus used other sources besides EN.⁵

On no other occasion in the whole of the nineteenth century was Spengel’s view firmly contradicted, though the harshness of his judgement on the quality of EE as a philosophical text was to some extent recognised.⁶ Spengel had himself suggested that the first discussion of pleasure in EN⁷ was an earlier draft rejected by Aristotle, but preserved by his editors;⁸ but in general he and his successors remained faithful to his basic assumption, and refused to believe ‘qu’Aristote ne soit repris à deux fois pour donner à sa morale la forme convenable’.⁹ This assumption was first questioned in detail by Kapp in 1912.¹⁰ Kapp suggested the possibility of supposing a development within Aristotle’s thought, thus making room for both EE and EN inside the Aristotelian corpus, while acknowledging the real differences between them. He pointed out the complete absence of any detailed analysis from Spengel’s case. ‘Der Beweis der Abhängigkeit der eudemischen von der nikomachischen (Ethik) lässt sich bei der Unsicherheit äusserer Indizien wirklich nur durch eingehende, unter diesem Gesichtspunkt aufgestellte Vergleichung beider Schriften untereinander und mit anderen aristotelischen Schriften erbringen; gerade die ist Spengel aber so gut wie schuldig geblieben.’¹ He had shown only the general agreement between EE and EN, not the dependence of the one on the other.

It is precisely on this kind of detailed comparison that Kapp’s own thesis rests. He presents two distinct categories of argument, of which one is based on an analysis of certain parts of the structures of EE and EN, the other on a comparison of their respective contents. The first is of prime importance, and I shall return to it shortly. The second showed that EE was closer to the Platonic ethics than EN and, so Kapp argues, that Eudemus should have gone back to the Republic or the Laws is highly improbable. This second type of argument forms the basis of Jaeger’s chapter on the ethical works in his important book on Aristotle, published in 1923.² Here, the supposed development in Aristotle’s ethical thought is brought within the context of his development throughout the whole range of his philosophical speculation. The development, as Jaeger saw it, took the form of a growing detachment from Platonic philosophy, which reached its climax in the scientific empiricism of the biological works. In the ethical sphere, he traced a line from ‘the late Platonic period of the Protrepticus’, through the ‘reformed Platonism’ of EE to the ‘late Aristotelianism’ of EN.³ Kapp had himself pointed out the relevance of the Protrepticus; but it was only with the publication of Jaeger’s large-scale work that his suggestion of a development in the ethics could begin to command the attention it deserved.⁴

The kernel of Jaeger’s discussion of the ethics, his account of the history of the term φρόνησις – again, taken from Kapp – has been shown conclusively to rest on a misinterpretation of the texts.⁵ If so, then little remains of his case, apart from the minor verbal correspondences to which he points between EE and the Protrepticus; and there are similar correspondences between the Protrepticus and EN.⁶ Nevertheless, if Jaeger’s particular conclusions are disputable, his general thesis remains of some importance.⁷

In fact, Kapp’s position is ultimately weaker than Jaeger’s, at least in principle, since he makes much less use of the Protrepticus, and his hypothesis of an early Platonic period in the development of Aristotle’s ethical theory is thus largely dependent upon the acceptance of EE itself. But arguments of this kind are in any case insufficient, whatever the form in which they are stated, since it remains true, as has often been pointed out in criticism of Jaeger,⁸ that Aristotle was probably closer to Plato in some respects in his later views than his earlier; and – if we accept Jaeger’s placing of EE – this is particularly true in the case of the two Ethics. Kapp’s first line of argument, however, as I hope to establish, is of quite a different order.

Practically nothing has been added to the case for authenticity since. Where it has not been denied, it seems simply to have been assumed, since the weaknesses inherent in Jaeger’s arguments have long been recognised, and very little attention, if any, has been paid to what seems to me to be the more important part of Kapp’s work. And there is in fact no reason why it should not be assumed, once granted that no conclusive argument has been put forward on the other side. That is, the onus lies with the opponents of authenticity, since it is only reasonable to accept the tradition, if no case can be made against it.

There have been three attempts in this century to establish the spuriousness of EE. Miss Needier,¹ Schächer² and Brozska³ all give their whole-hearted support to Spengel’s view. Miss Needler’s thesis was written in direct opposition to Jaeger, against whom she presents a reasonably convincing case. But her positive arguments are almost worthless. She shows that there are certain differences and contrasts between EE and EN, and that these can be explained on the assumption that EE is spurious and based on EN, without once remarking that it can equally well be explained on the assumption that it is genuine and independent. ‘Can only’ is always interchangeable with ‘can’. But her case is considerably stronger than Schächer’s;⁴ for Schächer presents practically no argument at all. He concludes that EE is the work of a later Peripatetic, possibly of no mean originality, who based his ethical system largely on EN, plus the continuing stream of Schuldiskussion, but who also had a predilection for Aristotle’s early Platonic period. The absence of argument suggests that this is precisely what it appears to be, a simple amalgamation of all previous views on the subject, though perhaps an ingenious one at that. But the paucity of our evidence about the Peripatos, about which Schächer rightly warns us, scarcely justifies elaborate hypotheses of this sort.

Of the three, Brzoska’s work is the best. I summarise his argument as follows. It is impossible to trace a development between EE and EN in terms of concept, as Jaeger supposed; in fact, the doctrine of the two is identical. But the style of argument in EE does not match that of EN. Its dryness and lack of freedom, its strange predilection for the logical and formal mark it off from the characteristic pattern of Aristotelian discussion.⁵ Since Jaeger’s results can be rejected, and EE in fact belongs to the same stage of development as EN and, what is more, presupposes the whole body of the physical, metaphysical and logical works, it cannot be early; and it cannot therefore be Aristotle’s. This is an excellent argument ad hominem. But once granted that the development need not necessarily be seen in Jaeger’s terms – that is, in terms of sweeping changes of concept – it loses its force. The differences to which Brzoska points (though he greatly exaggerates them) are precisely the sort of differences which the genetic approach can happily accommodate. Moreover, the correspondences between EE and the Metaphysics or the logical treatises are not such as to weaken the case for an early EE, even on Jaeger’s reconstruction of Aristotle’s intellectual history.

But it is not sufficient to answer to Brzoska that the peculiarities of EE can be explained on the assumption of a development, which would be to go no further than Miss Needier; and there is in fact no necessary reason why the philosophical inferiority of EE (in Brzoska’s sense) should be seen in terms of the philosophical immaturity which the genetic view must presuppose. The assumption remains purely hypothetical, and as such, however plausible it may be, it can in itself provide no satisfactory solution to the dispute. Indeed, Spengel’s argument, to which Brzoska himself to some extent subscribes, has some point, if EE and EN are actually identical in content. The case for authenticity must, it seems, rest on other grounds. It is not in any case inevitable that a developmental view – of whatever kind – should be taken even if EE is accepted as genuine. Professor Allan accepts the possibility of Aristotle’s having written EE at the same stage as EN, or even later; and he accounts for the differences between them by suggesting that they may have been written for different purposes.¹ Thus, while Jaeger’s approach suggests a plausible answer to a Spengel or a Brzoska, it remains only a possible method of explanation, and at that a method which may be regarded as entirely superfluous, if Jaeger’s particular thesis of a gradual movement in Aristotle away from the Platonic ethics is unworkable and illusory.

Brzoska’s argument thus retains a certain force, unless grounds of a different kind can be found to support the authenticity of EE. It has more than a prima facie plausibility, since the point on which it rests, the inferiority of EE to EN, is a matter of common agreement;² and I suggest that in consequence it represents a very real bar to the straightforward acceptance of the tradition.

There is no single external historical criterion which can be brought to bear on the problem. The appearance of a five- or four-book Ethics in Diogenes Laertius’ list of Aristotle’s works is of little or no importance.³ Even if it represents our EE, which is in itself an uncertain assumption, its appearance in the list means no more than that it was accepted as part of the corpus Aristotelicum at the time of writing of Diogenes’ source, and this is scarcely decisive. Again, the meaning of the title Eudemian will always remain obscure. The necessary independent grounds must be looked for within the Ethics themselves.⁴

They are to be found, I suggest, by means of the sort of structural analysis which forms the basis of the first and better half of Kapp’s arguments. Kapp points out that the construction of EN I ‘ist aus der Sache heraus gar nicht zu erklären; in der eudemischen Ethik dagegen [i.e. in EE I–II 1]…steht alles zwar im wesentlichen an entsprechender, aber…natürlicher Stelle’.¹ That is, while the order in which ideas and arguments are introduced is much the same in both, the reason for that order is often not visible in EN, but only in EE. Discussions which in EE form part of a careful, ordered and logical progression are left strangely isolated. Again, EN often anticipates points and distinctions which are formally developed only later, something of which EE is almost entirely innocent. From the comparative rigour to which this points in the construction of EE, Kapp argued that it must be Aristotle’s, and the earlier of the two Ethics, and that Spengel’s assumption that it was based on EN was no longer tenable. Whether all the details of his argument will hold water is questionable; but his basic method is, I suggest, sound. The structure of EN, that is, can be shown quite unambiguously to presuppose that of EE. And not only does this establish the authenticity of EE, but, by showing it to be prior, it provides the basic ground for the hypothesis of a development in the ethics.

But Kapp’s own analysis is itself insufficiently detailed. His dissertation is a matter only of some fifty pages, the larger part of which is taken up with the other arguments later adopted by Jaeger. Accordingly, I propose to analyse EE and EN in much greater depth. The analysis will cover all the discussions where parallels are preserved in both works, i.e. the discussions of happiness, the general discussions of virtue, the discussions of the individual virtues, and the discussions of friendship. The arguments I put forward are of a type similar to Kapp’s;² but by approaching EE and EN in a more systematic fashion, and by attempting to see the various treatments as wholes, I hope to provide them with a broader base. And my results do, in fact, go far beyond his.

It has been held that if EE is not spurious as a whole, large portions of it at least were added by a later hand.³ This is improbable; though it may be possible to split off VII and VIII from each other and from the main complex formed by I–III, which is itself an essential unity,⁴ no necessary or sufficient reason can be found for doing so. There is in fact not a single sentence in the whole of EE which need be regarded as suspect. If we put to one side the special problems involved by the fragment VIII, and by the ‘common’ books,⁵ it represents a unity in a very real sense. My thesis, then, is that EE belongs to Aristotle in its entirety.⁶

1 F. Schleiermacher, Über die ethischen Werke des Ar., published (in part) in Sämtl. Werke, III 3, Berlin 1835.

2 R. Walzer, MM und arist. Ethik, Berlin 1929, p. 2.

3 Cp. F. Dirlmeier, Ar., EE, übers. u. erl., Berlin 1962, p. 121.

4 Though Aspasius (in EN, p. 151 Heylbut) seems to have attributed EE to Eudemus (cp. L. Spengel, ‘Über die unter dem Namen des Ar. erhaltenen ethischen Schriften’, II, Abh. der Bayer. Akademie München III 3, 1843, p. 521); but this is a rare exception to a general rule.

5 Gohlke and Zürcher alone defend it (P. Gohlke, ‘Die Entstehung der arist. Ethik, Politik, Rhetorik’, SB Wien 223, 2, 1944; J. Zürcher, Ar., Werk und Geist, Paderborn 1953).

6 Cp. E.-A. Schmidt, Ar., Über die Tugend, übers. u. erl., Berlin 1965, p. 17.

7 Op. cit. I (III 2, 1841), 11.

8 Zürcher, op. cit., attributes it to Theophrastus, along with most of the rest of Aristotle.

9 Cp. G. Ramsauer, Zur Charakteristik der arist. MM, Progr. Oldenburg 1858; A. Trendelenburg, ‘Εinige Belege für die nacharist. Abfassungszeit der MM’, Hist. Beitr. zur Philos. 3, 1867; W. Jaeger, Ar., Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, Berlin 1923; Walzer, op. cit.; and especially K. O. Brink, Stil und Form der pseudarist. MM, Ohlau 1933. On the other side, see H. von Arnim’s long series of articles, beginning with ‘Die drei arist. Ethiken’, SB Wien 202, 2, 1924; and Dirlmeier, Ar., MM, übers. u. erl., Berlin 1958. Von Arnim and Dirlmeier have not made their case. It can fairly be said that if MM is genuine, then no internal criterion, literary or philosophical, is valid for the judgement of any work.

10 Titze, who wrote shortly after Schleiermacher, but apparently without knowledge of him, had firmly asserted its authority (F. N. Titze, De Ar. operum serie et distinctione, Leipzig 1826); but his argument is a mere curiosity.

1 If it is not in fact structurally inferior (see below), its philosophical inferiority is almost universally accepted (MM, on the other hand, is certainly inferior on both counts).

2 J. Bendixen, ‘Übersicht liber die neueste des Ar. Ethik und Politik betreffende Literatur’, Philologus 11, 1856. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire’s position (J. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire, Morale d’Ar., Paris 1856) has something in common with Bendixen’s, but, pace Dirlmeier (EE), Spengel is largely justified in claiming his support.

3 Op. cit. p. 582 (quoted by Dirlmeier, EE, p. 133).

4 ‘Arist. Studien I’, Abh. der Bayer. Akademie München X 1, 1864.

5 Though in the case of MM, which bears the same relation to EE and EN as Spengel thought EE to bear to EN, there is not a single passage in the whole work where we have to point elsewhere than to EE or EN for its source.

6 E.g. by Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire, op. cit.

7 VII 12–15.

8 Cp. C. A. Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der griech.-röm. Philosophie, Berlin 1857, pp. 1510–11.

9 Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire, op. cit. 1, p. 332.

10 E. Kapp, Das Verhältnis der eud. zur nik. Ethik, Berlin 1912. P. von der Mühll (De Ar. EE auctoritate, Diss. Göttingen 1909) reached much the same conclusions as Kapp, but they are based almost exclusively on the type of argument suggested by Bendixen. His special thesis, which explains supposed inaccuracies in EE by assuming it to represent a set of notes made by Eudemus from a course of lectures given by Aristotle, is effectively demolished by Kapp. See also T. Case’s article on Aristotle in the Encyclopaedia Britannica for 1910.

1 Op. cit. pp. 5–6.

2 Ar., Grundlegung (cp. p. 9, n. 9).

3 Op. cit., English translation, Oxford 1934, p. 231.

4 See also Jaeger’s earlier work on the Metaphysics (Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des Ar., Berlin 1912).

5 Cp. e.g. the review by H. Margueritte of Jaeger’s article ‘Über Ursprung und Kreislauf des philosophischen Lebensideals’ (SB Berlin 1928), in Revue d’histoire de la philosophie 4, 1930, pp. 98–104; J. Léonard, Le bonheur chez Ar., Brussels 1948; H.-G. Gadamer, ‘Der arist. Protreptikos und die entwicklungsgeschichtliche Betrachtung der arist. Ethik’, Hermes 63, 1928.

6 Cp. e.g. EN 1177 a 12 ff., Protr. fr. 6 Ross.

7 See Part II, chapter 3.

8 E.g. by G. E. L. Owen (‘Logic and Metaphysics in Some Earlier Works of Ar.’, in Ar. and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century, Göteborg 1960).

1 Mary C. Needier, The Relation of the Eud. to the Nic. Ethics of Ar., Abstracts of Theses, Univ. of Chicago, Hum. Ser. 5, 1926–7.

2 E. J. Schächer, Studien zu den Ethiken des Corpus Aristotelicum, Paderborn 1940.

3 K. Brzoska, Die Formen des arist. Denkens und die EE, Frankfurt 1943.

4 Gadamer’s (op. cit.) is apparently much the same, though it is stated only very briefly, as an appendix to his criticism of Jaeger. Cp. Mary C. Needier, ‘The