Commentators on Aristotle’s practical philosophy rarely find new topics. Most of the time we debate classical topics by finding new clues and going into more details about, for example, the precise understanding of happiness, the relation between ethical and intellectual virtue, the structure of practical syllogism, the mechanism of akrasia, etc. But Pavlos Kontos’s book Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason does find new and untrodden territory, and enlarges the scope of our understanding of Aristotle’s practical philosophy. Drawing on resources from both the Aristotelian tradition (covering a wide range of ancient and contemporary commentators) and various other traditions of practical philosophy (notably Isocrates, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Kant, Gadamer, Arendt, Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams), this book provides new agendas in general and richly detailed interpretation of certain texts in particular. Kontos acquaints us with four kinds of Aristotelian figures who have been largely neglected before. They are the spectator of moral and political action, legislators, the person of hopes and prayers, and the radically evil person. Each kind occupies one chapter of the book and exhibits one perspective on practical reason.
The spectator is concerned with non-motivational practical judgments. In studies both of Aristotle’s practical reasoning and of contemporary philosophy of action, the focus is always on how practical reason motivates action. But Kontos insightfully detects a third category in addition to the often-discussed dichotomy between an action-centered understanding of practical matters, and a purely theoretical or metaethical understanding of practical matters. This third category is marked by the role of the judge (kritês) and spectator (theôros), and related to the quasi-intellectual virtue comprehension (sunesis), which is, in turn, related to the intellectual virtue practical wisdom (phronêsis). The difference between comprehension and practical wisdom lies in the fact that practical wisdom is prescriptive, while comprehension is non-prescriptive and merely evaluative, i.e., passing judgments without giving orders. While the Ethics and Politicsonly pay limited attention to comprehension, Aristotle’s Rhetoric provides valuable sources for understanding non-motivational practical judgements. For the audience of rhetorical speeches is “quintessentially someone who exercises the intellectual activity of judgment about practical matters that largely fall outside the sphere of his/her own actions” (p. 15).
I agree with Kontos’s emphasis on this third category of practical judgment, his thoughtful interpretation of NE VI.10 (on comprehension) and Rhetoric, and his connection of this kind of judgment with the contemporary debate about internalism and externalism (sections 1.2, 1.3 and 1.5 respectively), but I am less convinced by his efforts to identify the perfect spectator with the self-controlled person (enkratês) (section 1.4, pp. 31-40), for two reasons. First, unlike virtue and vice, both self-control (enkrateia) and lack of self-control (akrasia) are unstable states of character, and, given the battle between reason and appetite within the soul, the enkratic person and the akratic person may very well be the same person. An enkratic person may do the right thing on one occasion, but with reluctance, even pain, because excessive appetites still impact him. The next time he may do the akratic thing, and vice versa. To call the enkratic person an “underestimated hero” and “virtuous spectator” who consistently provides correct judgment grants him too high an honor. Second, if the honor of being a “virtuous spectator” is justly granted to the enkratic person, then it is unjust to deprive the akratic person of this honor. According to Aristotle, the failure of the akratic person is on the level of action, not on the level of mere judgment at some distance from action. The metaphors of an actor reciting verses on stage, or a student stringing words together without understanding the meaning, which are used by Kontos to deprive the akratic person of correct judgment (pp. 39-40), seem to prove quite the opposite. For the recitation of verse, and stringing the words together, are more naturally associated with making correct judgments, but without fully understanding why it is so and without enough force to motivate corresponding actions. Therefore, it seems enough to differentiate two different uses or exercises of practical reason, one from the agent’s perspective and the other from spectator’s perspective. There is no need to distinguish a group of people who reliably provide correct practical judgments but are different from the practically wise person (phronimos) or the epieikês (the equitable or perfectly just person).
References to the legislator appear throughout Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics (but less so in the Eudemian Ethics), but somewhat surprisingly the role of the legislator has rarely received extensive discussion. This lack of attention may be partly because his role is too obvious, i.e., to make laws, and partly because his role is too mysterious, for Aristotle seems to present different images of the legislator. Kontos delineates and analyzes three images of the Aristotelian legislator: as a political actor (A-legislator), as a producer (P-legislator), and as a theoretical thinker (T-legislator). He argues persuasively that the legislator straddles the border of theory, production and action, but the practical aspect should be seen as the focal meaning (most clearly shown in NE VI.8, where legislation is categorized as a branch of practical wisdom). First, there is normative priority of the A-legislator over the P-legislator, for production is not self-standing, but always needs a goal set by action. Second, to see the legislator merely as a theoretical thinker (T-legislator), concerned only with universals but not particulars, is a common mistake found in both ancient and modern commentators. Kontos corrects this mistake by pointing out both universal and particular elements in legislator’s work. The former lies in the fact that regulations of law are always in universal terms, while the latter in the fact that a certain legislator always makes laws for a particular city with particular body of people in regard to a particular period of time.
A small reservation I have concerning this chapter on legislation is Kontos’ claim that the “excellent legislator enjoys the highest degree of leisure…that is not very different from the one enjoyed within the theoretical xenikos bios” (p. 87). I believe there is a important qualitative difference between the contemplative life and the political life represented by even the ideal kind of legislator. The legislator may enjoy a certain level of leisure in contrast with the craftsmen or political busybody, but there is no comparison with the leisure enjoyed by the contemplator, who has the most honorable things beyond human level as the objects of his contemplation, so that he is completely beyond concern for a particular city (NEVI.7, X.7-8).
The person of hopes and prayers is concerned with luck and uncertainties within the domain of practical reason. Although the role of luck has been widely discussed since Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams, scholars do not usually take Aristotle as an important source for this discussion. Indeed, even if he does not internalize virtue as much as Socrates or the Stoics, Aristotle blatantly rejects the view that happiness is a matter of good luck, and marginalizes the role of luck in the pursuit of happiness (NE I.10). But Kontos carefully collects Aristotle’s discussions of luck and finds what Nagel calls “constitutive luck” (such as people’s natural talents and breeding), “circumstantial luck” (such as whether the situation for exercising virtue is favorable or not), “resultant luck” (such as results brought out by the causes external to our agency). Moreover, unlike other scholars who treat moral luck as a passive factor in relation to human agency, Kontos takes a different route by discussing the more active and anticipative aspect of moral luck. His analysis focuses on Aristotle’s discussion of hope (elpis) and prayer (euchê), two notions that have received virtually no attention before. He argues that “hoping and praying are core functions of our agential selves” (p. 100). For only a practically wise person knows what to hope for and what to pray for. Moral and political actions bring changes to the world, and are thus future-oriented. There are always uncertainties in these actions. Hope “is the excellence of our future-directed practical sight that allows us to reconcile the resilience of our character traits and the hospitality of the world with our undertakings” (p. 101, original emphasis). Prayers are particularly relevant to legislators, concerning the resources for establishing a city (factors including the size and composition of the citizen body, and both internal and neighboring territories). His very original discussion about the present-perfect tense Aristotle uses when discussing prayer, and the contrast between Aristotle’s and Plato’s use of prayer is philologically meticulous and philosophically insightful (pp. 126-132). Using the present-perfect tense to describe prayers, Aristotle indicates that “we hypothesize certain things in advance—that is, before we start specifying our practical ends and planning our actions: ‘something must be there to start with’” (p. 128). For Plato, prayers are the objects of wish, such the wish for a ruler uniting the power of a tyrant and legislative excellence in Laws IV; but for Aristotle this mistakenly conflates what is a matter of luck and a matter of deliberate choice. I find this chapter the most original and inspiring chapter of the book.
The last figure, the radically evil person, is concerned with the corruption of practical reason, and therefore negatively related to the scope of our practical rationality. To apply the phrase “radical evil” to Aristotle appears a bit of a stretch, for it most naturally alludes to the famous conception in Kant (“das radikal Böse”), which refers to the phenomenon of subordinating moral law to self-interest or self-deceit, and in a more or less Christian context. Kontos uses this phrase to mean something different, i.e., the ultimately bad person (the incurably intemperate and the beast-like person) and radically bad constitutions (such as extreme forms of democracy, oligarchy and tyranny). Kontos is well aware of this difference, but justifies his use of it with some vague references to Rousseau and Kant (pp. 151-152). It seems to me preferable to avoid, rather than invite this kind of confusion. He could have easily used a different phrase, such as “ultimately bad,” to make a distinction between Aristotle and Kant. Apart from this stretched use of the term, this chapter provides a comprehensive reading of Aristotle’s account of the intemperate person, the beast-like person, and extremely deviant constitutions, and is a good addition to the growing interest in Aristotle’s understanding of evil.[1] Kontos makes two contributions. First, he carefully distinguishes two “paradigms” of evil , one being “the opposite” of virtue, the other its “privation,” and challenges Terence Irwin’s unitary understanding of evil (which is too Kantian in his view). Second, he successfully connects Aristotle’s discussion of evil in the Ethics with that in the Politics, without neglecting to point out one interesting asymmetry, i.e., the extremely bad person is (almost) incurable, while the extremely bad constitution is always open to redemption. This hope lies in the ordinary people, who have a natural impulse for the good and can with difficulty be completely corrupted.
At the end of the book, as a kind of bonus, Kontos imaginatively brings in the fifth figure, the sailor, to summarize the precedent chapters. Sailors may be spectators or shipbuilders (like legislators), they need hope and prayers to deal with luck and envisage the future, and a total absence of the captain (like the total lack of practical reason) will cause shipwreck.
Despite the few small reservations indicated above, Kontos’s book is clearly presented and lucidly argued. Each chapter can be read as an independent project, and put together they broaden and deepen significantly our understanding of Aristotle’s practical philosophy. It is a most welcome addition to the literature on Aristotle’s practical philosophy, and will benefit both students of Aristotle and those of contemporary practical philosophy.
Notes
[1] This chapter is a revised version of his paper “Radical Evil in Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics” in Evil in Aristotle edited by himself (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). This volume contains a number of interesting papers and serves as a good testimony to the growing interest in the topic of evil.