Washington Philosophy Club: Presidential Address -1994-

Professor. E. Piscitelli

I. On Behalf of The Critical and Astute Observer

Mr. Urbanas' paper on "The Aristotelian Background to Nietzsche's Immoralism" urges that Aristotle's ethical starting point is the basis of Nietzsche's radical critique of moral philosophy and what he calls moralism. He admits that these two philosophers have been thought to be on opposite sides of the philosophical spectrum. I shall argue that though they share something in common, they are indeed on opposite sides of the philosophical spectrum. However, I shall grant the writer this much: that if his assessment of Aristotle's rejection of what he calls, inappropriately I think, Plato's "transcendental idealism" is right, then Aristotle does hold a proto-Neitzschean view. However, I think his argument that Aristotle has unqualifiedly jettisoned Plato's vision of a Transcendent Good is exaggerated conveniently for his own thesis of the coincidence of the moral teaching of Aristotle and Nietzsche. He claims that Aristotle "abandoned the grand theoretical edifice that his mentor had constructed." I would like to suggest that except in the minds of Platonists and anti-Platonists, there is no "grand theoretical edifice" in Plato's works, there are just dialogues. I would like to suggest that if there is a grand theoretical edifice, the author would do well to look to Aristotle's teatises, not Plato's dialogues.

The author says that for Aristotle phusis is the physical world composed of bodies susceptible of change, each carrying out a naturally appointed function." If he means by that to say that Aristotle is not only a naturalist, but also a materialist, then I think he is mistaken because Aristotle claims that there is a Transcendent Noetic Activity, what he calls Noesis Noeseos, that is completely devoid of any material principle that stands at the pinnacle of the Natural Universe. I think the author would agree that a Transcendent Divine Intelligence is something Nietzsche would find completely superfluous.

I think I have already established by these two brief observations that Mr. Urbanas and I would disagree on some very fundamental issues in the interpretation of Aristotle and it will become clear that we differ even more fundamentally on the philosophical issues themselves since he applauds Nietzsche's philosophy as an advance and I reject it as a deviation. I will offer a probable explanation for the seeming coincidence of the philosophical approach of Nietzsche and Aristotle that he so deftly argues for in his paper.

I divide my remarks into three questions:

1. To what extent does Aristotle reject Plato's Idea of the Good and to what extent does he agree with Plato's fundamental approach?

2. To what extent is Aristotle's philosophy in agreement with Nietzsche's?

3. Is the author right that a choice for Nietzsche is not necessarily a choice against Aristotle?

It is difficult to do justice to these questions within the compass of a commentary on someone else's paper, but that is my present lot and I will try to make the most of the opportunity.

II. Aristotle Pro and Contra Plato

Mr. Urbanas claims Aristotle holds that, "Plato's basic error was to separate essences (ousiai) from their natural objects and to place these essences in a hypothetical world mistakenly construed as ultimate reality." He cites Aristotle's Metaphysics, 991 b, 1- 3:

"Again it would seem impossible that the substance and that of which it is the substance should exist apart; how therefore could the Ideas being the substance of things exist apart? In the Phaedo the case is stated in this way--that the Forms are causes both of being and becoming; yet when the Forms exist, still the things that share in them do not come into being unless there is something to originate movement; and many other things (such as a house or a ring) come into being of which there are no Forms."

This is a classic passage in which Aristotle criticizes Plato for separating the Ideas from the individual substances. His famous chorismos or separation criticism is meant to explain to the reader the new perspective Aristotle is bringing to the question of the intelligible ground. In the passage just preceding the one quoted Aristotle seems to be replicating the "third man argument" from Plato's Parmenides leading us to wonder whether Plato was responding to a criticism of Aristotle or whether Aristotle knew that Plato himself had considered earlier the objection he was raising.

I do not assume that Aristotle is always primarily trying to do justice to Plato's teaching. I think this passage is clearly a metaphysical criticism of an interpretation of Plato's teaching, assuming he had one, on the Ideas, or at least a criticism of some Platonic Doctrine of Transcendent Ideas. Even if he had given a version of Plato's teaching, he did so to suit his own purpose of developing his notion of the immanent intelligibility of matter to account for his own theory of scientific knowledge. From a certain perspective Aristotle unfairly used his own philosophical vocabulary to measure Plato's teaching. The transcendence of the forms is not the same as the "separation" of the forms except in an extremely literal interpretation of Plato. His choice of the Phaedo is not without guile since the burden of the argument in the Phaedo concerns the separation of the soul from the body in death and the transcendence of the forms as a guarantee that the human soul that knows them is also capable of existence independently of the conditions of the body. Aristotle's purpose was not simply to develop Plato's philosophy; he was thinking through his own questions in his own way and attempting to distinguish his philosophical approach from his master's.

In Metaphysics XII, vii, 7 ff. after Aristotle argues that the First Principle of the universe, Nous, moves things like a final cause and is, therefore, itself unmoved, that is separated from what he called kinesis, we also find the following:

Such then is the first principle upon which depend the sensible universe and the world of nature. And its life is like the best we temporarily enjoy. It must be in that state always (which for us is impossible), since its actuality is also its pleasure (and for this reason waking, sensation, and thinking are most pleasant [for us] and hopes and memories are pleasant because of them.) Now Noesis is concerned with that which is in itself the best and Noesis in its highest sense with that which is the best in the highest sense. Noesis understands itself by partaking in the object of Noesis, for it becomes an object of noetic activity by an act of understanding itself so that Noesis and the object of Noesis are the same because that which is receptive of the object of Noesis, its essence, is Noesis. itself. Its act is the possession of itself as object. Hence it is actuality, energeia, rather than potentiality, dunamis, that is held to be the divine attribute of Nous. and the activity of contemplation, qewria, is the most pleasant and the best. If then the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as we enjoy sometimes, it is wonderful or marvelous; and if it is greater, then it is still more wonderful. Thus it is. Moreover life belongs to God for the Energeia of Noesis is life and God is that Energeia. The essential Energeia of God is life as what is most good and eternal. We hold then that God is a living being, eternal and most Excellent; and therefore life and uninterrupted, eternal existence belong to God for that is what God is.

To say that this is a "Platonic passage" is begging the question. It shows that Aristotle is both an original thinker and a philosopher whose position is not substantially different from Plato's on the reality of the Transcendent even though he clearly conceives of the Transcendent quite differently. Aristotle does not mention Plato's name in these passages, probably for two reasons: first he did not have to and second it did not serve his purpose to indicate where he was in fundamental agreement with his master.

The other classical passage of Aristotle's criticism of Plato is found in the Nicomachean Ethics I, vi, 12-16. Aristotle says,

But in what sense then are different things called good? For they do not seem to be a case of things that bear the same name merely by chance. Possibly things are called good in virtue of being derived from one good; or because they all contribute to one good. Or perhaps it is rather by way of a proportion, that is as sight is good in the body, so intelligence is good in the soul, and similarly one thing in relation to another thing.

Perhaps this question must be dismissed for the present, since a detailed investigation of it belongs more properly to another branch of philosophy [first philosophy]. And likewise with the Idea of the Good; for even if Goodness predicated of various things in common really is a unity or something existing separately and absolute, it clearly will not be practicable or attainable by man; but the Good which we are now seeking is a good within human reach.

But possibly someone might think that to know the Idea of the Good may be desirable as an aid to achieving those goods which are practicable and attainable, having the Idea of the Good as a pattern we shall more easily know what things are good for us, and knowing them attain them. Now it is true that this argument has a certain plausibility; but it does not seem to square with the actual procedure of the sciences. For these all aim at some good and seek to make up their deficiencies, but they are not concerned with a knowledge of an Idea of the Good. Yet if it were so potent an aid, it is improbable that all those who profess to know the arts or the sciences should be ignorant of it and not seek to discover it. Moreover it is not easy to see how knowing the same Idea of the Good will help a weaver or carpenter in the practice of his own craft, or how anyone will be a better physician or general for having contemplated the absolute idea. In fact, it does not appear the physician studies health in the abstract [universal good]; he studies the health of a human being [particular good] -- or rather some particular human being for it is the individual he has to cure.

. In the Republic Socrates implies that we cannot consult the "nature of the Good;" we cannot deduce any knowledge ethical, political or metaphysical from it. The Good is likened to the Sun that we cannot directly look upon except at our own peril. The point is the Good is a Transcendent Divine Final Cause that illuminates reality, makes it intelligible, without our being able to say just how it does that. You might want to call this the mystical element in Plato, but that would imply that it is not methodically useful in Aristotle's sense of methodic utility or in what he calls the "actual procedure of the sciences." To understand the notion of method in the sciences is essential to understanding what Aristotle was up to in his own philosophy and how he distinguished his approach from Plato's.

Next consider another passage from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book X chapter 7:

. . .the activity of our intelligence constitutes the complete well-being of mankind, provided it encompasses a complete life-span because human happiness requires completeness. However, such a life would be more than human. A man who would live it would do so not insofar as he is human, but because there is a divine element within him. This divine element is as far above our composite nature as its activity is above the active exercise of practical virtues. So if it is true that intelligence is divine in comparison with ordinary human life, then a life guided by intelligence is divine in comparison with human life. We must not follow those who advise us to have merely human thoughts since we are only human, and mortal thoughts as mere mortals should; on the contrary we should try to become immortals as far as that is possible and do our utmost to live in accordance with what is highest in us. For though this is a tiny portion of our nature, it far surpasses everything else in value. We might even regard it as man's true self, since it is the controlling and better part. It would therefore be strange if a man chose not to live his own life but someone else's."

This is another Platonic sounding passage on the sublimity of the bios theoretikos. Martha Nussbaum, who has little use for Plato's theology, says she would like to prove that this passage was not genuinely Aristotelian, but even she admits that she cannot.

The present writer quotes H. Flashar to the effect that the critique of the Ideas in the Ethics of Aristotle frees ethics from ontology and as Urbanas says repudiates the conflation of value and transcendental being proper to Platonic teaching. I wholeheartedly disagree. There is no "conflation of value and transcendental being" in Plato's teaching. The Good is not a notion of "value" in the modern sense because it is not subjective. There is no "Transcendental Being" in Plato's dialogues except in a mistaken neo-Kantian interpretation of them. Plato's teaching on the Good, if there is any such thing in the dialogues, is that an Ultimate Transcendent Reality illuminates -- in the sense of "makes intelligible" -- the universe of things that we experience. Things exist because they excel; Ex-sistence is Excellence; and therefore, EXCELLENCE is the ground of being. To be is to EXCEL. To excel is to be intelligent and to be intelligent is to excel! That is Plato's teaching on the Good if there is any such thing. The teaching on the Good is not an Ethical teaching. The teaching on the virtues is the ethical teaching, if there is any, in the dialogues; and the teaching on the virtues is the substance of the ethical teaching in Aristotle's Ethics. There is not much difference in that respect between Plato and Aristotle. Yes, Aristotle differentiates First Principles, Proto Philosophia, from Ethics and writes different treatises. Plato wrote dialogues. How do we know that Plato did not have lecture notes similar to Aristotle's? We don't. How do we know that Aristotle did not follow in Plato's footsteps even on this score? We don't.

Permit me to quote a German scholar and first rate philosopher who had something to say about the philosophical relationship between Plato and Aristotle with whom I basically agree: Hans Georg Gadamer. I came to conclusions similar to Gadamer's independently, without knowing about his work on this question, so when I discovered his work I was relieved of having to argue for it single-handedly. He had to overcome the German idealistic interpretation of Plato whereas I was not so crippled. In The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, pages 171 and following he concludes his close study by writing: A

In returning to Aristotle we find the intertwining of the theoretical and practical that we have seen at many sorts of cracks and splits in the substance of his teachings. For one thing we see that according to Aristotle the highest possibility of awareness which the Greeks called "nous" is to be attributed to that theoretical knowing which has attained complete self-fulfillment -- to sophia, wisdom. But the same highest awareness is to be attributed to practical reason as well-- namely to phronesis, which in each instance is conscious of the rightness of its choice and decision. The definitive juxtaposition of theoretical and practical knowing, and hence of the theoretical and practical virtues of knowing in no way infringes upon the unity of reason which governs us in both directions in which our reasoning might carry us.

Aristotle's conception of a "practical philosophy is plainly the consequence of the critique we treated above of Plato's idea of the good. Nevertheless, his separation of practical philosophy from theoretical philosophy in no way implies a lack of coherence or an inconsistency in the content of his thought. On the contrary it is solely out of methodological and argumentative caution that Aristotle forbids himself any and every extension of his practical thought into more universal considerations. Not that such a universal, more theoretical background does not show through in many places. But Aristotle makes use of it in his argument only where it is based in universally accepted, given facts that provide a methodological foundation for theoretical philosophy too.

Naturally Aristotle does not speak of practical philosophy in the context of his metaphysics. But insofar as the world of human practice is located within the entirety of what exists, the whole sphere of human praxis (action) and poesis (making) has its place within the realm of nature. Not only art imitates nature. Human practice does so too insofar as it aims at nothing other than the highest fulfillment of human existence itself. The fact that it does, however, shows that at the same time human existence points beyond itself to the divine. And hence Aristotle too -- in following where necessity leads him -- must give precedence to the theoretical ideal of life as opposed to practice and politics.

Within his practical philosophy this precedence is also made clear by the ontological implications of Aristotle's concepts. . . . the paradigm of being that always is -- be it the being of the divine or the heavenly bodies -- remains the ultimate point of reference in treating the practical nature of human being. Thus on occasion it is said that human nature is per se "not simple" (EN 1154b21) or that it is "compounded" (EN 1177b28); it does not consist in the pure intellectuality of any divine living thing. Nevertheless nous or logos is the most important component in us and it is our task to develop it above all others.

In general human beings are vulnerable to their drives and feelings (pathe) which threaten to overwhelm them. Still the essence of human practice lies in the fact that we do not simply give ourselves over to these drives. Instead we are capable of cultivating in ourselves a constant disposition (hexis), so to speak, which enables us to obey our reason, the logos. This capacity too is human nature. Aristotle explicitly emphasizes that it is when he characterizes the realm of praxis and ethos which takes shape in habituation and habit, as specifically human. He thereby distinguishes it from everything that is by nature (pephyskosin hemin [has come to be in us by nature] (EN 1103a25). The teleological framework into which the entire practical world is fitted could be similarly displayed in many passages. Doubtless for Aristotle the structural order that is to be attributed to this whole of things can be conceived of in reference to the good. That it can may be deduced from the fact that Aristotle finds his teleological cause (aitia) missing in all his predecessors. The teleological cause together with the doctrine of the eidos, is Platonic inheritance. Thus Aristotle has no problem with calling the teleological cause the "Well" eu (Metaphysics 984 b 11) or even hou heneka kai tagathon [that for the sake of which and the good]. Metaphysics 938 a 31and thus in using exactly the same word Plato uses.

One should not view this choice of words as a remnant of Aristotle's early Platonism, and certainly not as a basis for dating texts. Rather in these cases too such language usage confirms that the problem Aristotle treats is one both he and Plato see.

The strongest confirmation of what they share, however, is to be found in the way that Aristotle holds fast to the ideal of the theoretical life. That, of course, is made clear in the arrangement of the Proto Philosophia, in particular its so called theology. But the lecture on practical philosophy also concludes with a corresponding discussion of the theoretical and practical ideal of life. The priority of theoria is based on the ontological superiority of its objects, namely, beings which always are. In contrast the world of praxis belongs to that reality or being that can be one way but also be another. Consequently knowledge of what is to be done in practice must be placed second to theoria. Even so both dispositions of knowing and reason are something supreme. Practical reasonableness, phronesis, as well as theoretical reasonableness are "bestnesses" aretai. That which is highest in human being -- which Aristotle likes to call "Nous" or the divine is actualized in both of them.

. . . We can establish the priority of theoria on the basis of practical philosophy alone, without having to bring in the subject matter of theoretical philosophy. Practice itself is the all-inclusive, distinctive characteristic of human being. Thus one must understand even theoretical activity as highest praxis (Politics 1325b) Aristotle remains quite vague in discussing the relationships here. At the end of his treatment of phronesis (EN Zeta, 13) he argues that the inclusiveness of human practice entails no subordination of theory to practice. Practical reasonableness, though, is the precondition for engaging in theory and developing theoretical reasonableness. At the same time practical reasonableness is also something highest. Indeed it is the same highest thing nous-- albeit in another application which is not reducible to theory but which is also a beltiste hexis tou aletheuein, a most excellent disposition of knowing truly.

With that a final substantive similarity between Plato's philosophy and Aristotle's practical philosophy comes into view. It turns on the relationship of human life to the divine, a relationship which both take as their starting point for their thinking on the finite, conditioned, and limited nature of human being. Aristotle can repeat genuinely Platonic ways of putting things when he attempts to describe the approximation of the human being to the divine. What Hegel claims -- namely that philosophy itself must surpass its character of striving for knowledge and become wisdom -- may not be said of Aristotle.

On that account one may not absolutize the priority given to the ideal of the theoretical life over the ideal of the practical-political life; Aristotle knows just as well as Plato that for human beings precisely this possibility of theoretical life is limited and conditional. Human beings cannot devote themselves persistently and uninterruptedly to thought's pure contemplation for precisely the reason that their nature is composite. Hence viewed from the perspective of practical philosophy the relationship of the two ideals of life is not such that the complete happiness of the practical life would not be something supreme too. To be sure Aristotle calls this happiness a deuteros, that is a second best. But this too is something best, that is, a fulfillment of eudaimonia (happiness). The fulfillment in purely theoretical existence is, after all, not the full bliss of the gods since it is a limited fulfillment for human beings. The happiness of nous is in a certain sense separate (kechorismene) -- beyond all comparison. And precisely for this reason the practical happiness of human beings is not second rank, rather precisely what has been apportioned to them. That holds even if at times they can also rise beyond themselves to the divine bliss of theoria. Does one not find the same thing in Plato's Republic in regard to how the philosopher-kings will carry out their office?

Thus the overall result of our investigation is as follows: in basing the question about being on the physei onta and not on the universality of the eidos or mathematical-eidetic configurations, Aristotle did indeed subject Plato's teachings to a radical critique. But in the end did he not carry out what Plato intended to do -- indeed even go beyond it in fulfilling it? There are basic truths that the Socratic Plato did not lose sight of any more than did the Platonic Aristotle: in human actions the good we project as hou heneka (that for the sake of which) is concretized and defined only by our practical reason -- in the euboulia (well-advisedness) of phronesis. Furthermore every existent thing is good when it fulfills its telos. Still Plat only anticipated symbolically in his number doctrine what the good in such a universal sense actually means. Aristotle found conceptual answers to this question. The artificial expression entelecheia, which Aristotle introduces, is obviously supposed to make clear precisely that the telos is not a goal that belongs to some faraway order of perfection. Rather in each case the telos is realized in the particular existent itself, and realized in such a fashion that the individual contains the telos. Aristotelian metaphysics keeps this fact in focus as its constant theme. It thinks of the being of what is as the self-mediation of an existent thing with its "what it is"- ness (ti estin). its eidetic determination. I have tried to make credible that such a mediation of being and becoming has to be presupposed if the postulation of ideas is to make any sense at all. The idea of the good and the barely comprehensible doctrine of the one and the two, point to such a mediation even though it is formulated only metaphorically in Plato's dialogues -- in the game played in the Parmenides, the likeness of the Philebus or the muthos of the Timaeus. In Aristotle's thought what Plato intended is transferred to the cautious and tentative language of philosophical concepts.

I have quoted the conclusion at length because it points out how a sensitive reading of the differences between Plato and Aristotle will yield very different results from the present writer's easy rejection of Plato's "transcendental idealism." Plato was no less interested in praxis and politics than Aristotle, in fact Aristotle probably learned most of what he knew about ethical-political philosophy from the first great Western political theoretician. So when the present writer makes remarks like, "Whereas Plato had argued that the good was an object of contemplation that only the highest and best trained minds could apprehend, Aristotle claims the good is something we can be said to become, insofar as we are physical, living rational beings." my reaction is to say this is an unfair characterization of both thinkers because Aristotle was as convinced of the divinity of the bios theoretikos as Plato was committed to the recognition that human beings had to become excellent through moral practice. I suspect that what the author does not like about Plato is that it is difficult to read him as a secularist, materialist, or nihilist; whereas Aristotle's "naturalism" seems to him to keep that door open.

The author claims that "This [Aristotle's] universe is in stark contrast to Plato's world of Forms, for it is construed as fundamentally and irrevocably determined by motion." This statement is misleading. It gives the impression that Plato does not appreciate the fact that the world of our experience is fundamentally to be characterized by motion and change WHICH Plato DOES APPRECIATE and that Aristotle's world is thoroughly permeated by kinesis WHICH IT IS NOT. For Aristotle kinesis is completely unintelligible without a relation to energeia and the principle of energeia is ultimately identical with a transcendent divine Nous. Finally his claim that the "liberation of the good from the Platonic prison house of the forms marks a progressive step towards ethics as an independent discipline," is, I think, misguided. Aristotle did not want to be freed from the "Platonic prison house of the Forms" because he never thought of the theory of the Eidoi as something confining, but rather as something itself liberating. Aristotle after all takes Plato's Eidoi as the basis for his theory of understanding and his theory of the forms in his metaphysics. Both Plato and Aristotle are committed to the value of Divine Intelligence or Nous which the Platonic Eidoi or the Aristotelian Forms symbolize. A nihilist would "feel liberated from the Prison house" of Divine Intelligence but not a philosopher who recognized Transcendent Intelligence as liberating.

III. Why does Nietzsche Seem To Agree With Aristotle?

This is a hard question to answer because it requires that the interpreter understand both Aristotle and Nietzsche in a way better than they understood themselves. The philosophical interpreter must be wary of the serious pitfalls. I am concerned to abide by three caveats. The first caveat is that conceptual similarities are superficial if the interpreter does not get to the grounds of those similarities in the understanding of the author. The second caveat is that the interpreter who discovers similarities does not suppress important differences to support their bright ideas. The third caveat is that we do not reduce differences or similarities to superficial explanations that do not take account of the entire work of the author. I am concerned that I myself avoid these pitfalls. I fear the present offering on Aristotle and Nietzsche has, alas, failed on all three counts. I am not unsympathetic for the task is daunting.

Let us start with a reflection on the meaning of to kalon as it appears in the Greek tradition prior to Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Kalos and agathos are often found together as kalos kai agathos in the traditions just before and after Socrates. After Plato they are conflated to kalokagaqia. From the time of Homer the agaqoi are those who stand out from the common herd by reason of their worthiness, the Greek is areth, and their areth is based upon their breeding, possessions, and especially, but not solely, their warrior skills. Kalos expresses the character of the "born nobleman." Kalos kagathos is distinguished from the agatho polites or the good citizen. Contemporaries of Socrates, for example Thucydides (VIII, 48,6), contrast the kaloi kagaqoi with the demos and we find the same opposition in the political comedies of Aristophanes (Eq, 227). By the time of Socrates Kalos had taken on different political meanings in the emerging, self-governing Greek polis.. In the political disputes in the Athens of Socrates the term kalos is often associated with a certain qualitative superiority linked with higher social rank. It is linked with the aristocratic claims to legitimate political rule. There are corresponding obligations that the "nobly born" be honorable men (possess areth) and be properly educated (given the right paideia).

Kalos clearly represents a value of the earlier tribal culture of the Greeks. It reflects a tribal morality rooted in a tribal society that is based upon blood relations and the family. Tribal morality derives its values from the natural order or phusis, Although it exalts vital values, it would be wrong to conclude that tribal morality is fundamentally based upon physical values in the current sense of the word. The term phusis has been more or less deformed by our ways of thinking about "the natural" or the "physical" solely in terms of what we are forced to call by the abstract term, "material values".

The earlier meaning of the term, kalos, will be transformed first by the sophists in the moral-political debate about the meaning of civil society as that which displaces tribal society and therefore tribal morality exemplified in the phusis-nomos conflict, next by Socrates who will define the human in terms of the principle of Nous and ground the self-governing polis in the same principle as both natural and human, and then by Plato who will identify Nous with Eros and suggest in his dialogues in the teaching on the metaxis that the principle of Nous is natural, human, and divine, and finally by Aristotle who will recapitulate and consolidate the achievements of Socrates and Plato by rethinking the same principles from an understanding of intelligence that is derived from his own introspective appropriation of his experience of understanding that he expresses in his ethical-political and metaphysical system. Aristotle's works will reflect the whole process of the transformation of the meaning of kalos in a delicate synthesis that could easily be misinterpreted and collapse producing philosophical chaos. To call Aristotle a "naturalist" as though that implied that he was not committed to intelligence or as though it meant he was opposed to intellectual values is an anachronism based upon interpreting Greek philosophy in terms of the later deformations of modern and post-modern Germanic thought. Pitting aesthetic values against intellectual values is based upon a gross misunderstanding of the aesthetic as well as conceptual meaning and does little justice to the Greek philosophical synthesis.

To return to our reflection on kalos. The sophists argue that the newly emerging civil society means that the excellences of tribal life are no longer viable and as a result they tend to demythologize the so-called tribal hero who is well-born and "noble." Kalos tends to become a purely aesthetic value and it is reduced to appearances: The sophist discussion moves the meaning of kalos in the direction of the beautiful and the fine as civilized values. The sophists hold that underneath the outer coverings men are all alike: miserable animals with the same basic needs. The city is a place for men to hide from themselves. The sophists move the discussion of kalos in the direction of the distinction of the inner and the outer man that Plato's Socrates develops in the dialogues. The sophists also move the meaning of kalos in the discussion of morality in the direction of aesthetic away from traditional political or religious values.

Socrates faces the challenge of the sophist's critique of tribal culture squarely. He takes a dialectical position that says civil society is the fulfillment of human nature: man is a social and rational animal but the traditional excellences of tribal society, the areth, are not to be simply trashed but must be re-thought in terms of the principle of nous. Nous was performative in tribal society; in civil society it must become thematized. The question becomes what is really kalos ? Socrates re-defines to kalon in terms of the areth appropriated by intelligence in a theory of human excellences founded on the re-vision of the tribal virtues of self-control, courage, justice, and practical wisdom. The Platonic Socrates discovered that while nous can be easily identified as the basis for logical argument, it should not be completely identified with it. Nous is also ultimately eros. Socrates might have been overly optimistic about the ability of human beings to identify affectively with their intelligence but he was not the simpleminded rationalist his critics, including Nietzsche, like to make him out to be.

Plato suggests in the Symposium that the to kalon is the aesthetic and visible side of the to Agathon, the hidden, divine Good. The Divine Good is known through its play of hiddeness and disclosedness in human life. Plato does not imply that we can consult the Good as a standard in moral deliberation. What Aristotle called the spoudaios and the phronismos Plato identified in the concrete character of Socrates. Socrates is serious and playful. In this sense Plato is more concrete than Aristotle. Socrates is by no means perfect, but he is an historical individual.

The Good is an object of intellectual, philosophical, and religious faith. The Good refers to a Transcendent Divine Reality in the speech of the Plato's Socrates, but this does not imply that Plato is an idealist unless an idealist is someone who believes that the beautiful things, the meanings, the truths, and the values we, human beings, experience, understand, know, and come to appropriate and incorporate in our lives are real and that there is a difference between them and the chaos, falsity, nothingness, and worthlessness that threaten to overwhelm them and us. The Divine Transcendent Good is a Promise that meaning will overcome chaos, being is better than nothing, excellence is final and man is not the first or the last word but in-between, in the metaxis. There are daimonic men like Socrates who create meanings, truths, values and transform the societies in which they live, but they can do so because there is something beyond the natural and the human; there is a divine that remains at once Intelligence, Power, and Mystery. The divine does not eliminate or suppress life but grounds and liberates it. The great and noble men of tribal societies that celebrated and lived according to vital values were living according to a divine Nous, but they did not know it. One of the central insights of Aristotle in the Peri Psuches is that Nous is the highest form of Life. It is a Transcendent Vital Value!

The speaker claims that "Nietzsche's immoralism is in no wise an attempt to undermine or destroy morality as such." It is rather a "plea for a naturalistic, hence non-egalitarian, ethics of excellence or virtue." My view is that whether Nietzsche meant to undermine morality or not, his immoralism is based upon either a misunderstanding or rejection of the classical ethical synthesis of Plato and Aristotle. The synthesis implied the recognition that understanding or nous, was the divine principle that ordered the universe, made human life excel in tribal society, was made explicit as the principle of excellence in self-governing civil societies, and as a theological principle allowed men to worship the divine reflectively without loss of their intelligence, creativity or vital values.

He says Aristotle and Nietzsche "share a lot in common in their respective visions of physical and human nature." Still Aristotle stands at the historical beginning of the new way of living and thinking on the basis of nous and Nietzsche stands at the end of a long history in which nous was the basis of Western achievements and its rejection the basis of Western failures. In my view Nietzsche underlined the failures and misunderstood the achievements of western philosophy. In the spirit of Nietzsche, in almost every text he cites from Aristotle, the author suppresses the principle of intelligence in favor of the tribal. vital values that Aristotle admittedly attempted to preserve in his philosophical synthesis of tribal and civil values. Thus Nietzsche represents the de-construction of the classical ethical synthesis and he does so paradoxically by imitating a reverse Socratic dialectic of bi-polar disintegration: sometimes arguing for the sophistic aestheticizing of value and sometimes reverting to a celebration of tribal instinct or passion abstracted from intelligence. Nietzsche is always trying to forget the principle of divine intelligence that demands a recognition of some kind of Transcendence beyond nothingness. Since Nietzsche advises the practice the forgetfulness of knowing, I assume that his rejection of the philosophical synthesis is purposeful and based upon a perverse understanding. As Werner Dannhauser points out in his fine book on Nietzsche's View of Socrates, Socrates is Nietzsche's anti-hero, the anti-overman, the man whom Plato dramatized as the incarnation of the principle of Intelligence, the daimonic man of the divine Nous. It is not rationalism that Nietzsche rails against since he is himself impressed with logic and dialectics as practiced by the sophist's of Plato's Athens and by his own German academic colleagues, but with the reasonableness that is the revelation of a divine intelligence.

Allow me to quote from an early seminal work of Nietzsche from 1873 called On Truth and Lies in an Trans-Moral Sense.

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner into that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. -- One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather it is human and only its possessor and begetter takes it so deadly seriously (with pathos) as though the world's axis turned within it. But if we could communicate with the gnat we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same earnestness, pathos, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.

It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect which has certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detaining them for a minute within existence. For without this addition they would have every reason to flee this existence. The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and sense of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character.

As a means of preserving the individual the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker less robust individuals preserve themselves since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey. The art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man. Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-- in short a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity--is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing that is less comprehensible than that an honest and pure drive for the truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms." Their senses nowhere lead to truth; on the contrary they are content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to engage in a groping game on the backs of things. Moreover man permits himself to be deceived in his dreams every night of his life. His moral sentiments do not even make an attempt to prevent this, whereas there are supposed to be men who have stopped snoring through sheer will power. What does man actually know about himself? Is he indeed ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him--even concerning his own body--in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the nerves. She through away the key. And woe to that fatal curiosity which one day might have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous--as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger. Given this situation where in the world could the drive for the truth have come from?

What then is the truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and embellished, and which after long usage seem to people to be fixed, canonical and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from.

Very powerful writing and clearly opposed to the classical view of intelligence as the human share in the divine.

In what appears to be a concession the author says, "While certain differences [between Aristotle and Nietzsche] are not insignificant, overall the numerous parallels are extremely revealing." The proposition with which I wholeheartedly agree is that the differences are not insignificant, they are centrally significant and to pass over the significant differences is seriously misleading. I have already pointed out just how significant those differences are. The similarities can be explained in terms of what Aristotle is building and Nietzsche is trying to tear down. Aristotle's return to the principle of nature or phusis is not a rejection of the Transcendent Divinity of Nous, but, in his view, a corrected understanding of its Transcendence. Aristotle's return to the vital values of the tribe and family is not a return that bypasses or suppresses the achievements of Socrates' and Plato's commitment to intelligence or Nous in human ethical and political life, but one that is meant to enhance and fill out that achievement as we saw earlier in Gadamer's argument and in the texts of Aristotle. Aristotle meant to show the continuity between nature and human nature; tribal and civil values; nature, man, and the divine in a comprehensive systematic philosophy. Sometimes the ragged edges on the philosophical garment that he wove show through, but to fasten upon the rough edges and ignore the seams is to do the work of Aristotle an injustice. To underestimate the seriousness and power of Nietzsche's nihilistic choice to destroy the philosophical synthesis of Intelligence and Passion is to do him an injustice as well. Nietzsche is no Aristotelian moralist. If I were to compare Nietzsche to someone, it would not be to Aristotle but to Plato. Plato's Socrates stands in contrast to Nietzsche's overman, Plato's Transcendent Good stands in contrast to Nietzsche's transcendent nothingness, and Plato's Dialogues stand in contrast to Nietzsche's monologues.

Ten Features Common to Aristotle and Nietzsche

I would like to run through each of the ten features common to the ethical theories of Aristotle and Nietzsche pointing out where I agree and disagree with the present paper.

1. Plato does not hold a thesis of transcendental idealism in the sense implied by the present writer. Aristotle holds that a Transcendent Divine Intelligence exists that is the Final Cause of Being, but Nietzsche does not.

2. The thesis that reality is the physical world tempered by fortune and chance is the position of Nietzsche. The author makes a large concession by admitting that Nietzsche equates nature with chance and Aristotle does not. Whether he realizes it or not, this fundamentally nullifies his thesis. It is half of the Aristotelian position. Aristotle holds that while the material world is a very real part of phusis and while it is what we humans understand first even before we understand ourselves, if we ever do ever come to understand ourselves, that the material world represents only the tip of the iceberg of reality and that human intelligence is capable of understanding immaterial reality in some way by reasoning. Intelligence is essentially immaterial and while human intelligence is potential with regard to understanding and self-understanding because it is essentially united with a body, there are unlimited possibilities for non-material based intelligences in the universe. The poetic inquiring intelligence is clearly immortal because it provides the basis for scientific collaboration. The responsive intelligence in human beings is not clearly capable of surviving the conditions of human life as we know it. Some human beings can with great pain, but seldom without error, understand themselves and act nobly and justly. Aristotle agrees with Plato that we must try to reduce the effects of the elements of chance in the universe by using our intelligence.

3. Both Aristotle and Nietzsche agree that pleasure and pain are not ends in themselves and that impulse and passion are to be directed to higher levels of life. But they disagree on what those higher levels are. Nietzsche is not just a traditional atheist, he is a nihilistic atheist. Neither Nietzsche nor Aristotle nor Plato for that matter suppresses the passions, but Plato and Aristotle understand them ultimately to be a desire for a divine reality beyond the human. Nietzsche does not.

4. For Plato, Aristotle, and Nietzsche there does exist a rank order of individuals, but the order in Plato and Aristotle is based upon an understanding of intelligence as well as vital values mediated by intelligence; in Nietzsche it is based upon the animal and vital values of strength, will, and power raised to the level of, what can be called a civilized tribalism. The distance between Aristotle's brute and the divine is greater than the distance between the last man and the Overman.

5. Nature reveals competing schemes of morality. But It seems that Nietzsche's moral insights differ significantly from Aristotle's. For Aristotle the reason men are slavish is that they neglect their intelligence and do not act Kata Ton Orqon Logon. Nietzsche thinks that acting according to right reason is necessarily acting according to another person's reasons or rules and is, therefore, slavish. Nietzsche is mistaken. Good rules are the result of reflecting upon what makes a performance excellent. When they no longer reveal the requirements of excellence, they can be safely ignored. But we have to be able to make the case for a different choice or way of acting in the situation. Intelligence and moral insight can never be ignored. Ethics is normative, but the norms are based upon intelligence: Kata Ton Orqon Logon. Even though it is true that the presence of right reason is to be found in the good judgement of the man of practical wisdom, I seriously doubt that this is what Nietzsche had in mind when he talks about the superior man creating values.

6. On the issue of the "rank order of men" and the "higher types of men," it would be wonderful if Nietzsche were in agreement with Aristotle here, but again I do not believe he is. The text referred to in the Politics 1284b-25 is about ostracism and whether a just and noble ruler who is pre-eminent in virtue should be ostracized if he gets too powerful. Aristotle says no for reasons similar to Plato's arguments for the philosopher king in the Republic. The author thinks Aristotle is referring to Alexander in the text. But there is no indication in it beyond his assumption that Aristotle and Nietzsche are in fundamental agreement. Are there any places in Aristotle's Politics where he explicitly refers to Alexander? None I can find. Moreover when Aristotle talks about the highest form of kingship in Politics III, xvii there is no mention of great conquests as the pre-condition for a great king. Here, if anywhere, you would expect a reference to Alexander. Aristotle does include such characteristics as physical strength, heroism, and other tribal virtues for a good ruler, but the controlling characteristic is that the ruler should be a man pre-eminent in areth. Thus the whole argument rests upon whether Aristotle is talking about virtue in the Socratic-Platonic sense based upon a moral-philosophical protrepsis and not primarily about natural or genetic traits or whether he has returned to a more primitive tribalism, as in the case of Nietzsche, to a sophistic tribalism.

I think Aristotle in contrast to Nietzsche remains committed to the Socratic-Platonic philosophical synthesis. I believe Nietzsche either never understood the classical philosophical synthesis or if he did, then he resentfully refused to recover it and appropriate it. Neither Plato nor Aristotle are Platonists in Nietzsche's sense of preferring the "Lie" to Truth, of proclaiming the existence of a Transcendent Reality in which they themselves did not believe. What Nietzsche calls Truth is Nihilism: being that is ultimately indistinguishable from nothingness, truth that is ultimately indistinguishable from falsity, good that is ultimately indistinguishable from evil. Ironically Nietzsche's Nihilism is as much a matter of belief as the existence of Transcendence. In the end Nietzsche is not just a moralist or amoralist, he is a deeply religious, atheistic thinker. He knows that the moral order is not ultimate. In that sense Nietzsche is right: there is something Beyond Moral Good and Evil.

Let us return to the argument of the author that there is at least a parallel between Nietzsche's heroic creator of moral values and Aristotle's man of practical wisdom who acts kata ton orqon logon. The passage cited is very interesting; it is from the Nicomachean Ethics around 1145. But I want to look at the whole context, not just a "proof text" that shows superficial conceptualist similarities. Aristotle concludes the prior section by saying,

Therefore it is evident that it is impossible to be practically wise without being good.

We must, therefore, consider virtue once more; for [two types of] virtue are also similarly related [to each other] as practical wisdom is related to cleverness -- not the same but like it -- thus are the natural virtues related to the virtues in the strict sense. For all men think that each character belongs to its possessors in some sense by nature; for we are just or fitted for self-control or brave or have the other moral qualities, but yet we seek something else as that which is good in the strict sense-- we look for the presence of such qualities in another way. For both children and brutes have the natural dispositions to these qualities but without reason these are evidently hurtful. Only we seem to see this much, that, while one may be led astray by them, as a strong body which moves without sight may stumble badly because of it lack of sight, still once a man acquires reason that makes a real difference in action; and his state while still like what it was, will then be virtue in the strict sense. Therefore as in the part in us that makes judgments there are two types, cleverness and practical wisdom, so too in the moral part there are two types, natural virtue and virtue in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves practical wisdom. This is why some say all the virtues are forms of practical wisdom, and why Socrates in one way was on the right track while in another way he went astray; in thinking that all the virtues were forms of practical wisdom he was mistaken; but in saying they implied practical wisdom, he was right. This is confirmed by the fact that even now all men when they define virtue, after naming the state of character and it objects add 'that state which is in accordance with right rule-- kata ton orqon logon -- the right rule is that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. All men, then, seem somehow to understand that this kind of state is virtue, namely what is in accordance with practical wisdom. But we must go a little further. For it is not merely the state which is in accordance with right rule, but the state that implies the presence of the right rule, that is virtue; and practical wisdom is the right rule about such matters. Socrates thought, then, the virtues were rules or practical principles (for he thought all of them were forms of scientific knowledge), while we hold them to involve a rational principle.

It is clear, then, from what we have said, that it is not possible to be a good man in the strict sense, without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue. But in this way we may also refute the dialectical argument whereby it might be contended that the virtues exist in separation from one another; the same man, it might be said, is not best equipped by nature for all the virtues, so that he will have already acquired one when he has not yet acquired another. This is possible in respect to the natural virtues but not in respect to those virtues in relation to which a man is called without qualification good; for all the virtues will be given with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom. And it is plain that even if practical wisdom were of no practical value we would have needed it because it is the virtue of the part of our intelligence as it applies to practice; it is also plain that we could not make right choices without practical wisdom any more than without the virtues; for the one determines the end and the other directs us to do the things that lead to the end.

But again practical wisdom is not supreme over philosophic wisdom, that is over the superior part of us, any more than the art of medicine is superior to health; for [medicine] does not use health but provides for its coming into being; the [physician] issues orders, then, for the sake of health, but not to it. Further, to maintain the supremacy of practical wisdom would be like saying that the art of politics rules the gods because it issues orders about all the [human] affairs of the state. Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 13.

I suggest that this passage nicely reveals the essential difference between Aristotle's ethical views and Nietzsche's. Note Aristotle's distinction between "natural virtue" and "virtue in the strict sense". The notion of virtue in the strict sense is the result of Socratic-Platonic-Aristotelian philosophical synthesis. Virtue in the strict sense is the result of a protrepsis, a practical and affective identification with nous, with intelligence that functions as the basis for the life-decisions of the man of practical wisdom.

The author says, "The creation of value is viewed more as a result of conquest than of an intellectual intuition or even the practical syllogism." There are other possibilities. Other than the alternatives of conquest or intuition on the one hand or the alternatives of intuition or the conceptualist view of the practical syllogism, there is another possibility: that the recognition of value is the result of a Practical Intelligent Mediation. I think this other possibility is in fact Aristotle's position. Aristotle does not think that good men either intuit values or create values in Nietzsche's sense of a willful assertion. Aristotle's kata ton orqon logon implies that the man of practical wisdom makes present the basis for his moral judgment by expressing the good concretely in good choices and actions. For Aristotle the moral arguments and rules are derivative of the actual practice of the moral excellences. But this does not mean that the rules or the arguments are not intrinsic to the practice of virtue in the strict sense. The rules simply express what the conditions are for the practice of excellence. The rules thematize the performance.

Doing the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason can be articulated and the right choice can be shown to be right by moral arguments. If the arguments are lacking or if they are impossible to make in such a way as to be able to convince a reasonable man, a man of practical wisdom, I think Aristotle, agreeing with Socrates and Plato, would say the choices and the actions that follow from it are not morally justifiable. I doubt that Nietzsche would agree. It is true that there is no previously existing moral standard in Aristotle's conception of virtue or of Nietzsche's conception of value, but from this abstract agreement it does not follow that Aristotle agrees with Nietzsche on the nature of the principle that authenticates values. For Aristotle it is the divine principle of Nous in which human beings have an active share insofar as they are intelligent and practically intelligent; for Nietzsche it is the strong man's willful decisions that need not be articulated in terms of intelligence and certainly cannot be vitiated by the fact that the human "creator" cannot give a reasonable account of them.

For Nietzsche the "creator of values" is accountable only to himself. Although similar language can be used to describe Aristotle's man of practical wisdom, the words would not mean exactly the same thing, pace Urbanas, because Aristotle's argument implies that the demands of intelligence and reasonableness remain to be met in terms of the practical argument that justifies the action: the kata ton orqon logon is itself not alterable by the man of practical wisdom. Aristotle remains a Platonist insofar as he thinks the reason practical intelligence needs to be flexible is that the realities with which it deals are changeable, less than perfect, not fully divine. Those realities considered by practical intelligence are, namely, human affairs. Whereas Nietzsche thinks the creator of values can do what he wills to be best since what he wills to be best becomes the best because he resolutely wills it to be the best. For Nietzsche the greatness of human actions are such because they proceed from great individuals alone. As far as I can tell, Nietzsche excludes the principle of a "right reason." For Nietzsche moral argument is a deformation of tribal excellence left over from the decadent rationalism of Socrates. The author's argument implies that Aristotle abandoned the intellectual synthesis of his predecessors. Whereas I hold that Aristotle thinks of himself as having corrected the flaws in the moral views of Socrates and Plato, but there is no evidence that he abandoned what he considered to be the advances that their philosophies of transcendence represented.

7. The author claims that because Aristotle and Nietzsche agree that moral decisions are neither autonomous nor fatalistic that, therefore, they agree on the meaning of moral insight: Aristotle emphasizes establishing the "proper end of action and Nietzsche the greater life-enhancing organizations of power." By autonomous I assume he means unmotivated acts and by fatalistic I assume he means fully determined by external causes. Even if they both agree that human acts are neither unmotivated nor fully determined by outside causes, it is precisely the contrast of the emphases of end-determined action versus power-experienced action that sets the two accounts of moral activity apart. Aristotle's teleological ethics is a consequence of his view of intelligence in man and in the cosmos. Nietzsche's will to power is based upon a non-teleological view of the material world and predicated on a negative view of intelligence as it pertains to human action. The author claims that with both thinkers we are "beyond all absolute models of good and evil, for there is no a priori external standard that could be invoked to adjudicate between competing valuations." However, this similarity is misleading because, while it is true that for Aristotle there is no a priori standard apart from the criteria of the active practical intelligence of the man of practical wisdom himself, human intelligence must be able to give an account of the actions it embraces on its own terms -- right human action for Aristotle is kata ton orqon logon. If the same could be said for Nietzsche, then he is in fundamental agreement with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as I understand them. I am sure Nietzsche would not admit to that.

8. Perspectives and Moral Decisions

The author claims that Aristotle's distinction between moral understanding or sagacity, sunesis, and practical wisdom, phronesis commits Aristotle to a doctrine equivalent to Nietzsche's moral perspectivism. He bases his conclusion on a text in the Nicomachean Ethics 1143a, 6-12 where Aristotle distinguishes between two types of moral knowledge. However I read that passage as saying something quite different from his finding. Allow me to quote the full context of Book VI, chapter 10. I pick up the last sentence at the end of chapter 9:

If then it is characteristic of men of practical wisdom to have deliberated well, excellence in deliberation will be correctness with regard to what leads to the end of which practical wisdom (phronesis) is the true apprehension.

Moral understanding (sunesis) or good moral understanding (eusunesia) are not entirely the same as scientific knowledge (episthme) or opinion (doxa) (for if true, all men would be morally sagacious) nor are they (practical wisdom or moral sagacity) such as medicine, the science of things connected with health or geometry the science of spatial magnitudes. For sunesis is neither about eternal and unchangeable things, nor about the things that come into being indiscriminately, but about things that can become subjects of moral questioning and deliberation. Hence sunesis is about the same objects as phronhsis, but sunesis and phronesis are not the same. For practical wisdom issues commands since its end is what ought to be done or not to be done but moral sagacity--sunesis-- only passes judgments. So moral sagacity is neither the having of, nor the acquisition of, practical wisdom; but as learning is called understanding when it means the exercise of the cognitive faculty, so understanding is applicable to the exercise of the faculty of opinion for the purpose of judging what someone else says about matters with which practical wisdom is concerned--and of judging soundly; for well and soundly are the same thing. From this usage has come the use of the term moral understanding to denote the quality that makes persons of good moral judgment, just as often happens in the case of using the term learning for understanding.

Aristotle distinguishes moral sagacity from scientific knowledge because the latter is about what does not change, but he also distinguishes sunesis from mere opinion because opinions could be about anything that is changeable while moral understanding is about good moral judgments. The author wants this to mean that Aristotle holds moral judgment to be "perspectival in the sense that it is in no wise objectively the best nor infallible." But Aristotle does not mean that the judgments of the man of speculative wisdom about what changes generally or the judgments of the man of practical wisdom about human affairs that are certainly changeable are not objective in the first case or objectively the best in the second. Aristotle means that such probable judgments are the best we can get from either changeable reality in the case of wisdom or changeable human affairs in the case of practical wisdom. This does not imply a Nietzschean perspectivism in moral knowledge; in fact I think it implies the opposite. But the opposite is not some conceptualist application of rules nor some absolutist approach to moral judgments. For Aristotle there is an absolute in moral judgments, but the absolute is virtual or a conditioned whose conditions are, in fact, fulfilled. Aristotle thinks that men of practical wisdom would tend to agree about the moral judgments they would make under the same circumstances. He does not think the man of sunesis practical wisdom "creates" values.

Aristotle means that sunesis (which comes from sunihmi to join, to unite) is the ability to make good judgments about moral matters that do not concern one's self in the act of self-deliberation. It is like the ability to give other people good advice, but, as we know, the ability to give people good advice is not necessarily the ability to take the good advice you yourself can give to others. The latter involves the moral virtue of practical wisdom which commands us to act in one way over another in the concrete situation in which we ourselves are involved in making choices.

The author concludes much more than the passage warrants when he says, "Knowledge of the good is lived experience, not abstract contemplation, and truth, not something discovered 'but something that must be created and gives a name to the process, or rather to a will to overcome that has in itself no end.'" I find little, if anything, to support the idea of a Nietzschean 'Will to Power' in Aristotle's Ethics. Nietzsche has an anti-rationalist and anti-conceptualist notion of moral insight and so does Aristotle, but it does not follow that if they both reject the same things, then they reject them on the same grounds. Nietzsche rejects them on the basis of nihilism and Aristotle rejects them on the basis of a philosophical and moral protrepsis. Aristotle is trying to improve the intellectual, moral, and philosophical synthesis of Socrates and Plato; Nietzsche is trying to destroy it.

9. The pleasures of power choices and the pleasure of doing the right thing at the right time in the right way are not quite the same thing. I think Aristotle is talking about the latter and Nietzsche the former. Again I must quote the whole text of what Aristotle says here in Nicomachean Ethics, 1170a:

Further, men think that the happy man ought to live pleasantly. Now if he were a solitary, life would be hard for him; for by one's self it is not easy to be continuously active; but with others and towards others it is easier. With others, therefore, his activity will be more continuous, and it is in itself pleasant as it ought to be for the man who is supremely happy; for a good man, insofar as he is a good man, delights in virtuous actions and is vexed at vicious ones as a skilled musician enjoys good music, but is pained by bad music. A certain training in virtue arises from the company of the good, as Theognis has said before us.

In Nietzsche's view of the joy that accompanies the "creative process" there is no reference to what Aristotle called Noesis; in fact, Nietzsche explicitly rejects it. For Aristotle there is always a reference to the act of NohsiV especially when he waxes eloquent about the highest joys of life that allow men of the greatest virtue to come close to the divine. The reference to music is an explicit reference to a kind of Noesis. as is made plain by the further reference to training in virtue as arising from being in the company of the good. Is there anything like this in Nietzsche? I cannot find it!

10. The Higher Goal of Human Action

The goal of human action "For Nietzsche it is overcoming humanity and the preparation for the Uebermensch," while for Aristotle it is the achievement of well-being in the just state. These are not commensurable and even our usually undaunted interpreter of Nietzsche does not bring himself to claim that these are equivalent. (And I am not issuing a challenge for him to do so.). There is an interesting remark Aristotle makes in the text from the Politics 1332a 1-7 to which Mr. Urbanas's paper refers.

It is clear that all men aim at well-being and the good life, but some men have an opportunity to get it, others have not. This may be due to their nature or to some stroke of fortune, for the good life needs certain material resources and when a man's disposition is comparatively good, the need is for a lesser amount of these, but a greater amount when it is comparatively bad. Indeed some who start from greater opportunities go wrong from the very beginning of their pursuit of well being.

The implication is that the need for external goods is proportional to the moral quality of the person: the greater the moral quality the less the need for external goods. The last remark, I assume, would cover all opportunities external to the practice of the virtues and, therefore, it would cover being well-born if the latter means being born into an aristocratic or wealthy family.

V. Nietzsche's Perspectivism: The Climax

The author's application of the Nietzschean notion of "perspectivism" to Aristotle's moral theory comes down to the following: Aristotle's view of moral choice as the act of concrete human beings in concrete historical circumstances commits him to the view that deliberation leads to a particular choice of a particular individual under particular circumstances and that choice governed by wish culminates in action. What is missing in his description is the word "intelligent:" the deliberation is intelligent, desire is rooted in the desire to know, and the action is measured by practical intelligence. "In Nietzsche insight is not wish but an immediate appropriation of power." I could not have said it better: in Nietzsche insight is not the act of intelligence, speculative or practical; it is an act of self-assertion; it is the appropriation of the will to power.

The reference of Nietzsche to Plato in Will To Power, 572 is a most interesting text. The fuller context reveals that Nietzsche objects to Plato's identification of being with the good and with his identification of the beautiful with the good. Nietzsche claims Plato preferred appearance to being because he identified the beautiful with the good. What else could he mean, given the fact that Plato always distinguishes reality from mere appearances and especially in the case of human beings. In fact this is what separates Plato from Nietzsche: Plato thinks we cannot distinguish who is excellent from who is not, just by considering the outward person; Nietzsche's moral objectivity is reducible to outward appearances disguised as perspectives produced by decisions based upon extending one's personal power field. Nietzsche has turned Machiavellian power politics into a personal metaphysics of power. Indeed Nietzsche does propose that there are no moral facts but, if that is true, then there is no real objectivity for moral values: for real moral objectivity is an objectivity based upon value judgments which in turn are based upon judgments of fact. Indeed Nietzsche has taken his stand beyond good and evil. But the good he stands beyond is the good of the discredited moral optimism of German idealism and the evil that he stands beyond is the evil of the impossible moral pessimism of a Schopenhauer, not beyond the good recognized by men of really excellent moral character as Aristotle conceived them, nor beyond the evil such as Aristotle's men of practical wisdom would reject as self-destructive behavior. Much of Nietzsche's writing reminds me of a very intelligent, very articulate adolescent rebelling against his parental, philosophical tradition. Nietzsche would like to think that his "Great Man" creates moral facts by his power decisions and that these creations are qualitatively objective in the life a man carves out for himself by his will to power. But this is an adolescent illusion nothing like Aristotle's mature man of practical wisdom who practices the virtues kata ton orqon logon.

Nevertheless there is a certain symmetry between Aristotle and Nietzsche: Aristotle stands at the end of the beginning of Western Philosophy and Nietzsche stands at the end of the end of a modernity that defines itself as rejecting its own intellectual and moral inheritance. Aristotle systematized the achievements of a classical philosophy of transcendent intelligence that reached its high point in Socrates and Plato, a philosophy based upon a protrepsis toward transcendent Being; Nietzsche de-systematized the anti-philosophy of modernity beginning with Machiavelli and ending with Hegel's pneumatic gnosticism that effectively eliminated the need for a protrepsis towards transcendent being. Hegel substituted wisdom (Wissenshaft) for the love of wisdom (philosophia). Nietzsche completed the cycle of modernity by substituting the illusion of human power for the illusion of a human wisdom without divine wisdom. Nietzsche showed that the whole Hegelian project was folly, but he wrongly concluded that modernity was the natural culmination of the classical philosophical tradition.

There are parallels between Nietzsche's nihilism and the classical philosophy of transcendence. First transcendence itself is akin to nothingness in that both are beyond the world of everyday things and ordinary persons. Transcendence is the ground of excellence. The Good of Plato is beyond good and evil as instantiated in human lives. Transcendence is no-thing in the world, but that is its negative side. On its positive side, it is the basis for the recognition of all forms of excellence. The philosophy of transcendence is anti-conceptualist and anti-rationalist insofar as concepts are generated by a transcendent intelligence (Aristotle's Noesis Noeseos) and reasonableness is not reducible to a system of rules, but rather the rules are the result of discovering and creating excellent performances and ways of life. Finally in a philosophy of transcendence a creative, personal decision, rather than following pre-established moral norms, is the existential principle of life over death. Neither the Transcendent Good in Plato and the daimonic man who lives in its light nor the transcendent Nous in Aristotle and the man of practical wisdom who lives intelligently, reasonably, and responsibly in the light of an inquiring, poetic intelligence represent pre-established moral norms. What Nietzsche calls morality in a philosophy of transcendence would be "beyond the good of optimism and the evil of pessimism," but it would not be beyond the discrimination of the excellent from the defective, nor beyond the discrimination of the creative from the destructive, nor beyond the discrimination of the reasonable from the unreasonable, nor beyond the discrimination of the meaningful or intelligible from the meaningless or absurd. At least some of those discriminations even Nietzsche needs to preserve. How he can do so often eludes even his most sympathetic interpreters.

The parallels between a classical philosophy of transcendence like Aristotle's and the nihilism of Nietzsche are not genuine philosophical correspondences. The position of Mr.Urbanas amounts to claiming that Aristotle agrees with Nietzsche against Plato and Socrates that there is no real transcendence or transcendent intelligence. It would amount to denying that Aristotle was a philosopher who recognized a divine, transcendent intelligence as the first principle of reality. It would amount not just to a clever interpretation of Aristotle, but to a new edition of the Aristotelian corpus; it would amount to re-writing Aristotle's work and producing something so entirely different that Aristotle himself, I am quite sure, would not recognize it as his own. I think the critical and astute observer is right: Nietzsche does not agree with Aristotle.

Bibliography

Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Edited and Translated by Richard McKeon, Random House, New York, (1941).

Gadamer, Hans Georg, The Idea of the Good In Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, (transl. P. Christopher Smith), New Haven, (1986).

Dannhauser, Werner J. Nietzsche's View of Socrates, Cornell, Ithaca, (1974)

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Philosophy And Truth: Selections From Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, edited and translated by Daniel Breazeale, Humanities Press, New Jersey, (1979).

Nussbaum, Martha, The Fragility of Goodness, Cambridge University, (1986).

Piscitelli, Emil J., "The Fundamental Attitudes of the Liberally Educated Person," in The Lonergan Workshop, Volume V, edited by Fred Lawrence, pp. 289 ff.

Voegelin, Eric, Anamnesis, transl., edited by G. Niemeyer, Notre Dame, (1978).

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