University of Kansas, Fall 2002
Philosophy 672: History of Ethics
Ben Eggleston

Class notes: Aristotle

The following notes correspond roughly to what we cover, including at least a portion of what I put on the board or the screen, in class. In places they may be more or less comprehensive than what we actually cover in class, and should not be taken as a substitute for your own observations and records of what goes on in class.

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1. historical background of Aristotle and the Nicomachean Ethics
   1. Aristotle’s life
      1. born in 384 B.C.
      2. student of Plato, in Athens, from 367 to 347
      3. some traveling, including a stint as tutor to Alexander (the Great)
      4. returned to Athens in 334 and founded philosophical academy
      5. died in 322
   2. Nicomachean Ethics
      1. apparently not authored by Aristotle as a freestanding book; more like lecture notes requiring some filling in by subsequent translators (e.g., Irwin)
      2. apparently so named because it was dedicated to, or compiled by, Aristotle’s son Nicomachus
      3. survives into modern times via many copyings and translations
2. book I, chapters 1–12
   1. the good: The main idea of this book is what the good for humans is—what it is for a human life to go well, and what it is for a community of humans to do well. Before going further into this question, we need to note some of the basic features of the way Aristotle approaches it.
      1. a practical question: First, Aristotle intends this question to be taken very practically, as a question about how to live. It’s not a question of purely theoretical interest, like (perhaps) the question of what a number is or (somewhat more practical but still not really practical) the question of what human beings would be like if they were ideally constructed instead of the limited beings that they are. When Aristotle asks what the human good is, he means to be asking a question whose answer will enable him and his intended audience to live better: literally to make their lives go better. (See especially book II, chapter 2, section 1.)
      2. living well, not living “morally”: Second, there is a distinction taken for granted by modern moral philosophers, and by modern people generally, that is basically absent from Aristotle’s ethics. This is the distinction between (1) what is good for a person, without regard to whether it’s morally acceptable for this person to possess or enjoy this good, and (2) what is good overall, from the moral point of view. Indeed morality is typically thought of by moderns—not just in moral philosophy but also in everyday thinking—as a set of norms that adjudicate the conflicts that arise when individuals press their self-interested claims on one another, and circumstances do not permit all of these self-interested claims to be satisfied. (To take a trivial example: I want the whole cake, and you do, too; so we take up the moral point of view in order to divide the cake appropriately—that is, to reconcile this conflict between my self-interest and yours.) Aristotle, however, observes no such distinction. There is just living well, and we moderns have to take this as covering both the point of view of self-interest and the point of view of morality.
   2. reliance on common opinion: To answer the question of what it is to live well, Aristotle begins with what people commonly think about what it is to live well, and tries to make common ways of thinking about it deeper and more rigorous. He does not take any sort of “top-down” approach.
   3. happiness as the good: Aristotle proposes that the human good is happiness. Or, at least, what Aristotle said is often translated as ‘happiness’. But we should understand ‘happiness’ here, and throughout our discussion of Aristotle, to have a lot of the same meaning as ‘flourishing’. (It’s not just a state of mind, or a feeling of enjoyment or contentment.) To keep this notion in view, I’ll use the phrase 'happiness or flourishing'. Anyway, happiness or flourishing is regarded as the good by Aristotle for two reasons.
      1. completeness: First, happiness or flourishing is complete, in the sense of containing other things: when we want other things (horseshoes for our horses, or victory in battle, or whatever), we want them not for their own sakes, but in order to be happy or to flourish. And this completeness is something we would expect of whatever is truly the human good.
      2. self-sufficiency: Second, happiness or flourishing is self-sufficient, in the sense that once we have happiness or are flourishing, we don’t want other things: happiness or flourishing is enough; it does not need to be supplemented by other things. This, too, is something we would expect of whatever is truly the human good.
   4. what happiness is: So we have seen that the human good consists of happiness or flourishing: this fits the bill, the criteria of the human good. But what does happiness consist of? What does it mean for a human to flourish? The very idea of being happy or of flourishing is so vague that some more-definite specification is badly needed. Aristotle supplies this more-definite specification in two different (but compatible) ways in this book.
      1. common opinion: First, there is the consideration of what people commonly believe constitutes a happy or flourishing life, in chapter 5.
         1. Some people think that such a life is simply one of pleasure. Aristotle rejects this, saying that such a life may be proper to grazing animals, but not to such advanced beings as humans beings.
         2. Some people think that such a life is one of honor. But, Aristotle says, these people really want not just to be honored, but to be honored by people whose opinions matter to them. That is, it seems that they want to be deserving of honor, or to possess virtue. But possessing virtue is not enough for happiness or flourishing, since a virtuous person may suffer great hardships.
         3. Some people think that such a life is one of thought. Aristotle has little to say about this here, but he says more about it later.
      2. the function argument: Aristotle’s second way of answering the question of what happiness or flourishing is comes in chapter 7.
         1. In this chapter Aristotle considers the function of a human being. (Thus, the argument of this chapter is known as “the function argument.”) The motivation for this is that what it the good is for any being can be ascertained by finding out what that thing’s function is: then, its good will consist in its fulfilling its function. So if we can find out what the function of a human being is, then we will know what the good for a human being is.
         2. It may seem odd that Aristotle is inquiring here into the function of humans, in order to find out what the good for humans is. For didn’t Hume show that you can’t figure out what ought to be the case by inquiring into what is the case? Well, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t, but for Aristotle, there is no such divide between facts and values, or between science and morality. Ethics is a practical inquiry just as, say, gardening is; and just as you look at how plants actually operate in order to figure out how to garden well, so you look at how humans actually operate in order to figure out how to live well. Of course, there is a lot more to be said both for and against the fact–value distinction, but this is at least the gist, I think, of Aristotle’s approach.
         3. To find out what the function of a human being is, Aristotle looks at what is distinctive about humans: “activity . . . in accord with reason or requiring reason.” (One might object to the procedure of ascertaining something’s function by identifying what’s distinctive about it. Would the function of humans have anything less to do with reason if not only humans but also some other beings than humans had the same reasoning capacities as humans, and what made humans unique was some obscure non-reasoning ability, like the ability to balance chairs on their chins? Surely then balancing chairs would not be humans’ function!)
         4. Given that the function of a human being is activity involving reason, the good for a human is to act in accord with reason well, or activity involving reason and in accord with virtue. So this is how happiness (or flourishing) should be understood. Note that being “in accord with virtue” is to be taken to mean something like excellently, not something like in accord with morality.
   5. further support from common opinion: So we have a conception of the human good as happiness or flourishing, and a conception of happiness or flourishing (for humans) as activity involving reason and in accord with virtue. In chapter 8, Aristotle claims that some confirmation of these results can be found by considering what people commonly believe about the human good. (Notice here an important element of Aristotle’s method: an appeal to what is commonly believed. Whereas modern moral philosophy takes, as its context, domestic strife and international conflict, and thus cannot very often just say, “Well, everybody knows that such-and-such,” Aristotle wrote in a community with a fair measure of agreement on basic values. As a result, we find in Aristotle’s writing much less concern with anticipating every objection that may arise, or defending every claim with all the arguments that can be mustered for it.)
      1. First, it is commonly believed that there are three kinds of goods—of the mind, of the body, and external—and that goods of the mind are the best.
      2. Second, it is commonly believed that the the good person lives well and does well.
      3. Third, it is commonly believed that the human good is a pleasant thing for someone to have.
   6. some misconceptions corrected: So, certain misconceptions about happiness or flourishing can be corrected:
      1. Happiness or flourishing does not consist of just pleasure. For a pleasurable life in accord with reason and virtue would be better than a pleasurable life lacking reason and virtue; therefore happiness or flourishing requires these extra ingredients.
      2. Happiness or flourishing is not ensured by virtue (capability of excellence) alone. Happiness or flourishing requires rational activity, and misfortunate beyond the control of virtue can impede rational activity. So you need not only virtue, but the conditions conducive to rational activity, in order to be happy or to flourish.
      3. Happiness or flourishing is not a momentary or episodic thing; rather, it extends over a complete life. So it depends on having been brought up well, and requires having acquired certain habits. You can't be virtuous just by deciding to, in the way that you can bowl by the rules of bowling just by deciding to (assuming you have some way of knowing what the rules of bowling are). And if you lack virtue, then you can’t really be happy or flourish, though you might have a pleasant existence like that of a pampered grazing animal.
      4. Your happiness or flourishing is not settled entirely by what you do when you’re alive. It is also influenced by what happens to your friends and descendents after you die.
   7. the section on Plato: In chapter 6 of the book, Aristotle argues against taking a Platonic approach to the question of what the good is. Basically, this means arguing that we have to start with what we know of specific instances of the good and work up to a grand idea of the good (or as much of a single idea as the facts allow), instead of trying to arrive at some grand idea through abstract reason (as a Platonic approach would involve) and then apply it downward to specific areas of life. But we will not be further concerned with this chapter.
3. book I, chapter 13, and book II
   1. two kinds of virtue of the soul: In the last chapter of book I, Aristotle discusses the virtues—in particular, the virtues of the soul, since these are what happiness is concerned with.
      1. Some of the soul’s nonrational parts or activities do not concern us, such as the parts having to do with digestion and growth and so on.
      2. But the soul has other apparently nonrational parts that do concern us, since there are parts—having to do with appetites and desires, for example—that do not themselves engage in reasoning but do obey or disobey, enforce or flout, the dictates of reason.
      3. There are two kinds of virtue of the soul: virtues of thought, such as wisdom, comprehension, and produce; and virtues of character, such as generosity and temperance.
   2. how virtues of character arise: In book II, Aristotle discusses several aspects of virtues of character. First (chapters 1–2), how do they arise?
      1. through action and habit: Unlike virtues of thought, which arise mostly through teaching, virtues of character arise through action and habit. What kind of action and habit does it take for a person to acquire a virtue of character? Precisely that sort of action and habit that the person would exhibit if he or she already possessed the virtue in question. For example, one acquires the virtue of generosity by doing the acts that he or she would do if he or she already possessed the virtue of generosity. You become virtuous by doing virtuous acts.
      2. neither by nature nor against nature: Closely related to this view of the development of the virtues is the thesis that the virtues arise neither by nature or against nature; rather, each person is naturally capable of becoming virtuous. But each person is also naturally capable of becoming vicious, by engaging in and becoming habituated to vicious behavior.
      3. the importance of one’s upbringing: Here we should stop to dwell on the importance that Aristotle accords a person’s upbringing in whether or not he or she is virtuous, because it is another distinctively non-modern aspect of Aristotle’s approach. The story from just above is, in effect, that performing actions of certain kinds is both necessary and sufficient for becoming the corresponding sort of person. This means that if someone is raised badly—raised so that they become habituated to laziness, thoughtlessness, unfairness, etc.—then he or she is very likely going to have those vices. Only if you’re raised in the right way, Aristotle means for us to understand, can you, now, be virtuous. Now from the modern point of view this may look elitist: as if Aristotle is saying that being good is the entitlement of only those few who are privileged to have proper upbringings, and that others who lack such favorable formative environments cannot be good (at least, not without a lot of work in unlearning bad habits and learning new ones). In response, Aristotelians are generally wont to point out two things: first, being good is hard, and we should not be surprised if we need the help of others—e.g., the people who raise us—in order to achieve it. And second, you don’t need a highly privileged upbringing; all you need is an upbringing in which you’re taught to be honest and to treat other people kindly and so forth. Of course there is much more to be said about this, but this much is worth noting at this point.
   3. virtue not just a matter of behavior: Second, the fact that someone possesses a certain virtue can’t be determined simply from looking at the content of their actions. Certain things are true of people who act virtuously, above and beyond what can be discerned from examining their behavior.
      1. want to act virtuously: First (chapter 3), the exercise of the virtues is pleasant to the agent. If someone performs a generous act but is pained by it, then he or she is not really generous (i.e., does not really possess the virtue of generosity), and has not really acted generously (though we may not be able to tell this from the outside, if the person pretends to have enjoyed it in order to hide his or her lack of generosity).
         1. example from Urmson: Brown and Smith standing up for what’s right
         2. Still, the person may be working on acquiring the virtue of generosity, and may be making progress towards this end by performing generous acts.
      2. three criteria: Second (chapter 4), Aristotle gives three criteria that must be met in order for someone truly to be acting virtuously:
         1. The agent knows he or she is acting virtuously.
         2. The agent must decide to perform a virtuous action, because it’s virtuous.
         3. The agent must act in this way from a firm and unchanging state.
      3. disanalogy with crafts: Note, then, the difference between being virtuous and being good at some craft. In the case of crafts, we have an external standard for whether someone is good at it: we look at the piece of furniture that’s been made, or we listen to the song that’s been played, and if those products are good, then we say that the person is good at the corresponding craft, no matter how unorthodox his or her technique may be. In short, with crafts, the proof is in the pudding. But acting virtuously is not like this. We don’t have an independent idea of the kinds of actions we would like to see performed, and then just use that idea in order to figure out what the virtues consist of. (A consequentialist might come up with an account of the virtues in this way, but Aristotle does not.) Instead, the virtues are themselves states of excellence for humans, and their manifestation in action, while generally beneficial, is not what gives them all of their value. This is why acting virtuously requires certain things about the agent to be true, as well as certain kinds of outward behavior.
   4. virtues not feelings: Third (chapter 6), virtues are not feelings like anger and fear, nor are they capacities like the capacity for anger or the capacity for fear. Rather, they’re states.
   5. moderation: Fourth, since virtue enables a human being to function well, it must involve moderation (the mean) and avoiding both excesses and deficiencies.
      1. relative to the person: The mean must, of course, be relative to the person, not to the external circumstances. For example, if you can each anywhere between zero and twenty pounds of beef for dinner, the mean with respect to the beef itself may be ten pounds, but the mean with respect to your own digestive capacities may be something more like a third of a pound. So it might make more sense to say that what being virtuous has to do with the mean is not (1) choosing something intermediate—unless understood in the way just described—but (2) having a disposition to choose that is, as a disposition, intermediate between two more-extreme dispositions.
      2. circularity? Here is the right place to pause to note an important structural feature of Aristotle’s account of virtuous action: what can reasonably be called a sort of circularity in Aristotle’s ethics.
         1. Recall that the modern normative ethicists we studied—Mill and Kant—sought to provide a way of understanding morality in non-moral terms: a way of describing and identifying moral actions that did not itself presuppose any antecedent moral insight on the part of the agent. Mill, for example, very explicitly says that he’s trying to come up with a test of right and wrong, without relying on the assumption that we already know what’s right and wrong. And for Kant it is a pretty dry logical exercise, not requiring any distinctively moral thinking, to arrive at correct moral judgments. Thus both Mill and Kant consciously sought to come up with a non-circular account of morality. But Aristotle has no such aspiration, and this first place this becomes important is here in his discussion of the mean, relativized to the agent instead of to the external circumstances. For in response to this discussion, one is tempted to say, “Well, if I already knew how to find the mean for me—how to avoid too much and too little of things for me—then I would already know how to perform virtuous acts. Where’s the account of how to find the mean for me? Where’s the algorithm that I can use, if I don’t know anything about virtuous actions, in order to perform them?” In response to this, Aristotle would say something like, “Sorry, you cannot have a recipe for performing virtuous acts if you don’t already have any idea how to do them. My account of ethics does not attempt to reduce the moral to the non-moral, as it seems to have become fashionable among the moderns to do. Instead, it speaks to people who already have some idea of how to live, and offers them a deeper understanding of this important question. My account may be circular, but it is a very large and informative circle, a much larger one than people normally comprehend in their everyday thinking.” (On this point see chapter 9, section 8.)
         2. With this in view let us revisit the question of how to become good, which we considered earlier in the context of habituation. For now it might seem that becoming good not only requires a lot of practice, but requires the sort of practice that is accessible only to those who already know how to do it. But this is a bit of an exaggeration. Here, in rough outline, is how Aristotle thinks that virtuous people got that way: (1) They were raised by people who taught them about honesty, fairness, and so on, and who encouraged, or pressured, or bribed, them to behave in these ways—parents have all sorts of ways of getting children to do things. (2) They gradually got the hang of these concepts, and came to be motivated to exhibit them in behavior for their own sake, not for parental approval or whatever. (3) Now they act in accordance with the virtues, and do so on purpose, and from a commitment not easily shaken. So the process of becoming good is not that mysterious, despite the fact that a person can’t be good just by waking up one morning and deciding to be, and despite the fact that there are no non-moral criteria that can be used to conclusively identify virtuous acts.
      3. examples: The various virtues fit into the framework of means, excesses, and deficiencies, and although there are some cases in which not all three have names, there are some cases in which they do (chapter 7):
         1. cowardice, bravery, rashness
         2. ungenerosity, generosity, wastefulness
         3. self-deprecation, truthfulness, boastfulness
         4. boorishness, wit, buffoonery
         5. (Still to come: justice and the virtues that belong to reason. The virtues mentioned here are mainly for illustration.)
      4. choosing on which side to err: When trying to achieve the mean of a certain kind, you have to take into account which extreme you’re more prone to, and you may need to aim for the opposite extreme, at least to some extent, in order to hit the mean. For example, a cowardly person might need to aim for some rashness just in order to perform a brave act.
4. book III, chapters 1–5
   1. These chapters make two main points, each having to do with both virtue and vice, on the one hand, and voluntariness on the other hand. The first point has to do with those actions in which virtue and vice are on display, or those actions that reveal a person’s character.
      1. Such actions must, of course, be voluntary. What does it take for an action to be voluntary? Aristotle maintains that one acts involuntarily only when one is physically forced (as when someone puts your hand on a gun and uses it to pull the trigger) or when one is ignorant of some particular about what one is doing (as when you think you think you are throwing water on a fire but you’re actually throwing gasoline on it, because you didn’t realize there was gasoline in the glass). As a result, Aristotle has a pretty broad notion of the voluntary, including some things that people might say they were “forced” to do (and thus did not do voluntarily), like throwing cargo out of a ship in order to keep it from sinking. It might make more sense to think of what Aristotle is talking about here as the intentional rather than the voluntary.
      2. But not all voluntary actions reveal a person’s character. Rather, this is true of only those actions that result from decision, which Aristotle regards as a subset of voluntary actions. For an action to be the result of decision, it must be the result of deliberation: its particulars must have been considered (correctly), and it must have been selected as choiceworthy. (Again, the notion of intentional action helps here.) These, Aristotle says, are the actions that reflect virtue and vice.
   2. responsibility for one’s own virtues and vices: The second main point of these chapters has to do with the way in which virtues and vices are themselves voluntary (i.e., voluntarily chosen). Aristotle maintains that we’re responsible for whatever virtues and vices we have, since they are the product of actions done voluntarily in the past. (Involuntary actions—pulling a trigger because you’re forced to or accidentally adding fuel to a fire, or whatever—don’t instill virtues and vices.) Of course virtues and vices are not under our control in quite the same way as actions are, since we’re in control of actions from beginning to end, whereas once a virtue or vice is formed or is getting formed, it’s a little like the train has already left the station. (Indeed Aristotle uses the metaphor of the stone having left the hand that threw it.) With some work we can undo what we’ve done; but also, what we’ve done now has a momentum of its own. But while virtues and vice are less under our direct control than our actions are, we’re still responsible for them.
5. book III, chapters 6–12
   1. In these chapters Aristotle discusses the virtues of bravery and temperance, and their related vices, in some detail. These are the first of several virtues of character that Aristotle discusses from here through book V. First, some points about bravery.
      1. mean between cowardice and rashness: Bravery can be understood as being intermediate between being cowardly and being rash. The cowardly person fears things he shouldn't fear, and fears things too much; while the rash person is not fearful enough.
      2. appropriate fear: It is not true that the brave person fears nothing. On the contrary, there are certain things it is proper to fear, such as getting a bad reputation or acting badly oneself, so even brave people fear these things. Fearing these things doesn’t make one a coward.
      3. wanting to act bravely: We saw that Aristotle says that anyone who has a particular virtue typically wants to do the actions that are characteristic of it. It is especially important, when thinking about bravery, not to  make the mistake of thinking that Aristotle means that someone with a particular person always finds it pleasurable to exhibit that virtue. For the brave person needn't actually be enjoying himself when he act bravely. But he will do it because he wants to, of because he thinks it's worth doing, not because he’s bribed to do it or because he’s forced to do it.
      4. not quite bravery: There are certain states that resemble bravery in certain ways, but that ultimately fall short of it.
         1. People compelled by their superiors may perform brave actions, but they are not brave, because they act from the desire for reward or the fear of punishment.
         2. People moved by “spirit” may perform brave actions, but they are not brave, because they do not (knowingly and deliberately) choose brave actions because they are worth doing.
         3. Similarly for people moved by the desire for revenge, or people with unjustified confidence in their abilities.
   2. Second, temperance: this is concerned with pleasures, and to some degree pains, of the body, but not the soul; and not all pleasures of the body, but only those that are shared with other animals, such as touch and taste.
   3. circularity again: One thing to notice in Aristotle’s discussion of both of these virtues is the re-emergence of the “circularity” we saw earlier (in connection with book II). For in regard to both bravery and temperance, Aristotle does not provide any algorithm for using non-moral properties of actions to identify the brave and temperate ones: rather, he says that the brave person is the one who fears the right things, in the right circumstances, in the right way, etc.—and Aristotle makes no apologies for characterizing the virtue of bravery in terms of actions with the “right” properties. The way to read these sections is not as an analysis, in non-moral terms, of any virtues or any virtuous actions, but as a characterization of certain structural features of the virtues: for example, whether an action is virtuous depends on many different aspects of it (object, circumstances, motivation, etc.), and the action isn’t virtuous unless all these are just right. What it means for all these to be just right depends, of course, on each particular case.
6. book IV
   1. In this book Aristotle discusses some related virtues: (1) generosity and (2) magnificence; and (3) the virtue concerned with small honors (lacking its own name) and (4) magnanimity. Since magnificence is, in effect, generosity on a large scale, not everyone has the resources to be magnificent; similarly, since magnanimity is concerned with great honors, this isn’t relevant to everyone, but everyone can be generous and appropriately interested in small honors.
   2. One passage important from a methodological point of view is chapter 5, section 13, where Aristotle says that there’s no precise standard for when someone has acted generously, or whatever, “for the judgment depends on particular cases, and [we make it] by perception.” This is similar to a remark he makes in book II, chapter 9, section 8, noted above.
   3. In chapters 6–8, Aristotle discusses friendliness, truthfulness, and wit, and clarifies the relations among them in chapter 8, section 12.
   4. In chapter 9, Aristotle discusses shame. This, he says, is not a virtue, but a feeling; and feeling it on the right occasions (i.e., when you’ve done something bad) does not make you virtuous, since in order for that to happen, you will already have had acted disgracefully.
7. book V
   1. two kinds of injustice
      1. Aristotle arrives at an understanding of justice by considering injustice (remember this was Mill’s technique; Mill was influenced by Aristotle in many ways).
      2. He says that there are two main kinds of injustice: (1) being lawless and (2) being overreaching and unfair. So justice involves obeying the law and not overreaching or being unfair.
   2. general justice
      1. Because justice requires conformity to law, and because well designed laws tend to require bravery, temperance, mildness, and other virtues, justice is (1) complete virtue and (2) “the only virtue that seems to be another person’s good” (chapter 1, section 17).
      2. Aristotle regards justice as “complete virtue” only in this broad sense of justice. And it is just a peculiarity of justice that, in addition to being a particular virtue, it can be understood in a sense that makes it encompass the other virtues.
   3. particular justice
      1. fairness: This is concerned with getting only one’s fair share of things like wealth or honors. It is closely connected with the idea of fairness.
      2. two kinds of particular justice
         1. distributive justice
            1. concerned with persons’ receiving their fair shares
            2. equal shares to equals, unequal shares to unequals
            3. Of course, opinions differ as to what counts as equality or inequality: citizenship, wealth, birth, virtue. Ultimately, though, it’s just a matter of mathematical proportion.
         2. rectificatory justice
            1. concerned with proper “compensation”
            2. two kinds of transactions involved
               1. voluntary transactions
                  1. examples: buying, selling, renting, loaning, etc.
                  2. Here the basic standard is reciprocity.
               2. involuntary transactions
                  1. via stealth: burglary, adultery, poisoning
                  2. via force: assault, kidnapping, murder
                  3. Here the basic requirement is to compensate victims.
8. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958)
   1. pp. 1.6–3.5: We can find no elucidation of the concept of the moral (as opposed to the non-moral, not as opposed to the immoral) in the work of Aristotle or more recent philosophers.
   2. p. 5.3: two conceptions of “should” and “ought”
      1. as in “machinery should be oiled”
      2. a distinctly moral sense
   3. p.  5.6–7: how this “special sense” of such words came about: the law conception of ethics (permission, prohibition, etc.)
   4. p. 6.9: “The situation . . .”
   5. pp. 8.2–9.2: the notion of morality
      1. p. 8.3–4: no concept
      2. p. 8.9: should be dropped
      3. p. 9.1: what should replace it
   6. others sources of normativity besides a divine legislator
      1. p. 13.7: the “norms” of a society
      2. p. 13.8: legislating for oneself
      3. p. 14.3: a contract
      4. p. 14.8: human virtues
   7. p. 15.4: ‘ought’ meant non-emphatically; replacing ‘wrong’ with ‘unjust’, etc.
   8. p. 17.8: ‘morally wrong‘ as residue from divine-law ethics
   9. p. 1: three theses
      1. first one: not our concern
      2. second one: our concern
      3. third one: not our concern
9. Annas, “Ancient Ethics and Modern Morality”
   1. Annas’s aim
      1. p. 119.8: “widespread attitude . . .”
      2. p. 120.2: “it is widely taken . . .”
      3. p. 120.3: “that ancient ethics is ancient morality”
   2. “Moral and non-moral reasons”
      1. The standard story in modern moral philosophy is that moral reasons are more compelling; they’re overriding.
      2. But, it is said, there are not not two kinds of practical reasons in ancient ethics; there’s just reasoning well about things.
      3. But in ancient ethics (especially in the theories of the Stoics), we find certain reasons’ being regarded as silencing others, as moral reasons do according to modern moral philosophy.
      4. Also, in ancient ethics (especially in the theory of Aristotle), we find certain things’ being done because they are good, paralleling the modern view of moral actions’ being done for their own sake
   3. “Moral responsibility”
      1. It is often thought that in ancient ethics, it is implied that people are morally responsible for things that were not up to them. This suspicion is buttressed by the understanding of what is often called “virtue” as, rather, “excellence.”
      2. But in ancient ethics there is an emphasis on the voluntary, and on freedom of choice, that mirrors the modern concern with holding agents morally responsible for things that are up to them.
   4. “Scope”
      1. It is often thought, especially by those who take Aristotle’s ethics to be representative of ancient ethics, that in ancient ethics the scope of morality is much wider than it is in modern moral philosophy.
      2. But this feature of Aristotle’s ethics is not representative of ancient ethics, and it is not so clear after all that morality concerned with such a narrow part of one’s life.
   5. “Actions and agents”
      1. It is often thought that modern morality is act-centered and that ancient ethics is agent-centered.
      2. But this is more a difference of emphasis than a sharp divide, as shown by the important role of rules in theories of both kinds.
   6. “Myself and others”
      1. It is often thought that ancient ethical theories do not insist on the impartiality that is characteristic of modern morality.
      2. But some ancient ethical theories did (such as those of the Stoics); and besides, it’s a matter of debate whether modern ones should.