Ethical Function in Augustine and Aquinas

Aristotle and Augustine represent two distinct traditions of ethical eudaimonism. Both make teleological arguments for human flourishing based on what they consider to be the unique function of a human being. Each articulate a metaphysical function that distinguishes humans from other animals. Both Aristotle and Augustine argue that exercising this distinct function leads to happiness. Aristotle’s metaphysical argument centers on the human function, which is phronesis. He understands this rationality as the distinct capability of a human being. Augustine’s metaphysical argument centers around the human function, that is the soul. He understands this ability to enjoy and commune with the divine as the distinct capability of a human being. The differences in their metaphysical understandings of the human function lead to differences in ethical eudaimonism: Aristotle to the pursuit of virtue, Augustine to enjoyment of God.

The tension between Aristotelian and Augustinian eudaimonism finds its roots in similar disagreements between Platonic idealism and Aristotelian realism. The debate would be furthered by Aquinas’s attempted synthesis of Augustinian theology and Aristotelian ethics, and it remains a point of contention in the philosophies of John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre, Julia Annas, and Eric Gregory. In this essay I focus on the arguments of Aristotle and Augustine, as they present the metaphysical commitments in their most distinct forms.

Aristotle and Phronesis

Aristotle argues that reason, or phronesis is the distinct function of the human being that leads to happiness. In The Nicomachean Ethics, he first describes a part of the soul that has reason, which distinguishes humans from other living things.[1] It is a function or action that brings happiness to those who exercise it well. Comparing it to other, lesser human functions, Aristotle articulates this metaphysical function as the thing which is essential to being a good human. Just as the function of a good harpist is to play well, the function of the good human is this activity of the soul that involves reason.[2] While he does not name the function in book I, where he first articulates his metaphysical argument for eudaimonism, I hold that phronesis, is this human function.

Aristotle continues his discussion of the proper function of man in book VII. Within the context of seeking the good, he defines pleasures as “unimpeded activity of the natural state.” Man takes pleasure in whatever his nature desires, and that his a natural state, every man desires happiness. The most human part of the soul desires true happiness.[3] Annas clarifies this, adding that “we seek various pleasures, because we have various and unstable natures. The lesser natures seek lesser pleasures, while the higher, distinctly human nature seeks higher pleasures, the highest of which is identical with happiness.” [4] Attaining happiness, therefore, requires the uninhibited exercise of the highest part of the soul, which I argue, is phronesis.

Aristotle, like Plato, identifies three parts of the soul: sense perception, wisdom, and desire. Unlike Plato, however, he claims happiness comes from desires, not wisdom. According to Aristotle, happiness comes from one’s actions, and one’s actions follow one’s desires; thus happiness is a result of proper desires, not wisdom. Wisdom can reveal what is divine, but not what leads to happiness.[5] Desire is the highest part of the soul, because desire determines one’s actions and life. It is only after grasping the supremacy of desire that one can understand what the human function really is. As MacIntyre argues in Dependent Rational Animals, humans have unique, highly developed reasoning ability that enables a person to choose good reasons for action, to choose ends that are good rather than bad, and to consider how these choices affect the ones who make them.[6] It is the rational control of the desires that separates mankind from all other living things.

Aristotle identifies five states in which the soul grasps truth relatives to human desires: craft, scientific knowledge, prudence, wisdom, and understanding.[7] Of these, it is prudence, or phronesis, which determines one’s happiness. Aristotle defines phronesis as “a state grasping the truth, involving reason, concerned with action about things that are good or bad for a human being.”[8] Phronesis is the function which determines the. desires; it is the action that determines happiness. Annas affirms this, noting that “one cannot remove either the contemplative or active aspect of phronesis; it is an active state of the soul, not just an intellectual action.”[9] In book I, when Aristotle speaks of a distinctly human metaphysical function, he speaks of phronesis.

Much of book VI focuses on Aristotle’s analysis of phronesis and its implications on happiness and virtue. He portrays phronesis as the highest of all functions. Distinct from other actions of the soul, phronesis determines what is good for man as a whole. It is “the eye of the soul” that possesses all craft, scientific knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.[10] Irwin suggests one should not consider phronesis to be a different action than the others, but rather the action which contains all other actions: phronesis is the attainment and application of other forms of knowledge.[11] One begins with practice, then attains scientific knowledge of the virtues, begins to see the principals of the virtues, contemplates the nature of virtue itself, and then can act upon the wisdom he has learned. This entire process is phronesis.

It is in and through virtue that one grows phronesis: virtues are the dispositions of right moral actions, of proper desires. This unique human capacity to desire and act upon the proper things leads to happiness. This action leads man to understand and act in virtue, which leads to eudaimonia. One must grow in phronesis gradually, as he also grows in wisdom, practice, and understanding of the virtues. One can only be happy by practicing phronesis in every virtue. This is the metaphysical function of man that makes him happy.

Aristotelian eudaimonism is grounded in the human telos, that man has the potential to flourish. According to Aristotle, phronesis is means by which ones actualizes this potential. This natural function of the soul which leads happiness. Phronesis enables the construction of an ethical system that instructs the movement from the untutored state toward the natural state. Because Aristotle identifies this a uniquely human faculty, he claims that growing in phronesis actualizes the human potential in its fullest form. One does this through virtue ethics.

Not considering an afterlife, Aristotles account of eudaimonia must come to fruition entirely within ones temporal existence and temporal metaphysics. One must find happiness in this life, even if only at the end. If the unique factor of man is, as Aristotle claims, his ability to actualize the potential of living a virtuous life, there is no need for any eternal pursuit of happiness. Happiness is fulfillment of the human potential, the expressions of phronesis, in this life.

Aristotle’s metaphysic of phronesis leads him to a virtue ethics approach to eudaimonia. Since happiness is the actualization of phronesis, and virtues are the means by which one brings about such actualization, virtues are the means to happiness. Virtuous actions become habits, and habits become dispositions, and dispositions become a way of life. Through a lifetime of training one’s habits and dispositions toward virtue, they will have actualize their distinctly human potential by creating dispositions within the soul toward virtue, and following them until the end. Then, at the end of such a life, one can be happy. They will have mastered their desires and joyfully acted well; this is happiness. If the distinct function of the soul is phronesis, human happiness is the faithful development of the virtuous life.

Augustine and the Enjoyment of the Divine

Like Aristotle, Augustine’s amount of eudaimonism centers on what he claims to be the distinct function of the human being. However, rather than focusing on reason, or phronesis, Augustine claims man is unique in his ability to enjoy God. Augustine’s ethics reflect this, emphasizing contemplation of God and love of neighbor over virtuous actions and self-improvement. He draws heavily on Platonic idealism and hierarchies, articulating a need for properly ordered loves especially in relation to God, others, and oneself. Augustine adds to ethics, however, a crucial understanding of grace, realizing that man is incapable of loving rightly. Augustine’s eudaimonism is then found through enjoying God by loving him, one’s neighbor, and oneself properly, and acknowledging the need for grace for humanity’s inadequacies.

Augustine’s approach mirrors Aristotle: he identifies the function mankind has which is distinct from other living things. In his earlier writings, he followed the Platonic tradition of emphasizing the intellect of the soul as this function, but in his more mature works he recognizes that even the soul must be perfected by something higher, eg. Wisdom or the divine..[12] If it were not for his Christian theism, he might come to agree with Aristotle here and emphasize phronesis and the virtues. However, because of his adherence to an eternal soul, and his emphasis on the fallen will, such an ethical project falls short of the human function. While humans are unique in their rationality, this is not the highest function of the soul. The highest function of the soul is the enjoyment of the divine[13]

Within the soul, Augustine identifies three functions within the mind: being, knowledge, and will. While knowledge sets man apart from other living things, full human activity requires all three functions working together, directed at a single aim. The most important function of the soul is the function that directs it. This is the role of love. For this reason, Augustine identifies love, not reason as the key function of the soul: if one loves properly, he will be happy.

Two themes are central to Augustine’s ethics: love and happiness. The former is the means by which we achieve the latter. While he articulates four proper objects of love: God, Neighbor, self, and the body, the ultimate aim of love is to attain happiness.[14] His framework is distinctly eudaemonistic.[15] Like Aristotle, he claims that all humans seek the good, but his account of the human function begins with the love of the soul, not the rationality of the soul.[16]

Hannah Arendt identifies three uses of love in Augustine’s writings: love as a desire of happiness, the love between God and man, and the love between fellow humans.[17] I am concerned with this first articulation of love. Augustine argues that since all men seek happiness, they love those things which make them happy. He claims that happiness is found by possessing a good that we cannot lose. Thus, the love of any temporal thing cannot bring happiness. Furthermore, since man himself is temporal, the state of happiness will pass away when we do. For this reason Augustine rejects actualization of phronesis as happiness. Augustine argues instead that one must find happiness in the eternal state of the soul being loved by God, since neither the soul, nor the love of God is mutable.[18]

Augustine distinguishes the natures of specific loves, not by the nature of the love itself, but by the object of the love. A bad love, or cupiditas, is love that is disproportionate to its object: either a love too great directed to an unworthy object, or an insufficient love directed to an object that deserves more. A good love, or caritas is a proper love directed at a proper object. Augustine believes that the full enjoyment of God is the highest form of love.[19] All other proper loves follow in the appropriate order: love of neighbor, then love of self, then love of one’s body. Happiness is achieved by loving these things properly (Caritas); the disordering of loves (cupiditas) corrupts happiness because mutable things will pass away and their good is contingent on God. Because God is eternal and necessarily good, he is the proper object of one’s highest love.[20]

One must make an important distinction here: Augustine is not suggesting that man out to be indifferent to earthly good, but that he love lesser goods as means to greater goods. He distinguishes between the use (uti) of an object of love and the enjoyment (Frui) of an object of love. Since all things find their goodness in God, it is inappropriate to enjoy (frui) them for their own sake. Rather, one ought to use (uti) lesser goods to enjoy (frui) God. This enjoyment of the highest good draws on a Platonic ethic, which emphasizes enjoyment of the divine.[21] Augustine argues for love teleologically, claiming that the proper end of one’s love is God. All other actions must seek this same end. He claims that we have a unique function to enjoy (frui) God, and all else must be a means (uti) to actualizing this potential.

The primacy of the enjoyment of God in Augustinian eudiamonism results in an odd normative ethic. He must deny any ethics which values temporal goods for their own sake. Consequently, one cannot love their neighbor for their neighbor’s sake. The love of neighbor is a means (uti) to our teleological end. The love of another is the love of God through them or the love of the image of God in them.[22] To use one’s neighbor is to enjoy God. Furthermore, Augustine emphasizes that full happiness occurs in the next life. One cannot be happy on earth, even at the end of life.[23] Again, borrowing from Platonism, he claim happiness on earth is a shadow of divine happiness, but being transcendent beings, humans do partake in true happiness on Earth, albeit to a lesser extent.[24] Despite the emphasis on the next life, Augustine seems to value the love of temporal things on earth, especially mankind; he argues against suicide as a means of attaining communion with God, as it this would not properly love (uti) oneself as a means of loving God. Rather, one ought to enjoy God on Earth through the proper love of temporal things.[25]

Augustine admits, such a task is beyond the capacity of the human soul. Unlike Aristotle, who argued that ethics was a shift from human potential to actualization, Augustine argues that ethics is an attempt to reclaim what was lost in the fall.[26] Man lacks the capacity to love rightly, and must settle for an attempt. Thus he denies Aristotle’s claims that one can cultivate the dispositions of the heart in any virtuous way.[27] Rather, he advocates for a theocentric view of formation, relying on the divine to change one’s soul. While one will love properly and attain happiness in the next life, this is impossible on earth.[28] Thus, grace becomes central to Augustine’s ethics. Here Augustine differs from the stoics who claim virtue as the highest good, and Aristotle who argues for the primacy of phronesis in moral formation. Augustine is less concerned with cultivating virtue and instead focuses on contemplation of the divine.[29] From contemplation of the divine, the soul changes to love rightly, and act accordingly. Virtue is then a result, not a cause of happiness.[30]

Here Augustine returns to the emphasis of rationality. Accepting both man’s inability practice virtue and the necessity of grace in this life, he emphases contemplation as the means to happiness in this life; in contemplation we seek union with the divine.[31] When one’s being, knowledge, and will are fully directed toward God, the human and God are united in happiness.[32]

In contemplation of the divine, man properly knows himself as creature and reaches beyond oneself to the realm of true being above.[33] The wisdom one finds in the contemplation of the divine reorients one’s soul to the proper love (uti) of the temporal world for the love (frui) of the divine. Since the will follows the loves, proper loves result in proper actions. It is God, not habits that causes virtue. Thus Christian eudaimonism repeats the ascension up Plato’s line, and reflects Christ’s incarnation back down to earth[34]

Conclusion

Aristotle and Augustine take remarkably similar approaches to eudaimonism: both articulate a metaphysical teleology, attempting to identify a unique human function that results in happiness. However, they differ in their conception of the natural human state: Aristotle claims humanity exists in its natural state, while Augustine claims man is fallen and incapable of happiness in this life. Consequently, they identify contrasting accounts of the human function. Aristotle argues that reason, or phronesis is this function, while Augustine argues that it is enjoyment of the divine. Aristotle forms a conception of eudaimonism which derives from actualizing one’s potential to train of the dispositions to desire and act virtuously; one can develop phronesis and attain happiness upon one’s death. Augustine, advocating an eternal existence claims man’s metaphysical function must be greater than controlling one’s dispositions and must return to enjoyment of the divine.

Their ethics reflect the divisions of their metaphysics. Claiming that one’s end is the actualization of the potential for virtue, Aristotle’s ethics are comprised of descriptions of the virtues and descriptions of how they attain. He constructs a method of habit, understanding, and knowledge that changes one’s dispositions to freely act virtuously. His method beings with forcing oneself to right actions, then understanding, and lastly having dispositions or affections toward virtue.

Contrarily, Augustine, claiming that one’s end is the enjoyment of the divine, comprises no ethical text whatsoever. Rather, his ethics are found in his discussions of God. He emphasizes love first, articulating a proper ordering of love: first, the love of God, second, the love of neighbor, and last the love of one’s self. Because we are eternal creatures desiring eternal happiness, we must love an eternal good above all. The love of God is man’s natural end. Thus, the ethics Augustine prescribes are the love (uti) of temporal things as a means of loving (frui) God, and the contemplation of God. His method begins with affects, then understanding, and ends with action.

Both Aristotle and Augustine are eudaimonists, but the differences in their metaphysical analysis results in drastically different accounts of what eudaimonia is, when it is attained, and how one can seek it. Aristotle, focusing on man’s natural reason, articulates a eudaimonism of virtuous dispositions, attained at the end of this life, sought by habitual practice. Augustine, focusing on man’s eternal soul, articulates a eudaimonism of the enjoyment of God, attained in eternity, sought by contemplation of the divine and properly ordered loves.

[1] Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. (NE) Hackett. 1999 . I.7. 1097b 26 [2] Nicomachean Ethics. 1.7 1098a 3 [3] Nicomachean Ethics. VII. 1153a 12-15 [4] Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford. 1993. P. 145 [5] Nicomachean Ethics. VI.7 1141b 5-8 [6] MacIntyre, Alasdair. Dependent Rational Animals. Chicago. Open Court Press. 1996. Pp 166. [7] Nicomachean Ethics VI. 3. 1139b 18 [8] Nicomachean Ethics VI. 11. 1143b. 25. [9] Annas p. 73 [10] 1144a p. 30 [11] Nicomachean Ethics. p. 225 [12] Duffy, Stephen J. “Anthropology.” In Fitzgerald, Allan D. Augustine Through the Ages. Eerdmans Press. 2001. [13] Teske, Roland J. “Soul” in Fitzgerald, Allan D. Augustine Through the Ages. Eerdmans Press. 2001. [14] Van Bavel, Tarsicius. “Love” in Fitzgerald, Allan D. Augustine Through the Ages. Eerdmans Press. 2001. [15] Kent, Bonnie. The Cambridge Companion to Saint Augustine. Cambridge. 1987. [16] Schlabach, Gerald W. “Ethics” in Fitzgerald, Allan D. Augustine Through the Ages. Eerdmans Press. 2001. [17] Arendt, Hannah. Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago Press. 1996. p. 6 [18] Arendt. p. 30 [19] Van Bavel p. 508 [20] Augustine On Christian Doctrine. Dover Press. 2009 I.11.20 [21] Arendt p. 36 [22] Gentry, Glenn. Beyond Augustine. Baylor University. 2003. P. 112 [23] Augustine On the Trinity. New City Press. 2015. VIII.10.14 [24] Augustine City of God. Random House Press. 1950 8.14. [25] City of God I.17-25; Arendt p. 32 [26] Gentry, Glenn. Beyond Augustine: The Ethical Structure of Community. Baylor University. 2003. P. 116 [27] On the Trinity. 14.14.18 [28] Lib. Arb. I.8.18; I.15.33-I.16.35 [29] Cipriani, Nello “Ethics” in Fitzgerald, Allan D. Augustine Through the Ages. Eerdmans Press. 2001. [30] Ibid [31] Hankey, Wayne J. “Mind” in Fitzgerald, Allan D. Augustine Through the Ages. Eerdmans Press. 2001. [32] On The Trinity 15.12.21 [33] Augustine The Confessions. Penguin Press. 2001 7.9.10; Trinity 12 [34] Hankey p. 563.