Perception in Aristotle's Ethics

Abstract

The project of this dissertation is to examine the role that perception plays in Aristotle's ethics. Aristotle is famous for offering what might be called a situational ethics: discerning what one ought to do is not derivable from universal laws, but must be assessed with respect to the particulars that make up the situation in which one must act.Aristotle argues that what virtue calls for is acting and feeling in an appropriate manner, i.e. at the right time, to the right degree, in the right manner, with respect to the right people, and so on (Nicomachean Ethics 1106b21-24). Moreover, because of the situational specificity of right action, one must also have the right character in order to discern what virtue calls for-only the virtuous person sees what is truly good. If one has a faulty character, the particulars will appear in a distorted manner, just as the wine tastes bitter to those who are ill (1113a25-29).It appears that a consequence of the situational specificity of virtuous action is that in order to be virtuous one must see rightly, in a literal sense. Aristotle is consistent in designating perception as the faculty that apprehends the particular (De anima 417b21- 29, Nic. Eth. 1109b23, 1113a1-2, 1126b4, 1142a27, 1143b6, 1147a27, 1147b18).Moreover, if those who are not virtuous cannot discern instances of virtuous action as virtuous (as a person who is ill cannot taste wine as sweet), this means that there is a limit to what the powers of intellect can accomplish with regard to virtuous action, for if virtue were simply a matter of understanding, whether one does or does not have the right character should not matter. Discerning virtuous action, then, seems to be a matter of perception.This consequence, however, carries some difficulties with it. In the first place, it appears to contradict the very definition of virtue as the excellent activity of the rational part of the soul. This suggests that it is not perception, a faculty of the non-rational part of the soul shared with animals, that discerns what is virtuous, but intellect and reason. In the second place, Aristotle conceives of perception as a bodily power in an important way: it is a power that operates through sense organs that are affected (physically) by the objects of sense. But it would be strange to consider goodness (or justice, or temperance, etc.) a physical object capable of affecting the sense organs and producing perception.Aristotle seems to be in a theoretical bind: perception is the faculty that discerns the particulars yet it is seemingly not equipped to discern ethical particulars.There are two ways one might get Aristotle out of this bind: one way is to give perception a merely instrumental role in the discernment of ethical particulars, where it is by the judgment of intellect upon the data provided by perception that one apprehends ethical particulars. If one adopts this strategy, one maintains that it is indeed the rational part of the soul that discerns virtuous action, but risks undermining the situational specificity ...

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