The Function Argument
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 at 12:15 PM
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1 Comments |
I shall here explicate Aristotle’s celebrated ergon, or function argument. On my reading, the argument goes something like this:
1. For anything, its function (ergon) is its characteristic (peculiar) activity.
2. For anything, if it’s got a good, it’s good is the excellent (arete) performance of its function.
3. So if humans have a good, the good for humans is the excellent performance of the characteristic (peculiar) human activity (from 1 and 2).
4. Humans have a characteristic (peculiar) human activity: rational activity.
5. So if humans have a good, then it’s the excellent performance of rational activity (from 3 and 4).
6. And humans do have a good.
7. So the good for humans is the excellent performance of rational activity (from 5 and 6).
Aristotle has a sub-argument in support of premise 4: if humans have a characteristic activity, it’s either vegetation (growing, absorbing nutrients), sensation (seeing, hearing, smelling), or rational activity (cognition). But we overlap with both plants and animals on the first, and with animals on the second. The third is the only activity peculiar to us.
There are two points worth noting before whole-heartedly attributing the above argument to Aristotle. First, he considers the possibility that there are many excellences (virtues). His response: if this is the case, then the good of a thing is performance of its function in accordance with the chief of these virtues or excellences. So even if rational activity is just one virtue among many, it still makes its way into the argument. Second, Aristotle adds that we must consider lives as wholes. `One swallow does not a summer make’, so instead of merely speaking of rational activity, we should speak of a complete life of rational activity.
1 Comments:
at 6:30 AM said... Andrew, Your rehearsal of the argument looks accurate, but it is worth noting that "rational activity" is ambiguous between a life of prudence (phronesis) and a life of wisdom (sophia). It is unclear which interpretation Aristotle prefers, and the source of this confusion is the ergon argument itself: not the argument in Book I, mind you, but the ergon argument in Book X, where Aristotle abandons the notion of our peculiar function for that of our highest function. Thus:
"If happiness is activity in accord with virtue, it is reasonable for it to accord with the supreme virtue, which will be the virtue of the best thing. The best is understanding, or whatever else seems to be the natural ruler and leader, and to understand what is fine and divine, by being itself either divine or the most divine element in us. Hence complete happiness will be its activity in accord with its proper virtue; and we have said that this activity is the activity of study." (1177a13-18)
and in one of those occasional rhetorical flourishes that suggest a facility with language that is otherwise absent from the Ethics, Aristotle finishes the discussion by telling his students that "We ought not to follow the makers of proverbs and 'Think human, since you are human,' or 'Think mortal, since you are mortal.' Rather, as far as we can, we ought to be pro-immortal, and go to all lengths to live a life in accord with our supreme element..." /vce
