The Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle
Good without God
I read this book in order to counter an idea I often hear from Christians -- that it is impossible for an atheist to be a good person. There are three main arguments presented. The first is that a "Good person" *by definition* must have faith in God. The second is that it is impossible to know good from evil unless you RTFM: you need a higher authority to tell you which is which. And the third is that the only possible reason anyone could have to be good is fear of Hell. The first argument is vacuous. As for the third: a person who cannot be honest and kind unless compelled by fear of an afterlife of everlasting torment is not a good person -- their opinion should be ignored. Argument 2 is just wrong, and this book shows it. In it Aristotle sets out to systematically explore good. He was not a Christian, having lived hundreds of years before Christianity got off the ground. In fact, religion plays no important role in the book. Aristotle shows that it is possible to think about good without a God to tell you what it is.
So, I read it. Aside from proving that it is possible to think about good without God, I do not find it a useful guide to action. In this regard Plato is more convincing. Even though Plato does not systematically survey the subject of ethics in one place, the questions of what is good, what is virtue, and how should a good person act arise frequently in Plato, and the views presented there are clearer and more convincing than Aristotle's. So, in that regard Ethics is disappointing.
Why is this? There are a few reasons. First, it should be noted that there is a hugely important technical difficulty in reading Ethics: vocabulary and translation. A good illustration of this is Aristotle's discussion of courage. It became obvious immediately when I began to read the chapter on the subject that what Aristotle means by (the word translated as) courage is not at all what I and most English speakers mean by it. Aristotle's concept is much narrower, really covering only physical courage in war. In fact, the word Aristotle uses is ανδρεία (andreia), which is derived from άνδρας (andras -- man). So what Aristotle here discusses is something like "manliness", and even of that he has a narrow concept. (Google translate informs me that modern Greek has two other words for courage that correspond more closely to the modern concept: θάρρος (tharros) and κουράγιο (couragio)). I don't know if those words were in use in Aristotle's time, but I can tell you that his discussion of courage is seriously flawed from my point of view since it has little to do with anything that I would recognize as courage. It is barely even possible to imagine a courageous woman in Aristotle's views. (Chinese has a similar vocabulary problem: here is brave: 勇, and here is male: 男. The English word "courage" is derived from the Latin for heart, and is thus free of sexual etymology.)
This points towards another problem with Aristotle: he considers man superior to non-man, to the point of incomparability. Non-man includes women, children, and animals. Women and children are barely mentioned in Ethics. For instance, he has this to say about animals and boys: "It is natural, then, that we call neither ox nor horse nor any other of the animals happy; for none of them is capable of sharing in such activity. For this reason also a boy is not happy; for he is not yet capable of such acts, owing to his age." He does seem to consider the possibility that there might be such things as womanly virtues, although they are clearly far inferior to those available to men.
Another problem I find with Aristotle is the view that a man's will is unitary. (This he shares with Plato and Socrates.) It is the idea that what one wants is what one wants, i.e. that there is no such thing as internal conflict -- the very idea makes no sense. Aristotle, unlike Plato and Socrates, does admit a limited exception, which he calls incontinence, where, under certain circumstances a less-than-perfectly virtuous person may give in to temptation even though he knows he should not.
This error (for so, I maintain, it is) also infects his discussion of courage. Aristotle thinks a courageous man does not fear death in battle. In fact, I believe, as I think most people do, that without fear there is no courage. Courage is doing the thing you fear when it is right. Aristotle cannot fully conceive the idea that a man fears dying in battle yet does so voluntarily.
Who the Hell am I, who thinks he has the standing to find fault with Aristotle? I am an educated 21st-century human. I am somewhat familiar with 2300 years of history that had not yet happened when Aristotle lived. I am aware of real governments, constitutions, movements, and nations of which he could barely conceive. I have read the works of many philosophers, including some who came after Aristotle. I am infected by the liberal values of my time, which hold that humans are far more alike than they are different. For instance, except for sexual physiology, men and women are mostly alike. Humans are animals (Aristotle knew that) and are not discontinuously different from other animals. I am also, as it happens, a retired neuroscientist. Thus I know that we reason and philosophize with our brains. This was not generally appreciated in Aristotle's time. Aristotle himself believed that the brain was a kind of radiator whose purpose was to cool the heart, which he, like most people of his time, believed to be the seat of reason. (It was not until Harvey's description of the circulation of the blood in 1628 that anyone correctly understood the purpose of the heart.) I know that the brain is a complicated organ of many parts, and that these parts may act in opposition, so that a human is almost constantly in a state of internal conflict. There is nothing logically incoherent in the idea of a person overcoming his/her fear.
I bought The Basic Works of Aristotle intending to read Ethics and Politics, and then perhaps others of Aristotle's works. However, I am sufficiently disappointed in Ethics that I do not intend to read Politics. As I already said, Plato is better.