Brooklyn College Library ILL tied tN: 447474 MMIII Lending String: *'VDB.2XC,COO,VYF.NYP.NYG,VYS.ZSJ,NAM,B UFSP’ Patron: Journal Title: The University of Dayton review. Volume: 19 Issue: - Month/Year: 1988Pages: Re 45-2 Article Author: University of Dayton, Cole Artiole Title: Autarkeia in Aristotle Imprint: (Dayton, Ohio} University of Dayton, 1964-1997, ILL Number: 4: A il vam: APZ 3S Location: Periodical Stacks ODYSSEY ENABLED Charge Maxcost: 100.001-m Shipping Address: UL Borrowing, Columbia University Livraries 935 West 114th St New York, New York 10027 United States Fax: 212-854-3313, 128.589.152.191 Email: il. borrowing @libraries.cul.calumbie.eduAUTARKEIA IN ARISTOTLE Eve Browning Cole ‘The quality of autarkeia, usually translated “self-sufficiency” or “independence, is significant in the Greek moral tradition from Socrates through the Stoics! Xenophon praises the auiarkeia of Socrates in several contexts; Memorabilia 1.2.14 tells how Critias and Alcibiades were attracted by the fact that "Socrates, though possessed of very little, was living the most self-sufficient of lives (autarkes tata zonta), having achleved mastery over all the pleasures .. "" Near the end of this work, Xenophon eulogizes Socrates as having been "so wise that he was unerring in his Judgement of the better and the worse, and needed no counsellor, but relied on himself (autarkes einai) for his knowledge of them" (Mem. 4.8.11)? For the Stoles, autar- keia holds a central place among the valued moral and mental states, appearing in parallel constructions with ataraxia in references to desirable conditions of soul.? Aristotle is more interested in autarkeia than any other classical author, however. His moral philosophy invokes this quality again and again, and in contexts both important and problematic. For example. happiness is the ultimate end of human life in part because it possesses autarkeia, or is autarkes (NE 1097b7-21: 11766: BE 1238al 1-13), Autarkeia both makes the higher kinds of friendship possible, and raises puzzles about them; for a person who is "sel/-sufficient” is thereby free to have friends who aren't needed for some more mundane purpose (for their political clout, or their business acumen. etc.). But are friends needed in any sense by one who is truly described as “self-sufficient”? (These matters are discussed at NE 1169b5{C.; BE 1244b6-21; MM2.15.1-9.) Autarkeia isa morally admirable trait in ttself, for the “great-souled man,” in possessing “beautiful and profitless things,” demonstrates it, and this is good (VE 1125a12), It is also one of the valued characteristics of con- templation or study (theorta; NE 117727). For this reason. philosophical individuals possess autarkeia preeminently, since contemplation is their characterizing, ifnot their characteristic, activity (NE 1177b1-2)4 Moreover, autarketa is the goal of political organization, the reason why there are cities (Politics 1253al, 125b29f1.; 1261b14; 1275b21). Individuals by themselves lack It. and so are disposed to band together (Politics 1253228). It also serves as a limiting princtple on the size and organization of cities (Pol, 1275b21. 132641). The concept figures in Aristotle's theology as well. It is possessed by “the gods” (Magna Moralta 2.15.3.4; 2.15.5.3), or in the terms of Aristotle's cosmology. the “unmoved movers” (De Caelo 279a21-23). In spite of, or perhaps because of, this broad range of applications for the term and the quality it designates, it is not entirely clear what autarketa means. Our English term “self-sufficiency” is semantically incomplete, requiring either a definite con- text or an appended purpose-specification (eg., “self-suffictent with regard to food production” spoken of a farm or a region) to render it meaningful. Aristotle's texts do not typically provide this. What then does Aristotle mean by it? And why does he assign positive moral value to it? ‘These questions are the more interesting in that they touch on areas of Aristotie's, moral thinking which have drawn much criticism. From the aloofness of Aristotle's ods, to the seemingly cold-hearted indifference to mundane matters shown by the Universtiy of Dayton Review, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1988-1989} 35“great-souled man," to the apparently anti-social and elitist implications of contem- plation asa crowning virtue, some of Aristotle's most sympathetic interpreters have drawn a line of distaste or even moral disapproval. Autarkeia extends all along this line. as a defining feature of gods, of “great-souled men.” of philosophy and philosophers, A clear understanding of the concept is therefore in order, and would appear to be requisite for deciding whether some of Aristotle's central moral ideals are defensible to madern moral sensibilities. The nearest Aristotle himself comes to defining autarkeia in al least one context is a passage early in the Nicomachean Ethics (beginning 1097b14):"* . . . the self- sufficient we now define as that which when isolated makes life desirable and lack- ing in nothing; and such we think happiness to be,"5 Bonitz, in his Index Aristoteli- cus, designates this as the defining instance of to autarkes. But is this really an infor- mative definition? It has two strikes against it as such: (1) it sounds stipulative ("tithemen’’), and as such would be strictly speaking valid only for the present con- text: we would need independent arguments to show that this sense is operative else- where as well. But more seriously, (2) it is not really a definition at all. What we are told in this passage is that a thing which 1s autarkes makes life desirable etc., and that happiness is such a thing. This is to leave it completely open whether there isn’t more to being autarkes than the designated properties (and, indeed, there must be. if the above-cited passages employing the concept in other ways are to make sense). So we are left to interpret this interesting concept on our own. This I will try to do, by looking at the way Aristotle uses it in three different important connections: autarkeia (1) in relation to friendship; (2} in relation to the “great-souled man”; and (3) in relation to the establishment and structure of cities. From these varied con- texts a composite picture will emerge. which is, I believe. rather different from what one would expect if either “self-sufficiency” or “independence” were a perfect trans- lation. These English terms, which may well be the closest one-word equivalents, have the misleading association of the “Robinson Crusoe,” the condition ofneeding nothing from without, which is sometimes part but seldom all of what Aristotle must mean by the terms he uses.® Autarkeia and Friendship Good and virtuous persons possess autarkeia, in view of this, Aristotle wonders whether such persons will need friends (EE 1244b6ff.). For it does not belong to the self-sufficing man to need either useful friends or friends to amuse him and society, for he is sufficient (hikanos) society for himself. Here, self-sufficiency as a concomitant or effect of moral goodness is contrasted with two states: (1) a state in which one seeks frlends for some service or favor they can provide, ic., utility friendships; and (2} that in which one seeks out friends who satisfy one's need for amusement and society. Interpreting autarkeia contrastively, then, we can assume that it denotes a degree of independence (whether psychological, moral, physical, or some combination of the three) in which one needs neither advan- tage nor amusement from without. There must be a sense in which the Aristotelianly Sood person is the source of his or her own well-being. However, this ts far from entailing that frieidship is a thing of lesser importance in the fife of the virtuous, and hence “autarkic.” individual. As the immediately . 36following passages make clear, the '‘sclf-sufficiency”" of the good person isa positive incitement to friendship. “For when we need nothing, then we all seek others to share our enjoyment" {EE 1244b15), We seek, driven not by need, but by the generous desire to share our felicity. Thus, natural human sociability, the assertion of which is so basic to Aristotle's anthropology, is here seen in its truest and purest form. In what sense is the good man “sufficient soctety for himself"? Aristove can hardly intend to be saying that virtue equips one for solitude, since the context is an argument for the moral value of friendship. The right sort of friendship is a positive moral good. Even philosophical thinking goes better when it isa shared activity (NE 1177bi), and many of the activities which display virtue or provide occasions for its exercise are necessarily social. How then do we take the claim that the good person, possessing autarketa, finds his own society enough? Well, NE IX tells us of the sort of person who does not find himself “sufficient society," or even tolerable company— this is the wicked or viclous person. And wicked men seck for people with whom to spend their days, and shun themselves: for they remember many a grievous deed, and anticipate others like them, when they are by themselves, but when they are with others they forget. And having nothing lovable in them they have no feeling of love to. themselves. Therefore also such men do not rejoice or grieve with themselves; for their soul is rent by faction ... (NE 1166b13-19) ‘To the wicked person. his own company is torment. He is driven to seek the company of others, because he is fleeing his detestable haunted solitude. Society is a neces- sary distraction. Far from sharing happiness, as the good have been asserted to do, the wicked mitigate their unhappiness by temporarily forgetting themselves. (One pictures a Dickensian scene in a smoky shabby tavern, with dour villainous charac- ters muttering to one another over their pints, perhaps casting distrustful glances at other tables now and then!) No matter how plausible we find the Aristotelian sketch of the villains-in-society, this passage shows that the autarkeia of the virtuous person is not an isolating, but a relating kind of quality. So the ‘'self-sufficiency” of the virtuous person carries with it the capacity for social self-determination; it is predicated ofa state of character in which a person is cap- able of true and freely chosen friendships because s/he is net driven by needsor bereft of self-respect. The relevant contrast between autarkeia and its opposite is not parallel to that between solitude and society, nor to that between independence and depen- dence, but 1o that between freedom and compulsion in one’s personal relationships. Aristotle means his term to connote, not that good persons do not need others, not even that good persons can ina pinch get along without friends; but that they alone can behave autonomously in the domain of friendship.” This theme of autonomy or self-determination will return. Autarkeia and Megalopsychia The virtue variously translated as “pride,” “magnanimity.” or 'great-souledness” {megalopsychia) is really a compendium ofall the virtues, for Its possessor is a moral paragon.® 37Now the proud man. sinec he deserves most, must be good in the highest degree: for the better man always deserves more. and the best man most . . . and greatness in every excellence Would seem to be a characteristic of a proud man” (NE 1123b27-31). It's tempting, given ta kala kai akarpa, to think in terms of material wealth, AWE. Adkins belicves this is appropriate.* The proud man would then be desorbed one Who can afford the collection of “beautiful and profitless'™ things. These things bespeak his material well-being. Economic security is certainly an element in Aristotelian eudaimonia. But I believe that the profitless beauties of the proud man are Meant to tell us more than that he can afford them; they are supposed to be morally revelatory as well. oy tell something about his inner self. But what? Wie could Uhink here about what, in general, Aristotle would count as a““beautiful Rrople who have the requisite material well-being, comfort. and leisure; they do not themselves contribute to that well-being. or produce that leisure. In Aristotle's view, uselessness (in this sense) mirrors the proud man’s. freedom; for he is “unable to make his life revoive round another, unless it be a friend; for this is slavish” (NE 1124b31-1125a2), What the ‘higher kinds: of philosophy and the proud man have in common Is autonomy, theoretical in the one case and moral or personal in the other! ‘So, the fact that the proud man has converse with “profitless things” attests to his autarketa in the sense. ‘of autonomy. of self-determination. He does not subserve; between autonomy and self-respect in Aristotle!? The autonomy of the proud man, Aristotle's moral paragon, is the basis on which he devorves Tespect (his own as well as that of others}; and respect (time) is the good with which megatopsychia is pre- eminently concerned (NE 112320). 38Autarkeia in the Political Context In Aristotle's political philosophy, the origins of the state are, as we might say, causally over-determined: for he invokes three different causal explanations, any one of which might arguably have brought about political society all by itself. The three are: (1) the necessity for social cooperation in the interests of survival, (2} the natural desire for the society of one's fellow creatures, and (3) the desire to flourish, or to be happy, which can be satisfied only in a polity. Causes (1) and (2) are paired in Eude. milan Ethics 1242a7-9: “(Flor men seem to have come together because each is not sufficient (me autarkein) for himself, though they would have come together anyhow for the sake of living in company" The third cause is invoked often in the Politics: for example: “The state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self sufficing (autarkous} life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life” (Pol. 1280b34-38). That this “perfect and self-sufficing life” is the final cause of the state has been stated in Politics 1253a1-2: “Again. the object for which a thing exists, its end, is its chief good; and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) isan end, and a chief good."12 Here there appear to be two separable senses of autarkeia at work. In one sense, what drives people to band together is the need to be provided for (eause (1) above. mentioned in the EE passage). Plato's Republic is criticized by Aristotle for advanc. ing a notion ofa city which could not have been autarkes (Pol. 1291a14-15). for the straightforward reason that it didn’t contain an adequately diversified range of producers. But in another sense, the autarketa for which the city is organized has moral content {cause (3) abovel. Itis for the sake of genuine freedom, moral autonomy, which as we know is central to Aristotle's moral vision, that cities are formed. Asistotle maintained that humans flourish, or achieve eudatmonia, only in political society. Aman without a city is “either a beast or a god," and as such requires a different analysis of happiness-achieving conditions than that which Aristotle wishes to provide for humans. In NE, Aristotle says of political justice that it is found among free equals, “who share their life with a view to self-sufficiency (pros . . . autarkeian: NE 1134a26-27). Thus freedom and autarkeia are not related. The connection between these two different senses of the term, in this cluster of political passages, is as follows: there is a certain level of material satisfaction which must be achieved if human life as we know it is to be lived (auéarkela in the first sense}, we need shelter, food, security, ete. Once this is given, however, we will naturally begin looking toward more ultimate ends, or the satisfaction of higher-order desires—for a government of laws rather than men (NE 1134234), fer a society organized to facilitate the pursuit of happiness on the part of free and autonomous individuals {auiarketa in the second sense).'5 Conclusion From these three different neighborhoods in Aristotle's moral philosophy. friend- ship. megalopsychia, and the origins and purposes of the state, it has emerged that uiarkeia has as its central sense moral autonomy, the capacity to choose tmpor- tantly, to determine the shape of one’s own life. With regard to friendship. this connoted that the virtuous person's friendships alone are freely chosen; so that only in such friendships is the true sociality of humankind displayed. The “proud man’ of NELV shares a species of autarkeia with philosophy itself. in his freedoi to pur- suc the sublimely useless, And the cities we construct are, in Aristotle's view, designed 39to make possible that real individual self-determination which is the project of morality. If this is true, then I believe this concept, autarketa, brings Aristotle closer to the dominant moral and political philosophies of western liberalism than is sometimes thought. b the question whether Aristotle was right to assign positive moral value tothis quality. think the answer must be ‘yes, if Ihave described iteorrectly. For this rich sense of autonomy must remain central to any description of what is valuable m human life, Department of Philosophy and Humanities University of Minnesota, Duluth0 NOTES Research for this paper was substantially completed during a Summer Seminar funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. at the University of Texas, Austin in summer of 1986, under the direction of Prof. Paul Woodruff, am especially indebted to Richard Lounsbury. Julie Ward. and Paul Woodruff for conversations and helpful suggestions concerning an early draft, and to Jane Zembaty and Nick Smith for detailed criticisms of a later draft. ‘Transtations of Xenophon are those of EC, Marchant. in the Loeb Classical Library edition. For example, Plutarch, Moratta 101b3-4 would appear to be exploiting a Stoic connection. There is serious question whether Aristotelian contemplation is meant to designate a life that Is contemplative predominantly. or merely an activity which forms part of the life- programme of an individual who may also pursue other sorts of goods, euch as moral virtues. John Cooper, in Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Harvard, 1975), argues that Aristotle is describing a life whieh ts almost entirely devoted to theorta, to the exclusion of any other ends including the moral ones described in the preceding entirety of the Nicomachean Fthics. His argument rests tn part on “simple facts about the Greek word ‘bios’, " which entatl that itis used, as in the relevant passages from NE. only of modes of life. Thus, one can live only ‘one sort of bios at a time, See Cooper's pages 158-160. This position remains controver- sial, however, For a persuasive account of how the inclusivefexclusive ends controversy, concerning Aristotle's concept of happiness. can be peacefully resolved, see Howard Curzer {of Texas. ‘Tech University), “Supreme and Secondary Happiness in Aristotle's Ethics” (manuscript). All quotations from Aristotle are taken from the revised Oxford translations contained in The Complete Works of Aristotle edited by Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, Bollingen, 1984), unless otherwise indicated. ‘There are contexts In which Aristotle uses autarkela and the related terms in more straight- forward senses than those which I'll be arguing arc at work in the Ethics’ and Politics. For example, in the Progression of Animals, 708425, it ts said that some animals jump but ~,.. do not find this mode of locomotion sufficient lautarkes) by itself.” so must resort to other locomotive strategies. I think there is a kind of ordinary "enougiiness" sense of the terms. and an Aristotetianly enriched moral sense of the terms (not entirely original with Aristotle, though its technical employment is pioneered by him) which Is his legacy to the Stoies' moral philosophy, It 1s the moral sense with which 1am chtefly concerned here. * For a more careful and thorough treatment of Aristotle's views on the sociability of virtue, see Nancy Sherman's article “Aristotle on Friendship and the Shared Life.” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research {June 1987). WER Hardie stresses this, in ‘* ‘Magnanimity’ in Aristotle's Ethics" (Phronesis 23, 1978, pp.63~79), and argues that this creates some of the pecullarities of the virtue (Le, Il is only questionably a particular virtue, if". . . to be magnanimousisto possess, asa sort of crowning ornament, what is great in every virtue"; see p. 65.). Inhisarticle" ‘Friendship’ and 'Self-sufficiency’ in Homer and Aristotle” (Classical Quarterly ns. xili (1963), $311), Adkins maintains there fs a qualified con tinulty In the Greek moral tradition, according to which key terms continue to carry Homeric resonances throughout the classical period, Thus autarkeia still means economic independence, and this meaning remains at the center of its semantic field. In the Homeric world, the economically indepen- dent were the agathoi, worthy of respect [if for no other reason) because they were able to underwrite military campaigns. From this ground, classical moral thinking grows: and it never loscs touch with its source entirely. Ubelieve, contrary to Adkins, that Aristotle may be consciously working against this sense of autarketa at times (e.g.. NE 1179a1-16). Ina shightly different but still relevant context, Hardie writes, “We are told that the toast of the higher mathematics is celebrated in Cambridge with the words ‘may they never be 41of any use to anyone’ " (Aristotle's Ethical Theory 2nd edition, p. 356). 1+ Fora convinelng argument thet the proud man philosophizes, and that this explains some of his quirks, see the article by Hardie, “Magaanimity ..." xeferred to in note above. 1 Martha Nussbaum makes this connection clear, and contrasts Aristotle with Plato on this theme in “Shame, Separateness, and Political Unity: Aristotie’s Criueism of Plate’ (Essays on Aristotle's Ethtes, ed. AO. Rorty: UC. Press, 1980, pp. 395-435). 12 -The translation af this passage is that of Rackham. in the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Politics. 4 Apistotle is referring to the first “unreal city” of the Repubite, which Socrates is deseribed as calling “the healthy city” before the fever of desire for luaury sets 1. 18 This naturally brings up the hatcful subject of slavery. As one would expect. if aularketa and autonomy are related (as I have been trying to show they are), Aristotle denies that slaves possess auitarketa (at Politics 1291410). a2