BOOK REVIEWS 75

of the idea t h a t 'being' has focal meaning. More important is the fact t h a t dialeotic
in the Metaphysics and its practice in other mature works (notably the Physics) appears
as an impartial propaedeutic to investigations which are properly scientific. In the
Topics we find advice on how to win competitions in defending and attacking theses
many of which are trivial or highly abstract or notoriously sophistical, and it is not
clear that anything which results could be called an advance in knowledge. Winning,
not investigating, seems to be the aim. Evans does say (p. 49), " I have been concerned
not so much with the details of the practice of the question and answer debate, which
is most fully discussed in Topics ©, as with the location of dialectic in Aristotle's system
of the forms of expertise". But this is not really satisfactory. Topics & is full of advice
on the level of concealing one's purposes from one's opponent, leading him on and
making him lose his cool. Through the Topics as a whole, advice comes in two varieties,

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"for destructive argument" and "for constructive argument". What becomes of this
aspect of dialectic, which has no serious scientific counterpart? The dialectical examina-
tions of time, place and dbcpama have little in common with a procedure whereby one
is limited to answering yes or no to a question. Evans discusses this on pp. 36-7, where
he seems to identify the latter limitation with the demand that the concepts under
investigation allow of a yes/no answer as to whether they apply—that is, that they be,
in Frege's terms, sharply defined; he points out t h a t this "imposes a discipline" which
the open-ended 'what is XV question does not. But what Aristotle says at 158a 16-17
is not this, b u t that a dialectical proposition is one to which one can answer yes or no
—sadly, a cruder point than Evans's. The Topics is, of course, compatible with the
more developed theory and practice of dialectic we find elsewhere, and advioe for a
competition may well produce a pupil keen on and good at scientific enquiry. But,
while grateful for Evans's useful elucidation of Aristotle's mature concept of dialectic,
I remain unconvinced t h a t the Topics has the central importance he claims for it.
J U L I A ANNAS

Reason and Human Good in Aristotle. By J O H N M. COOPER. (Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Harvard University Press. 1975. P p . xii + 192. Price £6.60.)

Cooper's book is one to which everyone interested in Aristotle's moral philosophy

will turn with great interest. Deliberation and practical reasoning, and the nature of
eudaimonia, as conceived by Aristotle, are the dominant topics of the book, and are
treated by Cooper with sophistication and sensitivity.
I n the discussion of the account of deliberation in E.N. I l l , Cooper rejects three
doctrines t h a t have been widely attributed to Aristotle b y his interpreters: (i) that ends
are never deliberated about; (ii) that deliberation always concentrates on a single end
at a time; (iii) that the process of deliberation is complete only when a chain has been
forged from the end in question to the here-and-now—when some particular action
(whose specification involves singular terms) open to the agent to perform forthwith
has been arrived at. Cooper rejects (i), on the grounds that passages like E.N. 1112b
12-15 and E.E. 1227a 8, t h a t seem to imply the contrary, are saying only that ends are
not as such deliberated about. I t follows that only eudaimonia, which alone Aristotle
holds is never pursued as a means, is not a possible subject of deliberation. Similarly,
on (ii), Cooper says (p. 18) that "two or more ends can conflict, and when they do, the
conflict is resolved b y looking to a higher end". Here I find some difficulty in distinguish-
ing Cooper's view from the prevailing orthodoxy.
Returning to Cooper's position on (i), it is no doubt true t h a t Aristotle's seemingly
paradoxical remarks about bouleusis can be interpreted in this hygienic way; but the
passage in which comparable things are said about prohairesis has to be taken into
account also (E.N. 1111b 26 ff.), and there Aristotle seems to be saying that not only
76 BOOK REVIEWS

happiness but also health are not appropriately said to be chosen, yet health is presum-
ably a clear example of something chosen with a view to happiness. Here at least, Aris-
totle seems not to say only, innocuously, that, when health is chosen, it is not chosen
as an end. I n his treatment of this topic, Cooper rightly stresses t h a t phrases like
'TO xp6<; T6 T£XO?' should not be taken as referring only to means in the ordinary sense:
often one thing will be chosen with a view to something else where the first is a com-
ponent of the second.
I t is on (iii) that Cooper's argument is most novel and interesting. He claims t h a t
Aristotle's view is that deliberation terminates not with a particular action (or a decision
to perform such an action), but a decision to perform an action of a specific kind. In
his view, the practical syllogism forms no part of the process of deliberation: in Aris-
totle's view, deliberation never takes syllogistic form, despite the fact t h a t he uses the

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technical language of the syllogism in some passages dealing with practical thinking.
The place of syllogism is, rather, when the transition is made from the decision to
perform a specific action, arrived at by bouleusis, to the action itself—a transition
whioh Aristotle thinks is effected by perception.
Cooper recognizes that his interpretation might be thought to founder on the objec-
tion that Aristotle says explicitly in E.N. VI that deliberation concerns TO xa8' exaaxa,
but argues t h a t in passages like 1142a 22, this phrase refers not to particulars, in t h e
strict sense, but specific types of object or action, instances of which can be immediately
recognized by perception. This reading is supported by a subtle discussion of some
crucial passages in E.N. VI ch. 8. There is no space to do full justice to Cooper's argu-
ment here: he argues that 1141b 16-23, where recognition of TO xa6' sxaaxa is said to be
crucial, shows that Aristotle regarded as an example of such knowledge the general
but highly specific knowledge that chicken is healthy; and he argues t h a t in 1141a 24,
the reference is to the passage about TtoXiTud], where the analogy with a decree shows
that '£aya.T:ov' does not mean 'particular' here. This in turn is used by Cooper to give
an interpretation of the puzzling passage about the triangle at 1142a 28-30; according
to Cooper, the perception in question is the perception t h a t a terminal point has been
reached in deliberation, a point a t which a type of action has been specified closely
enough for the agent to be in a position to recognize when the occasion for performance
arises. That is seen by Aristotle as analogous to the geometrician's reaching the stage
in his analysis of a problem when he recognizes that he can simply construct a figure
of the required kind. This interpretation (which connects this passage with I I I 1112b
16-24) seems to make good sense of this rather difficult passage. I n saying t h a t Aristotle
does not regard the practical syllogism as forming part of the process of deliberation,
Cooper has to regard De Motu 701a 18-22 as aberrant.
Cooper's treatment of the other difficult passage in E.N. VI, where perception
appears, 1143a 35-b 5, is less happy. He rejects (p. 42n) the commonly held view that
at 1143b 4-5 Aristotle is saying that these (i.e., the minor premises of practical syl-
logisms) are the starting-points for the apprehension of the end, holding instead t h a t
they are starting-points for its attainment. But, apart from the awkwardness of treating
premises (like 'This is ohicken') as starting-points for the attainment of the end, and the
oddity of thinking that the perception involved here is something appropriately called
vou?, Cooper seems to ignore the immediately ensuing passage (1143b 11-14) which
surely does refer to some sort of inductive process whereby the 9p6viuo? acquires his
"eye".
Cooper's conclusion t h a t the practical syllogism is not intended t o represent t h e
form of practical reasoning at all is paradoxical, as he recognizes, and he tries to explain
the contrary indications by supposing that Aristotle thought without justification t h a t
he could represent the process in which desire and perception produce action by analogy
with the necessity with which the conclusion follows from the premises in a deductive
argument.
 BOOK KEVIEWS 77
Cooper claims that tiie account of deliberation offered in E.N. I l l is consistent with
the conditions for a virtuous act (that it be done "for the sake of the noble") that Aris-
totle elsewhere lays down, and the insistence that virtuous action has an intrinsic value.
This is supported, in chapter I I , b y a detailed study both of the Eudemian and the
Nicomachean Ethics. He rejects the common view that, in E.N., Aristotle identified
eudaimonia with a single activity—theoretical reasoning, everything else having at
best an instrumental value in relation to that. If virtuous actions and theoretical
activity are each regarded as having an independent value for Aristotle as some have
suggested, there is the possibility of a conflict between them, unless we suppose (what
Aristotle never attempts to argue) that the conduct required by the virtues is a necessary
condition of the realization of the intellectualist ideal. Instead, Cooper claims, the
ideal recommended in, for example, E.N. VI is a bipartite one, with theoretical aotivity

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and morally virtuous action each having a place. This recommendation of the mixed
life is found, he claims, in E.E. V I I I ch. 3. One is left wondering, once again, how
Cooper's position differs from the view he rejocts, that recognizes two independent
ultimate values, which are capable of coming into conflict with one another.
I n his third chapter, Cooper examines the second half of E.N. X in the light of the
unified and balanced conception of the good life t h a t he claims to find elsewhere in the
Nicomachean Ethics. Cooper thinks t h a t the kind of life given first placo here is a life
dominated b y theoretical pursuits, a life that will allow no place for moral virtue in
the full sense, since virtuous actions will not be valued for themselves, though doubtless
such a person would act virtuously most of the time. This conception of the ideal human
life depends on the identification of the human being with the nous and is seen by
Cooper t o presuppose the late, technical psychology of the de Anima. With t h a t life
is contrasted, in X ch. 8, not a life in which only the activities manifesting phronesis
are valued, but rather the "mixed" life t h a t is regarded as ideal elsewhere in E.N. and
E.E.; not the life of the "stolid burgher" as Cooper puts it, but one in which intellectual
pursuits play a major part. Cooper's reasons for rejecting the normal view of the sort
of life t h a t Aristotle says is Seuflpox; euSaiptcov are hardly conclusive, as they consist
(p. 165) largely in the fact t h a t Aristotle does not say certain things that would put tho
contrary view beyond doubt.
I t will, I hope, be clear from this brief review that this book can be warmly recom-
mended. I noticed the following misprints: p. 6 (footnote) for '1141a 32' road '1142a
32'; p. 55 (footnote) for '710a 10-12' read '701a 10-12'.
MICHAEL W O O D S

Hume's Moral Epistemology. By JONATHAN HABKISON. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

O.U.F. 1976. P p . 131. Price £1.95.)

This book bears the birth mark of a set of introductory lectures which, if my surmise
is correct, were b y all the signs very good of their kind. This quality shows itself in the
book, and as an introduction to the type of careful analysis and argument characteristic
of much British philosophy, it can be unreservedly commended.
The theme of the book is apparent in its title and the epistemological implications
of Book I I I of the Treatise are dissected carefully in chapters I, I I , IV and V. The
third chapter consists of an account of the basics of Hume's general sceptical epistemo-
logical conclusions, and the sixth examines in some detail the first Appendix to, and
Section I of, the Second Enquiry. Hume's positive conclusions from both Treatise
(III i 2) and Enquiry are outlined and commented upon in the final chapter. The method
followed is t h a t of paraphrase of particular passages from Hume, followed b y detailed
and numbered comments. Harrison excuses the luxury of devoting approximately one-
fifth of this short book to the paraphrase of Hume on two grounds: " I thought it would