Transcript The Aristotelian concept of meson

The Aristotelian concept of meson: Historical or Real value?
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There is generally a critique of the concept of mean in Aristotle
Example: in 1109a25 the concept of medium is approximately replaced by a
metaphor: it is said that the mean is like the center of a circle. The mean does not
need to maintain its literal meaning in order, once again, to ensure the explanatory
value. Also in 1222v13-14 it is recognized that the doctrine has its exceptions. At
the same time, if we are talking about moral correctness, it must be noted that it
exceeds any quantificating value judgment.
The following analysis is an attempt to solve such problems mainly through the
concepts of hexis, prohairesis and phronesis.
Ethical action, autonomy, meson
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Aristotelian ethics is determined by the constitution of the action as such
Ethics it is a range in which the autonomy of action offers the autonomy of practical reason
That creates history. History opens itself in a social realm that is why every description
concerns-demands the experienced man (empeiros). The public character of action entails
social critique and ethical recognition
Fronimos(prudent) says yes to social life otherwise he’d not be human but an animal or a
God. The success of ethical acting depends on the accomplishment of the mean (meson).
meson, mean, seems to refer to the actor who has many experiences in a specific domain.
actor attempts to achieve a relevant goal through these special skills
Mesotes as a range is this pattern of action, a way of life that tends to actualize the right
behavior in the right circumstance.
excess and deficiency are patterns of action that do not accomplish the relevant goal . If the
actor accomplishes the aimed goal, then this pattern is the golden mean virtue needs to
manifest itself
Paradox: a behavioral pattern aims at a virtue while the virtue itself is that which guides the
pattern to achieve its end.
Aristotle’s solution is ethos, habit. The subject builds step by step the acquisition of virtue
through habitual experiences. We can understand more how this happens with the help of
the concept of Hexis.
Hexis, living well, self-accomplishment
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Hexis is holding certain patterns of actions. In 1125b20-21 hexis is considered as a holon, a
whole, according to which subjects hold patternal behavior for varied circumstances.
Taking from looking light as an hexis we conclude: it is a three-way relational cluster. For
example: He says that light is a hexis. It consists 1. of the transparent may have 2. an actual
color made by 3. the activity of light.
From this example we can understand hexis firstly as pure potentiality and secondly as
dynamis, power which tends to manifestation after having been developed by habit.
An autonomous dynamis, a power in its own right is able to initiate some activity with the
help of the always-active side. For example, human living being is always active, but living
well, eudaimonia, exists as a potentiality that it can take place through the emergence of
practical habituation.
An Aristotelian example is the art of playing the guitar and practising as to become an expert.
As far as these experiences take place again and again, a non-reducible competence arises
regulating the future guitar play. Such a regulative movement is according to the virtue “I
play good guitar” having in the same time this specific virtue as its final end.
Analogously, eudaimonia, living well, needs practicing in certain ways so as these manners
become habituated. Consequently, with the emergence of a new model of living, virtue
comes together as an already semi-static capacity to help for achieving eudaimonia.
General ontological human realm for eudaimonia
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For Aristotle it seems that life and pleasure are inseparable. But we have to notice that this
kind of self-consciousness, selfknowledge and pleasure are non-self-thinkable. Thus, not only
life and desire for life are inseparable but also life and knowledge. Life itself is considered as a
specific kind of knowledge. (1175a18,1175a10, 1244b26)
Ego cogito is non-reflective that is why as a potentiality gives the opportunity for conscious
self reflection. That means, ontologically man has the potential capacity to become the
object of itself.
Fighting for an ethical life is a kind of self-accomplishment, it is for me, myself, and such a
form of pleasure is not this of having material goods but stems from an endless fight which
ends in faith and acceptance of the living world.
Thus, habituation and the ontological realm we’ve already mentioned could define
prohairesis as a transcendental level of potential practical responses. The concept of the
potential realm of prohairesis contains transcendental intentionalities that are about to
become (energeia) real:
Prohairesis
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Let’s call the unities of partial intentions that are formed by habituation “affective unities”
Here culture and education play an essential role in creating constitutive commitments, i.e.,
the habitual constitution of moral objects under certain circumstances. Such a background
mechanism creates basic mental episodes which undergo retentional modification and
eventually become part of the implicit background which works as a transcendental
potentiality.
Autonomy here emerges in the words of Aristotle:
• “Autonomous entities rely on themselves both for the realization of their capacities and for
their persistence”
• Autonomy is the ability to do something that is functional. Function must be seen here as
normative because it ends up in succeeding an aim or not. We can have either function or
dysfunction, meaning that we can speak about good or bad and true or false.
• The key idea is not “having a function” as a metaphysics of essence could admit but “serving
a function” that it can address “artifactual functionality” both of serving and of having a
function directly as well as being derived from purposes e.g. a coat in cold weather, or when
I’m moving my legs to help blood circulation in long plane trip. Such a procedure can explain
what is a “meson”:
What is meson
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Aristotle distinguishes “the part of the soul that possesses a logos” and that which does not
possess it but “shares” in it by “heeding” and “obeying it”, and each part has its own virtue.
We find a distinction among an active and a passive meson. Just like nous gives orders while
the body obeys, the active mean is the directive while the passive mean is the execution
procedure.
constitution of the realm for action is twofold. First, is receptive meaning that it is not in the
subject’s hand to see a different externality than the one it is given to it by its perceptions. It
is not its decision to constitute what it receives as a challenge for applying virtue. Its
experience is determined by the externality at hand that causes the experience. Secondly, it
is inactive in the sense that a decision to perform a constitution in order to have an
experience is not taking place.
past experiences come in play working as partial intentions recognizing familiar patterns in
relation with the new experiences. Past experiences can be seen as retentions while future
events that are to come can be seen as protentions.
nous perceives objects in their wholeness. Main factor for this is the concept of time
consciousness as indivisible.
Aristotle mobilizes nous in his attempt to solve the paradox of how we recognize something
as a single whole and not its constituent parts.
The thinking part of the soul judges simultaneously. This action implies the unity of
perceptual time. Conscious perceptual time is indivisible.
Fronimos, The Prudent Man
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In this realm, phronēsis “makes it so that someone does his ergon well” :
“is by helping someone find an active meson, that is, putting affairs in his life in a
proper proportion to the goal he is trying to achieve, and the way in which ethical
virtues do so is by making it so that he can carry out accurately the directives of
phronēsis. Prudency is presumably what Aristotle means when he says that an
ethical virtue is stochastikē tou mesou, that is, as rendered above, “the sort of
thing that characteristically aims at and hits the meson” (Pakaluk), that is, the
meson set by phronēsis.
The experienced man has gained a new competency “το της εμπειρίας όμμα” (the
eye of the experienced)
Only the good man can see clearly a situation and make the right choice because
he can activate the eye of his soul, το της ψυχής όμμα. (the eye of the soul)
Aristotelian fronisis is not just a form of thinking with a practical character
(βουλεύεσθαι, βούλησις), but ευβουλία, correct thinking and decisioning as far as
research of usefull things and accomplishment of telos is concerned. Fronisis
decides what must and what must not is to be done and thus it actualizes action.
Conclusion
• A phenomenological analysis as the above shows that the right moral
decision does not concern a quantitative measurement. On the contrary it
shows to us that is demanded a special non-reducible competence always
according with social-political-historic realm. This competence is able to
choose the correct act while every other choice would be wrong.