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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
There are various features of the language and exposition of the Eudemian Ethics (EE) that allow us to impute what might be called an ‘egalitarian’ outlook to its author. Each of these features, on its own, might be dismissed as of little significance, or as significant yet anomalous; but taken together, they constitute a body of evidence that cannot easily be put aside. The term ‘egalitarianism’ is of course imprecise, yet it serves its function well enough. I shall take it to signify a certain cast of mind which consists of at least the following cluster of dispositions: (i) being unwilling to view society as divided into ranks or classes (e.g. ‘the good’ vs. ‘the bad’; ‘the better sort of people’ vs. ‘the rabble’) or even to use language suggestive of such a division; but rather (ii) having a tendency to see the similarity of everyone with everyone else, by finding some good even among those reputed to be bad, and some bad among those reputed good; furthermore (iii) wishing to identify with the general run of humanity, or at least not being averse to doing so; and (iv) insisting on the fundamental equality and likeness of human beings, so that their inequalities and differences are regarded as secondary.
1 By 
I mean the adjective 
, in any case, singular or plural, and also substantival forms; and similarly elsewhere in the paper for other adjectives.
2 There is also 
at 1216a 16, but the verb form is fundamentally different, since it is used to signify the attitude or belief'that someone is in some way fortunate or well-off. Nor is it the case that 
typically means, precisely, ‘to regard as a 
’. (One might also class, along with 
, formulaic expressions such as 
…, which are ways of actually expressing the attitude referred to by the verb; yet such do not occur in EE.)
3 I here count the Gorgias as a late ‘Socratic’ dialogue. 
is clearly used in the sense of 
also at Lysis 208al and d4, but the latter term does not occur along with it, as in the other passages cited.
4 That all 15 passages are confirmatory is hardly surprising, since, as we saw, 
is nearly absent in EE. What is interesting about the list is that it shows how frequently this absence occurs in roughly parallel passages, i.e. those in which one might expect otherwise
5 These parallels differ considerably in closeness to EN. It is a puzzling feature of the correspondences of EE and EN that so often they are quite imperfect: we never see anything that looks like an author simply taking up again the same material he had used elsewhere. I signify those correspondences which are more contestable with the sign for approximate equality, i.e.‘»’.
6 I use language such as ‘drops out’ in a phenomenological sense, namely ‘it is as though the word drops out’, not wishing to prejudge questions of temporal priority and authorial dependence; likewise in other discussions below.
7 Anthony, Kenny, The Aristotelian Ethics (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar. Kenny briefly discusses 
and 
(see chart, bottom of p. 148), butihe groups together all ‘cognates’ of each word (e.g. all occurrences of 
get grouped with those of 
); hence, he misses the phenomena I consider here. He remarks, concerning his pooled data: ‘by our tests the differences between AE [i.e. the common books] and EE are insignificant, those between AE and NE significant’ (p. 149). I have called the difficulties that arise from this way of gathering data ‘the problem of homonymy’. See my review of Kenny's Aristotle on the Perfect Life (Oxford, 1992) in Ancient Philosophy 15 (1995), 233–5.Google Scholar
8 One cannot have the same confidence in a computer search for this figure, since one wants to capture also cases where the article is separated from the adjective, say, by 
, and to be sure to exclude instances which are really not germane. This figure was arrived at by pooling the results of two searches: [i] 
(in the various cases); and [ii] 
(in the various cases) followed within two lines by 
(in the various cases), and not near 
(in the various cases). The first search reveals 33 occurrences, but when these are screened to remove qualified uses (e.g. uses of 
with the partitive genitive, as at 1121a30, 
), or the obvious statements of 
(e.g. 1172a31), which are not relevant, then 28 remain. The second search reveals six more: 1095M 8; 1099a 11; 1121 b 14; 1124b 5; 1179b 10; 1180a 4. Thus, the (tentative) total is 34. Note that Kenny's method of counting frequencies would be much too coarse for our purposes, since we need to avoid entirely the problem of homonymy.
9 Besides those listed below, include also: 1105b12, 1124b31, 1125b16
10 Cf. 1121b 14, 1159a 12, 14, 17; 1163b 26, and 1167b 27
11 I derive these figures from Kenny, Aristotelian Ethics, pp. 92–6.
12 Their conjecture was apparently arrived at by analogy with EN, but the soundness of that analogy is precisely what is in question here.
13 Cf. also 1127b23, which use 
14 Note that, whereas the passage talks about whether the friends remain 
, it is prefaced by general remarks contrasting, as regards equality, 
and 
, not 
and 
. (That the latter sort of language would be natural enough, if indeed Aristotle wished to restrict his thesis only to 
, and not 
and 
interchangeably, is clear from 1155a26–8.)
15 EE reads as though it is defending a received doctrine, but in a context in which that doctrine appears doubtful or controversial.
16 Spengel, L., ‘Uber die unter dem Namen des Aristoteles erhaltenen Ethischen Schriften’ in Abhandlungen der Philosophisch- Philologischen Classe der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, (Munich, Ill.i, 1841; Ill.iii, 1843).Google Scholar
17 See Allan D. J., ‘Quasi-mathematical method in the Eudemian Ethics’, in Mansion, S. (ed.), Aristote et les problemes de methode (Louvain, 1961), pp. 303–318. ‘The method which an author adopts in an inquiry’, Allan writes, ‘is largely determined by his conception of its purpose, and we may begin by asking whether our two versions set before themselves the same general aim’ (p. 304).Google Scholar
18 See Allan, ibid., p. 318.
19 See Chroust, A.-H., Aristotle (University of Notre Dame, 1973), vol. 1.Google Scholar
20 Max, Scheler correctly notes in his The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter, Heath (Hamden, CT, 1973) that, ‘Whereas the tendency in modern times has been to take up ideas which have been unconsciously acquired and thought a thousand times, and put them forward as new and original, the older (medieval) habit was to extract ideas which actually were new and original from such authors as were invested with special authority’ (p. 254). But this habit is peripatetic as well as medieval.Google Scholar
21 I take the following to be among passages of this sort: (1) EE 1234a21–3, which seems intended to answer the question posed at EN 1128a25–7; (2) EE 1228b 17–38, which apparently attempts to clarify the seeming contradiction in the EN account of courage, in that EN in III.6–7 holds that a courageous person does and does not fear the objects of fear in the face of which he stands firm; (3) EE 1229a 30–b 13, which seems to give an explanation of why courage must be defined with respect to death (whereas EN had only stated that this was so); (4) the aporia about the character of the great-spirited man at EE 1232b14ff., which seems to make explicit a difficulty latent in the EN text; (5) EE 1234a24–34 (cf. also 1233b 16–18), which seems to try to resolve the problem in EN that some 
are also listed as virtues and vices (e.g. 
), by developing the category in which EN had placed 
(said to be a 
by EN), so that is now includes a variety of praiseworthy and blameworthy 
, which, however, are without 
, and so are neither virtues nor vices, properly speaking.
22 Its use of 
analysis for the three forms of friendship seems to be an instance of this, since that analysis, it seems, cannot be made to work, as A. Price and others have urged. SeeAnthony Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1989), pp. 134fFGoogle Scholar
23 Although EE and EN have many passages that are roughly parallel, I know of no instance in which they coincide almost word-for-word, except EE 1249b5–6, 
, and EN 1138b25–6, 
It seems to me that the best explanation for this single coincidence of language is that the author of EE, familiar with EN, is quoting EN, precisely at the point where the former provides its resolution for what EE has quite explicitly identified as the problem of the ὅρον for virtuous action—this in order to remind the reader that the problem, although raised, was never solved in EN.
24 A clear example of this is EN's definition of a great-spirited man, 
(1123b2, 8, 15–16), and EE's corresponding 
(1233a2–3, cf. 1232b31–2). The hypothesis that Aristotle hit upon the compact formula in EN, only after having worked with the clumsy version of EE, seems to me far less plausible than that a later writer approved of the definition, but either did not wish, or was unable (because of changes in the language) to use it verbatim. Similarly, the EN formula is easily remembered (and perhaps designed for this purpose), so it is difficult to believe that Aristotle on a later occasion would not have it available to him, or that a student taking notes on his lectures would not transcribe it exactly.
25 See Kenny, Aristotelian Ethics, pp. 215–39.
26 Most scholars, I believe, accept this inference, yet they draw from it the conclusion (which is the sententia communis) that EE is earlier—this even though Jaeger's arguments have been discredited, so that we really ought to consider that the debate has essentially returned to the terms originally defined by Spengel.
27 Another such anticipation, though not evidently related to its egalitarianism, is EE's prominent doctrine of 
in VIII. 1.
28 Research for this paper was supported in part by a grant from the Higgins School of the Humanities at Clark University. I am grateful for comments from Lindsay Judson, David Konstan, Andrea Nightingale, Anthony Price, Jeffrey Wills, and Charles Young.