ARISTOTLES FUNCTION ARGUMENT (NE I.

7)
Anthony Price
In one way, the so-called function argument in Nicomachean Ethics [NE] I.7 is fairly modest in
its ambitions: I do not believe that it is deriving an ought from an is, or an obligation from a
fact. More precisely, I do not believe that Aristotle has any intention of defining how to behave
by use of any argument only of defining abstractly how human virtue or excellence (aret)
relates to human activity and the human good. He has stated that everyone agrees in identifying
the highest human good with eudaimonia (very roughly, happiness), and suppose that living
well and doing well are the same thing as being happy (I.4 1095a16-20). But that left it open
whether doing well means enjoying pleasure or wealth or honour (a23), whereas Aristotle
wishes to equate it with acting well. He needs to argue in I.7 that our function is action (in a
sense broad enough to extend to the contemplation of truth, though neither to the production of
aretefacts, nor to the exercise of perception), so that our good is to be found there. Yet it is
doubtful whether he does or can succeed even in this.
He holds that production is just for the sake of the product, and so a means, not an end. This
comes out near the start of I.1: Where there are ends over and above the activities, in these cases
the products are by their nature better than the activities (1094a5-6). Better here must mean not
preferable to (as if one could also have the product without the production), but the source of
the goodness of. See also VI.2 1139b1-3: Everyone who produces something produces it for
the sake of something, and what is an end without qualification is not the end of production
(being relative to something else, and the end of a given expertise), but the end of action. This
makes the further point that even the product, the end of production, is only good as an
instrument. Apparently also that producing is only the activity of a man qua builder (say), and for
that further reason not part of the human good.
Yet it is hard here to find any decent argument. To take the last point first: it is a commonplace
that man is a tool-making animal (quoted by Boswell to Dr Johnson from Benjamin Franklin, 7
April 1778). Of course different crafts exercise different tools. But one might as well argue
against any privileging of the contemplation of truth, which is Aristotles own favourite element
in eudaimonia, that it is performed only by man qua philosopher. Otherwise, Aristotle is
evidently making a distinction. It is the consequences that may, on occasion (as when neither
good nor bad luck comes into it), determine that some act is brave, say, and not rash. So, even in
the sphere of ethical action, the consequences may be a mark of the virtue. Analogously, it is the
value of the product that defines the instrumental value of its production, or of the activity of
making it qua production. Yet Aristotle holds that, in the case of production alone, the endproduct is the point of the activity, and not just the yardstick of its degree of success. We need
not agree: any producing that exercises a craft has value as the exercise of a branch of expertise.
And, in some cases, as that (say) of exquisite metalwork (say by Benvenuto Cellini), the product
is most enjoyed as proof of the craftsmanship. Why then shouldnt an exercise of skill contain its
own point, and be as such (and not just as an instrumental means to an end, or say as a way
of fulfilling a commission and so acting justly) an element within the human good?

Aristotle also lacks good reason to exclude perception from the human function, and hence from
the human good. He will write about pleasure: Since every sense is active in relation to the
sense-object, and completely active when the sense is in good condition and its object is the
finest in the domain of that sense ... in the case of each of the senses the activity that is best is the
one whose subject is in the best condition in relation to the object that is most worthwhile in the
domain of that sense. But this activity will be most complete and most pleasant (X.4 1174b1420). And this cannot all be excluded as not peculiar to human beings. Even lower animals are
capable of what Aristotle calls incidental perception, e.g. seeing objects, like other animals, that
are not purely visual or strictly visible, but can be seen through seeing other things, e.g. colours
and shapes and movements. Thus the lion perceives that the ox is near by its lowing (III.10
1118a20-21). However, presumably men have a richer repertory of incidental perception because
they associate percepts with concepts. An example from De Anima (II.6 418-21) is perceiving a
white thing as son of Diares, doubtless through visual resemblance and mastery of the concept
son of. It is true that Aristotle locates perception in the lower part of the soul; yet perception
can be imbued with concepts just as irrational desires may be directed by judgments (cf. I.7
1098a4-5, I.13 1102b13 ff.)
Against another objection, however, I believe that Aristotle has an answer. Terence Irwin has
objected to this reading of his argument that, if the function of a creature must distinguish it from
other creatures, it would seem to follow that the lower animals lack proper functions, since men
too are capable of nutrition, growth, and perception. However, Aristotle is evidently trying to
identify some higher function that distinguishes men from other animals. It shouldnt trouble us,
if we are trying to define the function of Fs that are G, where being G functionally privileges
certain Fs over others, that for Fs that are not G we cannot identify a function lacking to Fs that
are G. Nor does it matter that gods too are rational, so long as rationality distinguishes men
within the relevant comparison class. Richard Kraut well compares Topics I.5 102a248: we can
contrast men with horses and dogs by the distinguishing property two-legged, even though that
property would not be distinguishing within a different comparison.
So Aristotles ambitious argument fails in some ways, though not others. However, we should
grant that he is cautious in a way: I dont think he identifies the function of man with the human
good, which I take to be not the good of man but the good for man. If we say not only that the
function of man is rational activity, but that this is the good for man, we have trouble with this
proposition: the human function is some kind of activity according to excellence (II.7 1098a1617). For we cannot equate rational with according to excellence. Aristotle has earlier said this:
For all those who have some characteristic function or activity, the good their doing well
seems to reside in their function, so too it would seem to be for the human being, if indeed there
is some function that belongs to him (1097b26-8). Of course the italics are mine. I intend them
implicitly to distinguish reside in from any phrase like consist in. Such a distinction is
justified, I think, by what follows.
There is clear evidence, in both Ethics, Nicomachean and Eudemian [EE] that Aristotle holds this
principle: where an F has the function of -ing, it is the function of a good F to well. Consider
these two passages:

The function, we say, of a given sort of practitioner and a good practitioner of that sort is
generically the same, as for example in the case of a cithara-player and a good cithara-player,
and this is so without qualification in all cases, when a difference in respect of excellence is
added to the function (for what belongs to the citharist is to play the cithara, to the good citharist
to play it well) (NE I.7 1098a8-12).
A thing and its excellence have the same function, though in different ways. For example, a
shoe is the function of the art of shoe-making and the activity of shoe-making. So if there is
some excellence which is the excellence of shoe-making and of a good shoe-maker, its function
is a good shoe. The same holds true in other cases (EE II.1 1219a19-23 but the manuscripts
are corrupt).

There is an apparent difference between the two Ethics: I take NE 1097b26 and b28-9 to count
shoe-making as the function of the shoe-maker, whereas here in the EE it seems that the function
of the shoe-maker is the shoe. The shift may be occasioned by a switch in examples: playing the
cithara has no product in the manner in which a shoe is a product of shoe-making. But what I
want to emphasize is that Aristotle is consistently unwilling to say that a man and a good man
have the same function: 1098a8-9 find the function to be the same only generically. In the EE,
it is in different ways that an F and a good F share the same function; for -ing is the genus
within which -ing well falls.
As we approach Aristotles conclusion, which is about the human good, the distinction is well
maintained within clauses that Ingram Bywater (in his still standard 1894 Oxford edition of the
NE) excised as redundant:
A human beings function we posit as being a kind of life, and this life as being activity of soul
and actions accompanied by reason, and it belongs to a good man to perform these well and
finely, and each thing is completed well when it possesses its proper excellence (1098a12-16).

Here, explicitly, what is distinctive of human life is activity of soul and actions accompanied by
reason, whereas what is distinctive of the life of a good man is performing these (viz. the
psychic activity and the rational actions) well. The final conclusion opens less explicitly:
The human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with excellence (a16-17).

Yet doubtless, in context, activity of soul is short for rational activity of soul.
How does the issue matter? In this way. If the function of a man is identified by his biology
(though, of course, a teleological biology, which looks to the goal of the life of a living thing,
and not a biochemical one), and the function includes, in Aristotles full, equivocal formulation
excellence (and if there are more excellences than one, the best and most complete) (a1718), then it should be possible to identify human excellences biologically or, to use a broader
and more richly suggestive term, naturalistically. In fact, there is no argument within I.7
whatever to establish that the excellences of a human being are justice, courage, wisdom,
temperance, etc.

Aristotle rather recognizes that he needs to argue that, since man has a generic function, the
specific function of a good man is to perform that generic function well. What he shows not the
least trace of arguing here or anywhere else in the Ethics is what counts as well, i.e. what
constitute the distinctive human excellences. Of course, he spells them out rather fully, in the NE
from the middle of Book III to the end of Book V. But he offers no proof, and manifests no sense
of any need for a proof, that his task is anything more than one of patiently clarifying what is
already broadly agreed between himself and his intended readership.
The issue is important, for it must affect our view of the pretensions of Aristotelian ethical
theory. I take it that Aristotle is not trying to ground ethics upon anything. He is rather, in
general, trying to explicate the ethics he knows, often, indeed, with local arguments. His appeal
is to what is already taken for granted. Remarks like the following are typical:
Each person judges well what he knows, and is a good judge of these things (so the person who
is educated in a given thing is a good judge of that, and the person who is educated in
everything is a good judge without qualification). This is why the young are not an appropriate
audience for the political expert; for they are inexperienced in the actions that constitute life (I.3
1094b27-1095a3).
We must start from what is knowable to us. Consequently, in order to listen appropriately to
discussion about what is fine and just, i.e. about the objects of political expertise in general, one
must have been well brought up Such a person either has the relevant first principles, or
might easily grasp them (I.4 1095b3-8).

A modern reader who presumes, doubtless with the aspirations of modern moral philosophy in
mind (but also, to be fair, with Platos), that Aristotle must, in part, be justifying morality must
suffer recurrent disappointment as he meets either no argument, or (as in I.7 read as it has too
often been read) bad argument. An implicit lesson from Aristotle is that ethics contains
arguments, but cannot, as a whole, rest upon argument.
Even so, Aristotle is open to criticism. He seems to restrict the range of relevant human activity
unduly. Another disputable point (which I have rather raised than discussed) is whether he is
right to relate the human good to excellent action in the way he does: even if we find our good in
action, why should acting well require acting commendably especially if this requires acting
well from an ethical point of view? For both these reasons, we may agree that those who act
ethically deserve to live well without taking it as a tautology that only they can live well.