In order to measure the consistency of Aristotle’s theory of political agency, we need to place the emotions within the framework of Aristotelian ethics.
Virtue is the faculty (hexis) of producing and preserving good things. Good things, that is, which are valuable in themselves but also beneficial to others (Arist. Rhet. 1.9.5-7; cf. Eth. Nic. 2.6.1-10). These faculties are justice, courage, self-control, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, and gentleness; practical and speculative wisdom. They are not innate, but the result of education, training, and habituation. They make up our character (Arist. Eth. Nic. 2.1.1-6). Now, these acquired qualities enable us, or dispose us, to actions as well as passions. ‘‘Moral virtue is concerned with emotions and actions, in which there is excess, deficiency and the mean’’ (Arist. Eth. Nic. 2.6.10; cf. 2.6.12). They generate our acts as well as our feelings, by setting us to do certain things and feel in a certain way (Arist. Eth. Nic. 2.5.1-2). Between the two (vicious) extremes of irascibility and slavish indifference to any offense lies the virtuous ability of the even-tempered, and yet dignified, person to get angry when she must respond to an undeserved slight. Between the excesses ofdaring and fear lies the noble valor of the warrior.
Like emotions, virtues are related to pleasure and pain: they allow us to act well in those matters (Arist. Eth. Nic. 2.3.6; cf. 2.3.10). Reciprocally, emotions can be classified following a moral criterion: they are worthy either of a good person or of a despicable one. ‘‘Emulation is virtuous and characteristic of virtuous men, whereas envy is base and characteristic of base men’’ (Arist. Rhet. 2.11.1). Shame is the pathos through which we respond to our own vice, from cowardice to sexual incontinence, to meanness (Arist. Rhet. 2.6). Because a virtue is but the correct mean as opposed to vices that are intense passions, the constant intertwining of virtues and emotions regulate our life (Arist. Eth. Nic. 2.6.10-12).
Pathe or pathemata make the texture of a person’s morality. This intrinsic connection is possible because, first of all, for Aristotle, passions are reasons: only, as briefly mentioned, they are reasons accompanied by pleasure or pain (Arist. Eth. Nic. 2.5.2). I have been slighted, I did not deserve it; I feel aggrieved; I wish to retaliate. This sequence of thoughts, excruciatingly felt, is what we call ‘‘anger.’’ I can restrain my anger in an effort to think differently. I can govern my passions because they are not alien to reason. Secondly, happiness is the enjoyment of excellence, in all its forms (Arist. Rhet. 1.5.3). I only feel well if I am good. Therefore, my emotional state is the result of my ethical condition. And, reciprocally, my excellence is made of virtues, those dispositions which make me do the right things, and feel the right emotions. Thirdly, emotions are causes of agency, and of voluntary acts. Therefore they contribute to the decency or the wrongdoing of a moral agent.
Now virtues are all interactive. Excellence is composed of faculties, we said, which are intrinsically good, but also beneficial to others: a virtue is a dunamis euergetike. Virtues always regulate our dealings with other people. Think of justice, courage, liberality, moderation, or gentleness. The very exercise of these dispositions implies the existence of others, involves others, and engages us with others. This is what it means to be political animals. We are political animals not superficially, because we resemble the bees in our spontaneous inclination to live together, but more profoundly because our personal quality, our excellence, is made of excellent social manners. In order to fulfill our potential to live well, therefore to attain a full-fledged arete, we must live in a community; ideally in a political order that allows and fosters a complete flourishing. The political animal, therefore, is a moral animal.
The emotions too imply the interaction with others. Think of courage, gentleness, love and hatred, fear, hope, anger, shame, envy, emulation, indignation. It would be impossible to define them without including, in their definition, a relation to others. Aristotle classifies the emotions on the basis of three binary oppositions: pleasure versus pain; what is deserved versus what is undeserved; I versus other people. Facing another person’s pleasure (be it happiness, well-being, or success), I can either rejoice (friendship) or feel sorry, and this because that pleasure is not well deserved (indignation), or because I fail to have that pleasure (envy), or because I strive to have it (emulation). Facing another person’s suffering, I either feel sorry and afraid that the same horror might happen to me (pity), if it is undeserved; or I rejoice if the pain looks well deserved to me. This dilemma presupposes my ethical quality. If I am a mean person, prone to envy, I will enjoy other people’s diminishment, as much as
I would resent their prosperity. If I am a decent human being, I will be inclined to pity, indignation, and emulation. The moral animal is a pathetic animal.
This is a script for the performance of politics, between the Pnyx and the courts of law. How an individual responds with his pleasure and pain to the pleasure and pain of others - their pleasure and pain consisting in their welfare or their misery: this is a pathos. And a pathos is a social manner: a pleasure or a pain that I feel in the comparative, competitive game of communal life. The list of the emotions in Rhetoric composes a web of intersubjective adjustments which hinge on what one thinks about oneself. Expectations, self-representations, self-descriptions are the cause of our responses to others. Whereas the inconsistency of others’ views of us with our image of ourselves causes pain, recognition gives pleasure.
Pleasure and pain are, for Aristotle, the object of political theory. Political theory studies the end of human life, its highest good: happiness. Happiness cannot be reduced to pleasure, but it entails a sense of pleasure. Happiness requires excellence. Now, excellence exists through the virtues. And virtues are dispositions to feel the right emotions. Happiness, therefore, being made of virtues, is also made of emotions: those which are beautifully pleasurable.
The political animal who finds his accomplishment - that is his happiness - within a polis is a polites, thus a virtuous/emotional living.
A political environment, a given politeia is what shapes the characters, thus the virtues and the emotions of the people. Lawgivers, Aristotle claims, make citizens good by training them to acquire proper habits: those forms of excellence which will result in the right acts and the right emotions. And within a society governed by certain principles, human beings learn, through practice and habituation, to behave and to feel. Consider the following:
It is by taking part in transactions [sunallagmata] with fellow-men that some of us become just and others unjust; by acting in dangerous situations and forming a habit of fear or of confidence we become courageous or cowardly. And the same occurs also as far as desire [epithumia] and anger [orgH] are concerned. Some people become moderate and gentle, others profligate and irascible, by actually comporting themselves in one way or the other in relation to those passions. (Arist. Eth. Nic. 2.1.5-7)
We display justice, courage and other virtues in our intercourse with our fellows [pros allUlousprattomen en sullagmasin], when we respect what is due to each in contracts and services and in our various actions, and in our emotions also [en te toispathesi], (Arist. Eth. Nic. 10.8.1-2, trans. Rackham 1944, slightly modified)
This is exactly what Pericles or Lysias endeavored to accomplish in their speeches. The pathetic and moral animal is a political animal.
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