03 Mar 2009 |
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by Cornelius Olukunle Ewuoso OP Introduction Aristotle’s Ethics, no doubt, is highly teleological. He is concerned with actions as conducive to man’s good. As he opined, ‘the action that is conducive to the attainment of man’s good or end will be a right action while the one opposed to it is the wrong one’. Thus, just as there is a right way and a wrong way of fishing, so there is a right way and a wrong way of living. The wrong way leads to frustration and defeat while the right way is the ‘good life'. But does the good life mean corruption, stealing, embezzlement, gross injustice, as is widely practised in this country? Why do people engage in such acts with so much impunity then? Do they give us joy? Or does the Nigerian society present a condition which makes it difficult for us to act virtuously, or how else do we explain our inability to consistently act virtuously in the face of moral, social and economic decadence in Nigeria? This essay attempts to explore Aristotle’s conception of the good life, using the Nigerian society as a case study. To achieve this end, therefore, we shall proceed in the first section to examine the end of human acts, after which we shall proceed to the second section to identify this end as virtue and happiness. Then immediately preceding the conclusion is Aristotle’s conception of this end as lying in the mean. 1.0 End of Human Acts Every human act presupposes the awareness and permission of the intellect and the freedom of the will. Now when the will freely decides to perform an action, the will must also intend the definite effect which follows from the action. This effect is the end. Consequently, every human act tends towards a certain end. Aristotle described this end when he said, "Every art, every inquiry and similarly, every action and pursuit is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim"1. Thus, the end of an action is always a ‘good'. It is characteristic of the will to always strive for what the intellect proposes for it as the good and to shun what it says is evil. 2.0 The Good as Virtue and Happiness "The conscious state of satisfaction”, according to Fagothey, “which the human person feels when he possesses this good is called happiness"2. Happiness, Aristotle says, is ‘the end of all action’, the basic motive and the good of all human endeavours. ‘One who would not crave happiness must have no desires, and such person could not be human’. We are so made that we must seek happiness, and no one is free with regards to this. As Aquinas says, "Since the good is the object of the will, the perfect good of a man is that which satisfies his will. Thus, to desire happiness is nothing else than to desire that one's will be satisfied. And this everyone desires"3. That the human person can obtain happiness as the end of his human actions is indisputable. If this were impossible, then the human person can never have any of his cravings satisfied which is absurd. Happiness or the good life, according to Aristotle, is the human person's subjective or intrinsic last end. The human person is so made that he or she must seek this good. But, what is that objective or extrinsic last end whose possession will bring about this subjective state (happiness or the good) within man? Is it wealth, robbery, sex, corruption, drink? ‘Happiness’, Aristotle adds, ‘is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world’, and it certainly cannot be derived from robbery, sex, drinking, embezzlement and the likes4. Even the policeman who stands in the middle of the road to extort money from unsuspecting motorists or the prostitute who stands in the middle of the road, or the young man who decides to steal from a bank, or the politician who vies for the political post for the purpose of amassing wealth cannot claim to derive happiness from his or her actions. Happiness, he opined, does not lie in such occupations as these. It lies in virtuous activities. “Happiness”, he says, “ is an activity in accordance with virtue”5. The good of man, therefore, is to live a happy and virtuous life, but ‘all want to be happy, but not all know how to find happiness’. Happiness, for one thing, is “not inactivity, but action, else one could be happy while asleep.”6 It is not done for something else but desirable for its own sake. It is not amusement or action of the senses or body such as robbery, drinking but of what is noblest in us, our reason. Not of practical reason but of theoretical reason. Since ‘it is the good life, it is a life of virtue, the highest virtue’. Not merely of courage or of practical virtue but of intellectual virtue which fits man for contemplation of the highest truth7. This is the life of the divine and the best. Albeit, such a life would be too high for man, it should not deter him from striving for it. The human person’s focus should be to live a life most like this, the highest good and perfect happiness of man. This understanding of happiness seems to put happiness out of the reach of man, since it is the contemplation of the highest truth and equally requires the whole life-span of man. According to Aristotle, this should not be seen as the case. Happiness of some sort, or what he called temporal happiness, is possible even in this practical life, since our nature is not self-sufficient. Our body must be healthy and must have food and other attention(s). However, self-sufficiency does not entail excessive actions. We can act virtuously and be happy in this practical life even with moderate possessions. ‘The happy man’, he says, ‘is neither the rich nor the despot, again neither the one who needs many things nor great things as though he could not be supremely happy without them, but the one who lives temperately’. ‘He who exercises his reason and cultivates it, acting both rightly and nobly in accordance with virtue is most truly happy. 3.0 Virtue and Happiness as the Mean: The Nigerian Quandary Aristotle considers virtue as the most important component of happiness. Happiness, temporal or perfect, must be an activity in accordance with virtue. But virtue lies in the mean. Consequently, the happy man is one who lives a moderate life, wanting neither many things at a time nor preferring poverty, but living a temperate life. Since human beings are intellectual beings, the good of humans, hence, is to reason well. And since part of the task of reason is to teach human beings how to act virtuously, the good for human persons, thus, is the exercise of their faculties in accordance with virtue, to live a temperate life. Certainly not in wanting excess wealth by way of corruption or bribery as is rampart in Nigeria, but in being contented with what one has. The average Nigerian wants to live big, with plenty of money, women, cars, houses, etc. Even the one who is considered rich wants more. As I cast my eyes over the horizon, what do I see? A mad rush for more, and this is because most Nigerians believe that happiness would be impossible with these. But this is a fundamental mistake and the results are obvious; large scale embezzlement, increase in crime rate, bribery, injustice, corruption, robbery, maiming, prostitution, profligacy etc. The situation is further heightened when those who are supposed to enforce law and order in country join in the spree. In random order, as I consider them, the presidency is advised by an ethically-empty Attorney-General and Minister for Justice. Increasingly alleged to be involved in all kinds of personal malfeasance and even dismissed by the political salesman Terry Waya as "the greediest man in Abuja," it took Mr. Michael Aondoakaa only months to build himself a mansion fit for a king. Equally the anti-graft war is directed by an unrepentant and professionally uncaring woman. Unofficially, Mrs. Waziri seems to be a competent sports-woman. Her favourite sport being corruption and ineptitude that runs from the troubled former governors to her office and on to the Federal Ministry of Justice. Her sad track record makes it most unlikely we will ever celebrate her as a champion graft-fighter. And the police? It is now controlled by a leader who knows no limit. Inspector-General Mike Okiro is linked with several cases of corruption himself, including private schools and shopping malls in Abuja worth billions of Naira that he could not possibly have paid for from his police salary. Over to the federal legislature, the Senate President, Mr David Mark is a former minister who is stupendously wealthy, with properties that span Africa and beyond. It is unknown how he came about any of them, including 6 million British pounds his former wife convinced a court to freeze several years ago8. His counter-part, Dimeji Bankole, is not any better with his recent attempt of replacing ‘brand new cars’ with ‘brand new cars’ with a huge sum of money running into billions. And at the Judiciary, some Supreme Court justices were equally reported to have received $30 million from Yar’Adua’s men, from Aondoakaa and EFCC's Waziri in particular, so as to favour the presidency in their judgement. And of course they had their way. Over to the Presidency, Patience Jonathan the Vice-President’s wife, remains a screeching tyre. A woman twice held for money-laundering, once for N104 million, and then for $13 million (US). The list continues and the end is not in view. There is no stemming the tide. But in a country where both the led and the leaders engage in a sporadic looting, extortion, crime, embezzlement, out of the desire for more, what would be left? Chaos, anarchy, frustration, poverty, a stroke of evil geniuses, the poison that keeps on poisoning9. The ‘law of force would then become the force of law’, hence, giving rise to quandary. Certainly actions such as these would never bring about happiness, on the contrary, they are notorious for bringing about social, economic and political ills. Our national landscape is strewn with the carcasses of failed, abandoned and still-born policies, projects and programmes, too numerous to mention. Our education system is still in discord with the human development needs of our society, generating armies of unemployed and unemployable youths. Underlying our ills in this country is the culture of greed for the needless more which pervade the whole country. The year 2009, therefore, must be a challenge for all of us. We must refocus investment in our future through discipline, moderacy, temperance, transparency and frugality. It should be a year when we must deliberately put an end to corruption, embezzlement and the greedy desire for more. We must all recognize that we can live a good life and be happy without necessarily being corrupt, amassing or stealing. But doing the simple things virtuously. Conclusion By way of conclusion, let us endeavour to summarize this essay by retracing our steps. We set out at the beginning of this essay to examine Aristotle’s theory of the Good life, using the country Nigeria as a case study. This was achieved in three sections. In the first section, we identified the good as the end of human actions, then we described this good as an activity in accordance with virtue. In the final analysis, we concluded that the means to the good life or happiness is through the human acts which must conform to the right order, moderacy, contentment and temperance. But when this truth is neglected, the resultant effect would be chaos, anarchy, doom and ‘bad-life’. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics, Politics. In The Works of Aristotle. Translated into English by Ross, R. D. 12vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921-1952. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by English Dominican Fathers. New York: Benziger, 1947. Fagothey, Austin. Right and Reason. California: Mosby Company, 1959. --------------------- Anthology of Right and Reason. California: Mosby Company, 1972. Simon, R. Yves: The Definition of Moral Virtue. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986. Newspaper and Articles The Guardian Newspapers Olumhense, Sonala. “ Nigeria Surrounded”. The Guardian Newspaper (Sunday, November 23, 2008) online copy, www.ngrguardiannews.com “Sustaining the Dream”. Editorial, The Guardian Newspaper (Thursday, January 1, 2009) online copy, www.ngrguardiannews.com
1Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics by W D Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), Bk. 1, Ch. 1. 2 Cf. Austin Fagothey, Right and Reason (California: Mosby Company, 1959), p.44. 3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 5, a. 8. 4 Cf. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, op. cit. Bk 1. Ch.8. 5 Ibid., Bk X. Ch. 6. 6Austin Fagothey, op. Cit., p.51. 7 Cf. Ibid., p. 51. 8 Cf. Sonala Olumhense, “Nigeria Surrounded”, The Guardian Newspaper (Sunday, November 23, 2008) online copy, www.ngrguardiannews.com . For this information and for others, I particularly recognize the contributions of the Guardian newspaper without which this information and several others would not have been possible. 9 Ibid.
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