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Aristotle and the Charge of Egoism

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Notes

  1. See, for instance, Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (7th edition) (London: Macmillan & Co., 1907), pp. 121–122; W. F. R. Hardie, Aristotle’s Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 331; D. J. Allan, The Philosophy of Aristotle (2nd edition) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 138.

  2. For Aristotle’s texts, see Jonathan Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle (The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). In what follows, I will not preface textual references to the Nicomachean Ethics with ‘NE,’ but will give the Bekker number on its own.

  3. Jeff D’Souza makes a powerful case that no neo-Aristotelian form of virtue ethics has managed to escape the charge of egoism. See Jeff D’Souza, “The Self-Absorption Objection and Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (published online: April 19, 2018). There are two non-egoistic interpretations of Aristotle’s ethical theory I will not be considering. The first is by Charles H. Kahn (see “Aristotle and Altruism,” Mind XC/357 (1981): 20–40). Kahn’s reading of Aristotle is original yet extravagant, since it depends on construing individual minds as all reducible to one mind, a construal of Aristotle found only in Alexander of Aphrodisias and some Arabic commentators. The second non-egoistic interpretation is by Richard Kraut (see Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), ch. 2). Kraut understands egoism as a maximizing position, which disqualifies Aristotle as an egoist in short order, since as Annas maintains, no Ancient Greek philosophers were ethical maximisers except the Cyrenaics (see Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 447–448).

  4. See Thomas Hurka, “Self-Interest, Altruism, and Virtue,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr, and J. Paul (ed.), Self-Interest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 286–307, p. 287.

  5. It might be objected that akratic or ‘weak-willed’ action is an exception here. But even this sub-rational form of action aims at a perceived good, and pro tanto has flourishing as its proper aim. In what follows, I take rational, non-akratic action to be the paradigm case of action for Aristotle.

  6. For further reflection on this taxonomic issue, though not under the rubric of egoism, see Anthony Kenny, “Aristotle on Happiness,” in Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield and Richard Sorabji (ed.), Articles on Aristotle, vol. 2 (Ethics and Politics) (London: Duckworth, 1977), ch. 3, pp. 27–30; John McDowell, “The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Amélie O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), ch. 19, p. 359; Richard Kraut, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 88. John McDowell speaks of ‘indicative’ and ‘gerundive’ conceptions of eudaemonism, terms which map onto my ‘psychological’ and ‘ethical’ above. (Cf. ‘psychological’ and ‘normative’ eudaemonism in Mark LeBar and Nathan Goldberg, “Psychological Eudaimonism and Interpretation in Greek Ethics,” in Rachana Kamtekar (ed.), Supplementary Volume on ‘Virtue and Happiness: Essays in Honour of Julia Annas,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (2012): 287–319, p. 288).

  7. See Kelly Rogers, “Beyond Self and Other,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr, and J. Paul (ed.), Self-Interest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 1.

  8. See, for example, Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, “Egoism and Altruism,” in Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), ch. 15, p. 265; Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 197; Peter Singer, How are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. ix. Thomas Nagel holds that ‘moral requirements have their source in the claims of other persons’; Peter Singer asserts that the ‘ethical life is the most fundamental alternative to the conventional pursuit of self-interest.’

  9. See Alison Hills, The Beloved Self: Morality and the Challenge from Egoism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 1–7.

  10. See André Comte-Sponville, A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2001), pp. 88, 91, 93, 96, 99. Terence Irwin argues that Scotus repudiated Aquinas’ eudaemonism on similar grounds: it supposedly precluded a ‘pure’ love of God, i.e. love free from all self-interest (see Terence H. Irwin, “Scotus and the Possibility of Moral Motivation,” in Paul Bloomfield (ed.), Morality and Self-Interest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 8). For an analogous, late seventeenth-century debate between Fénélon and Bossuet on whether the love of God can be ‘pure,’ see Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion. With Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), ch. XIV, esp. p. 339 ff; Robert Spaemann, Reflexion und Spontaneität: Studien über Fénélon (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1990).

  11. Cf. Julia Annas, “Ancient Eudaimonism and Modern Morality,” in Christopher Bobonich (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), ch. 14, p. 268.

  12. For similar definitions, see, for example, Stephen A. White, Sovereign Virtue: Aristotle on the Relation between Happiness and Prosperity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 284–285 and Gerard J. Hughes, Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Aristotle on Ethics (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 172–173.

  13. See, e.g., L. H. G. Greenwood, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics Book VI – With Essays, Notes, and Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), p. 46 ff.; Brad Hooker, “Does Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent?”, in Roger Crisp (ed.), How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), ch. 9, p. 141; Dennis McKerlie, “Aristotle and Egoism,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy XXXVI (1998): 531–555, pp. 531, 534–535; Christopher Toner, “The Self-Centredness Objection to Virtue Ethics,” Philosophy 81/318 (2006): 595–617, p. 602; Julia Annas, “Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism,” in Paul Bloomfield (ed.), Morality and Self-Interest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 10, p. 209. As several authors maintain, the only ancient philosophers who seem to have embraced a plainly instrumentalist account of human well-being are the Epicureans. See Terence H. Irwin, “The Virtues: Theory and Common Sense in Greek Philosophy,” in Roger Crisp (ed.), How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), ch. 3, p. 43; Michael Slote, “The Virtue in Self-Interest,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr, and J. Paul (ed.), Self-Interest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 264–285, pp. 267–268; Julia Annas, “Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism,” in Paul Bloomfield (ed.), Morality and Self-Interest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 10, p. 213; Julia Annas, “Ancient Eudaimonism and Modern Morality,” in Christopher Bobonich (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), ch. 14, p. 268.

  14. See, e.g., Anthony Kenny, The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 208; Terence H. Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 392–393, 396, 405–406; White, op. cit., pp. 286, 290; Kelly Rogers, “Aristotle on Loving Another for His Own Sake,” Phronesis XXXIX/3 (1994): 291–302, p. 294; Jennifer Whiting, “Eudaimonia, External Results, and Choosing Virtuous Actions for Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXV/2 (2002): 270–290, pp. 271, 284.

  15. For theories that affirm a non-Aristotelian, purely subjective conception of well-being, see, for example: Fred Feldman, What Is This Thing Called Happiness? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Daniel Haybron, The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Jason R. Raibley, “Well-Being and the Priority of Values,” Social Theory and Practice 36 (2010): 593–620.

  16. The objective, ethical quality of one’s actions does not wholly determine the condition of the self, because the latter is partly determined, on Aristotle’s view, by the availability of ‘external’ goods, viz. goods of the body and goods supplied by one’s environment. See 1099a31-9b8.

  17. See Gabriel Richardson Lear, “Happiness and the Structure of Ends,” in George Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), ch. 24, p. 394.

  18. By contrast, philosophers like Feldman, Haybron and Raibley (see note 15) hold that there is no necessary connection between ‘moral’ action and well-being. For Aristotle’s view that eudaimonia is developed only over the long-term, see 1098a18-20: ‘one day, or a short time,’ he maintains, ‘does not make a man blessed and eudaimōn.’

  19. This issue will loom large later on, when I come to various defenses of Aristotle’s theory.

  20. This other-focused conception of the moral life finds its paradigm expression, perhaps, in Stephen Darwall’s notion of ethical action as governed by the ‘second-person standpoint’ (see Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)). But it is found also in mainstream utilitarianism and Kantianism: the utilitarian must devote him- or herself to people’s overall welfare, while the Kantian is called upon to treat others never merely as means, but always also as ends-in-themselves.

  21. It is true that Aristotle defines general justice as ‘complete virtue – not absolutely, but in relation to others [pros heteron]’ (1129b26-7). But acting in relation to others does not entail acting primarily for the sake of others (or for their sake at all). It is also true that Aristotle distinguishes the chief good ‘in disposition’ from the chief good ‘in activity’ (1098b33); only the latter counts ethically, he contends, lest the virtuous fail to achieve any ‘good result’ [agathon] (1099a1). But ‘good result’ here – or more accurately, ‘good’ – may refer simply to achieving a virtuous character, something suggested by Aristotle’s athletic analogy: it is ‘those who compete,’ he remarks, ‘who … win the noble and good things in life’ (1099a4-5). Once again, moreover, none of this entails that those taking part in life’s ethical competition act for the sake of others. Toner argues that achieving a virtuous character can be construed in a purely impersonal sense: i.e. virtue comes to be instantiated, irrespective of its instantiation by or for me (see Christopher Toner, “Virtue Ethics and the Nature and Forms of Egoism,” Journal of Philosophical Research 35 (2010): 275–303). This reading does not explain why it is not a matter of indifference to the Aristotelian agent that he instantiate virtue rather than someone else. Nor does it assort with the first personal project of achieving eudaimonia: the Aristotelian agent does not set his sights on a virtue-filled world, but rather on a eudaimōn life.

  22. The term is Derek Parfit’s, though Parfit uses it in the context of utilitarianism (see Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 24). See Justin C. Clark, “Eudaimonistic Virtue Ethics and Self-Effacement,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 50 (2016): 507–524. (For the seminal treatment of virtue ethics as self-effacing, see Simon Keller, “Virtue Ethics is Self-Effacing,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85/2 (2007): 221–231.) Clark (among others) argues that the self-effacement he identifies is ultimately unproblematic. I will argue below that this argument fails.

  23. NB ‘megalopsuchia seems to accompany all the virtues’ (EE 1232a31-2; cf. 1232a37-8, 1232b23-5); ‘megalopsuchia is the virtue that disposes us to do good to others on a large scale’ (Rhetoric 1366b17-18).

  24. Kalos here has the sense of ‘noble,’ along with certain aesthetic connotations.

  25. As I will document in more detail below when we come to Aristotle’s account of philia.

  26. For a different, less competitive reading, see Jennifer Whiting, “Self-Love and Authoritative Virtue: Prolegomenon to a Kantian Reading of Eudemian Ethics viii 3,” in Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting (ed.), Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ch. 6, pp. 173–174, 177; cf. White, op. cit., pp. 279 n. 15, 281.

  27. Michael Pakaluk maintains that ‘superior’ here is tendentious, and that huperechein should rather be translated ‘to excel’ (see Michael Pakaluk, “The Meaning of Aristotelian Magnanimity,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XXVI (Summer 2004): 241–275, pp. 270–272). He also claims that this term is ‘something of a metaphor,’ indicating not comparison with others but excelling over oneself. Such excelling is, moreover, a mark of ‘aspiration,’ rather than of ‘smug self-satisfaction’ (ibid. p. 245). But I cannot see how these highly revisionary readings are warranted. Liddell and Scott do translate huperechein as ‘excel’ in one instance, but the context is a military one. Otherwise their translations are thoroughly comparative, not to say competitive: ‘overtop,’ ‘exceed,’ ‘outdo,’ ‘prevail,’ ‘rise above.’

  28. Pakaluk holds that while contempt is involved here, it is ‘the right sort of contempt, of things, when this is required, and not an objectionable contempt of persons’ (Pakaluk, op. cit., p. 245; cf. p. 264). Again, however, this is highly revisionary. Even if the contempt is impersonal at 1124a19-20, shortly afterwards it is not: Aristotle holds that those without virtue ‘do not act excellently, but they do despise others … the proud man despises justly’ (1124b4-6). Here the object of ‘despises’ is clearly personal, albeit implied. And later on, at 1124b29, ‘he is free of speech because he is contemptuous’ is also clearly personal in sense.

  29. More precisely, it is true of the good man’s relation to his intellect, or nous, ‘which is thought to be the man himself’ (1166a16-17; cf. 1166a22-3).

  30. Nonetheless, and as Annas points out, the idea that concern for others develops from concern for self struck later, non-Aristotelian ancient philosophers as ‘strained’ and ‘paradoxical’ (see Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 286–287), given the other-directed phenomenology of friendship. Annas herself does not seem to feel the force of their view.

  31. NB ‘if it is more characteristic of a friend to do well by another than to be well done by, and to confer benefits is characteristic of the good man and of virtue … the good man will need people to do well by’ (1169b10-13). It is notable how Aristotle deprecates signs of vulnerability, which he associates with women. Thus he condemns the person who flees from danger, ‘swinging his arms by his sides’ (1123b31), along with the evils of a ‘shrill voice,’ ‘rapid gait’ and ‘hurry and excitement’ (1125a15-16). Cf. 1171b5-12.

  32. Annas holds that even if competition is involved here, it is ‘benign’ in nature, since virtue is not an ‘exhaustible’ or zero-sum good (see Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 257; cf. Pakaluk, op. cit., p. 272 n. 41). But I think this is too quick. For even if virtuous action does not involve competition over external goods, and is thus tantamount to cooperation, there can still be competition over the degree and extent of virtue shown. One thinks, for example, of those seeking to outdo each other in courage on the battlefield. Or to take a non-Greek example, even saints can be more or less saintly, though they never clash in foro externo.

  33. One can (and should) point out that loving oneself ‘best’ involves doing noble actions, since this is what the true self – namely, intellect or nous – enjoins. So Aristotle is (again) hardly recommending self-love simpliciter. He is, nevertheless, affirming the self as one’s ultimate and preferential locus of concern. And in this crucial respect, his account remains firmly egoistic. (Cf. Kenny’s analysis at Anthony Kenny, Aristotle on the Perfect Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 48, 52.) Annas papers over this fact when she stresses that self-love is not the friend’s ‘immediate aim,’ and moreover is not in conflict with love for his friend (see Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 260). But when an ultimate aim is self-regarding, it remains egoistic – whether or not it is in conflict with love for others.

  34. LeBar and Goldberg argue that what they call ‘psychological eudaimonism’ – viz. that ‘each person has the desire to live well as a dominant element in his or her psychological economy’ (Mark LeBar and Nathan Goldberg, op. cit., p. 291) – is necessarily true. But not only is it unclear whether ‘dominant element’ here entails egoism in my sense, their argument – which rests on premises derived from Donald Davidson’s work on radical interpretation – is perfectly general, prescinding from the details of Aristotle’s ethical theory. I will thus leave it to one side, despite its intrinsic interest.

  35. See Dennis McKerlie, op. cit., p. 531.

  36. Dennis McKerlie notes that ‘Eudaimonia is introduced as the goal of political understanding, not as the ultimate end of individual choice. And political understanding aims at the eudaimonia of the citizens of a state, not at the eudaimonia of an individual’ (McKerlie, op. cit., p. 542; cf. p. 549). Granted, NE I.2 subsumes eudaimonia under politikē technē, and the politikos will apply his expertise to the good of the state. But outside Aristotle’s Politics, the central application of eudaimonia is to ‘the case of an individual deciding what to do with her own life’ (ibid. p. 542) – as we have seen extensively above. To claim, therefore, that the generic pursuit of eudaimonia is directly and primarily about promoting the political good is untenable.

  37. See Thomas Hurka, “The Three Faces of Flourishing,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr, and J. Paul (ed.), Human Flourishing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 44–71, p. 67.

  38. See Jennifer Whiting, “Eudaimonia, External Results, and Choosing Virtuous Actions for Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXV/2 (2002): 270–290, pp. 272–273. The invocation of ‘self-indulgence’ by both Hurka and Whiting may be misleading, insofar as it suggests, contra Aristotle, that virtuous action and the well-being of the self can come apart. Perhaps ‘self-privileging’ is more appropriate.

  39. As I have already argued in criticizing Aristotle’s eudaemonism, along with his accounts of great-souledness and friendship.

  40. See Thomas Hurka, “The Three Faces of Flourishing,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr, and J. Paul (ed.), Human Flourishing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 44–71, p. 69.

  41. For interpretations of Aristotle which affirm psychological occlusion of the type just mentioned, see sub-section (ii) below, ‘Two versions of self-effacing egoism.’

  42. See Arthur Madigan, “Eth. Nic. 9.8: Beyond Egoism and Altruism?”, in John P. Anton and Alexander Preus (ed.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy IV: Aristotle’s Ethics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 73–94.

  43. Madigan, op. cit., p. 86.

  44. Madigan, op. cit., pp. 86–87.

  45. Madigan, op. cit., p. 86.

  46. Madigan, op. cit., p. 89.

  47. For views similar to Madigan’s, see Kelly Rogers, “Aristotle on Loving Another for His Own Sake,” Phronesis XXXIX/3 (1994): 291–302, and Kelly Rogers, “Beyond Self and Other,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr, and J. Paul (ed.), Self-Interest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 1–20. Rogers argues that ‘altruism, like egoism, is grounded in a conflict model of ethics, which would have been quite alien to most Greeks’ (Kelly Rogers, “Aristotle on Loving Another for His Own Sake,” Phronesis XXXIX/3 (1994): 291–302, pp. 293–294). Her 1997 paper also targets this ‘conflict model,’ but without central reference to Aristotle. Cf. Timothy Chappell, Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), chapters 7 and 8 (the latter makes explicit reference to Aristotle’s notion of the kalon). Cf. also Annas, who holds that the egoism/altruism distinction ‘does not apply’ to ancient ethical theory (Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 5); to speak as if it does thus amounts, she claims, to ‘confusion and anachronism’ (ibid. p. 226).

  48. See Julia Annas, “Prudence and Morality in Ancient and Modern Ethics,” Ethics 105/2 (1995): 241–257, pp. 245–246.

  49. We saw above, in the sections on megalopsuchia and philia, that Aristotle is fully aware of the ubiquitous, intense conflict over ‘competitive’ goods like power and wealth.

  50. See Kelly Rogers, “Aristotle on Loving Another for His Own Sake,” Phronesis XXXIX/3 (1994): 291–302, p. 302.

  51. The terms are from Gavin Lawrence. See Gavin Lawrence, “The Rationality of Morality,” in Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence and Warren Quinn (ed.), Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory – Essays in Honour of Philippa Foot (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), ch. 5, pp. 111–112.

  52. See Julia Annas, “Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism,” in Paul Bloomfield (ed.), Morality and Self-Interest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 10, p. 211.

  53. See Toner, “The Self-Centredness Objection to Virtue Ethics,” Philosophy 81/318 (2006), p. 600.

  54. I take the term ‘moral purity’ from Kelly Rogers, “Beyond Self and Other,” in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr, and J. Paul (ed.), Self-Interest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 10.

  55. Marcia Homiak argues that we should conceive of self-love as causing virtuous action, rather than being its purpose (see Marcia Homiak, “Virtue and Self-Love in Aristotle’s Ethics,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy XI/4 (1981): 633–651, p. 640). This arguably deepens the mental splitting above, by consigning the engine of moral action to the unconscious. (It should be noted that Homiak explicitly denies this is meant to capture Aristotle’s own views. If anything, it is a revisionary reconstruction of them. See ibid. p. 636.)

  56. Jennifer Whiting, “Eudaimonia, External Results, and Choosing Virtuous Actions for Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXV/2 (2002): 270–290, pp. 282–283.

  57. Jennifer Whiting, “Eudaimonia, External Results, and Choosing Virtuous Actions for Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXV/2 (2002): 270–290, p. 283.

  58. Jennifer Whiting, “Eudaimonia, External Results, and Choosing Virtuous Actions for Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXV/2 (2002): 270–290, p. 284.

  59. Jennifer Whiting, “Eudaimonia, External Results, and Choosing Virtuous Actions for Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXV/2 (2002): 270–290, p. 284.

  60. Jennifer Whiting, “Eudaimonia, External Results, and Choosing Virtuous Actions for Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXV/2 (2002): 270–290, p. 286, n. 27.

  61. See 1166a17–22, 1168b30–9a3, 1169a16–18, 1178a2–8.

  62. It is worth noting that Whiting restricts herself to Aristotle’s eudaemonism in the abstract, and does not probe the substantively egoistic features of megalopsuchia or philia. These are conspicuous by their absence from her account.

  63. See Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 440–442. Cf. p. 261 on philia specifically.

  64. Terence H. Irwin, “The Virtues: Theory and Common Sense in Greek Philosophy,” in Roger Crisp (ed.), How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), ch. 3, p. 52. Rachel Barney holds, similarly, that a virtuous agent’s ‘framework commitment’ to eudaemonism need not impinge often or unduly on his ‘occurrent thoughts’ about particular actions. See Rachel Barney, “Comments on Sarah Broadie ‘Virtue and beyond in Plato and Aristotle,’” The Southern Journal of Philosophy XLIII (2005): 115–125, pp. 116–119. Cf. Annas: ‘As with other practical dispositions like skills, what is first consciously learned becomes internalized in ways that allow it to motivate, in intelligent and discriminating ways, without the need for a consciously motivating factor’ (Julia Annas, “Ancient Eudaimonism and Modern Morality,” in Christopher Bobonich (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 275). Cf. also Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 162. Cf. also Clark on what he calls the ‘global’ versus the ‘local’ level of deliberation (see Clark, op. cit., p. 511).

  65. See Howard J. Curzer, Aristotle and the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 273.

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Angier, T.P.S. Aristotle and the Charge of Egoism. J Value Inquiry 52, 457–475 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-018-9632-2

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