http://www.infomotions.com/serials/bmcr/bm...ld-morality.txt

Held, 'Morality of Happiness', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9405
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/b...5-held-morality

Julia Annas. The Morality of Happiness. New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993. x + 502. $55. ISBN 0-19-507999-X.
Reviewed by Dirk t. D. Held -- Connecticut College

Philosophers seeking alternatives to the principles dominant in
modern ethical thought have recently looked to the ancient ethics
of virtue and character. The wide response to MacIntyre's *After
Virtue*, the continuing debate over virtue ethics, and the
writings of communitarian philosophers such as Charles Taylor
reflect dissatisfaction over the inability of contemporary
ethics, despite technical sophistication and logical rigor, to
make clear what it takes to live a moral life. Ancient ethical
theories in contrast, as Julia Annas reminds us, originate from
reflection over final ends and a person's life as a whole.
Because of this perspective and because ancient ethics is 'agent
centered' (not 'act centered' like modern ethics), ancient
ethical theorists can readily address the demands of living 'the
developed moral life.' (65)Modern ethical theories are generally
typified by some form or combination of two principles. Theorists
invoking the principle of duty as the foundation of morals strive
to articulate obligations that hold universally and absolutely.
Kant is the most famous proponent of this type of theory, known
as deontological (classical scholars will be among the few to
recognize the etymology). The appeal of deontological theory is
its impartial application to all. Yet its very universality,
suitable for Kantian noumenal selves, isolates it from the
contingency bound practices of human beings. The other principle
informing modern ethics is consequentialism, of which
utilitarianism is a well known version. Consequentialist theories
measure ethical value by the consequences of actions, aiming to
ensure a positive balance of good over bad -- however defined --
either through following rules to maximize good (rule
utilitarianism) or calculating likely outcomes of acts in terms
of good and bad (act utilitarianism). Both consequentialist and
deontological approaches have a tendency to set moral problems in
isolation from each other and as a result to fall into
abstraction. Nonetheless they are regarded as *moral* theories
because they orientate right and wrong from a person's effects on
others. Ancient theories are said to contrast in this respect
since they set forth constitutive conditions for the good life
and the agent's happiness (eudaimonia). Gregory Vlastos
accordingly claimed that all Greek ethical systems were based on
a 'Eudaimonist Axiom,'<<1>> which holds in various articulations
that everyone desires happiness and that it is the ultimate goal
of all rational activity. Under this description, ancient
eudaimonism appears antagonistic to the main focus of modern
morality.

We are therefore confronted with a choice between distinct
normative standards, Right and Good. But is the choice absolute?
Must the ethics of the good life be incompatible with the
morality of right conduct? In short, is there anything 'moral'
about 'happiness'? These are the questions Julia Annas takes up
in the challenging and important book under review. In *The
Morality of Happiness*, Annas presents both a brilliant analysis
of ancient ethical theory and a powerfully argued defense of the
priorities and approaches taken by ancient philosophers to
ethical questions. Her mastery of a wide range of ancient (and
modern) texts along with her skilled exposition of philosophical
argument make this an outstanding book. Annas' analysis of
ancient ethical theory is complex and subtle, aided by her
facility at fleshing out abstruse argument with clear examples
and lucid prose. The reader also benefits from the clear
architectonic structure Annas applies to the whole enterprise.

Annas not only argues that is there no incompatibility between
the good life and right conduct, but that ancient theories of
virtue and modern notions of what is moral are conceptually
alike. Indeed in the introduction she states the thesis that
'ancient ethical thought is a recognizable form of *moral*
thought.'(14) This is not the only way to address the
reconciliation of right and good. Hans Kraemer for example in his
*Integrative Ethik* (Frankfurt 1992) moves to integrate the
ethics of the good life with the moral aims of modern philosophy
but steadfastly rejects collapsing one normative field into the
other. It is illustrative that both Kraemer and Annas rely on the
formal dimensions of ethical argument to build their respective
cases. Kraemer does so because the plurality of goods in the
non-teleological modern world precludes unequivocal privileging
of any single end. Annas on the other hand strategically exploits
the 'thinness' of happiness as a final end to argue that upon
philosophical reflection the ancients grasped the inseparability
of an agent's happiness from the interests of others. *The
Morality of Happiness* is not a history of the traditional
doxographic sort, nor did Annas set out to write such a work, but
an analysis of the formal structure of ancient ethical theory. A
significant consequence is the near total exclusion of Plato on
the grounds that the dialogue form renders Plato's own position
on the structure of ethical theory opaque. For this reason Annas
begins with Aristotle, the first to 'lay out the framework of
Greek ethics' as a 'distinct subject' (17), and continues through
the Stoics, Sceptics, Cyrenaics, Epicureans, and writers of the
later Aristotelian school. Here her familiarity with some of the
less traveled domains of ancient philosophy pays handsome
dividends. Part I of the book explores the nature of a final
end, the structure and status of virtue, and the relation of
virtue to a final end. As noted above , ancient ethical discourse
takes the agent's life as a whole for its focus a nd starting
point. Annas agrees with Aristotle that we do things for a reason
and regularly subordinate ends to other ends. She further argues
that what Aristotle says agrees with our own practice, and that
careful reflection will reveal the cumulative movement of
end-directed actions towards a single final end (33). Such a
unified view of our goals, Annas admits, does not sit well with
moderns. One needn't be a dues paying post-modernist to protest
that fragmentation and disjunction seem more typical of life in
the electronic age than any kind of unity. This is not to suggest
that Annas follows the path of those promoting any kind
pre-modern world view. She simply contends that rational
reflection bears out the truth of the fact that we do look at our
lives as a whole, and indeed that to be rational, we must live
our lives in an organized way. Even the ancient thinkers she
cites do not agree on which specific ends should be pursued. They
do, however, agree that 'the agent's life has a unitary
*structure* '(33, n.18) provided by the formal constraints
required of a final end. Aristotle notes these as completeness
and self-sufficiency. The latter remained a concern for
philosophers after Aristotle but was dropped as a formal
requirement. For all ancient philosophers completeness was the
principal formal constraint on final ends and retained the
meaning Aristotle gave it: the end must be both final and
comprehensive, indeed final because comprehensive. 'The good that
gives shape to the aims of a human life...includ[es] and
organiz[es] into a whole the ends of smaller scale desires.' (40)
That good is generally called happiness (eudaimonia). However, to
say that our final good is happiness, Annas point s out, is to
say very little. Although its formal role in ancient theories is
clear, it is so thinly specified that ongoing disagreement over
what happiness is made this 'the most important and central
question in ancient ethics.' (46)Annas holds that a grasp of the
structure and status of the virtues is necessary for an agent
adequately to understand his final end. Virtues have a complex
nature: they are dispositional, habituative, and intellectual.
Modern theories of morality which stress decision making
privilege reasoning and assume it sufficient for moral action.
This ignores the lived life, the development over time of the
disposition to make right judgements, and the habituation of such
dispositions. This is what is required to 'have a virtue,' and
will constitute phronesis a term that connotes not only the
reliable regularity of virtuous judgements but the unity of the
virtues as well. 'Fully to have a virtue involves grasping what
it contributes to the good of one's life *as a whole*; and when
we think this through we see that all the virtues are unified in
an agent's deliberations, so that if you have one you have them
all.' (77) After laying this largely Aristotelian groundwork,
Annas examines the views of Stoics, Epicurus, and Sceptics on
these matters. She concludes that 'there is no one favoured
paradigm for moral reasoning' although the schools are united in
stressing qualitative differences between the novice and
practiced moral reasoner. An agent will be one or the other, and
the ethically mature agent will better grasp the point of why he
acts virtuously.

The scope of ancient ethics is larger than that of modern ethics.
The reader is reminded that Aristotle includes as virtues many
things that strike us as peculiar and unrelated to virtue. Yet
these virtues emanate from the whole fabric of ancient social
life which is the necessary context for an agent's understanding
of his final end. Annas rejects the suggestion that such
inclusiveness is not relevant to our moral life, for to bring
'the whole of our lives into reflective focus' cannot be done in
isolation. This additionally answers the claim that an ethics of
virtue must be egoistic, devoid of concern for others: since the
*virtues* as a whole have to be developed, and these include
justice, courage, and the like, the good of others is immediately
implicated. Annas allows that 'An ethics of virtue is at most
formally self -centered or egoistic; its *content* can be as
fully other-regarding as that of other systems of ethics.' (127)
Later, in Part III, Annas presents evidence to the effect that
concern for others not only *can* be accommodated by ancient
theories but that the Stoics in particular move from an original
concern for oneself and one's happiness to impartiality in moral
judgements between one's own interests and the interests of
others even unknown to the agent. Annas concludes this section
confident in the truth of her intuition that ancient theories of
virtue will prove to be also theories of morality.Having secured
ancient ethical judgement within the framework of a final end
Annas turns in Part II to a question critical for any ethical
system, namely how ethical judgements are to be grounded or
justified. Ancient philosophers regularly sought justification in
nature. They did not however look for it in the constricted
notion of what modern ethical naturalists might consider 'brute'
nature but sought it in the realities of human nature, a realm
with a distinct normative value. Annas traces the appeal to
nature starting with Aristotle and proceeding through the various
philosophical schools which succeeded him. Her intention in this
part of the book is to show that though 'the appeal to nature
takes different forms in different theories it forms a common
element in ancient eudaimonistic ethical theories.' (142) In
Aristotle's teleological view, human nature is 'not just a
pre-ethical starting point but something which provides ethical
goals.' (146) This perspective is eventually refined by the
Hellenistic schools, most notably the Stoics, into a coherent
ethical argument that equates the agent's final end to a life in
accordance with nature. The Stoics, for all their determinist
talk of 'the nature of things,' do not see nature as an
independent foundation of ethical judgements. Annas relies on
Cicero for evidence of the interdependence between nature and
virtue, and concludes that 'Virtue and [human] nature both
function as parts of a theory which is built up as a whole;
neither ha s priority.' (173) Chapters on Antics of Ascalon, the
Epicureans (who in removing our false beliefs about pleasures
'rethink what is natural' until it becomes an ethical ideal),
and the Sceptics round out the discussion. Her view is that
nature in ancient ethics has been misunderstood. Rather than a
pattern to which humans should conform, nature has a limiting
role: negatively, it sets parameters on what is possible;
positively, it endows human rationality with developmental
schemata leading to ethical behavior. Finally, nature functions
as an ethical ideal attainable by the agent possessing the
necessary skills in practical decision making. In Part III,
titled 'The Good Life and the Good Lives of Others,' Annas faces
head on the challenge of incorporating the needs of others into
eudaimonism. She separates the agent's final good from simple
self-interest by relying on two facts. One is that acting
virtuously is the way to successful attainment of the final good,
the other that the virtues are dispositions to do what is right
*as established independently of the agent's interests*.
Therefore even though ancient ethical theories formally are
agent-centered, they are not necessarily self-centered in respect
to content and if so, not egoistic. She might strengthen the
grounds for this approach by noting that one's own good and the
good of others are construed differently by moderns than by the
ancients. In ancient societies a person's moral identity is far
intricately embedded in the social context than is the case for
moderns who only begrudgingly turn their post-Kantian eyes away
from the ideal of the morally autonomous individual. An ethical
system based on the perspective of a whole life would be hard
pressed to remove social inter-relations as a n area of primary
concern. In fact, only one group of ancient thinkers did no t
think one's life as a whole was important for a person's ethical
choices. They were the Cyrenaics, whose hedonistic philosophy
valued the interests of others only as they were useful to the
agent's own interests. But as Annas notes, they were the
exception that makes the rule. She uses them to make the point
that crude hedonism does not fit well with the assumptions that
ethical theory starts from reflection on one's whole life and
needs to include some concern for others. Even Epicurus is
rehabilitated to fit Annas' requirements, since he stipulates in
K.D. 5 that a life of virtue is a necessary condition for
pleasure (the right kind of stable pleasure), and the virtues are
determined independently of the agent.

Aristotle first raises the question of whether limits should be
put on the concern for others, and concludes that the ethical
importance of *philia* does not entail unlimited concern for
such, in Aristotle's words, as 'the furthest Mysian.' We have to
wait until the Stoic doctrine of *oikeiosis* before impartiality
towards all others, including 'the furthest Mysian,' is seen as
an important component of the ethical point of view. Such an
inclusive doctrine extends concern for those close to us, as
family, indefinitely outwards. There is no way ethically or
rationally to break off the commitment at any point, and this
fact becomes the basis of Stoic ideas about justice and community
life. After this, things were never the same, and the
Aristotelians were forced to accommodate ethical impartiality
into their systems. An issue related to impartiality is justice,
the virtue most obviously other directed. It is complicated by
its application to societies and institutions as well as to
individuals, and in a survey of the topic Annas makes note of the
difficulty of giving a definitive account of justice as it is
related to eudaimonism.

Part III concludes that charges of ethical egoism against the
ancient theories are not valid. Annas determines 'that there are
no structural barriers in a eudaimonist theory against the
acceptance even of demands for impartiality' towards others
(323), and for the most part morality is necessary for happiness.
The ancient theories differ among themselves in the attention
allotted the interests of others, ranging from the anomalous
Cyrenaics who assign these interests only instrumental value to
Stoic demand for impartiality between these interests and one's
own. Nonetheless nothing structural in eudaimonistic theories
separates morality and self-interest. In the ancient theories
only 'superficial' philosophical tensions exist between my own
interests and the interests of others.At this point, the reader
may ask whether Annas has reconstructed happiness to the extent
that it no longer fits our intuitive understanding. Modern
interpreters have had perhaps equal difficulty as the ancients in
defining 'eudaimonia.' Annas acknowledges this dubiety and
singles out the refractory nature of happiness as a positive
impetus for philosophical reflection. The success of ancient
theories, she claims, was that they were all 'more or less
revisionary.' (331) The impetus to 'Revising Your Priorities, '
the title of Part IV, is an impetus to abandon unreflective
acquiescence to intuitions about our happiness and final end. It
turns out on Annas' reading that the ancient debate about virtue
and happiness is a debate, with various outcomes, over what parts
of our intuitions regarding happiness should be retained and what
parts abandoned. It is the success, not the failure, of ancient
ethical theory that it leads away from an intuitive understanding
of happiness.

This understanding is applied to the subjects of Annas' study in
separate chapters. Epicurus is shown to have a surprisingly
subtle view, making *ataraxia* dependent upon careful reflection
and monitoring of desires, with the resultant internalization of
the final end and indifference towards external goods. The
Sceptics likewise are after *ataraxia*, for whom happiness comes
by realizing the futility of holding anything, external or
internal, good in itself; to do so only creates anxiety. Based on
Aristotle 's inability to provide a coherent account of the
relation of external goods to happiness, Annas finds in him a
deep tension between the relation of virtue to happiness. This
unresolved tension presented a problem for his Peripatetic
successors and for the Stoics. The latter found that external
goods were not required for happiness, and that hence virtue was
sufficient for happiness. Aristotle, giving considerable credence
to common *andes* that valued worldly goods and success, holds
that while virtue may be necessary for happiness it is not
sufficient. Theoretically the Stoic position is neater, but Annas
grants that Aristotle's position on this may indicate 'the limits
of ethical theory, at least of theory that aims to stand in a
realistic relation to people's ethical views.' (424)

These debates in Annas' view are really about the role morality
has in happiness, which can be seen as the role morality has in
the good life. The choice between Aristotle's insistence that
virtue was necessary for happiness and the good life, or Stoic
arguments for the sufficiency of virtue (even when one is on the
rack) for happiness can not be decisively made. Annas finds a
parallel to modern debates over ethical theories which have
varying claims on our intuitions and reason. The ancient debate
about the role of virtue in happiness is conceptually akin,
argues Annas, to the role of morality in our own lives. The
predicament of the ancients is our own.The book concludes with a
comparison of the structure of ancient and modern ethics,
including 'virtue ethics' (the ancient form is inherently
revisionist, the modern morally conservative). There are brief
biographical notices of ancient philosophers mentioned in the
text, a list of primary sources, and two indices in addition to
an extensive bibliography.

*The Morality of Happiness* will generously repay thoughtful
reading. It is distinguished both by the comprehensive scope of
its general thesis a nd the subtlety of its details. Annas offers
an abundance of provocative arguments on individual philosophers
and individual passages, certainly far more than can be
adequately scrutinized even in a lengthy review. It will b e
required reading for any scholar of ancient ethical thought, and
contemporary moral philosophers will find rich insights to bring
back to their work as well.

NOTE

1. Gregory Vlastos, Socrates. Ironist and Moral Philosopher,
Cambridge, 1991, p. 203 ff.