Dissertation
© 2025, Chuyu Tian
The aim of my dissertation is to investigate the justificatory status of rules in Aristotle’s ethics. How does Aristotle’s ethics differ from a rule-based one? In my dissertation, I clarify the meta-ethical status of ethical judgments and investigate the foundation of Aristotle’s ethics.
In Chapter One, I propose a person-centric account of virtue and virtuous action. I argue that although Aristotle’s ethics involves rules, it differs fundamentally from rule-based ethics by beginning with the human being: the notion of the good person is necessary in defining virtue and action in accordance with virtue. The virtuous person is not only an exemplar or someone who has unique epistemic access, but is a measure in the sense of being a litmus test to what is good to human beings: what is good for the good person provides a good indicator for what is good for humans. I devote the rest of the chapter to describing a kind of reflexive, experiential knowledge at the core of habituation not captured by rules.
In Chapter Two, I defend my person-centric account against meta-ethical objectivism. I clarify my meta-ethical position: the person-centric view is not relativism, but constitutivism. By “constitutivism”, I mean that a virtuous person, qua in a well-ordered, harmonious state, defines what is good for a human being. I then elaborate on the role of experience in habituation. I first show that experience is important, then why it is important. I argue that through particulars, experience leads to universal knowledge of the goal. Experience also attunes our emotions and thereby sets right our perceptions towards particulars. After that, I argue why becoming meta logou from kata logon involves experience: the progression to higher levels of universality in legislation necessitates a detour to specificity and particularity. I end by briefly explaining the other side of the Unity of Virtue thesis, i.e. practical wisdom requires virtue, by arguing that the fine-tuning of our perception of ethically salient particulars requires habituation.
For the rest of my dissertation, I inquire into the foundation of Aristotle’s ethics. In the first half of my third chapter, I argue against both Terence Irwin’s scientific explanation and John McDowell’s self-explanatory coherentism. In the second half, I extend my constitutive account to virtue politics. The virtuous person is the measure not just in ethics but also in politics. I will argue that “πολιτικὸν ζῷον” means any good person should want to live as a full-fledged citizen in a state that provides not just necessities but also conditions for cultivating and exercising virtue in collective self-governance. Justice involves more than having laws, but involves a shared understanding of the right kind of relationships by reference to a reasonable political order that nourishes a flourishing life. A political order without that goal is failing as a political order.
This raises the question: is Aristotle’s ethics prior to his politics, or vice versa? Does a good human life ground a good political constitution or the other way around? In Chapter Four, I first present the Basic Picture, in which the ideal constitution is determined by a conception of the best human life. The telos of a polis is ultimately good human lives. The Subtler Picture of what I term Proportional Political Organicism, however, questions how common is the common good. Even in an ideal polis, not everyone is expected to be virtuous qua human; the virtues of women and slaves are defined by their social roles, in ways that only make sense relative to the specific political arrangement. The abstract “Man” to be actualized within the network of paradigmatic free and equal citizenship is a socio-economically conditioned one.
Reflecting from a meta-textual perspective, I contend that Aristotle’s political treatise is itself perspectival. His politics starts from the “we” of a privileged citizenry. I conclude that Aristotle’s constitutional objectivism ostensibly says ethics precedes politics, but his ethics is preceded by the “common" good of a qualified “we”, and is therefore preceded by politics in this very sense. Ultimately, his politics is prior to his ethics.