MEANING AND REFERENCE OF ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις

Aristotle's Ethica Eudemia (EE) Book 2 Chapter 2 contains, at lines 1220b10–11, a well-known crux in the phrase ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις. The context makes clear that Aristotle is using this phrase to refer to some writing or other, but scholars have been puzzled both about what the phrase means and what writing it refers to.

In the part of the text where the phrase occurs Aristotle is discussing moral character and he has just concluded that characters are qualities in the soul brought about by custom or habituation. He continues that what must next be discussed is what qualities in what part of the soul. From what he stated earlier (at 2.1.1219b39–20a12, 29–37), as well as from what he has just concluded here, he is able to say, in general terms, that these qualities are in accord with the powers whereby people feel the various passions and in accord also with the soul's customs or habits whereby people are spoken of as being accustomed to feel or not to feel the several passions in some specific way. But such generalities are not enough. Aristotle needs to go beyond them and descend to details (in particular the details, in the next chapters, of the several virtues and that each virtue is a mean between two opposed vices). His method, as he has just recalled (at 2.1.1220a15–18, repeating what was said at 1.6.1216b30–35), is to begin with truths already but unclearly known, so as to reach truths that are clear. So the thing to do would be to appeal to the unclear truths about moral characters that we already have and use them to advance to what is clear, and it is at this point that Aristotle appeals to a division, ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις, of passions and powers and habits.

Actually what the manuscripts have varies. According to the OCT,Footnote ¹ C and P² have ἀπηλλαγμένοις, P¹ has ἀπηλαγμένοις (presumably a misspelling for ἀπηλλαγμένοις), L has ἀπηλεγμένοις (perhaps a misspelling for ἀπειλεγμένοις), Λ¹ has in enumeratione. The scholarly emendations, as listed in the apparatus of SusemihlFootnote ² and the OCT, are κατειλαγμένοις (Sylburg), ἐπηλλαγμένοις (Bernays, Langerbeck), διειλεγμένοις (Rassow), διηλλαγμένοις (Spengel), ἑπομένοις or ἐχομένοις (Bender). Of these possibilities the sense of all except the first is fairly clear: ἀπειλεγμένοις will mean ‘things selected’, enumeratione ‘numbered list’ or perhaps ‘summary’, κατειλαγμένοις ‘things catalogued’, ἐπηλλαγμένοις ‘sequence’ or ‘series’. διειλεγμένοις ‘things selected, or things discussed’, διηλλαγμένοις ‘reconciliations’, ἑπομένοις and ἐχομένοις ‘things following.’

As for ἀπηλλαγμένοις (which is the reading adopted by Bekker, Susemihl and the OCT), the suggestions are that it means ‘the cancelled version’ or ‘the separate section’, both from Allan,Footnote ³ or ‘the finished works’, that is, works separated off or released from further discussion, from Dirlmeier.Footnote ⁴ The latter two of these suggestions perhaps come more or less to the same thing. The first of them, even if it is possible, is less plausible, for it is not easy to see why Aristotle would, in support of an argument he is currently endorsing, appeal to some writing that has been ‘cancelled’ rather than to some writing that is just separate or completed. Another suggestion worth considering, however, is that it means, or carries the idea of, ‘abstracts’, for things ‘released’ or ‘separated’ (the literal meaning of the Greek word) are the sort of thing that abstracts are. They are statements or summaries separated or taken from a fuller discussion or writing and presented on their own (the English word does, after all, come from the Latin ‘abstraho’ which means to remove or take away). ‘Abstracts’ would also fit the context of Aristotle's argument since the work he is referring to would seem to be some set of summaries or abstracts of moral characters. If so, there seems to be little difference between reading ‘abstracts’ (ἀπηλλαγμένοις) or ‘selections’ (ἀπειλεγμένοις), since the sense turns out to be very much the same. Aristotle is referring to some set of selections or abstracts (which we might even gloss as ‘selected abstracts’) that are relevant to his current argument.

What writing, however, is Aristotle referring to? If we adopt the scholarly emendations ἑπομένοις or ἐχομένοις the reference will be to the list of passions and habits that Aristotle gives in the next chapter. Perhaps, indeed, the other scholarly suggestions, as well as the textual variants (including the Latin), could, as far as word meaning goes, all be taken as references to that list. However, they need not be, and if they are not, then a question arises as to what other work the reference is to. The main suggestion is that this work is the (lost) Divisiones (Div.),Footnote ⁵ which is certainly plausible, and not least because Aristotle says that the work contains a division, namely of passions and powers and habits.

However there are good reasons for thinking that the reference is neither to Div. nor to the list given in Chapter 2. These reasons come from what Aristotle immediately says following his mention of the division and the writing that contains it, for his words here give valuable clues as to what sort of thing he has in mind. The passage runs (1220b12–20):

If we judge, then, by these comments we should say that the work referred to should have the following features. First it should be about moral characters, for Aristotle's aim now is to find what sort of things in what part of soul moral characters are, and so a set of abstracts or selections relevant to such a search should be of moral characters. Second, it should be of moral characters in such a way as to include some sort of division of passions (as spirit and fear), powers (as that whereby angry and shameless people are angry or shameless), and habits in accord with or against reason (as courage and cowardice). But, further, in view of what Aristotle immediately goes on to argue in the next chapter, this writing can contain no explicit statement of the doctrine of actions and passions being divisible into excess and defect and mean, nor of the accompanying doctrine that virtues are in the mean and are opposed by two vices each, one at either extreme. For these doctrines are the clearer truths that we do not yet possess and that Aristotle intends to argue for by using the less clear truths he here briefly summarizes, and so these less clear truths can hardly include the doctrines already. Aristotle confirms the point himself, for his examples of habits in accord with and against reason (given at the end of the passage quoted) include only one of each, courage and temperance being opposed only to cowardice and licence and not also to rashness and insensibility. Still, even if this writing contains nothing about the mean, it must contain something about reason being what separates the habits into opposites. It must also, and more importantly, contain something from which the doctrine of the mean may be reached. It will necessarily do so, however, if it contains a division of powers and passions and habits. For Aristotle's argument to the mean, which he gives and illustrates with several examples in the next chapter (2.3.1220b21–35), proceeds from the fact that the habits are qualities in the powers for exercising, or being active with, the passions in certain ways. Such action, he says (b26–7), is change, and change is a quantity (a continuous quantity), and quantities admit of a mean and an excess and a deficiency (b21–2), of which the mean for us as commanded by knowledge and reason is best (b27–9). Hence the habits in the powers of passion, or moral characters, can be against reason in two ways, by excess and by deficiency (b30–5).

Now given this account of what the work in question must and must not contain, we can say at once that the reference of ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις is not to the list that appears in Chapter 2. For that list is explicit about the doctrine of the mean. Indeed it is introduced precisely to show that virtue must be a mean, for it expresses and illustrates the conclusion which Aristotle, by means of his discussion of continuous quantity, intends to draw from whatever work he is referring to but which is not found within that work. For the same reason we can reasonably reject Kenny's suggestion that the reference is to material from EN, because the doctrine of the mean is explicit there too when the virtues and vices and the passions and actions they relate to are discussed. There is also the fact that Kenny's suggestion requires us to suppose that EE is later than EN, which, even if it could be determinatively shown to be true (a doubtful prospect), would engage issues and controversies going far beyond the range and significance of the present passage. As for the suggestion that the reference is to the lost Div. there is little we can say for or against it because we do not know what they were like. However, if the divisions printed by Rose,Footnote ⁶ which may have an ultimate Aristotelian provenance, are anything to go by, we can dismiss a reference to them, for these divisions lack indication that the virtues and vices differ by being in accord with or against reason.

One other possibility remains, however, but it is a controversial one. There is a work extant in the Aristotelian corpus that answers well to the list of features given above as needing to hold of the work referred to: it is about moral characters; it talks of them in terms of passions, powers and habits; it lists virtues against only one opposed vice and says nothing of the mean; it makes clear, in its descriptions, that the virtues are cause of rational and the vices of irrational behaviour; it takes the form of a set or selection of abstracts. This possibility is, however, controversial because the work in question is almost universally condemned as spurious, namely the short De virtutibus et vitiis (VV).Footnote ⁷ Before showing, then, how VV could be the reference of ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις, there is need first to review the arguments of scholars against its authenticity and to examine how compelling they are.

THE QUESTION OF VV'S AUTHENTICITY

This task is not as easy as it may initially appear, because the view that VV is spurious is so much the received opinion that scholars content themselves, not surprisingly, with merely asserting the fact and do not also give the reasons or refer to sources where such reasons can be found.Footnote ⁸ Even when some discussion of reasons is given, the discussion tends to be brief and assertoric so that one receives the impression that these reasons are beyond question.Footnote ⁹ Fortunately, there is a fine book by SchmidtFootnote ¹⁰ which gives a full review and discussion of the question, as well as a commentary on the whole text of VV.

Schmidt informs us that, from the 56 extant MSS of VV, the title of the work should rather be περὶ ἀρετῶν than περὶ ἀρετῶν καὶ κακιῶν, and that a work of the former title is found in the ancient lists of Aristotle's works (though similar titles can be found in lists of Theophrastus' works as well).Footnote ¹¹ Schmidt also informs us that the modern view that VV is not by Aristotle does not go back beyond the second edition (1859–68) of Zeller's Die Philosophie der Griechen (the first printed Greek editions, from the Renaissance period, all attribute VV to Aristotle).Footnote ¹² Zeller's reasons for inauthenticity were:Footnote ¹³ 1) that the way the virtues and vices are described is characteristic of the Peripatos from the time of Theophrastus and after; 2) that, at the beginning, it connects itself with Plato and the Platonic division of the soul in a way that only a later Peripatetic could do (earlier Peripatetics would not have been so Platonizing); 3) that the pairing of the opposites ἐπαινετά and ψεκτά at the end as well as the beginning of the work reflects Stoic influence; 4) that the introduction of δαίμονες between gods and parents and the way piety and godlessness are handled are indications of late composition and of dependence on Neopythagorean developments. SchuchhardtFootnote ¹⁴ largely followed Zeller's judgement but placed the work more firmly in the Eclectic period of the first century b.c. and also pointed out that Zeller's reason number 3 (about the opposites ἐπαινετά and ψεκτά) was hardly compelling since the opposition is already found in Aristotle, as at Rhetorica 1.9.1366a23–5, 33–6 (SchmidtFootnote ¹⁵ points out several other parallels in word and thought between VV and Rh. 1.9). But he still accepts a late date because of other words (as ἀμνημοσύνη, ἀπότευγμα, χαυνοῦσθαι, μεμψιμοιρία, ἀνόρεκτος), which are not found elsewhere in Aristotle's works and which he thinks are late. We may then mark these ‘late’ words as number 5 of the reasons against authenticity (following on from Zeller's four). Susemihl (in his edition of EE which also included an edition of VV)Footnote ¹⁶ took over Zeller's and Schuchhardt's judgement and (assertorically) declared the work to be the production of an Eclectic philosopher of no great intelligence who was aiming to reconcile Aristotelian and Platonic moral teaching. He dates it no earlier than the second or first century b.c.

Two additional arguments against VV's authenticity are, first, and to be numbered 6 overall (taken by Schmidt from Rieckher and Gauthier), that VV organizes certain virtues under others, as kinds or parts of a larger whole, so that it betrays marks of the influence of Chrysippus;Footnote ¹⁷ and second, to be numbered 7 (taken by Schmidt from Grant), that VV says nothing of the doctrine of the mean and lists only one vice for each virtue (Grant also repeats argument 1 from Zeller, that VV treats the virtues after the fashion of the character portraits of Theophrastus, and not in the analytic manner typical of Aristotle himself, so that it postdates Aristotle's death).Footnote ¹⁸

Gohlke, by contrast, who accepted the authenticity of VV, says, on the basis of argument 2, that it belongs to an early stage in Aristotle's philosophical career, when he was still Platonic in his thinking and, on the basis of argument 7, that it belongs to a stage before Aristotle had developed the doctrine of the mean (for it is inconceivable that this doctrine could later have been forgotten, and hence inconceivable that VV could have been written by a Peripatetic after Aristotle's death).Footnote ¹⁹ It predates, therefore, in Gohlke's view, the writing of the Topica. Schmidt does not mention here Gohlke's other point against argument 7, but does mention it later, that Rh. 1.9 contains a discussion of virtues and vices and yet says nothing of the mean, nor of each virtue having two opposed vices (so that if absence of mention of the doctrine of the mean were sufficient to show VV to be inauthentic, it would show Rh. to be inauthentic too).Footnote ²⁰ Schmidt also argues, on his own account, that the doctrine of the mean does not appear in Theophrastus' Characters (or in other works of the early Peripatos), though it does appear in Theophrastus' formal treatment of ethical science.Footnote ²¹ Absence of the doctrine of the mean reflects, therefore, difference rather in a work's nature and purpose than in its author.

Of these arguments we can already dismiss numbers 2, 3 and 7 as being without weight, since the features they rest on are perfectly compatible with Aristotelian authorship. We are left, then, with arguments 1, 4, 5 and 6. But Gohlke had himself already pointed out, about argument 5, that if the use of words not found in other Aristotelian writings were an indication that a given work was not by Aristotle, then EN should be considered not to be by Aristotle because the same is true of it, especially in its last three books.Footnote ²² Schmidt himself makes the same point.Footnote ²³ About argument 6, the alleged Chrysippan influence on VV, Schmidt shows that it too has no weight, in part because we know so little of what Chrysippus said on the matter that to conclude VV reflects his influence is arbitrary (why could not the influence be the reverse?). In addition, the way VV talks about the relation of virtues to each other is loose and imprecise, follows expressions and formulations found in other Aristotelian works, and does not reflect some formal ethical system (such as is attributed to Chrysippus and the Stoics generally).Footnote ²⁴

As for argument 4 about δαίμονες, SchmidtFootnote ²⁵ again shows it has no weight. First, the Neopythagorean sources Zeller had in mind seem themselves to be derivative from earlier Academic, Peripatetic and Stoic material (so that resemblance between these sources and VV may as well show VV to be earlier as later than them). Second, giving honour to δαίμονες as well as to gods and deceased parents was an established part of traditional morality already in Aristotle's day and is attested by Isocrates and Plato.

The only argument left then is 1, the Theophrastean character of VV, and it is on the basis of this argument that Schmidt assigns the work to the time of Theophrastus' scholarchate and so after the death of Aristotle.Footnote ²⁶ But argument 1 is no more convincing than any of the others. For, as Schmidt cannot help admitting (and as he had anyway noted in his comments on Cope and Sandys),Footnote ²⁷ the descriptions in VV recall, if in shortened form, the sort of descriptions we already find of the same virtues and vices in EN and EE, and recall also the sort of descriptions we find in Rh., where too, as in VV, all elements of formal ethical analysis are missing.Footnote ²⁸ Hence the style of VV, even if it recalls Theophrastus, recalls Aristotle himself just as much – not to mention that Theophrastus could have been pursuing his work on character portraits while Aristotle was still alive, and so with the active encouragement and even collaboration of Aristotle himself (for elements of such portraits are already present in EN and EE).

We are forced to conclude, therefore, that no good or compelling reasons have been produced by scholars for doubting the authenticity of VV. Since we have the witness of Antiquity in its favour, and since it is a sound principle of method to follow the tradition unless and until we have good reason to reject it,Footnote ²⁹ we should, in the absence of further and good reasons yet to be proposed by scholars, hold VV to be a genuine work of Aristotle's. The tradition could, of course, be wrong, so scholars remain free to reject it. Absolute proof is seldom to be had in such matters,Footnote ³⁰ and we must be content instead with presumption and probability. But presumption lies first with tradition, as is evident, and so also here does the probability, unless reasons of greater probability can be adduced on the other side. But there are, in VV's case, no such reasons.

DE VIRTUTIBUS ET VITIIS AND ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις

We might still raise the question as to why Aristotle would want to write so slight a work as VV. It adds nothing to what is found in the ethical works and it lacks the fullness of observation and description of Theophrastus' character portraits (and of the lesser portraits Aristotle himself gives in the ethical works). One likely answer is that it is a brief summary or abstract of the chief virtues and vices, to be used as a quick and handy guide, especially perhaps by younger students, for judgement and direction of behaviour. Such an answer is proposed by Zürcher, who suggested it was written first by Aristotle as a sort of ethical vade mecum for Alexander and other young princes under his tutelage at Pella. The suggestion is attractive but it could never be more than a happy guess (it lacks any independent support). Another answer, compatible with and not opposed to the first, is that it is a brief summary or abstract of ethical phenomena, or endoxa, for use in philosophical analysis and in the exposition of ethical theory. That VV lacks all elements of ethical theory is evident (it is the burden of argument 1 against VV's authenticity). That making such collections of empirical data and endoxa was a practice of the Lyceum precisely for their use in philosophical analysis is well known, and that EE is referring to some such collection in the phrase ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις is virtually certain. Could that collection be VV?

Recall then the character of the work. It is a set of selections or abstracts; it is about moral characters; it talks about them in terms of passions and powers and habits; it lists virtues against only one opposed vice; it makes clear, in its descriptions, that the virtues are cause of rational and the vices of irrational behaviour. In evidence here are some representative passages.Footnote ³¹

One notices about these brief descriptions of virtues and vices that in each case they are in terms of a division of passions and powers and habits. So courage is of the spirited part (a power) and makes people hard to panic (a habit) by fear of death (a passion); temperance is of the desiring part (a power) and makes people cease to have appetite (a habit) for base pleasure (a passion); cowardice is of the spirited part (a power) and makes people panicked and easily moved (a habit) by fear of death (a passion); licence is of the desiring part (a power) and makes people prefer (a habit) base pleasure (a passion).

If we look further at what is said of these habits, or of these vices and virtues, we will see that in each case they are described as being in agreement with reason or contrary to it. The words reason and unreason do not appear in the descriptions (they do appear in the accounts of prudence and folly and of continence and incontinence), but the kinds of behaviour listed are described in ways that all would see to be rational or irrational. So courage makes one not panic before fears of death but to face dangers well and to be steadfast and manly, all of which is rational behaviour in battle, even if all one wishes is to escape death, for panic and flight make one do foolish things and to prefer defeat to death may be to find death in the end (the defeated are often killed when captured). Temperance makes one not to be fascinated by base pleasures, to keep order and decorum and a sense of shame, all of which again is rational behaviour. For disgraceful and disorderly behaviour can easily ruin reputation and also financial and physical health, as many still today, including many politicians, have discovered to their cost. Similarly too with the other virtues and vices described in the text. The point is capped in the summary paragraph at the end about virtue and vice in general, that virtue makes one's passions peaceful and ordered and harmonious and a model of a good regime, while vice does the opposite. For the former are all features of a rational state of soul and the latter of an irrational one.

The fit, therefore, between the work referred to in the crux phrase from EE and VV is tight. Moreover, the features of VV that scholars have used to reject its authenticity (that it fails to talk about the mean and the extremes in the case of actions and passions; that it lists only one vice for each virtue; that it begins with an appeal to the division of soul proposed by Plato; that it talks of δαίμονες; that it gathers certain virtues under others; that it is, in general, eclectic in character) are all features which make that work to be just the sort of writing EE is here referring to. Certainly the reference to Plato and the general eclecticism fit, for the views of Plato and others will be among the unclear truths we are to begin from so as to get to truths that are clearer.Footnote ³² We do not, therefore, have to suppose that Aristotle would have to agree with everything in VV in order to be the author of it. Sufficient if what is in it is the sort of material, the phenomena and the endoxa, from which Aristotle can fairly argue to his own, clearer conclusions.

Accordingly we have good reasons to conclude that VV is the work (or at least one of the works),Footnote ³³ being referred to by the phrase ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις. The reasons are not determinative proof (we are unlikely to get such proof in these sorts of matters), but they are sufficient to make the conclusion plausible, even probable. The conclusion should take its place, therefore, alongside other suggestions (as in particular the suggestion about the lost Div.) when the question is raised of the meaning and reference of ἐν τοῖς ἀπηλλαγμένοις.