What damage (if any) does the existence of tragic situations do to Aristotle’s ideas of acting finely leading to happiness?
At the heart of Aristotle’s ethical theory lies this hope that there exists an intimate connection between living well and acting well. Happiness, eudaimonia, is not merely a transient emotion but a holistic flourishing of human life, achieved through rational activity in accordance with virtue. To further refine this idea, Aristotle teleologically argues the human function is the rational activity of the soul, and to flourish and live well is to achieve one’s function. Thus, within the Aristotelian framework, these ideas of acting rationally in accordance with virtue, achieving one’s function as a human being, and living well are all different representations of a singular idea.
The existence of tragic situations questions this perhaps overoptimistic harmony. Greek tragedy presents agents who make efforts to act finely, yet fail to achieve eudaimonia. Often tragedy arises in situations where a choice must be made that is “not soluble without remainder:” conflicts where no choice leaves the agent uninjured (Williams). Nagel gives a value-oriented account of such tragedies, where tragic conflicts pit fundamentally incommensurable sources of value against each other. An example that doesn’t fit this choice-framework, however, is Oedipus, in which Oedipus kills a stranger on the street and marries the queen, only to realize later that he had killed his father and married his mother.
Tragedy does not, at least in any trivial way, refute Aristotle’s theory. Aristotle was not a Stoic, and acknowledged the role of factors such as fortune in the achievement of eudaimonia. He acknowledged that severe misfortune, such as being born very ugly or without certain cognitive abilities, can make eudaimonia unavailable. He also acknowledged there could arise conflicts of incommensurable values, for which he developed the concept of practical wisdom, which guides individual decisions beyond the scope of rational deliberation of values. Aristotle, however, treats such cases as near-outliers, pathologies mostly correctable by appropriate sociopolitical action. My claim, however, is that tragic situations force us to substantially weaken the scope of Aristotelian ethics to cases in which the circumstances are ethically intelligible. What survives is not a confident harmony of virtue and flourishing, but a more modest and fragile conception of ethical judgement. Aristotelian ethics should be treated less so as an all-encompassing thesis and more so as a rigorous theory that operates within a narrow range of cases; one that can be applied generally but with significant consideration of the error and uncertainties involved.
We qualify this claim further. Aristotle can accept that tragic situations exist yet preserve the core of his ethics. The question is not whether every situation has an unstained outcome, but rather whether deliberation allows for the finest available action under the given constraints. Aristotelian ethics, therefore, can absorb tragedy to some extent, especially as Aristotle already acknowledges the role of fortune and external goods. Yet such a defense comes at a cost; once Aristotle concedes the finest action can still lead to moral injury, the connection between fine action and flourishing is far less robust than suggested by eudaimonism. I claim this is the extent of the damage tragedy deals to Aristotle’s ethics.
Williams’ discussion of tragedy centers around Agamemnon at Aulis, who, under the influence of supernatural necessity, must either kill his own daughter or betray his own men in the war against Troy, both of which are morally unacceptable. This, at face value, seems to be a reiteration of the Aristotelian point that fortune and external goods are a part of human flourishing. However, Williams cuts deeper into eudaimonism with Agamemnon. Not only does acting finely not lead to happiness, but acting finely is unavailable in the first place; all options Agamemnon has are horrible. This also does not excuse Agamemnon from action itself as well: one may argue that as Agamemnon’s autonomy is constrained he does not act at all, only stands as an inert bystander under the flow of nature. However, Williams places emphasis that Agamemnon “put on the harness of necessity,” expressing that although the options given to him were all terrible, Agamemnon ultimately carries out the action he deems least terrible. Constrained action is still action, all things considered. Overall, Williams shows that in tragic circumstances the very terms of agency are shaped by something less tractable than character, and tragic necessity distorts the space of possible action itself.
Another dimension of Williams’ argument reveals itself in his discussion of Oedipus. In Oedipus, Oedipus hears a prophecy that he would commit patricide and flees his family to prevent such a terrible outcome, which ultimately leads to the prophecy coming true. This is a canonical instance of deferred fatalism, where regardless of the actions taken all outcomes converge to some known result. If one is to say happiness cannot be achieved once one kills their own father and marries their mother (which is a fair assumption to make), then regardless of what fine action Oedipus takes leading up to the predetermined patricide he will never be able to achieve happiness. This is a circumstance in which acting finely does not lead to flourishing. One could argue this falls under the Aristotelian concept of fortune being part of happiness, yet this would neglect the additional structure of deferred fatalism present. Acting finely can fail to lead to happiness not merely because of bad luck, but because one lives in a world sometimes hostile to ethical aspiration.
This connects to Williams’ further point that the world might fundamentally be ethically unintelligible. Aristotle belongs to a tradition that assumes human excellence and the structure of reality can be brought into alignment. Tragedy shows the limitations of such an assumption; Agamemnon illustrates a case where there is no fine available action that does not involve moral stain, and thus the agent, through no fault of their own, is forced to commit a terrible act. Oedipus shows a case where the world actively works against ethics, where regardless of his actions the world converges to a terrible outcome where he kills his own father. Overall, Williams’ interpretations of Oedipus and Agamemnon show the fragility of pursuing fineness and the link between fineness and flourishing in an ethically unintelligible world.
Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy refines and somewhat radicalizes this idea of an ethically unintelligible world. Williams’ argument is still framed in recognizably ethical terms: tragedy shows situations in which agency is deformed, and options are still morally stained. Nietzsche pushes this rift deeper into metaphysics, arguing that suffering and contradiction are not defects in ethics in its application to reality but rather constitutive of existence itself. The tragic world is not one where morality occasionally breaks down, but rather one where demanding life be morally intelligible may already be a kind of evasion.
Nietzsche illustrates this claim by identifying the Apollonian and Dionysian as two opposing sources of artistic inspiration. The Apollonian represents form, measure, patterns, the beautiful ordering of appearances. The Dionysian represents the more terrifying truth that exists beneath these ordered appearances, the true chaos of the universe which cannot be readily grasped by our rational consciousness. To Nietzsche, the power of tragedy comes from its distinctive ability to reveal glimpses of the Dionysian, from which it derives its artistic potency. This is why Nietzsche opposes tragedy to Socratic optimism, the belief that rational inquiry can render human existence justifiable and harmonious. The Dionysian element unique to tragedy reveals dimensions of reality orthogonal to rationality and reason.
This approach gives Nietzsche a sharper objection to Aristotle than Williams’ claim that tragic situations merely frustrate ethical action. Aristotle can concede that fortune interferes with flourishing, yet still preserve the thought that the good life is rationally intelligible: acting finely belongs to human flourishing even if circumstances prevent its achievement. Nietzsche denies something more critical; tragedy does not simply show that the world sometimes obstructs rational virtue, but rather that the world is not fundamentally organized for the sake of rational virtue at all. Tragedy is difficult to decipher from an Aristotelian view because it contradicts the harmony underlying Aristotelian metaphysics: tragedy reveals that suffering, flourishing, contradiction, and virtue are subjective projections onto an unintelligible, Dionysian world.
Of course, one must cautiously examine how much Aristotle’s eudaimonism depends on Socratic optimism. Aristotle is far less optimistic than Socrates in one sense: he does not think knowledge alone guarantees right action, and explicitly acknowledges the importance of habituation, external goods, and fortune in a flourishing life. Most notably, he rejects the Platonic and Kantian notion of a featureless self prior to habituation, and thus accepts upbringing as a critical factor to human flourishing that is not under the agent’s control. Regardless, Aristotelian ethics still inherits an optimistic structure. It assumes that reality is rationally intelligible enough for virtue, fine action, and happiness to belong in a unified account of human flourishing. The claim that humans have a function which is rational activity, and that flourishing consists in performing this function well, already presupposes a reality that acknowledges human ethics. This is where Nietzsche’s critique damages Aristotle’s account. The Dionysian element revealed by tragedy undermines the residual Socratic optimism grounding Aristotelian eudaimonia, and subsequently the robustness of the links between fineness, flourishing, and function.
A critique one may make of the preceding argumentation is that Greek tragedies such as Oedipus and Agamemnon challenge Aristotelian ethics only under seemingly contrived contexts of deferred fatalism and supernatural necessity. Our response to this is that such dramatic devices, of prophecies by oracles and curses by Greek gods, are only representations of a greater feature which is that the world is indifferent, and sometimes actively hostile, to ethics. One can easily create formulations of this ontological indifference more appropriate to modern culture, and arrive at the same conclusions on eudaimonia.
Nagel approaches this issue from a value-oriented perspective. Tragic conflict differs from ordinary conflict in that incommensurable values are directly pitted against each other in a dramatic fashion. No singular concept can capture all sources of value, as qualitative differences such as agent-centered versus outcome-centered cannot possibly be absorbed under one concept. Agamemnon can be interpreted under such a perspective—his specific obligations to Iphigenia are pitted against utility. This matters for Aristotle because eudaimonism presupposes a degree of unity in the human good. Even if Aristotle does not reduce all variables to a single scale, he still assumes practical wisdom can map all elements of life into fineness and flourishing. By showing that value has fundamentally heterogeneous irreducible sources, tragedy is evidence of the fragmentation of ethical life and thus reveals further fragility in Aristotle’s singular harmony between fineness and happiness.
Nagel’s framework also clarifies why the Aristotelian position cannot be fully rescued by his notion of phronesis, or practical wisdom. One may grant that a reflective and virtuous agent can still arrive at the most justifiable, finest decision in tragic situations. Yet justification does not guarantee moral vindication. If competing values arise from truly incommensurable sources, choosing finely does not dissolve the value of what is sacrificed, and thus does not protect the agent from moral injury. Phronesis may still guide action towards fineness, yet not lead to flourishing. Even without its deliberative component, tragedy damages the robustness of the link between fineness and flourishing.
These different tragic objections challenge eudaimonism from varying angles. Williams presents a practical challenge, that tragedy can deform the scope of agency that undermines fineness or happiness. Nietzsche presents a metaphysical one, that the world is not ordered such that ethical aspiration is universally intelligible. Nagel presents an evaluative challenge, that the irreducible plurality of value resists a unified conception of flourishing. These objections are not identical, nor does my argument require accepting all of them in their strongest form. The weakest conclusion already damages Aristotle’s position: the connection between fineness and happiness is not a universal truth but rather a fragile conditional achievement. The core of Aristotelian ethics remains intact after tragic objections, yet its scope must be substantially narrowed.
Works Cited
Nagel, Thomas. “The Fragmentation of Value.” Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 128–141. Print. Canto Classics.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Birth of Tragedy (Oxford World’s Classics). Oxford University Press, 2000.
Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen. Shame and Necessity. University of California Press, 2008.