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This chapter deals with the second phase of the theological history of suicide—its discovery as a subject of discussion. It examines the work of Alexander of Hales, primarily Summa Alexandri, and Neoplatonism; the reception of Aristotle's Ethics; St Thomas Aquinas; two local broadcasters, Remigio de' Girolami and Guido Vernani; and Pope John XXII and Johannes Nider.

This chapter examines the evidence of the ethical treatises regarding Aristotle’s use of the appeal to human nature to provide substantive guidance or justification for the demands of ethics. The so-called function argument, the notion that human beings have a natural direction of development, and the references to natural virtue or natural justice are canvassed as possible grounds for believing that Aristotle was an Archimedean naturalist about ethics. The status and relationship of the various ethical treatises is also discussed, together with the place of ethics within the hierarchy of sciences, as necessary background to the examination of Aristotle’s views.

Aristotle’s critique of attempts to ground ethics in metaphysical abstractions would be the logical place for him to have articulated the case for a naturalistic ethics, but he does not do so. Rather, we find, in Eudemian Ethics, a contrary case for a distinction between the natural good and the practical good. Given Aristotle’s well-known emphasis on the nature of action, and his practice of beginning normative treatises from the nature of action, we can see implicit in this focus an argument that, for rational agents, the fact that we aim at some good commits us to seeking the genuine or true good. This chapter argues that an apparent fallacy in the first sentence of Nicomachean Ethics yields—if properly understood—an insistence that rational agency requires consideration of the truly best goal.

Examining Aristotle’s intellectual milieu, this chapter argues that the supposedly modern questions about the ‘sources of normativity’ are being asked by Aristotle’s contemporaries, even without the spur of the modern sciences. The challenge to traditional beliefs from materialism, awareness of cultural variations and from sophistic challengers unsettled belief in traditional piety, requiring philosophers to seek other forms of justification. Plato’s work clearly shows a felt need for metaphysical foundations of ethics. The subjectivism of the Cyrenaic school, among others, put pressure on the notion that there is a true good beyond appearances. This chapter notes that—on one reading of the justification for Aristotle’s teleology—he might reasonably have seen the appeal to human nature as an external point of appeal to justify the demands of ethics; the question is whether he did do so.

Beginning from a short history of ethics offered in Korsgaard’s The Sources of Normativity, this chapter notes the practice—dating back to Anscombe’s ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’—of offering narratives about the history of modern ethics in order to unsettle the metaphysical picture underlying the rise of non-cognitivism or subjectivism in ethics. These narratives often feature Aristotelian virtue ethics as a potential alternative, and have shaped the reading of Aristotle’s ethics. The supposed ‘gap’ separating ancient and modern ethics is questioned, and with it the claim that Aristotle was unreflective about the grounding of his ethics; the supposition is also disputed that he regarded human nature as an ‘Archimedean Point’ to ground the demands of ethics, as the work of Williams and Foot might suggest. From a survey of modern appropriations of his ideas, two research questions are isolated: was Aristotle an Archimedean naturalist, and was he metaethically naive?

Several features of the ethical works actively militate against an Archimedean naturalist reading, including the non-instrumental value placed on the virtues, the non-deductive nature of practical reasoning and the absence of a blueprint for living well. This chapter reaffirms the consensus that Aristotle’s account of practical reasoning is not restricted to means-end reasoning, against a recent critique, and suggest that the contemporary particularist reading of Aristotle may be overstated if it is taken to suggest that all considerations may change valency. Having set aside the reading of Aristotle as an Archimedean naturalist, the chapter turns to the reconstruction of his positive account of the sources of normativity.

On the model of Grice’s account of the creation of a new kind of value at the same time as the introduction of practical agents, this chapter continues the argument that Aristotle attempted to ‘bootstrap’ a commitment to normativity from the existence of practical reason. Reinterpreting Socrates’ paradoxical claim that everyone aims at the good, Aristotle turned a tautological analysis of action—that it necessarily aims at some good—into the normative thesis that we are, as rational agents, implicitly committed to seeking the true good. Central to his vision is the belief that we can antecedently identify some agents as more practically wise than others, averting the possibility of radical collective error.

This chapter discusses and examines the evidence for dating the ethical treatises that can be drawn from their texts. It will not attempt to present an overall theory of the development of Aristotle's ethics, nor the progress of his philosophy as a whole. The chapter also includes a chronology of the ethical treatises that scholars have proposed within the framework of the known dates of Aristotle's life.

The central argument of the volume is outlined, and the importance of the opening sentence of the Nicomachean Ethics—that every action aims at some good—is highlighted. Aristotle should not be interpreted as an ethical naturalist, drawing substantive ethical guidance from impartial study of the natural world: his considered view does not depend on viewing human nature as an external point that provides substantive ethical guidance. The Introduction notes the somewhat unusual procedure—for a work of ancient philosophy scholarship—in proceeding from questions raised by modern appropriators of Aristotle’s ethical ideas. The transmission of Aristotle’s ideas, and the incomplete state of the surviving texts, justifies us in asking questions that may not be explicit in the texts.

Aristotelian virtue ethics has recently come under attack in light of situationist critiques of character. This chapter offers a new and original counter to these attacks. It argues that it is only the conception of character developed in Aristotle’s ethical works that is vulnerable to the objections raised by philosophers sympathetic to situationism such as Doris, Harman, and Merritt. The chapter argues that in Aristotle’s biology, one finds a conception of “natural character” largely immune to situationist objections. The idea is that for Aristotle, humans are a kind of animal, and like other animals, they have character traits that stem from their physiological profiles—for instance, they may be naturally courageous or naturally cowardly. These natural traits are what humans have by default, and they are subject to the influence of situational factors not “up to us.”

Constructivism attempts to straddle the divide between two extremes: on the one hand that the practical good exists independent of human thought and choice, or on the other that ethical claims are not truth-evaluable, because they have a non-cognitivist basis or even represent outright error. Aristotle’s position is compared to the forms of constructivism that see normativity as constitutive of agency, and his strategy is located within the current philosophical landscape. Although Aristotle’s position may not be as sophisticated or as carefully articulated as modern versions, it is argued that it is no accident that some modern constructivist accounts have drawn on Aristotelian resources.

In confession a lot of information was passed from one person to another. Most of the information was intimate: intrinsically elusive to record, then or now. Although priests were strictly forbidden to reveal what they heard in confession, many confessors thought it both permissible and constructive to tell each other of cases they had known, while protecting identities. Some of these priests recorded these exchanges. From their records not only do we ourselves learn a lot about medieval private lives, we also learn that the priests learned. Academically reared, priests became better acquainted through confession with the moral struggles of the laity. They were thus able to provide feedback to the moral theology of the schools which had taught them; and it may have been feedback of this kind which led to the promotion of the humane moral teachings of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.