The Human Being as an Ethical Norm

Abstract

Abstract In the Introduction to this volume, I suggested that the most obvious analogue in ancient philosophy for the modern concept of person was that of ‘human being’ (anthrōpos). I want to explore that suggestion here by examining two rather celebrated uses of the ‘human’ as a normative concept in ancient ethical theory: Aristotle’s use of the notion of the human function in the Nicomachean Ethics (hereafter EN) and the Stoic use of that of human nature, as formulated in two key passages of Cicero. In particular, I want to question the rather common view that the notion of human nature or function is conceived in these theories as having a superordinate normative status, in relation to other ethical norms, which enables intractable ethical problems to be settled or the whole ethical framework to be confirmed; and that this status derives from the fact that the conception so deployed is ‘objectively’ grounded in an extra-ethical metaphysics or world-view. I will argue for the alternative view that these notions function rather as a means of articulating ideals which are already part of an ethical framework; and that, even if they figure (more than other ethical norms) as part of a world-view, the world in question is one that is viewed from an ethical standpoint. My account is intended only as an interpretation of these two ancient theories, and not as a formula which is designed to fit all such theories in ancient philosophy. However, I think my interpretation could be applied more broadly; and at the close of the essay I consider briefly two other cases, in Plato and Aristotle, which, in spite of some significant differences, lend themselves to the same general type of interpretation.