Normative Normality: An Aristotelian Account

Happiness consists, for Aristotelians, in the actualization of all of our unconditional and essential causal potentialities.

But none of our powers are absolutely unconditional. They all depend on two things: on our internal constitution being in a healthy and intact state, and on our being located in a normal environment (that is, an environment that is normal for human beings). How can we define or even discern what is normal in these two ways? Do we have to rely on a brute intuition of a normative kind to do so? Or does ‘normal’ simply mean common or typical? Or desirable?

I think we can define normality scientifically, in a way that does not rely on mere frequency or on desirability. In making this claim, I will rely on Bishop Joseph Butler’s Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729), specifically, on Sermons 2 and 3. In these sermons, Butler focuses on the way in which our various desires, drives, and impulses form a coherent system, which he calls the “constitution of human nature.”

In explaining the contrasting notion of our real and proper Nature, Bulter considers the example of a man who succumbs to a snare or trap, being aware that by doing so he is rushing into the danger of certain ruin merely for the sake of some momentary gratification of his desires. Butler describes such a rash action as unnatural, as “disproportionate” to human nature:

“Such an Action then being unnatural, and its being so — not arising from a Man’s going against a Principle or Desire barely, nor in going against that that Principle or Desire which happens for the present to be strongest; it necessarily follows, that there must be some other Difference or Distinction to be made between these two Principles, Passion and cool Self love,…”

What can this difference between impulses consist in? Butler argues that some impulses must be superior in authority over others, even when they are inferior in strength:

“All this is no more than the Distinction which everybody is acquainted with, between mere Power and Authority, only instead of being intended to express the Difference between what is possible, and what is lawful in Civil Government, here it has been shewn applicable to the several Principles in the Mind of Man.”
 
“As the Idea of a Civil Constitution implies in it united Strength, various Subordinations, under one Direction, that of the supreme Authority, the different Strength of each particular Member of the Society not coming into the Idea, whereas if you leave out the Subordination, the Union and the one Direction, you destroy and lose it: So Reason, several Appetites, Passions and Affections, prevailing in different Degrees of Strength, is not that Idea or Notion of Humane Nature; but that Nature consists in these several Principles considered as having a natural Respect to each other, in the several Passions being naturally subordinate to the one superior Principle of Reflection or Conscience…. And as in Civil Government, the Constitution is broken in upon and violated by Power and Strength prevailing over Authority; so the Constitution of Man is broken in upon and violated by the lower Faculties or Principles within prevailing over that which is in its Nature supream over them all. Thus when it is said by ancient Writers, that Tortures and Death are not so contrary to Humane Nature as Injustice; by this to be sure is not meant, that the Aversion to the former in Mankind is less strong and prevalent than their Aversion to the latter…[rather] the latter is contrary to our Nature, considered in a higher Sense, as a System and Constitution, contrary to the whole economy of man.”and Authority.”

This Butlerian idea of a human Constitution can be applied, not just to our appetites and desires, but to all the powers and potentialities that pertain to our nature. And Butler himself suggests as much:

“Every Man in his physical Nature is one individual single Agent. … [Human Nature] is the inward Frame of Man considered as a System or Constitution: Whose several Parts are united, not by a physical Principle of Individuation, but by the Respects they have to each other…. Thus the Body is a System or Constitution: So is a Tree: So is every Machine.”

These mutual proportions and respects that Butler refers to echo an earlier idea expressed by Plato in The Republic: the idea that a good life is one characterized by internal coherency and harmony. Both Plato and Butler are relying on an analogy between the final cause of the whole person and health as the final cause of the functioning of the body’s organic systems. The various organs are inter-dependent. We could say that the health of the heart and of the kidneys are incommensurable. One cannot rank one as intrinsically more important than the other. But they are not independent: the heart cannot function well without the kidneys doing so, and vice versa. We can discern the proper functions of the organs scientifically by discovering these inter-dependencies.

Just as happiness corresponds to health, so unhappiness to illness. In Republic Book I, Plato describes the unjust or immoral person in terms of internal division and conflict:

“And [injustice] will produce its natural effects also in the individual. It renders him incapable of action because of internal conflicts and division of purpose, and sets him at variance with himself and with all who are just.” (Plato 1987, 97, 352a)

In Book IV, Plato defends the idea that only the just and moral person is happy in terms of this same internal harmony:

“The just man will not allow the three elements which make up his inward self to trespass on each other’s functions or interfere with each other, but by keeping all three in tune, like the notes of a scale (high, middle, and low, and any others there be), will in the truest sense set his house to rights, attain self-mastery and order, and live on good terms with himself. When he has bound these elements into a disciplined and harmonious whole, and so become fully one instead of many, he will be ready for action of any kind…” (Plato 1987, 221, 443e)

This notion of a natural harmony or constitution among our powers can best be understood dynamically, over the long run. Powers form a harmonious system or constitution when they are mutually supportive over time. And we can extend this constitution into our environment, including those external powers that help to sustain the harmonious internal system.

It is this harmonious constitution that gives some of our faculties and powers authority over others. Butler identifies two such authoritative faculties: rational self-love and the conscience. These faculties have authority over our other “particular passions” (to use Butler’s language), including our love of the various basic goods. Consequently, it can be rational to deny ourselves or others one or more of the basic goods for the sake of the long-term health of the human constitution. In particular, the long-run health of our human constitution requires that the good of living according to conscience must play a supreme and overriding role in our decision-making. Not that conscientiousness is the only basic good, but that we cannot enjoy any of the basic goods in the long run unless our attachment to conscience is recognized as supreme and overarching.

To clarify what I mean, I have to make one more point about the nature of causal powers. Powers can be obstructed, disabled, and even destroyed. If my eyes are shut or I’m located in a totally dark room, my power of sight is obstructed and disabled. If my eyes are blinded, that power is destroyed. Nonetheless, sight remains as one of my essential powers as a human being.

If some causal power of a human being is not obstructed, disabled, or destroyed, we can say that that person is well-disposed with respect to that power, or that the power is itself in a good disposition.

We are now in a position to define the constitution of a human being. The constitution of a human being is that largest set A + C + E of causal powers such that:

1. The set A contains all the essential immanent causal powers of a human being,
2. The set C contains only essential active and passive causal powers of the human being that are at the organic, sentient, or rational levels,
3. The set E contains powers of objects in the environment, which can be expected to occur in the surroundings of human beings with a non-negligible frequency,
4. The successful actualization of each member of C + E contributes causally in the long run to and is in the long run a causally necessary condition of the proper disposition of some of the other members of A + C.

We can say that a human being is in a normal condition if all the internal powers of the human constitution are well disposed in that human being.

And we can say that the environment of a human being is normal if all the external powers of the constitution are well-disposed in elements in that environment, and the environment does not contain any well-disposed powers whose exercise would obstruct, disable, or destroy the internal powers of the human constitution in that person.

The happiness or chief good of a human being then consists in the actualization over the long run of the human constitution. Prudence enables us, in the long run, to regulate our loves for the basic goods so as to maintain them in their proper balance. In addition, a well-developed conscience enables us regulate our actions so as to prevent the destruction of our character.