This chapter concerns the Aristotelian Feelings. Aristotle provides a list of the feelings in Nicomachean Ethics II 5, but he fails to give any analysis of their inner workings. For that we need to turn to Aristotle’s Rhetoric II 1-11 and passages from his de Anima. While it is a controversial matter to appeal to texts outside the Nicomachean Ethics, I argue that it is possible to draw important lessons from these texts for the interpretation of the Ethics while keeping sight of the major differences between the scope and often of the content of these different works. Two important features of the feelings that emerge from such an examination are: (1) that the feelings provide indexical insight – information about the immediate context of choice and action; and (2) that the feelings, while motivational, only get their direction from a person’s character and the particular circumstances that person is in. For example, sympathy (eleos) may motivate one to help someone in need if one is a good person, or it may motivate one to turn away, if one is a bad person.

Chapter 8 presents angelification in the Christian apocalypse Zostrianos. Zostrianos is the mysterious reputed author of the longest tractate in the Nag Hammadi library (NHC VIII,8.1). The first known reception of this text was by Christians, one-time friends of Plotinus who tried to fit into his philosophical circle at Rome. Zostrianos ascends into four extra-cosmic dimensions in which he experiences successively higher forms of angelification. The text of Zostrianos is designed to lead its readers into contemplative ascent prefaced by a life of purifying virtues. These virtues completely cut one off from the structures of civic society in an effort to generate an angelic subjectivity on earth.

Chapter 7 concerns to kalon and music. According to Aristotle, virtue of character and happiness are examples of to kalon, and the good person, who acts and feels correctly, does so for the sake of to kalon. While to kalon clearly means “the beautiful” in certain other contexts, there is a major debate in Aristotelian scholarship about whether to kalon has an aesthetic aspect in Aristotle’s ethics. I briefly discuss some aesthetic ideas in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, biological works, and Poetics, showing how they carry over into his ethics. I then raise some objections to the structural view of to kalon in Aristotle’s ethics. Next I discuss the ethical dimension to music – the importance of music for moral education, including a discussion of fear and sympathy and a reprise of the Philoctetes. This is followed by a discussion of the musical dimension to ethics, with music providing the best metaphor for describing the interdependence of the good person’s thought and feelings. Finally, I address the question what it means for the good person to act for the sake of to kalon, and I provide some reflections on music, contemplation, and the happy life.

Chapter 1 treats Hesiod (early seventh century BCE), who envisioned the daimonification of the primal (golden) generation of humans. The golden generation was already close to the gods, the “model A” type of human. For Hesiod, it was important that the golden generation was righteous and good. After death, they became guardian daimones that granted gifts to humans. Hesiod also presented the daimonification of an individual, Phaethon. Phaethon represents a type of figure who obtained daimonic status owing to his beauty. Later, however, daimonification was linked with moral forms of excellence. Alcestis, a maiden from Thessaly, became a daimon by her supreme sacrifice, and Pythagoras was venerated as a daimon for his wisdom.

Chapter 7 turns to daimonification in the founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus (205–270 CE). Porphyry presented Plotinus as already a daimon while on earth. This presentation partially depends on Plotinus’s own teachings: the one who becomes a daimon in heaven already was one on earth. This presentist focus was shaped by a reading of Empedocles and Plato – the daimon is one’s higher consciousness into which one lives. In his theory of daimonification, Plotinus emphasized ethical and contemplative practices. Purifying virtues disengaged the higher consciousness from the “conglomerate” of the body and the lower mind. When one’s higher mind is free from bodily images, one can live at the level of the daimon.

explores the phenomenon of disintegration, akrasia, in which the agent’s better judgment and appetite (classified as a feeling by Aristotle) come apart and the agent acts voluntarily simply on her appetite instead of her better judgment. Here again I rely on my account of indexical insight from , and I return to Sophocles’ Philoctetes to give a reading of the play that supports Aristotle’s claim that Neoptolemus is not akratic when he ceases to fall in with Odysseus’s plan to deceive Philoctetes, because he is not acting incorrectly. The upshot of my discussion, a detailed interpretation of the infamous EN VII 3, is that the akratic lacks the self-knowledge, the thoughtfulness, and virtue of character to act reliably in a correct manner. Contrary to the contention of modern philosophers, I argue that akrasia is primarily an ethical phenomenon.

In Chapter 6, I consider how much integration of thought and feeling is required for a good character, and how much integration or disintegration of thought and feeling exists in the psyche of the bad person. Both discussions raise the question whether the good person has a pleasanter life than the bad person. I attempt to answer this question by distinguishing two levels of pleasure (and pain), and by applying Aristotle’s view that virtue is the measure of pleasure. The beginning of the chapter clarifies my view and addresses an objection that my account of the interdependence of thought, desire, and feeling in the good person is too demanding. My answer relies on Aristotle’s threefold analysis of a feeling as a physiological reaction, an impression of a salient consideration in the here and now, and a motivating desire to do this now. The good person can have physiological reactions without having a full feeling – so, for example, a good person may still be hungry even if she does not want to eat another chocolate now. The end of this chapter discusses the thought in thoughtfulness, addressing the objection that my account of the good person is not demanding enough.

I have argued that according to Aristotle it is not possible to have the correct thought without the correct feelings and conversely. As he says, virtue of character and thoughtfulness are yoked together. One achieves the correct interdependence of thought and feeling by developing both at the same time, not one after the other. Metaphorically speaking, the culmination is a musical soul disposed to allow one to act in a thoughtfully ethical way. The motivation of such a soul is prohairetic. Contrary to Elizabeth Anscombe’s contention, “prohairetic” should be in our vocabulary after all.

Adapting certain features of Empedoclean daimonology, Plato formulated a more rigorous theory of daimonification through virtue. He daimonified the soldiers of his ideal republic for their courage, and daimonified rulers (“guardians”) for their wisdom. In his Cratylus, Plato vouched for the daimonification of all people who were noble and wise. Plato’s Timaeus introduced the ultimate democratic principle of daimonification by identifying one’s guardian daimon with humanity’s higher consciousness (or nous).

Empedocles (about 492–430 BCE) promoted himself as a daimon in flesh. He told a cosmic story about how daimones fell from their blessed state and the mode of their return. The pure daimon is a spherical being made up of the energy of Love. Owing to a moral fault, the individual daimon falls into flesh and enters a drawn-out cycle of moral and physical purification. The fallen daimon purifies itself by living the lives of different animals and plants and by not eating substances that contain the daimonic essence. Empedocles is historically significant for his focus on individual and present daimonification, and for his cosmic story of daimonic fall and redemption, a story moralized by Plato and his intellectual heirs.