Aristotle's system of ethics is one of the most important in philosophical history.
In short, it is an ethics directed at human happiness; and one that entails a sense of human "flourishing" that is truly revolutionary. Indeed, for this reason, many atheist and secular humanist thinkers over the past centuries have cited Aristotle as one of the fathers of a non-theistic system of morality. But is that really accurate?
Although Aristotle's ethics seems very unconcerned with God (at first glance), a closer look reveals something else.
Intellectual & Moral Virtue
For Aristotle, all ethics are aimed at happiness. In fact, he says, happiness is the very "end of human nature." (1176a33)
Furthermore, true happiness only occurs when one acts in accord with virtue. To account for this, Aristotle divides the ethical life into two parts: intellectual virtue and moral virtue.
Intellectual virtue is most closely associated with man's rational nature. For Aristotle, the highest being is the Prime Mover (God), who is nothing other than thought thinking thought. Man, as an image of this divine being, is thus called to ponder its nature and aspires to imitate the purity of its thought. He even goes so far as to say that "reason more than anything else is man." (1178a7) Thus, intellectual virtue is activity aimed at contemplating the divine; and in that it achieves happiness.
Moral virtue, on the other hand, is something entirely human. It does not take for its object the divine Prime Mover, but functions in the world. Moral virtue is constituted by "activities [befitting] our human estate," (1178a9) and belonging "to our composite nature." (1178a18)
As a result, the happiness afforded by morally virtuous action is altogether different than the happiness of intellectual contemplation. While contemplation seeks a divinely bestowed happiness, moral virtue results in human flourishing, or eudaimonia.
Rationality & Moral Virtue
Secular humanists who see Aristotle's ethics as non-theistic typically attach themselves to this idea of moral virtue as entirely self-accounting. In other words, they bring out the fact that man's relations to his fellow men can be fully virtuous without any accounting of God or the divine presence. That, they say, is something reserved to intellectual virtue.
But understanding what Aristotle intends by the moral life requires one to take into consideration his idea of God. Since man is primarily a rational animal — that is, reasonable and capable of thinking and pondering--Aristotle's idea of moral virtue must certainly take this into account. If living in harmony with other human beings requires one to know what it means to be a human being, understanding the model of rationality per se is an important thing.
At the very least, since moral action is defined as that pertaining to man's "composite nature" (i.e. his body and soul together), there must be a real account of rationality in properly moral virtue that has, in large part, a recourse to Aristotle's understanding of God as the very perfection of rationality itself.
Aristotle: A Secular Humanist?
While Aristotle's ethics are very appealing for secular humanists, who want to push toward a morality devoid of God and divine dependence, it seems that here they will be hard pressed. While there is clearly something left for such thinkers to hold onto — namely the internal cohesion of Aristotle's moral theory — there is nevertheless a strong echo of God that reverberates throughout his notion of what it means for a man to act in accord with his composite nature.
In short, it seems that Aristotle is not the secular humanist he is often portrayed to be. His work is rich with an appreciation of God as the cause of all reality — and a cause than cannot be separated easily from the way the world is understood.
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