Aristotle, Barthes, and "Meaning"

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses in depth some of the notions of capital-g-Goodness that contribute to a person’s virtue. Some of these notions include capital-h-Happiness, Good versus Ideal Good, virtue in relation to honor, voluntary action versus involuntary action versus nonvoluntary action, choice, and deliberation. Of these, the most intriguing topic to me is that of voluntary, involuntary, and nonvoluntary action, particularly in relation to choice, ignorance, and compulsion.

It is in Book III of Nicomachean Ethics that Aristotle begins the conversation about these different types of actions. He begins by saying that “virtue … is concerned with emotions and actions” (117). Much earlier in his essay, Aristotle describes virtue as something that is “possible to possess … while you are asleep” (15), which suggests its relevance and inevitable integration into the whole of our life. Furthermore, he states that “virtue is a greater good than honor” (15), suggesting its superiority even in politics. The link between virtue and g/Goodness, already easy to see, becomes clearer with Aristotle’s elaboration.

However, “virtue” becomes convoluted as with an unpacking of the word and a consideration of virtue in terms of voluntary and involuntary action, as well as a new term introduced by Aristotle: nonvoluntary action. Aristotle defines involuntary actions as those that are “done (a) under compulsion or (b) through ignorance,” defining an act of compulsion as one whose origin is “being such a nature that the agent, who is really passive, contributes nothing to it” (117). An action is voluntary when "the origin of the movement of the parts of the body instrumental to the act lies in the agent" (119). Of course, the definition for a nonvoluntary act is a bit more convoluted. A nonvoluntary action occurs when the person "cannot indeed be said to have acted voluntarily, as [s]he was not aware of his [or her] action, yet cannot be said to have acted involuntarily, as [s]he is not sorry for it" (123). If an agent performs an act that is in every way involuntary except there is no regret, then the action is nonvoluntary. 

However, my point is not to contest what it means for an action to be nonvoluntary. There are a few questions that I want to ask. 

How can someone be completely virtuous if their voluntary or as actions hurt one person, but help another? What if the action can’t be accurately boxed into any of the 3 categories of volunteerism? No complex term can fit perfectly into one box. If we can’t categorize actions into one term and can’t pack one term into one perfectly-fitting box, how do we define it? And if we can’t define it, what does this say about meaning in general? Roland Barthes would likely be taken aback by such questions. In “Death of the Author” he claims that “to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases – reason, science, law” (877).  

I want to make it clear that I don't mean to say that nothing has a meaning and that trying to give something a meaning is pointless. I am trying to argue for an individualistic interpretation of all meanings. In "The Death of the Author" Barthes states that "a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations to dialogue, parody, contestation" and that "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author" (877). The implication of these claims is that the reader, as an individual, creates the meaning. Whether it's the definition of a vocabulary word that the individual understands after hearing it used in a TV show or the idea behind a philosophy that the individual understands after applying it to an event in his/her own life, each person understand meaning in a way completely unique to themselves.